Seed on the Wind

But she never did, though she got the picture; three different poses, of which she chose one with Helen seated on Albert’s knee and Roy leaning against the arm of his chair. The photographer was almost incapacitated with bewilderment at her refusal — mother, obviously, he saw — to make the group complete.

At that several weeks passed before she actually did get it, for lack of money to pay for it. Gradually money was becoming her one important concern; all her savings were gone, and Albert’s weekly seventy dollars was developing an elusive quality which he could not comprehend and she could not control. He dined in the flat only once or twice a week; more than half of his nights were spent elsewhere; that’s all right, it’s none of my business, she thought, but what am I going to do? She could, she supposed, go back to the studios, it would be possible to get someone like Eileen to look after the children, but she had been away from it a long time and she had never really liked it. Almost certainly, though, it would before long have become unavoidable if one autumn day Albert had not happened upon Max Kadish in an uptown gallery and brought him home to where Lora sat placid and smiling with Helen at her breast.

Even at times when the rent was long past due and Mr. Halpern at the grocery store had begun to take on a doubtful and reluctant air, she was not genuinely concerned. This mildly puzzled her; was it because she had Roy and Helen, she wondered; but no, that should work the other way — she had good cause to be worried with two small children to care for and Albert already more than halfway out of the straitjacket she had made for him. I’m getting old and sensible, she thought, it’s about time; nothing is worth worrying about; something always happens. Look at the day Steve left; that was difficult enough, desperate even, but how nicely it all came out! Or the day, nearly five years ago, she first arrived in New York...

But that was different. That wasn’t really a question of money, though she hadn’t had much. She remembered the exact amount: seventy-two dollars and forty cents; she had counted it on the train after it had passed the station at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Forty-three cents really, but she had spent the pennies for an evening paper at Grand Central and had decided that it shouldn’t be figured as part of her New York capital. She had calculated that at eighteen dollars a week she had enough for four weeks, and certainly it shouldn’t take a whole month to find some way of making a living.

But that hadn’t really been a question of money. In the first place she had been ill, frightfully ill. During the five-hour ride to Chicago she had had no thought of that; she had felt it but not thought about it, keeping herself back in the darkest corner of the car she could find with her coat collar turned up and her tam o’ shanter pulled clear down to her eyes, afraid to look up, terrified lest at any moment she might feel a hand on her arm and hear a familiar voice or the tone of authority. Only one thought was in her mind: she would not go back. Everything else was excluded from consciousness to keep her will clear and strong on that: no matter what happened, no matter who found her or what they said or did, she would not under any circumstances whatever go back. She wouldn’t tell why not, she would never tell anyone that, but rather than go back she would throw herself off the train.

When the train finally stopped at the Chicago terminal and she arose to file out with the other passengers, her knees trembled so she could not stand without holding to the back of the seat. She knew that the chief danger was here. If they had wired or telephoned there would be policemen outside, and they would spot her at once. They had no right, but they wouldn’t listen to her. She was of age, wasn’t she? Was she? She was twenty. Was it eighteen or twenty-one? She wished she knew. Directly in front of her was a middle-aged well-dressed woman with greying hair; Lora seized her arm and when the woman turned, startled, shot at her in a breath, “Listen, I’ve got to know quick, when is a girl of age, eighteen or twenty-one—” The woman jerked away and made no reply whatever.