“Are you married?”
“Of course not. There is a father though.”
Anne looked at her, shivered a little, and looked again at the fire. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were my own husband,” she said. “Honestly I wouldn’t; you know he wants children. I wouldn’t put anything in the world above you or beneath you. You never did love Steve, did you? But you have his son. When I looked at Roy today, and thought, that is Steve’s son, it made me feel empty and sick inside. I hated you; I do hate you I think; you never loved Steve; you don’t even love Roy, you look at him as if he were a chair or something, something you’d gone out and bought somewhere—”
She stopped abruptly, still looking into the fire. I shouldn’t have come, thought Lora, I shouldn’t have brought him, poor Anne.
“I shouldn’t have brought him,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“No. You shouldn’t have brought him. I’m miserable, Lo, just completely miserable. That was what he called you, wasn’t it?”
A cat’s frightful howl came from the hall. “Roy!” called Lora instantly, as quick as a reflex. Panther, startled out of her sleep, sat up with wide eyes. Anne was on her feet at once, calling out, “Siesta, Siesta darling!” and off she went.
Roy met her at the door. “I didn’t hurt it any,” he declared. “It wouldn’t come out.”
“You little devil.” Anne brushed past him into the hall. “Siesta darling, where are you?”
“Come here,” said Lora. He walked over to her, calmly and with poise.
“Let me see your hands. Did the cat scratch you?”
He shook his head. “It couldn’t. It was behind that thing in the hall.”
“Did you pull its tail?”
“It don’t hurt a cat to pull its tail,” he said. “It uses it to hang on trees with.”
“It’s too bad she didn’t scratch you, then you’d know why you shouldn’t pull her tail.”
Anne returned, in her arms a big yellowish brown cat which nestled against her shoulder with its tail moving in little jerks and its eyes closed. She walked over to Roy and stood looking down at him with a bitter intensity. “You are a little devil,” she said, “Now you can pat her nicely and beg her pardon.” But at the scent of the hostile hand the cat scrambled loose, leapt to the floor and disappeared into the hall.
“Don’t get ideas,” said Lora. “All boys pull cats’ tails, it’s practically compulsory. They get over it.”
“Not all of them.”
“Roy will. Come here, dear.” The boy was instantly at her side. “This is manners. You have hurt Anne’s feelings. If you are sorry you will tell her so. Go on.”
Promptly he walked over to Anne and held out his hand, and when she had taken it he smiled at her and said, “I am sorry I pulled your cat’s tail.”
“All right,” she smiled back at him. “But you’re a little devil anyway.”
They left soon after. Anne insisted that they stay for tea, but Lora said no, the children must be got home and fed and put to bed; outside, it was already night, what with the winter solstice so close at hand and the curtain of clouds that had all day obscured the sun and sent the snow down. The snow was still falling as they made their way out to the curb and climbed into the car, Lora with short careful steps to avoid a fall on the slippery pavement.
“I’ll come to see you at the hospital,” called Anne from the door.
During the ride home Lora sat looking idly at the lighted windows and passing cars, her mind on Anne Seaver. It was pathetic and exasperating, she thought, that after four years Anne should still cherish the memory of Steve Adams. Not only the memory, apparently, even a hope — a vague amorphous hope, unfounded and desperate, plainly idiotic. What a waste of passion! A passion that Lora could not begin to understand. Passion was made for action; there was the object, here the purpose, the ultimate reason for both being quite obscure perhaps, but the present intention manifest. But a miserable purposeless passion, with its object so remote and inaccessible that in effect it did not exist at all, was utterly incomprehensible to her. You do not love Roy, Anne had said. Bah, that just didn’t mean anything. She might as well say, you do not love your arm, or your right leg, or your big toe. You love the things you’ve got to have, that’s all. Certainly Anne didn’t have to have Steve Adams; if she did she wouldn’t have lived four years without him — four years of dressing and undressing, of carefully prepared meals, of all the intricate politics, psychic and physical, of a social animal. That wasn’t love, it was a disease, a perversion, a sick clinging to a necessity that did not exist.
Nevertheless Anne was suffering, no pretense about that. Damn Steve Adams. No, that was silly; it wasn’t his fault. Maybe not, but damn him anyway, for it was painful to see Anne suffer. Her husband was an awful clod. Why didn’t he stick a pin in her or something?
In Manhattan the traffic was more than usually congested and moved by almost imperceptible jerks; by the time they reached Seventy-first Street Lora was restless and impatient, for it was past six o’clock and she hated to have the children’s routine disturbed. When they finally arrived and the chauffeur opened the car door Roy tumbled out and fell in the snow, but came up laughing; Panther scrambled out backwards; Lora followed with slow deliberation.
Upstairs there was no light except in the kitchen. The maid came hurrying out when she heard them enter and pressed the switches in the dining room and hall, then helped them with their wraps, shaking off the few snowflakes that had caught them crossing the sidewalk.
“Where’s Miss Kadish?” Lora asked.
“She went out.”
“That’s funny.” Lora pulled Panther’s dress down and brushed back Roy’s hair with her hand. “When did she go?”
“I don’t know. She sent me out for some soap and things and when I came back she was gone.”
“When was that?”
“It was three o’clock, ma’am.”
The woman stood there, not doing anything, not returning to the kitchen. Lora looked at her face, then hurried into the living room, to the little bedroom beyond, and from that into the further one; then through the bath she went to her own room. When she got back to the dining room, having completed the circuit, the maid was there spreading the tablecloth.
“She took the baby with her,” said Lora.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“She didn’t say anything.”
Lora looked at her a moment in silence. “Feed the children,” she said abruptly, and returned to the living room, to the little stand in the corner which held the telephone and directory.
When she got the number a woman’s voice answered. No, she said, Leah was not at home; no, she had been away all afternoon. She might be back for dinner and she might not. Where was she? Nobody could tell that, she might be anywhere.
“I understand. This is Mrs. Kadish, isn’t it? This is Lora Winter. This afternoon I went—”
“You know I will not talk to you, Miss Winter. I ring off.”
“Please! It’s about Leah. Wait, please!”
“You have killed her, too, maybe.”
“Please, Mrs. Kadish! This afternoon I went out with the children and left Leah at home with the baby. When I got—”
“Leah should not go there. She is a bad girl. I tell you I ring off.”
A click ended it. Lora stood a moment with the receiver in her hand, then replaced it on the hook.
“The damn old fool,” she said quietly.
She had never telephoned the police before and didn’t know how to go about it. It was quite simple, she discovered. The voice at the other end, rough and casual and disillusioned, told her that no accident to any baby or woman of Leah’s description had been reported; yes, he would see that the patrolmen in the neighborhood were notified; the baby was in a carriage, did she say? Lora asked him to hold the wire and she hurried to the hall and back again.