Seed on the Wind

Not in the carriage, that settles it, thought Lora. She picked up the telephone again, then put it down and made her way back to the little corner bedroom. There, in the closet in the corner, she found two empty shelves. Everything was gone, caps, dresses, shirts, stockings, not a diaper to be seen; even the spare rubber blanket was missing. She turned to the crib. It apparently had not been disturbed; the little silk quilt lay neatly folded at one end, and it was there on top of the quilt, in a sealed envelope, that she found the note. The envelope was addressed in pencil, Miss Lora Winter. She tore it open; written on a sheet of her own stationery, also in pencil, were the words, Look in the drawer where you keep the postage stamps.

“Thank god,” said Lora aloud, and on her way to her own room she sat for a moment on Roy’s bed to rest, pressing the palms of her hands against her belly. There was a faint movement there, like the fluttering of a grasshopper imprisoned in cupped hands. She smiled. I’ll have to eat my dinner, she thought, and got up and went to her room and opened the top right-hand drawer of the bureau, where postage stamps were kept. There lay a roll of bills, a few fives and tens and several ones. Ha, she thought, so Leah’s buying a baby, too! But no, this was, of course, to pay for the clothing and diapers. She counted it: eighty-seven dollars. Possibly all she had had, but more likely the result of a detailed appraisal and calculation. Lora folded the bills together and placed them in her purse.

In the dining room Roy and Panther were finishing their mush and milk, with crackers and a raw custard. Lora called out, “You may bring my plate, Hilda,” and sat down across from them. Roy looked over at her solemnly.

“Your face looks funny,” he said. “Where’s Morris?”

“I don’t feel like talking,” said Lora. “Eat your dinner.” After a moment he spoke again: “I’m glad Morris is gone so I can yell all I want to.”

“Be quiet,” Panther said severely,

Lora thought of telephoning the chauffeur to get the car from the garage, but decided against the delay; a taxi would be quicker. Should she have help? Probably it would be better, Albert, the police, Lewis Kane? Albert was no good. Certainly not the police, from what she had heard of them. Lewis Kane perhaps. But he was a lawyer. No, all that would mean complication and delay...

She finished her dinner, with the maid’s help got the children to bed, and had been in the house altogether less than an hour when she stood again at the door with coat and hat on, woolen gloves and lined galoshes.

“Be careful, ma’am,” Hilda admonished her.

“Yes. You stay till I get back.”

The snow was deep in the street but had stopped falling, and it was turning colder; a crust was beginning to form on top. After a long wait on Central Park West she got a taxi and gave the driver the address, on Manhattan Avenue a few blocks beyond the end of the park. The taxi was not heated, and she pulled the fur coat close. I should have changed my dress, she thought. At One Hundred and First Street the taxi went across to Manhattan Avenue and then headed north again.

She had not seen the place for nearly two years, since the day she had stopped in front of it to wait for Max to go in for his camera, and his mother, leaning from a window above, had seen her and cursed her in Yiddish. It had sounded rather terrifying, and Max, saying not a word, had hustled her off around the corner. The building looked different, it seemed smaller, but there was the number above the door. In the outer vestibule were five buttons on each side with names above them; the middle one on the left said Kadish, and she pressed it, with her other hand against the door waiting for the answering click. It did not come, and she pressed the button again. Still no click. She pushed the button down and held it there, and then jabbed it again and again, viciously. Then she gave it up and went out to the sidewalk and looked up; the windows on the third floor were dark.

Those are just the front rooms, she thought; she must be there, she couldn’t be anywhere else. She returned to the vestibule and pressed the button many times, time and time again, but the door did not open. Half an hour had passed, and she began to feel cold and weary and for the first time a little fearful. If her theory was wrong — but no, she knew Leah Kadish, she knew what was back of those wet black eyes. But where the devil was she? Had they gone off like gypsies? Nomad blood that from the Asiatic sands... for a hundred centuries... Bosh. She knew Leah all right. It was getting colder every minute.