Seed on the Wind

XIII

A little more than a month later, around the middle of May, Lora went to see a doctor. It was not easy to select one; there was nobody she dared ask, not even Pete, she thought. Finally, one evening on her way home from work, after having funked it for nearly two weeks, she stopped at a house three blocks down the street from the apartment which bore a sign in neat black and gold: Adrian Stephenson, M.D. She walked up and down on the sidewalk, passing the entrance half a dozen times, before she could screw her courage to the point of mounting the steps and ringing the bell.

She was shocked and indignant at the casualness of Dr. Stephenson’s manner. He was a ruddy bulky man, his hair almost white and his dark eyes almost concealed under the drapery of his brows, with a tenor voice and an engaging homely urbanity; and he asked her if she had had a cold recently and whether her bowels were regular. He also inquired regarding morning nausea and a score of other phenomena. There was no examination; he didn’t even take her pulse. When he asked if she was married the only answer he got was Lora’s quick flush that included even her ears.

“Nothing to brag about,” he said finally, looking at his watch. “Anybody might skip a period any time. Cold, or excitement, or a little congestion. Nature has her little pranks. Watch yourself and don’t do anything foolish and take one of these pills three times a day for four days and if necessary come back here four weeks from today at ten o’clock in the morning.”

“I can’t; I work.”

“All right, seven o’clock then.”

She paid him three dollars, and left, walking slowly and reluctantly down the street toward the apartment. Cecelia would be there, and she didn’t want to talk to her or listen to her. She wanted less, just now, to go to the room where Pete would be. She had overcome her dread and consulted the oracle, not without a vast swallowing of qualms and panic hesitations — and here she was, no better off than before. Another whole month of this business? Not even sure of what to hope for. That doctor was an ignorant old fool; surely there was some way of telling. Oh, she thought, and all her heart was in it— Oh, if she could only talk it over with Cecelia! But she pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head.

Four weeks later it was settled; Dr. Stephenson confessed that it would be most extraordinary for nature to carry a prank to this extreme, with all the corroborating symptoms. Yes, no doubt of it, another miracle had been performed, as he playfully put it. Then, as Lora sat and stared helplessly at him, he volunteered an offer to act as guide and counsellor during the pre-natal period, and got out of a drawer of his desk a card on which to record her name and address and other pertinent information. Lora stood up abruptly and shook her head.

“Thanks, no, it isn’t necessary. I shall probably be going home — that is — I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly—”

He insisted on the name and address with such emphasis that after she got out to the sidewalk again she kept looking back over her shoulder, wondering if she were being followed. Then she felt the absurdity of it and resolutely kept her face straight ahead until she reached her own address; but there the impulse again overcame her, she couldn’t resist a swift anxious glance to the left as she entered the vestibule.

What made it worse — or better, she didn’t know which — was Pete Halliday’s announcement, made a few days earlier, of his intention to join the Canadian army at the end of June, immediately after commencement. In less than a month, then, Pete would be gone. He could say that, or she could say it, aloud even, to herself, but it didn’t mean much of anything in the face of her present devouring delight at feeling herself in his arms, feeling his caresses and kisses, above all feeling herself dropping with him into that whirling pool of madness where the senses ceased to exist and everything, life itself, fainted away into an ecstasy of groans and writhings and convulsions. She loved that. “I love it, you don’t know how I love it,” she would say to him, crouching over him, running the fingers of both hands through his hair, tousling him beyond remedy. She loved every bit of it, from the moment when they met at the corner of Stanton Avenue and he would grin at her and squeeze her arm — even that thrilled her so that she trembled all over — to the end, the next mornings when she would climb softly out of bed so as not to disturb his sleep, dress hurriedly and trot down to the street-car on the way to her job at the switchboard. He had rented a room on Cameron Street, only a dozen blocks or so from the apartment, and nearly every night she was there with him; the exceptions were of his choosing, left to her there would have been none. Dining at a little Italian restaurant down the street and then going usually directly to the room — a program that was varied only now and then by a theatre or a movie or a walk to the lake front and back — he would want to smoke and talk, or read aloud perhaps, but she would have none of it. With a thousand tricks and traps she would tease him out of it, and in the end he would respond with an energy and insane ardor that sometimes genuinely frightened her, though she would have bit off her tongue rather than confess it. Then he would dress again, usually leaving off the necktie, sometimes even the coat, when the warm May evenings came, and go to fetch a pitcher of beer from the corner saloon; and she would listen to him contentedly for hours, no matter what flights he attempted, until the time arrived to go to bed in earnest. Not that he was then permitted to go quietly to sleep; she had first to sit on his stomach, tie ribbons in his hair, make sure if he had any new moles, find out how hard a pinch he could take without squealing; and this led not infrequently to further and more exhausting delights, so that sometimes when the alarm sounded in the morning she felt that she would give all the wealth of a million worlds just to lie there one more hour. Pete never heard the alarm at all.

How glad she was now for the pile of crisp twenties in the handkerchief drawer! It held out bravely; for while all girlish caution and reserve of her body had expired in one swift leaping flame, other cautions not only remained, they took on a new shrewdness and ingenuity. For one thing she kept her job. When Pete asked her why — for he had soon perforce learned that the switchboard was not her only source of income — she would pull his nose and tell him it was none of his business. (Rarely was she so far away from him that she couldn’t pull his nose without moving anything but her arm.) Declaring that the little Italian restaurant was just as good, she would no longer go to Dillon’s because it was too expensive; she limited the movies to once a week, and all but abolished the theatre entirely. Pete would make faces and roar against her tyranny but offered no serious objection. She had the good sense never to suggest the ignominy and outrage of riding on a street-car; it was always either taxi or walk, and always he would just as soon walk if time did not press and there was any chance of her keeping up. She developed a gait that was very effective, a sort of compromise between a walk and a lope, and dared him to lose her.

After her second visit to the doctor she grew more sedate. He could either walk more slowly, she said, or go on alone; for her part she was tired of galloping frantically at his heels until her breath gave out. “What’s the matter?” he demanded, “I thought you liked it.” For reply she would grab his coat and pull him back, and he would slacken his pace for a few blocks, then gradually and unconsciously work back into his stride until she pulled him up again.

The two last Sundays in June they took trips to the lake shore, north of the city, a short journey by train to a spot where two or three dilapidated huts stood isolated on a sandy strip of beach. The huts were abandoned and Pete said he had never seen any sign of life around them; he had discovered the place by accident, the preceding summer on a walking trip. They took their lunch and ate on the sand in the sun, and Lora found that and the swimming delightful; but what she liked most about it was the hour after lunch in his arms on the sand with the sun insolently staring at them, and the cool breeze on her naked thighs as she would lie afterwards not bothering to put her skirt down, learning to breathe again. The breeze caressed her skin as she lay with her head on his shoulder, his arm encircling her and her own arm lying dead across him; his eyes would be open gazing at the sky above, while hers would open and close indifferently and indolently, and she would wonder what he was thinking about without daring or caring enough to ask. Or he would perchance talk, as he did when once the breeze deposited on his cheek a gossamer thread of white, lighter than a feather, with a tiny brown speck at one end. She picked it up and laid it on his lips, and he gave a puff and off it went again.

“Seed on the wind,” he said, gazing after it. “That one’s out of luck, destined for powder in the sand. Or who can tell, if the breeze stiffens a bit it may be lifted far across the lake and finally come to rest against a dirty board fence in a vacant lot in Gary. Ha, it will exclaim triumphantly, I guess this shows what a determined seed can do. Never say die.”

After a while they undressed again and plunged back into the water, laughing and shouting and leaping, and swam out to the little island and clambered up onto its ledge of rock.

But the second time she got a scare. On the train on the way back she was suddenly taken by a cramp in her abdomen that made her bend over double and bite her lip to keep from crying out. Pete, seated beside her, put his hand on her shoulder and leaned down to look at her face.

“My god, you’re as white as a sheet,” he said, startled, “we’d better get off at the next stop and do something.”

“It’s nothing,” she gasped, “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

And in fact she was. Before they reached Chicago the pain was entirely gone, and she decided that it was merely that she had gone in the cold water too soon after eating. But she had been thoroughly frightened, and for days afterwards, when alone, she would put her hand on her belly and rub it softly, with a thoughtful and questioning look in her eyes.

Then something else came to drive that out of her head: the day of Pete’s departure for Canada was definitely set, July twelfth. He was really going. Originally he had meant to leave sooner, almost immediately after commencement, but there had been no specific date for it. Now it was different, you could count it up — just six more days! July twelfth. Five days after that, according to the doctor, she would know about the other business beyond all peradventure — though for that matter she knew that already, it was accepted. With Pete gone too — well, she thought, this is going to be altogether a little more than I bargained for — I don’t know, I really don’t know...

The Sunday before his departure they went again to the beach with the abandoned huts. Lora, afraid to go in, sat on the sand and watched him swimming, floating, diving, hurling taunts at her for clinging to an outworn superstition. The sun made her drowsy and sluggish so that even the thought, this is the last time we shall come here, induced only a dull and vague sadness, nearer to pleasure than to pain. When they left though she cast a lingering glance backward at the spot on the sand in front of one of the huts where she had lain in his arms, under the staring sun; and on the train on their way home she broke a long silence — Pete hated to talk on trains — by suddenly laying a hand on his arm and saying to him:

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but I’ve just got to. I’m going to have a baby.”

He replied at once, “I know it.”

She was amazed. “You know it!”

“Sure,” he said. “I knew it a week ago. Your breasts show it. It’s hard to see, but I was curious, and I looked at them carefully with my scientific eye. I’ve seen them that way before, had it all carefully explained — I tell you, education owes a lot to exhibitionism. There have been other indications, of course, the boomerang tendency of your breakfasts, the hiatus in your tidal schedules...”

“Oh,” said Lora. Her voice wanted to tremble, and that made her furious. But it was simply impossible to say anything else; all she could do was repeat it, “Oh.”

“I thought if you didn’t mention it there was no occasion for me to,” Pete explained. “I can’t do anything anyway; what it takes is money. It can be done as cheap as fifty dollars, but you get a much better job for a hundred. Do you know a doctor?”

Lora did not reply. He looked at her, squirmed around in his seat a little, and went on:

“Look here, it’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I knew you didn’t know anything and I should have been more careful. It’s a damn nuisance, and I’m sorry. This is life, isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it sweet the way they’ve got it fixed up? I said it was my fault — well, it isn’t. That’s a lot of bunk. What if you want a baby — how do I know you don’t? Maybe you do. All right, try and get it and see what happens. What if you don’t want one, and precautions, just once, fail? Just as bad — worse even. It’s one of the major jests.”

“Yes,” said Lora. “Of course that doesn’t help—”

He pulled a card out of his pocket, wrote a name and address on it, and handed it to her.

“That man will do it, he’s comparatively unobjectionable,” he said. “Mention my name if you want to, he knows me. And don’t be frightened, there’s nothing to it if it’s done right. It is said that this particular light of the medical profession cleans up forty thousand a year at this chore; he handles most of the university trade.”

Later that evening, at the room after dinner, Lora told him that she intended to have a baby. She returned the card to him, and he tore it up and threw it in the wastebasket. She wanted him to know, she said; not that it would make any difference in anything, but he was going away and probably she would never see him again and she wanted him to know. When she had said that she saw him bend forward a little, peering at her, with the characteristic stoop to his broad shoulders.

“And you not yet twenty,” he said. “Good god, it’s criminal.”

“It’s all right,” she said. She added, “I’ll be twenty before it’s born.”

He threw up his hands. “And I was about to get sympathetic. You are what is called in superstitious circles a brave little woman, meaning that the cells of a certain portion of your post-Rolandic area are below normal in sensitivity.” He grinned, a twisted grin that distorted his whole face. “By that prosaic fact you escape all the acute and subtle tortures. You’ve no idea what you’re missing. Lucky girl.”

“You’re being smart,” said Lora, “and I don’t want you that way this last night. Don’t.”

“There’s tomorrow.”

“That will be goodbye. It won’t count. I don’t want to think of tomorrow.”

When she got to the office, the next morning she told Miss Goff that she would not be able to be there the following day. It would be her first absence in the six months since she had started to work. Miss Goff made some remark about the annoyance and inconvenience of unexpected absences, whereupon Lora replied that it would perhaps be just as well to make this one permanent. At this Miss Goff took alarm; oh, no, she said, she hadn’t meant to offend, Mr. Graham would be terribly put out if Lora should leave, he thought very highly of her...

So the next morning Lora lay luxuriously in bed till nine. From seven-thirty on she was wide awake, but there at any rate she was, with Pete asleep beside her. At nine she arose and dressed and proceeded to prepare the farewell breakfast, all of Pete’s favorite dishes: a melange of grapefruit and fresh pineapple, Irish bacon, an omelet with anchovies and fresh tomatoes, fried potatoes, preserved watermelon rind, and strong coffee with thick cream. It took longer than she had calculated, nearly an hour, and at the end she hurried a little, for his train was to leave at noon. Pete ate in his shirt sleeves, without a necktie; Lora, already fully clothed, bobbed up and down continually taking this away and bringing that. After breakfast she helped him finish packing; and then after putting on her hat and taking a last look in the closet and under the bed to be sure he wasn’t leaving anything, offered him her parting gift.

Pete looked at the offering in her hand, then at her face, and shook his head.

“I don’t need it,” he said, “I’ve got enough.”

“Please, I have plenty,” she said. “I want you to.”

But he refused. “I don’t know much about the Canadian army,” he said, “but I imagine one gets fed. I’m not being sacrificial, I’ve simply got enough, mostly from you of course. You need it more than I do. How much have you got there?”

“It’s a hundred dollars.”

“A goodly sum.” He grinned. “Remember when I said that before? Sure you do. — All right, I’m off. What’s the idea of the hat?”

“I’m seeing you off to the war.”

His hands went up. “Good god, no! I couldn’t stand it. You on the platform with your handkerchief, and me leaning out of the car window and waving. I beg you not.”

She was seized with panic. What, this was the very last minute then!

“I won’t do that,” she said. “I won’t get out of the taxi. Just let me ride down to the station with you. I won’t get out.”

That he agreed to. They got the bags to the street and found a taxi, and after Pete had run back to the room for a book he had forgotten he helped her in and got in after her. She sat up straight on her side, her hands folded in her lap, and he after his custom sprawled in the other corner, his legs stretched out with his feet resting on the bags. The taxi sped along, and neither spoke. Lora thought she had never seen a cab go so fast; they were already more than halfway, almost to State Street. Pete broke the silence.

“I never bought you those flowers,” he said suddenly.

“No,” said Lora.

“Well, it’s too late now. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a sentimental jag. I even decided it should be roses.”

Silence again. She was wondering whether he would kiss her goodbye, and whether she wanted him to. The idea bewildered and embarrassed her, for they had never kissed except in passion. He wouldn’t, she decided; and on that instant felt his hand on hers. His fingers rather; he had reached over and with his fingers was awkwardly stroking the back of her hand as it lay on her lap. Her head dropped, and she could see the moving uncertain clumsy fingers; she wanted to look at him but couldn’t; and all at once she knew she was going to cry. She could feel it in her throat and high up on her cheeks, inside, and back of her eyeballs, inside of her head. At the same time she was overwhelmed by the conviction that to cry now, in front of him, these last two minutes, would be a calamity and an everlasting shame. Damn him, oh damn him, for touching her hand like that! That he had no right to do. Then she was aware that she had violently jerked her own hand away, he had retrieved his own, and the crisis was past.

The taxi had stopped in front of the railway station; the driver had opened the door; porters were standing there expectantly. Pete got out and lifted out the bags, waving the porters off, then he turned back and stuck his head in the door.

“You’re going right back home? To the room, I mean?”

Lora nodded. Home, yes.

“All right. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you and for god’s sake keep off of street-cars. When you read of a Canadian soldier shooting his colonel in the back because he was too stupid to live, that will be me.”

He flipped his hand at her and turned and picked up the bags.

“The soldier, I mean!” he called, grinning, and strode off toward the entrance to the station.

Lora gave the address to the driver. All the way home she sat up straight, her hands with the fingers intertwined pulled against her abdomen. He hadn’t kissed her; she might have known he wouldn’t; and that was as it should be. Pete was Pete. He wasn’t a lover going off to war, or a man running away from a girl with his baby in her; he wasn’t anything like that, he was Pete.

The room was a mess. Dirty dishes were everywhere, the bed was chaos, there were glaring vacancies where Pete’s things had lain and hung, a piece of thick fried cold greasy bacon was square in the middle of the floor. Lora did not even pick up the piece of bacon; she sat on the edge of the bed with her hat in her hand surveying the dismal scene. She would get her things out of here tomorrow, she decided; today even, for it wouldn’t be much of a job, most of her belongings were still at the apartment the rent of which she had continued to share with Cecelia. Explanations were due there too and could no longer be postponed; Cecelia was going to be a problem. Other problems too — plenty of them! What a mess. The room, that is. The first thing to do was to clean this up and get out of here — forget it ever was, for assuredly it would never be again. Sighing, she put the hat down on the bed and got to her feet, and as she did so her eye was caught by an object lying on her pillow. She went closer to look, and found it was two objects: a wrist watch with a leather strap, and a piece of paper with writing on it.

The watch she recognized at once; it was one that she and Pete had seen some weeks before in a jeweler’s window, and she had admired it; had said, in fact, that it was just the sort of watch she was going to have someday. The writing on the paper was in Pete’s irregular hand:

Well, she thought, I suppose he must have put that there when he came back in to get that book. It’s the very same watch...

She sat down again on the edge of the bed, and cried at last.