She had been called a whore twice: once by Steve Adams and once by Max’s sister Leah. That created no problem whatever. She knew what a whore was of course: a woman who lets a man go to bed with her for money — just as a rug is a piece of carpet you put on the floor without tacking it down, or a doctor is a man who treats people when they’re sick. That she should have been called a whore neither offended nor amused her; it was simply nonsense. She had entirely forgotten that Albert Scher had once called her a prostitute, but then she seldom bothered to remember what Albert said on any subject. She had a suspicion that he remembered mighty little of it himself.
She was surprised that Albert and Lewis Kane became good friends and apparently had a good opinion of each other. This happened after she and the children had moved to the country, to the house on the edge of the village of Maidstone which Lewis paid for, with the title in her name.
She never felt that she understood what people were trying to do or why they were doing it, but Lewis Kane especially was a puzzle. He would prepare an elaborate contract, with intricate provisions against every imaginable circumstance, regarding a child not yet born, not conceived even; and on the other hand he would pay thousands of dollars for a house, with lawns and gardens and a garage, a meadow and a grove of birch trees, and put it in her name apparently without a thought. She could mortgage it or sell it or give it away, anything she wanted to. That seemed to her stupid; when one day she told him so he merely smiled and said she couldn’t do any of those things.
“Why not?” she demanded. “I own it.”
“Try it.”
“Oh. I see. You’ve done something legal.”
“Not at all. Just try it. Tomorrow morning, say.”
“But I don’t want to tomorrow morning. There’s no reason.”
“That’s just the point. How can you do anything there’s no reason for? That’s why I say you couldn’t do it.”
She still thought it was stupid.
The house stood at the top of a gentle rise, where the road west out of Maidstone lifts itself in readiness for the long descent into the valley where the main line of the railroad runs. On a clear day she could see the hills bordering the Hudson to the west, and toward the north a corner of one of the reservoirs, lined with evergreens, was in plain view. The grove sheltered both the garden and the house from the winter winds, and a high hedge served as a screen from the road in front. But from the windows of her room on the second floor Lora could see the cars go by, over the top of the hedge. On that floor were four bedrooms, not counting the maid’s; the room downstairs that had been intended for a bedroom she had arranged as a playroom for the children. Stan, whose last name Lora knew but could not pronounce, a black-eyed Pole with a little tuft of black hair in the middle of his chin, who did the outdoor work and tended the furnace and could drive the car when necessary, lived on the other side of the village with his wife and seven or eight children. When Lora asked him one day if he didn’t think that was too many he shrugged his shoulders, screwed up one eye, and said impassively, “It don’t matter what I think, she’s as full as a frog.”
He’s a sensible man, Lora thought, I must ask him to bring his boys with him some day to play with Roy. A week or so later they came, three of them, straight and slim with flashing black eyes. Not more than ten minutes had passed before Lora heard a frightful uproar in the back and ran out to find two of the visitors rolling on the grass locked in a deadly embrace, screaming and jabbing at each other. Roy’s velocipede lay on its side nearby, and Roy himself was standing calmly with his hands in his pockets, watching the battle with detached interest. He explained that they were trying to decide who should have the first ride on the velocipede. The third visitor, the biggest and handsomest, was jumping up and down shouting encouragement to both combatants, while their father was methodically raking the grass not far off without bothering to look at them. The experiment was not repeated.
So far as Maidstone was concerned, Lora was a widow; her name was Mrs. Lora Winter. But for the insistence of Lewis Kane she would not have bothered with the transformation of the Miss into the Mrs., but seeing that obviously it would simplify matters she did not oppose it. The first autumn, when Roy started to school, he came home one day in October and demanded to be told the name, occupation, and date and place of demise of his father. Lora supposed it was a question of official records; but no, he explained that the other boys were all talking about their fathers and he wanted to talk about his; besides, they asked questions.
“It’s none of their business, your father is dead,” said Lora.
Roy stood, keeping his eyes on her, without speaking. She went over to him and put her hand on his head and turned his face up.
“You don’t tell me any big lies, do you?” she said.
His head wiggled from side to side under her hand.
“All right, I don’t tell you any either. I can’t tell you about your father now, but someday we’ll have a long talk about it, so if the boys ask questions just tell them to mind their own business. Fathers don’t matter a bit. They’re just a nuisance.”
That had faint repercussions, the first one coming the following Sunday, when Albert Scher arrived for his customary visit and Roy informed him briefly and categorically that he was a nuisance. When Albert laughed and demanded specifications Roy merely said, “You’re Panther’s father, so you’re a nuisance.”
In time things got somewhat complicated. As the children grew into the confused and shifting comprehensions of childhood it became difficult to explain how it happened that whereas Roy’s and Morris’s fathers were dead everywhere, Panther’s and Julian’s fathers were dead only under certain circumstances. At school all fathers were dead — not only that, they were all somehow the same person. At home Panther’s and Julian’s fathers were alive, and they were different people; in fact, they were Albert and Lewis. Then at home did Roy’s and Morris’s fathers, though they remained dead, become different people too? The confusion of course extended to the children’s playmates, the other boys and girls of the village, and from them into the homes, so that it ended by becoming Maidstone’s favorite puzzle, and finally got so inextricably tangled that no amount of research could ever have straightened it out again. So far as the children’s acceptance in their community was concerned all the deliberation and shrewdness in the world could not have managed it better, for Lora was accused of so many things that not a tenth of them could possibly have been true; and Roy and Panther were clever enough not to waste any time in discovering their superiority when it came to a discussion of fathers.
To Lora it was a matter of indifference. The first year or so there was the baby. She discovered it was vastly easier to manage a baby properly in the country than it was in town. But not necessarily more pleasant; now and then, with little Julian in his carriage on the lawn or along the paths of the grove, she would remember the days of the others, in Washington Square or the park or along the piers, with all the people to watch, all the movement and excitement of the great city at her elbow, and a faint regret would flow peacefully across her mind. But this, she knew, was better. With four young children, one still a baby, she was sufficiently occupied so that the stimulation of the city was better at a distance; and if it did now and then get on her nerves a little to be so bound by the wall at the end of the grove and the abrupt termination of the village sidewalk there was always the car and the picnic hamper; the roads north to the foothills, west to the river, or east to the sound. In the summer, when there was no school, they would make these excursions two or three times a week.