Seed on the Wind

Lora, overwhelmed, took the blue folded paper which he drew from his pocket and handed to her; it consisted of four closely typewritten sheets; opening it at random, she saw near the middle of the third page:

17. In the event of an irreconcilable disagreement between A and B regarding education after the tenth year, the person named in paragraph 9 shall be consulted and his decision accepted as final.

She refolded the paper and handed it back to him. Of course, a joke. No, actually, it wasn’t. She felt she must laugh, but she knew it was impossible. Poor man. She could laugh later. Somewhere behind the elaborate ridiculous façade, beneath the thick crust of efficient calculations and crisp phrases, even between the lines of the preposterous typewritten sheets, his harassed soul was squealing and trying to wriggle out of its trap. She could laugh later.

“So you haven’t been making love to me,” she said.

“No.”

“Of course I’m flattered by your list of my virtues. But a little skeptical. It’s too much to expect, even of myself. And I would die of anxiety for fear it might be a girl.”

“Even there your record is good. Two to one”

“True,” she smiled. “But no. I won’t crowd my luck.”

“There’s no hurry. Here.” He placed the paper back on the table beside her plate. “Take that home and read it. Take all the time you want. My mind’s set on this, but there’s no hurry. Let’s talk of something else. Did you see those pictures I spoke of — the moderns at Knoedler’s? If you like the one next to the end on the right as you go in, the red and blue things on a raft or something in the ocean, you can have it.”

He turned and called to the waiter, who hurried over.

“Take these away and bring the salad.”

III

Leah, her bulging form tightly encased in a shiny pink silk dress, the integrity of its seams a desperate tribute to the stubborn heroism of thread, sat in a straight-backed chair by the dining-room window looking vaguely down into the summer lethargy of Seventy-first Street. Suddenly, for the twentieth time within an hour, imagining she heard a noise from the next room, she went to the door and softly opened it, fastened her black Asiatic eyes on Morris sound asleep in his crib, closed the door again and returned to her chair. She was furiously angry. On Sunday afternoons she was permitted — “permitted, my God” — to take the baby, alone, into the park. Outside was July sunshine and a pleasant breeze, not at all hot; and merely because that fool of a doctor didn’t like the baby’s breathing here she was, helpless, sitting in a chair listening to that stupid man with yellow hair talking to that little baby girl — well — he was a bigger fool than the doctor. There was nothing wrong with Morris anyway; tomorrow she would come back and take him out into the sun, and let them try to stop her!

“Here’s another one with a donkey,” the man with yellow hair was saying. “Look, Helen. See the way his tail hangs down. See the lines of the branches on the cypress trees, they hang down the same way. That’s pretty nice. Don’t you think that’s a nice one?”

He was seated across the room near the large table, with Helen on his knee and a portfolio of lithographs propped up so she could see. Five-year-old Roy, silent and looking a little bored, stood at his other side.

“What do the words say?” demanded the girl.

The man frowned. “There aren’t any. Look, can’t you see? There aren’t any words. Pictures are one thing, and words are another thing; I’ve told you that a hundred times. I suppose you’d better say it yourself, repeat it... No, that won’t do, that won’t do, don’t say it. You must feel it. You must feel it. See, here are these lovely trees and this lovely donkey, all these lovely lines — what do you want with words?”

The little girl’s face, with its features, soft and delicate as they were, yet bearing an unmistakable resemblance to his own, was tilted mischievously upwards, full upon him. She liked this familiar game they were playing. She glanced across the room to where Leah sat silently fuming, then placed her finger on her lips and said softly, “She shows me nice pictures in the paper with words all over.”

“Damn!” exploded the man, half turning, so that the portfolio nearly tumbled to the floor.

There came a laugh from the other side of the table, from Lora, who was passing through on her way from the kitchen to her bedroom.

“Still at it?” Lora observed. “You know perfectly well it’s no use, Albert. You can’t train a child in two hours a month. Anyway, she thinks you’re playing a game.”

“It would work if you’d help me instead of laughing,” he grunted. “By god, it’s got to work.”

No use arguing, thought Lora, as she proceeded to the bedroom.

“By god by god,” put in Roy, helpfully.