Mildred Pierce (21 page)

‘He’s very well known.’

‘Known? Hell, he’s a shot.’

Arline came in, from the dining-room. ‘One waf.’

Veda went to the
out
door, peeped, and disappeared into the dining-room. Wally began speculating as to how Monty knew about the opening. He wasn’t on any list, and it seemed unlikely he had seen the Glendale papers. Bert, with some irritation, said that Mildred’s reputation as a cook had spread far and wide, and that seemed sufficient reason, at least to him, without doing any fancy sleuthing about it. Wally said by God he had a notion to find out, when all of a sudden he was standing there with open mouth, and Mildred felt herself being turned slowly around. Monty was there, looking down at her gravely, intently. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the little girl?’

‘I don’t know. I – couldn’t call anybody.’

‘I didn’t hear about it until her sister told me, just now.’

‘She seems to be quite an admirer of yours.’

‘She’s the most delightful little thing I’ve met in a long time, but never mind about her. I’d like you to know that if I’d had any idea about it, you’d have heard from me.’

As though to corroborate this declaration, a box of flowers appeared suddenly under Mildred’s nose, together with a slip the messenger was offering her to sign. She opened the box found herself staring at two gigantic orchids. But Monty took the card and tore it up. ‘I doubt if you’re in the humour for gags.’

She put the flowers in the icebox, and introduced Bert and Wally. She was relieved when Ida came over, demanding that the kitchen be cleared. Monty gave her a little pat and went to the dining-room. Bert and Wally went outside, eyeing her a little queerly.

By nine o’clock there were only two customers left, and as they were eating the last of the chickens, Mildred went to the switchboard and cut off the sign. Then she counted her cash. She had hoped for thirty people, and had ordered five extra chickens to be safe. Now, having been high-pressured into taking four more than that, she had barely had enough. Truly, as Wally had promised, there had been a mob, and she found she had
taken in 46 dollars, or 10 dollars more than her wildest hopes. She folded all the bills together, so she could feel their fat thickness. Then, having little to do until Arline, Pancho, and Letty finished up, she slipped off her apron, pinned on her orchids, and went into the dining-room.

Ida was still waiting on the last customers, but Bert, Wally, Monty, Veda, and Mrs Gessler were sitting sociably at one of the tables for four. Bert and Monty were discussing polo ponies, a subject that Bert seemed impressively familiar with. Veda had curled herself into the crook of his arm and was drinking in the heavenly words about the only world that could mean anything to her. Mildred pulled up a chair and sat down beside Mrs Gessler, who at once began making queer noises. Staring into each face, she repeated ‘H’m? H’m’ in an insistent way, evoking only puzzled stares. It was Monty who got it. His face lit up and he bellowed ‘Yes!’

Then everbody bellowed yes, and Mrs Gessler went out to her car. When she came back she had Scotch and White Rock. Mildred had Arline bring glasses, ice, and an opener, and Mrs Gessler began her ancient rites. Bert took charge of Veda’s drink, but Mildred forbade the usual switcheroo. She knew it would remind him of Ray, and she didn’t want that. Veda received her drink, with its two drops of Scotch, without any tricks, and Bert suddenly got to his feet. Raising his glass to Mildred, he said: ‘To the best little woman that any guy was crazy enough to let get away from him.’

‘You ought to know, you cluck.’

Mrs Gessler was quite positive about it, and everybody laughed, and raised a glass to Mildred. She didn’t know whether to raise her glass or not, but finally did. Then Ida, having disposed of the customers, was standing beside her, taking in the conviviality with a twisted grin that seemed strange and pathetic on her extremely plain face. Mildred jumped up, quickly made her a drink, and said: ‘Now
I’m
going to propose a toast.’ Raising her glass, she intoned: ‘To the best little woman that nobody was
ever
crazy enough to let get away from them.’ Wally said: ‘’Ray!’ Everybody said ‘’Ray!’ Ida was flustered, and first giggled, then looked as though she was going to cry, and paid no attention
when Mildred introduced her around. Then she plopped down in a chair and began: ‘Well, Mildred, I wish you could have heard the comment. You got no idea how they went for that chicken. And how amazed they was at them waffles. Why, they said, they never got such waffles since they was little, and they had no idea anybody knew how to make them any more. It’s a hit, Mildred. It’s going to do just grand.’ Mildred sipped her drink, feeling trembly and self-conscious and unbearably happy.

She could have sat there for ever, but she had Veda to think of, and Ida to think of too, for after such help, she had to give her a lift home. So she reminded Bert that Veda had to go to school, stuffed the precious cash into her handbag, and prepared to lock up. She shook hands with them all, looking away quickly when she came to Monty, and finally got them outside. On the lawn, the party gathered around Mrs Gessler’s car, and Mildred suspected the Scotch was being finished somewhat informally, but she didn’t wait to make sure. Calling Bert not to keep Veda up late, she loaded Ida into her car, and went roaring down the boulevard.

When she got home she was surprised to find the blue Cord outside. Inside, the house was dark, but she could see a flicker of light from the den, and there she found Monty and Veda, in the dark except for the fire they had lit for themselves, and evidently getting on famously. To Mildred, Monty explained: ‘We had a date.’

‘Oh, you did.’

‘Yes, we made a date that I was to take her home, so I did. Of course we had to take Pop home first—’

‘Or at least, to the B—’

But before Veda could finish her lanquid qualification, she and Monty burst into howls of laughter, and when she could get her breath she gasped: ‘Oh, Mother! We saw the Biederhof ! Through the window! And –
they flopped
!’

Mildred felt she ought to be shocked, but the next thing she knew she had joined in, and then the three of them laughed until their stomachs ached and tears ran down their faces, as though Mrs Biederhof and her untrammelled bosom were the
funniest things in the world. It was a long time before Mildred could bring herself to send Veda to bed. She wanted to keep her there, to warm herself in this sunny, carefree friendliness that had never been there before. When the time finally came, she took Veda in herself, and helped her undress, and put her in bed, and held her tight for a moment, still ecstatic at the miracle that had come to pass. Then Veda whispered: ‘Oh Mother, isn’t he just
wonderful
!’

‘He’s terribly nice.’

‘How did you meet him?’

Mildred mumbled something about Monty’s having come into the Hollywood restaurant once or twice, then asked: ‘And how did
you
meet him?’

‘Oh Mother, I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t say anything to him.
He
spoke to
me
. He said I looked so much like you he knew who I was. Did you tell him about me?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then he asked for Ray, and when I told him about her, he turned perfectly pale, and jumped up, and—’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘And Mother, those orchids!’

‘You want them?’

‘Mother! Mother!’

‘All right, you can wear them to school.’

From the sofa came a voice, a little thick, a little unsteady: ‘I’ve been looking at that damned costume all night, and with great difficulty restrained myself from biting it. Now, get it off.’

‘Oh, I’m not much in the humour for—’

‘Get it off.’

So the costume came off, and she submitted to what, on the whole, seemed a reasonably appropriate finale to the evening. Yet she was too excited really to have her mind on Monty. When she went to bed she was tired, happy, and weepy, and Bert, Wally, Mrs Gessler, Ida, Monty, the sign, the restaurant, and the 46 dollars were all swimming about in a moonlit pool of tears. But the face that shimmered above it, more beautiful than all the rest, was Veda’s.

O
ne morning, some months after this, she was driving down from Arrowhead with Monty. He was part of her life now, though on the whole not quite so satisfactory a part as it had seemed, in that first week or two, that he might be. For one thing, she had discovered that a large part of his appeal for her was physical, and this she found disturbing. So far, her sex experiences had been limited, and of a routine, tepid sort, even in the early days with Bert. This hot, wanton excitement that Monty aroused in her seemed somehow shameful; also, she was afraid it might really take possession of her, and interfere with her work, which was becoming her life. For in spite of mishaps, blunders, and catastrophes that sometimes reduced her to bitter tears, the little restaurant continued to prosper. Whether she had any real business ability it would be hard to say, but her common sense, plus an industry that never seemed to flag, did well enough. She early saw that the wholesale pie business was the key to everything else, and doggedly kept at the job of building it up, until it was paying all expenses, even above the wages of Hans, the baker that she hired. The restaurant intake had been left as clear profit, or what would become profit as soon as her debts, somewhat appalling still, were paid. That Monty might throw her out of step with this precious career was a possibility that distinctly frightened her.

And for another thing, she felt increasingly the sense of inferiority that he had aroused in her, that first night at the lake.
Somehow, by his easy flippancy, he made her accomplishments seem small, of no consequence. The restaurant, which to her was a sort of Holy Grail, attained by fabulous effort and sacrifice, to him was the Pie Wagon, a term quickly taken up by Veda, who blandly shortened it to The Wagon. And even though he sometimes brought his friends there, and introduced them, and asked her to sit down, she noticed they were always men. She never met any of his women friends, and never met his family. Once, unexpectedly, he had pointed the car at Pasadena, and said he wanted her to see his home. She was nervous at the idea of meeting his mother, but when they got there it turned out that both mother and sister were away, with the servants off for the night. At once she hated the big stuffy mansion, hated the feeling she had been smuggled in the back door, almost hated him. There was no sex that night, and he professed to be puzzled, as well as hurt, by her conduct. She had a growing suspicion that to him she was a servant girl, an amusing servant girl, one with pretty legs and a flattering response in bed, but a servant girl just the same.

Yet she never declined his invitations, never put on the brake that her instinct was demanding, never raised the hatchet that she knew one day would have to fall. For there was always this delicious thing that he had brought into her life, this intimacy with Veda that had come when he came, that would go, she was afraid, when he went. Monty seemed devoted to Veda. He took her everywhere, to polo, to horse shows, to his mother’s, granting her all the social equality that he withheld from Mildred, so that the child lived in a horsy, streamlined heaven. Mildred lived in a heaven too, a heaven of more modest design, one slightly spoiled by wounded pride, but one that held the music of harps. She laved herself in Veda’s sticky affection, and bought, without complaining, the somewhat expensive gear that heaven required: riding, swimming, golf, and tennis outfits; overnight kits, monogrammed. If Mildred knew nobody in Pasadena, she had the consolation that Veda knew everybody, and had her picture on the society pages so often that she became quite blase about it. And so long as this went on, Mildred knew she would put up with Monty, with his irritating point of view, his amused
condescension, his omissions that cut her so badly – and not only put up with him, but cling to him.

This particular morning, however, she was in a pleasant humour. She had slept well, after a romantic night; it was early fall again, with the mountain trees turning yellow, and she was pontificating amiably about Mr Roosevelt. She pontificated a great deal now, particularly about politics. She hadn’t been in business very long before she became furiously aware of taxes, and this led quite naturally to politics and Mr Roosevelt. She was going to vote for him, she said, because he was going to put an end to all this Hoover extravagance and balance the budget. Why, the very idea, she said, of all those worthless people demanding help, and this Hoover even considering doing anything for them. There was nothing the matter with them except they were too lazy to work, and you couldn’t tell her that anybody couldn’t get along, even if there was a Depression, if they only had a little gump. In this, Monty may have detected a smug note, an allusion to what she had done with a little gump. At any rate, he listened with half an ear, and then asked abruptly: ‘Can I tell you something?’

‘If it’s pro-Hoover I don’t want to hear it.’

‘It’s about Veda.’

‘What’s she up to now?’

‘Music . . . Well, what the hell, it’s not up to me to give you any advice. All I know is how the kid feels.’

‘She takes lessons.’

‘She takes lessons from some cheap little ivory thumper over in Glendale, and she has a squawk. She doesn’t think she’s getting anywhere. Well – it’s none of my affair.’

‘Go on.’