Seed on the Wind

When hot weather came he insisted on the seashore and they went for two months to a cottage on the south shore of Long Island. Endless afternoons Lora reclined in a chair under a huge umbrella, while Roy, now past his fourth birthday, played with other children in the sand, and Helen, just learning to walk, toddled herself from one sleep into another. Max would come out in the evening — business was slow, he said, with nearly everyone away from the city — Albert Scher spent a week with them, and Anne Seaver came for a Saturday and Sunday. It was at this time that Albert embraced his theory of esthetic education and put it into practice by drawing designs for Helen in the sand.

“Of course,” he would say to Lora, standing mountainous in his bathing suit, his hair pale as bleached straw in the sun and the skin on his shoulders a fiery red, “she wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it. That must wait. For the present we merely put them before her in their simplest forms, a part of the very earth she walks on — unconsciously they make their picture in her mind.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to make them a little smaller,” said Lora, looking at the gigantic circle he had traced in the sand with intricate radii and tangents in all directions. “She isn’t six feet two.”

“Oh. By god, you’re right.” He turned to look, and instantly shouted, “Hey, Roy, let that design alone! Hey! You vandal, get off of that!”

In late September they returned to town, to the apartment on Seventy-first Street, and there, ten weeks later, at noon of a sunny crisp December day, the baby was born. The doctor had advised a hospital, but Max was against it, insisting she would be better cared for at home, and Lora was indifferent. At nine in the evening she went to bed, the doctor came, and a nurse was sent for. Max sat quietly in a chair in a corner of the room, watching every movement they made.

“You’d better go somewhere,” said the doctor. “Have you a friend nearby? Go and get some sleep.”

“I’ll stay here.”

“Then go in the other room. Go to bed. It’s all right.”

Max shook his head. “Let me alone.” A groan came from Lora’s bed and he trembled all over. “I don’t like this. Let me alone.”

He stayed. Once during the night he said to the nurse. “Good god, it’s silly. She’s worth a thousand babies. I didn’t want a baby anyway.”

“She was a baby herself once, Mr. Kadish.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

In the morning, when the pains were more frequent and at their worst, he held her hands for two hours; rather, he put his own in hers and stood with his feet braced, bending over so she could stay on her back, while her convulsive grip and tug crushed his knuckles and twisted the skin of his fingers. The doctor, returning, tried to get him away; he said, “This is none of your affair,” and wouldn’t budge. Towards noon Lora released him and pushed him off, with her hands and her eyes; he returned to his chair in the corner. When a little later he saw the nurse carrying something to the elaborately equipped table that had been set up on the other side of the room he didn’t know it was all over; he got up to see what she was doing, and she said savagely, “It’s a boy, and you get out of here. We’re busy, get out, I tell you.”

As he started toward the bed, where the doctor was, Lora said without opening her eyes, “It’s fine, get out, Max. Please get out.”

He turned and left without a word. In the dining room the maid met him with a tray of hot coffee and made him take a cup. “Miss Ruggles took the children to the park, it’s a fine day for babies,” she said. When an hour later the nurse went to tell him that the boy weighed eight pounds and that Lora was fast asleep she found him in the little bedroom in front, himself sound asleep on the floor beside Helen’s crib.

The next morning he sat in a chair beside her bed and read stories aloud. He wanted to hold her hand, but she said no, it made her nervous. He was amazed at how well she looked, not wan, not exhausted even, her grey eyes quick and bright and strong, “I’m always that way,” she said, “It’s hard while it lasts, but it’s wonderful.” She laughed. “You look as if you’d done it yourself.”

“I was a nuisance.”

“Oh, no. You were very nice. Go on and read to me.”

He chose the name Morris one evening a few weeks later as he sat and watched his son’s bedtime meal. Lora didn’t care, she said, names didn’t make any difference; and Max replied that he didn’t care much either, only if it was all the same to her they might as well call him Morris, the name of his younger brother who had died in childhood, years before. “I loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone except you,” he said. “It would please me to call him Morris, if you don’t object.”

Lora nodded, closing the front of her dress and starting to hook it. To free her hands Max took the baby, deftly and properly, and held it in his arms, looking down at it.

“By the way,” he said, “shouldn’t we have him christened or something?”

Lora glanced at him. “By a rabbi?”