Seed on the Wind

She lived on the proceeds of her cache for nearly three months. None of the objects had great value, but she squeezed all she could out of them, and on two or three occasions good fortune attended her; the fur neckpiece, for instance, brought a generous thirty dollars from Mrs. Crosby at the tea-room, who also took the books, the etching and the fountain pen. Lora was niggardly with everything but food; she did the laundry herself, in the tub in the kitchen, and with remarkable ingenuity made over her old dresses to accommodate the swelling amplitude that had already set in and would soon be discernible even to a casual eye. She was relieved of the expense of Steve’s coffee and cream, for he began to take his breakfast out, leaving, usually without a word, as soon as he was dressed in the morning; often, indeed, he did not come to the flat at all, and when he did come it was commonly long after Lora had gone to bed. They seldom spoke to each other, and Lora avoided occasions for speech as much as possible, for when he addressed her his tone was so laden with resentment, with contempt and hatred even, that she shrank in pure physical repugnance. This attitude of his had come on gradually, growing steadily and as from one day to another imperceptibly, like a poisonous fungus on a tree, and she did not at all understand it. She did not hate him; why should he hate her? One morning as he was tying his shoe with his foot upon a chair in the living room, he expressed the opinion, apropos of nothing, that she was a whore; the word came out of him tight and intense and he repeated it and was incited by it to further observations. Lora made no reply. She found it painful but only because it was ugly; he was an ugly noise, that was all. Once or twice, minded to leave, she vetoed it at once; no, as long as he paid the rent she would stay. Too late; it was too far along for avoidable risks; for some time, trembling, breathless with apprehension, exultant, in an ecstasy of hope, she had been aware of the pushing within her; and now, when she lay quite still in a certain position with the palm of her hand on a certain spot, she could actually feel it, the little devil seemed actually trying to make a break for it... No you don’t, she would admonish it, no you don’t, you’ll just have to be patient a little while and so will I...

At the very moment that Steve called her a whore she had her hand there, for since he had stopped breakfasting in the flat she often stayed in bed till after he had gone. Usually she did not feel well when she awoke in the morning; to move at all was an effort and this disinclination was increased by the certainty that if she did get up and squeeze oranges and make coffee it was heads or tails whether they would be wasted. But it would be only a few minutes before she would frown at this weakness, sit up for a moment or two until the worst of the dizziness passed away, get up and get dressed and start the day’s activities. She made a point of getting out for a walk at least twice a day; towards noon she would go to the market on Hudson Street and make her modest household purchases, and after lunch it would be Washington Square or perhaps across to the river and back. When the springtime brought warmer days she found an isolated corner on one of the piers near Fourteenth Street where she could sit in the sun and watch the tugs and ferryboats and an occasional great liner gliding by. This ought to be good for it, she thought, the sun and the beautiful river and all the movement of the boats with the smoke curling up. Then, after leisurely making her way through the narrow streets back to the flat, never failing to be amused at her absurdly timid care at street crossings or when the sidewalks were wet, she would languidly, slow-motion, remove her hat and coat and hang them in the closet, and stretch herself out on the couch; and wait. That was all she did: wait. There was no virtue left in the world but patience, and no interest but expectation. It was May; her cache was empty, her money nearly gone, and Steve no longer bothered even to call her a whore. Somewhere within her was the conviction that she was acting like a stupid fool, but smothering and effacing it was a much livelier and more intimate conviction that action must wait upon emergency and that emergency, however desperate, must inevitably carry its solution along with it, like a kite its tail. Consolingly but dangerously she believed in life, much as a metaphysician believes in truth or a husband in chastity.