Seed on the Wind

The rest of July and most of August were hot. The sun blazed down from above, and New York’s pavements took the heat, mixed it with a thousand odors, increased it by some secret process to the temperature of a blast furnace, and hurled it up into the gasping faces of its citizens. Lora stuck it out. It was far from pleasant, what with the irritability of the children, a two weeks’ indisposition of Helen’s, Leah’s torrents of perspiration, and the morning nausea, but though Lewis suggested an Adirondack hilltop or a place at the seashore, Lora decided that it wasn’t worth the vast complication of the journey. She took off her clothes and lay on the floor somnolent in the heat, or went to the park with Helen and Roy and sat gasping on the grass while they tumbled around oblivious to thermometers. At home the new Swedish maid, paid out of the proceeds of Lewis’s first checks, was sweating over the vacuum cleaner or the washtub.

Lewis had not insisted on the seashore; he had suggested it, enumerated its advantages, and then quietly accepted her decision not to go. A few days later he had departed for Canada, headed for a little chateau in the Saguenay country where there was golf and trout-fishing, leaving behind him a card with the address typewritten on it and an invitation to wire him if any difficulty arose.

“Difficulty?” said Lora. “What difficulty could there be?”

“I don’t know. I’m quite ignorant,” he replied. “Don’t bother to write.”

So every few days she sent him a line or two to say that the union of chromosomes (this, long previously, from Albert) was proceeding without hindrance. There was no word from him, but each week an envelope came from his downtown office — Kane, Hildebrandt & Powers — containing a check neatly folded into a crisp blank letterhead. Surely less than impeccably discreet, she thought, but doubtless the intricate machinery of the legal factory of which he was the head somehow incorporated this weekly disbursement with an ambient indistinguishable vapor that would defy all analysis. The checks were generous and made many things possible. She bought Roy a velocipede and Helen a doll that walked three steps, and new clothing for all of them; she repaid Leah several hundred dollars which she had borrowed the preceding winter; she rescued from the pawnshop the necklace with platinum links and clasp which Max had given her the day after Morris was born; and one Sunday afternoon early in September she told Albert Scher, who was making his first paternal visit since July, that he need no longer bother about his monthly contribution to her household purse. Albert, seated on the floor trying to make Helen’s new doll go without falling over, looked up at her and blinked.

“What’s that, what’s that?” he demanded. Then he whistled in surprise and scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go into the bedroom,” he said; and then to Helen, “You try to make it go.” On his way past his foot clumsily knocked the doll on its head, but the child’s cries of protest went unregarded.

After she had righted the doll and followed him into the bedroom he closed the door and turned to her: “What’s up? What are you talking about?”

“What I said, that’s all,” she replied. “I won’t need any more money. There’s nothing mysterious about it.”

“I’m not being mysterious. There’s no occasion to discuss it in front of Panther.”

“But we don’t need to discuss it, and children know everything anyway. It doesn’t matter, that’s all there is to it.”

He stared at her, and blinked again. “Has anything happened? I don’t get it. Has Roy’s father turned out to be a bootlegger?”

Lora laughed. “Albert darling, listen. I’ll need no more of your hard-earned money. Isn’t that enough?”

“By god, you’re going to get married,” he exclaimed.

“No.”

“Of course it’s none of my business—”

“No,” she agreed.

“But you can’t do this. I mean, Panther is my daughter and I have a right to furnish her support — as well as I can. By the way, why won’t you call her Panther? Helen doesn’t mean anything; there are a million girls named Helen. Panther gives her individuality. A panther is itself a thing of beauty, of flowing living lines; the psychological effect should be tremendous. Think what your attitude toward yourself and art would be like if your name were Toad or Ichthyosaurus or Warthog. Gradually but inevitably you would come to hate all nature; you would be blind to everything but ugliness; you would probably even give up bathing—”

“You named her Helen.”

“Then I was wrong. Not that Helen is bad; it’s merely negative. But Panther! Don’t you feel it? Panther!”

“I have no objection; Panther it shall be,” agreed Lora. “Then it’s understood about the money.”

“By no means. I am her father and I should contribute to her support.”

“But it isn’t necessary. Honestly I don’t need it any more.” She put her hand on his shoulder and patted it. “You are a dear, Albert, but I don’t suppose the magazines pay any better than they ever did, and I know there are things you would like to have...”