Seed on the Wind

All this time, probably unknown to himself, he had a surprise in store for her; it kept itself in reserve another month or so, and then, on an afternoon in May, the very afternoon she took the necklace downtown and returned with a check for five hundred and fifty dollars in her purse, it burst forth. On her return she found Albert seated on the stoop, his hat pulled over his eyes, half asleep in the sun.

“Where the hell is everybody?” he demanded. Lora explained that Leah had gone to the park with the children and that she had been downtown on an errand. He had tried the park, but hadn’t found them, he said, out of sorts; then went upstairs with her and helped wash the dishes from lunch. Afterwards, in the living room, he said he guessed he would go, no telling when Leah and the children would return; and then, suddenly and without warning, Lora found herself in his arms, his lips violently upon hers, his hands resuming long-relinquished privileges. Taken completely by surprise, for an instant bewildered, she merely submitted; tardily she got her hands against his shoulders and pushed, throwing back her head, but he was a giant against her little efforts and at once had her lips again and lifted her in his arms. She ceased struggling, aware of his fumbling at the fastening of her dress, then feeling herself carried to the couch against the wall, where he put her down, following her without freeing her lips. “The fool, the damn fool,” she was thinking; and finally, getting an arm free she reached up, grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled as hard as she could. He let out a yell and released her; she hung on, still pulling; he seized her wrist and jerked it away, then got to his feet and stood there, panting, looking down at her. She twisted around and sat on the edge of the couch, panting too.

“Well, for god’s sake,” he said quietly. “For god’s sake, Lora mia, explain that if you can. You damn near pulled my hair out, and I damn near pulled your dress off. You don’t deserve that, you’re by no means good enough for it. Jackass — ho, ho, what a jackass!”

She did not reply, and abruptly he turned, and was gone. She heard him getting his hat in the hall, and an instant later the door slammed.

“As long as you admit I don’t deserve it,” she said aloud; and feeling something in her hand, looked at it and found a strand of fine blond hair twisted between her fingers. That’s a pity, she thought.

It was a month or more before he showed up again.

That night in bed she amused herself matching the after-noon’s episode with the Albert of four years back. He had always been direct, but directness like everything else is a matter of degree; he had always been stupid too, but never so stupid as this. Once she had been very fond of him; still was, for that matter, for she would never forget his blunt and unassuming kindness during a whole year, a year and more, before there was any hint of a reward. Nor would she soon forget the uncomfortable and all but hopeless situation out of which he had yanked her.

Five years ago, she thought; yes, all of that, for Roy would soon be five. Just think of it, so short a time ago there had been no Morris, no Helen, no Roy! Now Roy could read, Helen could talk, Morris would soon have a tooth. But that was a fix for you, five years ago. Steve had gone for good, with so natural and unembarrassed a brutality that she had felt no resentment or indignation, leaving her lying on a couch in the living-dining-bedroom of a tiny furnished flat on which the rent would be due in three days, with — to his knowledge — something under three dollars in her purse and seven months of his child in her womb. Anne Whitman — poor Anne she had thought even then — waiting at the door below for him to come down with his bags, had gone with him.

Anne had sought her out two weeks later — to apologize! She had gone first, she said, to the flat; the janitor told her that Miss Winter had gone, and after various inquiries she finally got an address from the girl at the drugstore on the corner. She explained this somewhat breathlessly after climbing three flights of stairs to the little furnished room on Fifteenth Street to which Lora had moved two days after Steve’s departure — the rent was only six dollars a week, whereas the flat had been three times that, and light and linen, clean each week, were furnished. They called it linen, a technical term, to be broadly interpreted.

There were two chairs in the room, one made entirely of wood, the other with a seat of green imitation leather. When Anne entered Lora was seated on the latter, sewing linings in coats. There were two piles of coats on the narrow bed, one with linings already in, the other without; the ready linings were at one end, and the wooden chair served as a sewing-table. Standing, Anne explained how she got there, stammering with embarrassment; then Lora moved the wooden chair over for her to sit on.