The problem remained academic, for Mrs. Kane speedily recovered.
She had one habit that she did not like: she dreamed of God. Or rather, of a god, for he did not at all resemble the insipid bearded Jehovah of the brightly colored Sunday School picture cards of her childhood. He was not young, nor yet old; of a friendly yet forbidding countenance, with his body of unimaginable grace clothed in a loose white shirt and loose white trousers which flapped about his legs in the breeze, he would suddenly appear from nowhere and stride toward her, where she lay in the center of a meadow surrounded by strange and lovely flowers nodding on long and elegant stems. As he approached her he would make a beckoning gesture with his hands, this way and then that, and hundreds of little figures — she could not call them dwarfs, for they did not look like men — would come bouncing up from all directions and begin plucking the flowers with their long stems and dropping them upon her. They would fall anywhere, on her legs, on her breasts, on her middle, even now and then on her face, and soon would pile up so that she could feel their weight. She would feel, without misgiving, that she was going to be suffocated — and would make no attempt to free herself from the increasing burden, though she could feel that she was being pressed into the carpet of the grass right against the ground and many of the sharp stems of the flowers were pricking her flesh. Still she would make no effort to move, until all at once, realizing that the face and figure of the god were now completely hid from her, and filled with a frantic desire to see him once more, she would impatiently push the blanket of flowers away, down from her face, and lift herself to look eagerly around...
She would be awake, in bed, in the night, sitting up or raised on her elbow, the covers pushed down, breathing quick and hard, feeling warm and disturbed and excited. Or half awake. After a moment her hand would reach up to grope for the light switch, and she would sit blinking in the sudden glare, getting back to reality by looking at the dressing-table, the chairs, the familiar pattern of the rug. Then she would go to the bathroom for a drink of cold water, and perhaps take a few puffs of a cigarette. After which she would sleep soundly till morning.
Sometimes she would not wake at all, but in the morning she would know the dream had come, for though she would not be able to remember any of the details there would be an unmistakable feeling about it. Her body knew. That feeling had a strange quality, an unnatural reconciliation of knowledge and disbelief, as though some new object had suddenly appeared in her room without having been brought there or having come.
She did not like the dream; there was something uncomfortable and a little disquieting about it; but neither did she greatly dislike it. She never recollected any other, but in time she grew to know the details of this one so well that it seemed almost like a part of her real existence. Sometimes she would try to remember when it had first come, but she could not even be sure whether it was before or since she had met Lewis Kane. The memory was lost.
She never mentioned it to anyone, not even to Albert Scher, one of whose favorite subjects was dreams.
In Albert she found a mild and comfortable enjoyment. He was good company. The same was true in less degree of Lewis; she was never wholly at ease with him; but now and then he aroused in her an interest and curiosity which Albert never awakened. Neither, however, cut into her very deeply; their visits to Maidstone were pleasant recurrent commas in the smooth phrases of her life; there were no sharp ejaculations or disturbing interrogations.
The infrequent major points of punctuation were furnished by the children. Roy came home late from the playground with a bloody nose. Panther contributed a sleepless and anxious week with diphtheria. Morris after three days’ trial refused point-blank to go to school, the only reason he would give being that it made his legs hurt to sit down so long. Roy declared the true reason to be that he was jealous of Tony Rahlson, who, being a year older, was two classes ahead. That was not so, Morris protested vehemently; in the first place, he would soon be ahead of Tony anyway; secondly, the girl across the aisle made faces at him; and thirdly, it made his legs hurt. Lora let him stay out two days and then took him back and arranged with the teacher to seat him on the other side of the room. This solved the problem; he reported that his legs still hurt a little, so that he had to walk with a jerk — he showed Lora how this was, back and forth across the dining room — but that he was willing to put up with it for Lora’s sake. She praised him for that, and he went out to play with Tony, Lora tactfully failing to remark that he was leaving his jerk behind.
This episode was in the autumn preceding Julian’s fifth birthday, and Lora’s thirty-third. It was still possible for Albert occasionally to call her Venus without sounding ridiculous, for the lines of her body were as clear and graceful as ever, and her face seemed unaware of time’s chief function. She had never bobbed her hair; usually now she wore it coiled at the back of her head, brushed straight back from her brow over her scalp’s well-modelled mound; when Albert tried to find a single grey hair to confront her with he had to confess defeat. The clear white skin still stretched with the most perfect smoothness over her cheeks and cheekbones, her chin and throat, even under her eyes and on her forehead; the amber-grey eyes held their steady unimpassioned light; the mouth, a little too large, maintained the line of its curve right to the tips of the corners, without a droop or any sign that the skin was finding it necessary to pull a bit here and there in the effort to adjust itself to unnecessary accumulations beneath. She had never cared for dancing, but now and then on a Sunday afternoon Albert would turn on the radio and insist on showing her a new stomp or drag he had picked up in Harlem; she would follow him properly almost at once, without thinking about it, close against him, letting her body move with his; Roy and Panther would imitate them, and Lewis Kane, half-reclining in a corner of the divan, would beat time with his foot and applaud them, with his eyes on Lora’s still tranquil face flushed a little with exertion, or the flowing graceful response of her body. That was what was wrong with her, Albert would say impatiently, her body flowed, and you shouldn’t flow with jazz; nor jerk either; what it required was a series of delicately broken motions, not legato, but each one beginning precisely where the last left off...
Don’t tell me there’s anything delicate about jazz, Lewis would object; and Lora, leaving them to have it out, would watch Roy and Panther and marvel at the tireless energy of their flying legs and supple little bodies.
Once, as they finished, she felt Albert’s arm suddenly tighten around her, then his other arm, tighter still; pressed thus close against him, she felt his lips on hers. Too astonished to move, she suffered the kiss to the end of its brief but somewhat violent career; all at once, feeling herself released, she stepped back. Albert stood an instant, then, obviously needing something to do, went over and turned off the radio. A loud shrill laugh came from Morris, seated on the floor; Roy and Panther stood staring at their mother incredulously; Lewis Kane looked uncomfortable and cleared his throat three times in succession. Lora was furious that she felt herself coloring with embarrassment, and could think of nothing to say. Albert stood at the radio, grinning around at them.