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.
“Oh, be quiet!” the man exclaimed. “Here, hold this end. Look, Helen, look here, see the panther? With the grass all around him? These pictures were made by a man in Africa — wait, get your geography, Roy — no, no matter, no matter — see the panther, Helen? Isn’t he lovely? Wouldn’t you like to be a panther and lie in the grass? That would be a good name for you — Panther. I’m sick of Helen anyway. I think we’ll have to call you Panther. Lora!” He raised his voice to carry to the bedroom. “Lora, we’re going to call Helen Panther! What do you think of that?”
He felt a hard grasp on his arm and turned to find Leah there, her black eyes flashing menace. “It don’t matter you think if you wake up a sick baby,” she spat. “You should care if Maxie’s baby dies.”
“Oh, I forgot. I’m sorry. Really.” He turned another page of the portfolio.
Roy was making faces at Helen and repeating over and over, “Panther, Panther, Panther...”
Leah shrugged her shoulders, tiptoed across, and silently opened the door into the room where Morris lay.
Lora, in her own room with the door shut, was lying on the bed, on her back, her eyes closed. She was tired, not painfully tired, but she needed to rest, and to get away from the people out there. It was amazing how complete an annoyance Albert Scher could be — mild enough, nothing desperate, but completely an annoyance; and as for Leah — oh, well, it didn’t matter. All that did matter was inside her, in her womb. She loved the word, though she never spoke it. Now she repeated it aloud to herself, “Womb, womb.” Heavens, what a word! No man ever thought of it, a woman did that. Within her own was a warm comfortable feeling, full and pleasant. That’s ridiculous, she thought, it’s too soon to feel that way. I just imagine it. She placed the palm of her hand flat on her abdomen, but the dress was too thick to feel properly, so she unhooked it at the side and pulled up the underwear and got her hand against the warm bare skin and rubbed it, gently back and forth, up and down, from right to left and back again, then let it lie there, still. Ridiculous, she thought, I just imagine it.
Yes, she was tired; she had been going since early morning. Doctor Hardy had been a nuisance, fussing around; that baby was perfectly all right, he breathed like a top. A top doesn’t breathe. All right, all right. If Leah loved him so much, why didn’t she wash out his diapers once in a while? But that was unfair; Leah was really a big help. Only there was that to be done, and feeding the others, and getting her own breakfast and lunch — squeezing ten oranges and straining the juice took half an hour. She would have to stop nursing the baby, that was too bad; anyway, it would take more time to attend to his bottles, and heat the milk, and mix that stuff in it... Leah was so tragic about everything, could she be trusted to do it right?
Even with Leah coming in nearly every afternoon, and the colored girl for three hours each morning except Sunday, there was too much to do. She wanted time to read a little, to get her stockings and dresses fixed up, to get a manicure and a shampoo with Nouveautone... Why then did she not accept Lewis Kane’s offer and let him furnish the money for a nurse and a full-time maid, the rent for a larger apartment, a car to go around in? She made a face at the ceiling. Damn his money. Damn every-body’s money. Not that she had any neat conviction of superiority to it, or any harassed spirit of personal independence against a world of threatening and malevolent impingements; she was merely irritated at its elusiveness. Apparently, she thought, there was no hole deep enough to give it, buried, the peace of security; those who had it seemed to be compelled to hold on with finger-muscles strained even more frantically than those who were still grabbing for it. She had had to grab for it too, but never with any great degree of violence; she had been lucky. “I’ve been lucky all right,” she said aloud to the ceiling. Then suddenly she shivered and closed her eyes, and her hand, still inside her clothing next to the skin, was pressed tight and tighter against her firm round belly. “I’ve been lucky about money,” she said.
Nevertheless Lewis’s offer must be accepted, soon. Soon it would be a necessity. And why not? Was she not carrying his son? Daughter? No. He was determined it should be a son. What if there should be five daughters one after another? Ten. Twenty. A thousand; an endless sequence of daughters, all in a row, the most recent an infant at the breast, the earliest a towering giantess with her head bumping the moon. Or even if it were just a thousand, that would be nine thousand months, nearly a thousand years — more than seven hundred anyway... Maybe some of the old Jewish women in the Bible actually did it...
She stirred, rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed, and tossed back her head to get the reddish-brown hair out of her eyes. Then she lay down again, on her side with her cheek resting on her upturned palm.
Child of love. She smiled with good-humored contempt; that, she thought, was a masterpiece among the meaningless phrases men have devised regarding children born out of wedlock. Look at that, you had to use another one to tell what you were talking about!
The man who invented “child of love” should have seen Lewis Kane that night two months ago. Whether he had for some time maintained bachelor quarters separately from his home, or whether the apartment had been prepared especially for this occasion, she had not known. It had not looked new; the furniture, clean and comfortably worn, had a settled air not to be found in a transient atmosphere. Lent by a friend, perhaps, she had thought, though that didn’t seem like Lewis. They had driven straight there after a late dinner; Lewis, after sending the chauffeur off with the car, had carried her little bag to the elevator, and on the twelfth floor to the door at the far end of the wide hall. Inside, he had turned on the lights, hung his hat and stick in the foyer, carried her bag to the bedroom and placed it on a chair, and returning to the large sitting room had lit a cigarette for her and started one himself, though he usually preferred a cigar.
“There’s no one about,” he said. “I thought you would be more comfortable.”
She nodded her thanks. “You’re a much more thoughtful person than you pretend to be.”
He waved it aside. “It’s merely a matter of common sense.”
“And sensitive. You’re really quite sensitive.”
“I don’t know. I think not. At the present moment I am in a situation popularly supposed to be emotional. If I am sensitive why am I so calm about it? Not that you are not charming; very charming. Chiefly I am concerned about our purpose; it doesn’t matter what I feel or don’t feel so long as I don’t flunk it when it comes to the point. I confess that I have been restless all day, for these things are beyond our control. In that respect you are fortunate; you have no responsibility. Doubtless you have noticed my uneasiness?”