“It’s ugly,” said Lora.
“Sure it is,” he agreed, “almost as ugly as living on coal miner’s lungs or factory women’s backs. Dear Lora, no taking in life is beautiful.”
“It is undignified”
“Only to those who borrow their standards.”
She shook her head vaguely; such things didn’t matter, you talked of them only to be saying something. When Roy was born, she remembered, she had decided that the most undignified process in the world was giving birth to a baby. What were you going to say for dignity after that?
As the weeks passed Max grew more and more insistent; Albert no longer loved her, he declared; obviously she did not love him; he, Max, could be and would be patient, but why not open the gate of his paradise? Lora, smiling and frowning by turns, kept him delicately suspended on the thread of her indecision. She liked him, but she mistrusted his smooth ready speech and more particularly his total lack of moral attitude. Steve had been brutally selfish; Albert, by his own admission, was constitutionally volatile; but neither, ignoring the moral verities, had deliberately insulted them. But no, she finally felt, that wasn’t it either, it was just something indefinable in the way Max talked...
One rainy day in December, after a long afternoon with her in the little flat, he gave up. He went to the closet and put on his coat and then returned and stood in front of her with his hat in his hand.
“I annoy you, dear Lora,” he said. “I am a nuisance to you and to myself. You were nearer to me that first day in the Square, when you let me hold your hand. You are more beautiful than ever — oh, so beautiful — but you are farther away. It is something I cannot conquer with my devotion and my desire — something I can’t help — my race perhaps, or my modest stature, something you’re not even aware of...”
“That’s it!” Lora suddenly exclaimed. She laughed.
He looked at her, his polite brows lifted.
“It’s because you’re a Jew. How funny! Isn’t it ridiculous? I’ve always been a little afraid of you, a little doubtful, and I didn’t know why. That’s it, because—”
She stopped; Max had gone to the door and opened it and was passing through without a word.
“Don’t go, Max!” she said, but the door closed behind him, and his rapid steps sounded from the hall.
She ran to the door and opened it. He was just starting down the stairs.
“You’re a fool,” she said. “Go if you want to, but you’re a fool.”
He stopped and looked back at her down the length of the dim hall. His tone was suave and emotionless.
“What’s the use, since it is, as I suggested, something I can’t help—”
“You know very well you’re a fool. We can’t talk out here — come—”
“What’s the use?”
“Come.”
He turned and walked slowly towards her; she preceded him into the room and after he had entered closed the door.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she demanded.
“I’m ashamed that I came back.”
“Silly! Would I have said it if there had been any hurt in it? Knowing it took it away — at once — like that!” She waved her hand. “I know what it is, it’s the old peddler with a beard who used to come to our house long ago, many years ago, when I was a little girl — that’s why it’s funny. If you don’t see it’s funny!”
“It isn’t funny, dear Lora.”
“Oh, yes, it is! I can’t say I’m sorry I hurt you because I didn’t really — you had no right to be hurt — but you will forgive me—”
He still stood holding his hat, looking at her.
“I suppose it would be the same,” he observed, “if I loved a Lesbian and she told me she despised me because I’m a man. That wouldn’t be funny. I can’t help being a man.”
Lora shook her head.
“There’s something wrong with that; I know; what if she wasn’t really a Lesbian, and what if she didn’t despise you? Anyway — it’s late and I have to feed the baby and you must go. But before you go—”
She walked up to him, quite close, and stood there against him, her hands at her sides, smiling into his face.
“I’d love to be kissed by a Jew,” she said.
He caught his breath. “You’re playing with me.”
“I’d love to be kissed by a Jew,” she repeated.
“Any Jew presumably?”
“Please.”
“This is not... dear Lora...”
“Please.”
Then his arms were around her and his lips were on hers. She pressed tight against him so that her swelling breasts could feel his firmness, and he could feel them; her arms remained at her sides but her whole body was against him, not wanton, not aggressive, but lyrical and warm and ready. He kept her mouth a long while, and then buried his face on her shoulder and gasped for breath, his arms still holding her tight.
“Dear Lora... dear Lora...”
“Yes. Yes.”
She raised her hand to pat his head and smooth his hair. At the touch he trembled, then raised his head and sought her lips again, but she put her hand on his mouth and he kissed the palm, over and over.
“Beautiful... oh, beautiful...” he murmured.
“You must go now.”
“Let me stay. I can’t leave now. I wouldn’t know where to go. Let me stay and cook dinner — you can’t go out in this rain—”
“Albert is coming.”
“Don’t make me go, dear Lora. How does it concern him that I have kissed you? Let me stay.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I haven’t two babies, I have four,” she said.
When Albert arrived a little later he found Max in the kitchen furiously stirring a bowl of eggs and bread crumbs, and Lora seated across the table from him peeling potatoes.
That night Lora lay alone in bed, stretched comfortably under the warm blankets, looking through the open window at the street light glowing through the winter mist. Max had left early; at eleven Albert had got up from his chair, yawned, and announced that he was off for a party uptown. She was glad to be alone; after a last look at the children she got into bed at once but did not close her eyes. This is getting chronic, she thought, I’d better find out what it is I’m trying to do. She was committed to Max, that was sure. Why? His lips had felt soft and moist, not at all disagreeable, but certainly not exciting. His embrace was not as urgent as Albert’s once had been — but that was actually a relief, let that dead lion sleep. Yet she had been excited. He had felt good against her breasts; she had pressed them against him exultantly, until they hurt; she had wished savagely that they might hurt till she fainted of it. Fearing to alarm him then, she had drawn back, pushing the thought away, patting his head and smoothing his hair as a mother might have done.
Beautiful, oh, beautiful, he had said. He meant her face, of course, and her hair, he was always talking about her hair and wanting to touch it. Well, she was beautiful. There was nothing more beautiful than her full breasts, just before she gave them to the baby, when she sat before her mirror with her dress open nearly to her waist, with their great drooping curves, drooping with weary grace like the branches of a peach tree loaded with ripe heavy fruit. Max of course did not mean that; think of Steve! Strange that men could be so blind to the only beauty that mattered. Probably Max wouldn’t want a baby at all. Ha, wouldn’t he though! Beautiful, oh, beautiful, he had said. How would he be, how would he feel? Suave and polite. That was one time that apparently manners didn’t count, but in reality they did; politeness was just as pleasant then as any other time. My loins are two spent tigers drowsing in the sun, Albert had said that day, stretched six feet two on his back beside her, and she had smiled to herself, thinking of the new strength in her own loins to support the new life. That had been the last time with Albert, three months before Helen was born — to her great relief, for her indifference had almost become an active repugnance; and by the time it was over he had gone afield.