Mildred Pierce (12 page)

On the strength of her new contract, she had a phone put in, and began to drum up more trade with the neighbourhood customers, on the theory that a few extra pies were no more trouble, but that the extra money would be so much velvet. For pies one at a time, she had charged, and still charged, eighty-five cents each. Shortly, as a result of the neighbourhood trade, there dropped into her lap another restaurant contract. Mr Harbaugh, husband of one of her customers, spoke of her pies one night at the Drop Inn, a cafeteria on Brand Boulevard, not far from Pierce Drive, and they called her up and agreed to take two dozen a week. So within a month of the time she went to work as a waitress, she was working harder than she knew she could work, and still hold out until Sunday, when she could sleep. Taking care of the children was out of the question, so she engaged a girl named Letty, who cooked the children’s lunch and dinner, and helped with the washing, stirring, and drudgery that went with the pies. She bought two extra uniforms, so she could launder all three at once, over the weekend. This chore, however, she did in the bathroom, behind locked doors. She made no secret of the pies; she couldn’t, very well. But she had no intention that either the children or Letty should know about the job.

And yet, tired as she was most of the time, there was a new look in her eye, even a change in her vocabulary. Talking with Mrs Gessler, she spoke of ‘my pies’, ‘my customers’, ‘my marketing’; the first personal pronouns predominated. Unquestionably she was becoming a little important, in her own eyes, at least, a little conceited, a little smug. Well, why not? Two months before, she barely had pennies to buy bread. Now she was making eight dollars a week from her Tip-Top pay, about fifteen dollars on tips, more than ten dollars clear profit on pies. She was a going concern. She bought a little sports suit, got a permanent.

Only one thing bothered her. It was now late in June, and on July 1st seventy-five dollars was due on the mortgages. Her affluence was recent, and she had saved less than fifty dollars toward what she needed, but she was determined not to worry. One night, driving with Wally, she said abruptly: ‘Wally, I want fifty dollars out of you.’

‘You mean – now?’

‘Yes, now. But it’s to be a loan, and I’ll pay you back. I’m making money now, and I can let you have it in a month, easy. But the interest is due on those mortgages Bert took out, and I’m not going to be foreclosed out of my home for a measly fifty bucks. I want you to get it to me tomorrow.’

‘OK. I think I got it.’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Hell, I’ll write you a cheque tonight.’

One day not long after that, she came home to find Letty in one of her uniforms. She hadn’t bought uniforms for Letty yet. She had her put an apron on, over the wash dresses she came to work in, and said the uniform question would be postponed until it was certain she was satisfactory. Now, seeing Letty in restaurant regalia, she felt her face prickle, but left the kitchen for fear of what she might say. But Letty caught the look and followed. ‘I told her you wouldn’t like it, Mrs Pierce. I told her right off, but she hollered and carried on so I put it on, just to keep her quiet.’

‘
Who
hollered and carried on?’

‘Miss Veda, ma’m.’

‘Miss Veda?’

‘She makes me call her that.’

‘And she told you to put that uniform on?’

‘Yes’m.’

‘Very well. It’s quite all right, if that’s how it happened, but you can take it off now. And hereafter, remember I’m giving orders around here, not Miss Veda.’

‘Yes’m.’

Mildred made her pies, and nothing more was said about it that afternoon, or at dinner, Veda taking no notice of Letty’s change of costume. But after dinner, when Letty had gone home,
Mildred summoned both children to the den, and talking mainly to Veda, announced they were going into the question of the uniform. ‘Certainly, Mother. It’s quite becoming to her, don’t you think?’

‘Never mind whether it’s becoming or not. The first thing I want to know is this: Those uniforms were on the top shelf of my closet, under a pile of sheets. Now, how did you happen to find them there?’

‘Mother, I needed a handkerchief, and went to see if any of mine had been put with your things by mistake.’

‘In the closet?’

‘I had looked everywhere else, and—’

‘All your handkerchiefs were in your own top drawer, and they still are, and you weren’t looking for any handkerchief at all. Once more you were snooping into my things to see what you could find, weren’t you?’

‘Mother, how can you insinuate such—’

‘
Weren’t
you?’

‘I was not, and I resent the question.’

Veda looked Mildred in the eye with haughty, offended dignity. Mildred waited a moment, and then went on: ‘And how did you happen to give one of those uniforms to Letty?’

‘I merely assumed, Mother, that you had forgotten to tell her to wear them. Evidently they had been bought for her. If she was going to take my things to the pool I naturally wanted her decently dressed.’

‘To the pool? What things?’

‘My swimming things, Mother.’

Little Ray laughed loudly, and Mildred stared bewildered. School being over, she had left a book of bus tickets, so the children could go down and swim in the plunge at Griffith Park. But that Letty was included in the excursion she had no idea. It quickly developed, however, that Veda’s notion of a swim in the pool was for herself and Ray to go parading to the bus stop, with Letty following two paces behind, all dressed up in uniform, apron, and cap, and carrying the swimming bags. She even produced the cap, which Mildred identified as the collar of one
of her own dresses. It had been neatly sewed, so as to make a plausible white corona, embroidered around the edges.

‘I never heard of such goings-on in my life.’

‘Well, Mother, it seems to me wholly proper.’

‘Does Letty go in swimming?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘What does she do?’

‘She sits by the pool and waits, as she should.’

‘For
Miss
Veda, I suppose?’

‘She knows her place, I hope.’

‘Well, hereafter there’ll be no more Miss Veda. And if she goes with you to the pool, she goes in her own clothes, and she has a swim. If she hasn’t a suit, I’ll get her one.’

‘Mother, it shall be as you say.’

Little Ray, who had been listening to all this with vast delight, now rolled on the floor, screaming with laughter, and kicking her heels in the air. ‘She can’t swim! She can’t swim, and she’ll get drownded! And Red will have to pull her out! He’s the life guard, and he’s stuck on her!’

At this, Mildred began to understand Letty’s strange conduct, and had to laugh in spite of herself. Veda thereupon elected to regard the inquest as closed. ‘Really, Mother, it seems to me you made a great fuss over nothing. If you bought the uniforms for her, and certainly I can’t imagine who else you could have bought them for – then why shouldn’t she wear them?’

But Veda had slightly overdone it. In a flash, from the special innocence with which she couldn’t imagine who else the uniforms could have been bought for, Mildred divined that she knew the truth, and that meant the whole thing had to be dealt with fundamentally. For Veda’s purpose, in giving Letty the uniform, might be nothing more sinister than a desire to make a peafowl’s progress to the pool, but it might be considerably more devious. So Mildred didn’t act at once. She sat looking at Veda, the squint hardening in her eye; then she scooped up Ray in her arms, and announced it was time to go to bed. Undressing her, she played with her as she always did, blowing into the buttonholes of the little sleeping-suit, rolling her into bed with a loud
whoosh and a final blow down the back of her neck. But all the time she was thinking of Veda, who never took part in these frivolities. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her, camped in front of the dressing-table for a period of primping, whose main object seemed to be the spreading of as many combs, brushes, and bottles in front of her as the table would hold. She was none too agreeable about it when Mildred finished with Ray, and ordered her to the den for more talk. She got up angrily and threw down a brush. ‘Ye Gods – what now?’

When they got to the den, Mildred closed the door, sat down in the armchair, and stood Veda in front of her. ‘Why did you give Letty that uniform?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, haven’t I told you once? How often do I have to tell you? I won’t have you questioning me this way. Good night – I’m going to bed.’

Mildred caught her arm, pulled her back. ‘You knew, when you gave it to Letty, that that was my uniform, didn’t you?’

‘
Your
uniform?’

Veda’s simulation of surprise was so cool, so calculated, so insolent, that Mildred waited longer than she usually did, when angered. Then she went on: ‘I’ve taken a job as a waitress in a restaurant in Hollywood.’

‘As a –
what
?’

‘As a waitress, as you very well know.’

‘Ye gods! Ye—’

Mildred clipped her on the cheek, but she gave a short laugh, and brazenly finished: ‘—gods and little fishes!’

At this, Mildred clipped her a terrific wallop on the other cheek, that toppled her to the floor. As she lay there, Mildred began to talk. ‘So you and your sister can eat, and have a place to sleep, and a few clothes on your backs. I’ve taken the only kind of a job I could get, and if you think I’m going to listen to a lot of silly nonsense from you about it, you’re mistaken. And if you think your nonsense is going to make me give up the job, you’re mistaken about that, too. How you found out what I was doing I don’t know—’

‘From the uniform, stupid. You think I’m dumb?’

Mildred clipped her again, and went on: ‘You may not realise
it, but everything you have costs money, from the maid that you ordered to go traipsing with you to the pool, to your food, and everything else that you have. And as I don’t see anybody else doing anything about it—’

Veda had got up now, her eyes hard, and cut in: ‘Aren’t the pies bad enough? Did you have to degrade us by—’

Mildred caught her by both arms, threw her over one knee, whipped the kimono up with one motion, the pants down with another, and brought her bare hand down on Veda’s bottom with all the force her fury could give her. Veda screamed and bit her leg. Mildred pulled loose, then beat the rapidly reddening bottom until she was exhausted, and Veda screamed as though demons were inside of her. Then Mildred let Veda slide to the floor, and sat there panting and fighting the nausea that was swelling in her stomach.

Presently Veda got up, staggered to the sofa, and flung herself down in tragic despair. Then she gave a soft laugh, and whispered, in sorrow rather than anger: ‘A waitress.’

Mildred now began to cry. She rarely struck Veda, telling Mrs Gessler that ‘the child didn’t need it’, and that she ‘didn’t believe in beating children for every little thing’. But this wasn’t the real reason. The few times she had tried beating, she had got exactly nowhere. She couldn’t break Veda, no matter how much she beat her. Veda got victory out of these struggles, she a trembling, ignoble defeat. It always came back to the same thing. She was afraid of Veda, of her snobbery, her contempt, her unbreakable spirit. And she was afraid of something that seemed always lurking under Veda’s bland, phony toniness: a cold, cruel, coarse desire to torture her mother, to humiliate her, above everything else, to hurt her. Mildred yearned for warm affection from this child, such as Bert apparently commanded. But all she ever got was a stagy, affected counterfeit. This half loaf she had to accept, trying not to see it for what it really was.

She wept, then sat with a dismal feeling creeping over her, for she was as far from settling the main point as she had ever been. Veda had to be made to accept this job she had taken, else her days would be dull misery, and in the end she would have to give it up. But how? Presently, not conscious of having hatched
any idea, she began to talk. ‘You never give me credit for any finer feelings, do you?’

‘Oh, Mother, please – let’s not talk about it any more. It’s all right. You’re working in a – in Hollywood, and I’ll try not to think about it.’

‘As a matter of fact, I felt exactly about it as you do, and I certainly would never have taken this job if it hadn’t been that I—’ Mildred swallowed, made a wild lunge at something, anything, and went on: ‘—that I had decided to open a place of my own, and I had to learn the business. I had to know all about it and—’

At least Veda did sit up at this, and show some faint sign of interest. ‘What kind of a place, Mother? You mean a—’

‘Restaurant, of course.’

Veda blinked, and for a dreadful moment Mildred felt that this didn’t quite meet Veda’s social requirements either. Desperately she went on: ‘There’s money in a restaurant, if it’s run right, and—’

‘
You mean we’ll be rich
?’

‘Many people have got rich that way.’

That did it. Even though a restaurant might not be quite the toniest thing that Veda could imagine, riches spoke to the profoundest part of her nature. She ran over, put her arms around her mother, kissed her, nuzzled her neck, insisted on being punished for the horrible way she had acted. When Mildred had given her a faltering pat on the bottom, she climbed into the chair, and babbled happily to Mildred about the limousine they would have, and the grand piano, on which she could practise her music.