Mildred Pierce (16 page)

She slipped feverishly out of her clothes, put them on a chair, slipped on the suit. This was before the day of sarongs, and it was a simple maroon affair that made her look small, soft, and absurdly childish. She put on the rubber slippers, picked up the soap. Near her was a door that seemed to lead to some sort of small corridor. She opened it and peeped. Out back was a lattice, and beyond that the walk that circled the house. She pattered out and around, then ran straight down to the little jetty, with its small float. Clutching the soap in her hands, she dived off. The water was so cold she flinched, but she swam down until she was within a few inches of the stones she could see on bottom. Now safely out of sight, she ground the soap into her hair, swimming down with her free hand, holding her breath until her heart began to pound.

When she came up he was standing there, on the float, so she let the soap flutter to the bottom. ‘You were certainly in one hell of a hurry.’

‘I was hot.’

‘You forgot your cap.’

‘I—? I must be a sight.’

‘You look like a drowned rat.’

‘If you could only see what
you
look like!’

At this pert remark he dived in, and there ensued an immemorial chase, with the immemorial squeals, kicks, and splashes. She retreated out of his reach, he followed with slow, lazy strokes; sometimes they stopped and floated, then resumed, as he thought of some new stratagem to catch her. After a while she tired, and began circling to get back to the float. Then he was in front of her, having swum under water to cut her off. Then she was caught, and the next thing she knew was being carried bodily into the shack. As she felt its warmth again, the dopey South
Seas feeling returned. She felt limp and helpless, and barely had strength to kick the beach bag off the bed.

It was dark when they got up, and they drove over to the tavern for dinner. When they got back it was cold, and they decided to build a fire, of pine knots. But then they decided they hadn’t had enough to eat, and got in the car, and drove down to San Bernardino, for a steak, which she offered to broil. When they got back it was late, but they gathered pine knots by the car lights, and carried them in, and started them going. When they were glowing red she laid the steak on them, to burn it, and then held it with the tongs while it cooked. Then he got plates, and they cut hungrily into it, chewing it down like a pair of wolves. Then he helped her wash up. Then he asked solemnly if she was ready to go home, and she solemnly replied that she was. Then he carried her into the bedroom, and they shivered at the unexpected cold, and in five minutes were exclaiming at how good the blankets felt.

After a while they got to talking, and she learned that he was thirty-three years old, that he had attended the University of California at Los Angeles, that he lived in Pasadena, that his family lived there too, or at any rate his mother and sister, who seemed to be all the family he had. When she asked him what he did, he said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. Fruit I guess. Oranges, grapefruit, something like that.’

‘You mean you work for the Exchange?’

‘I should say not. That damned California Fruit Growers’ Exchange is taking the bread right out of my mouth. I hate “Sunkist”, and “Sunmaid”, and every other kind of a label with that wholesome-looking girl on it.’

‘You mean you’re an independent?’

‘Damn it, what difference does it make what I am? Yes, I guess I’m an independent. I have a company. Fruit export. I don’t
have
it. I own part of it. Land too, part of an estate I came into. Every quarter they send me a cheque, and it’s been getting smaller since this Sunkist thing cut it, too. I don’t
do
anything, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You mean you just – loaf?’

‘You can call it that, I suppose.’

‘Aren’t you ever going to do something?’

‘Why should I?’

He seemed quite nettled, and she stopped talking about it, but she found it disturbing. She had a complex on the subject of loafing, and hated it, but she detected there was something about this man’s loafing that was different from Bert’s loafing. Bert at least had plans, grandiose dreams that he
thought
would come true. But this loafing, wasn’t a weakness, it was a way of life, and it had the same effect on her that Veda’s nonsense had: her mind rejected it, and yet her heart, somehow, was impressed by it; it made her feel small, mean, and vulgar. The offhand dismissal of the subject put her on the defensive too. Most of the men she knew were quite gabby about their work, and took the mandate of accomplishment seriously. Their talk might be tiresome, but it was what she accepted and believed in. This bland assumption that the whole subject was a bore, not worth discussing, was beyond her ken. However, her uneasiness vanished with a little ear-twiddling. At daybreak she felt cold, and pressed against him. When he took her in his arms she wriggled up to him quite possessively, and dropped off to sleep with a sigh of deep content.

Next day they ate and swam and snoozed, and when Mildred opened her eyes after one of these naps, she could hardly believe it was late afternoon and time to go home. But still they dawdled, he arguing they should stay another day, and make a weekend of it. The Monday pies, however, were on her mind, and she knew she had to get at them. It was six o’clock when they drove over to the tavern for an early dinner, and seven before they got started. But the big blue Cord went down even faster than it had come up, and it was barely nine as they approached Glendale. He asked where she lived, and she told him, but then she got to thinking. ‘Want to see something, Monty?’

‘What is it?’

‘I’ll show you.’

He kept following Colorado Boulevard, and then at her direction he turned, and presently stopped. ‘You wait here. I won’t be a minute.’

She got out her key and ran to the door, her feet crunching on the gravel that had been dumped for the free parking. Inside, she groped her way to the switchbox, and threw on the neon sign. Then she ran out to observe its effect. He was already under it, peering, blinking. It was, indeed, a handsome work of art, made exactly as she had pictured it, except that it had a blazing red arrow through its middle. Monty looked first at the sign, then at Mildred. ‘Well, what the hell? Is this yours?’

‘Don’t you see whose name is on it?’

‘Wait a minute. The last I heard, you were slinging hash in that—’

‘But not any more. Yesterday was my last day. I quit early to run off with you. From now on, I’m a business woman.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t get any chance, that I noticed.’

At this tribute to his prowess as a lover, he grinned, and she pulled him inside, to see the rest of it. She switched on the lights and took him through, lifting the painters’ cloths to show him the new maple tables, pointing out the smart linoleum floor covering, explaining it was required by the Department of Health. She took him to the kitchen, opened up the great range. He kept asking questions, and she poured out the whole story, excitedly flattered that a professional loafer could be interested. Yet it was an amended version. There was little in it of Wally, or Bert, or any of the circumstances that had actually figured in it, a great deal about her ambitions, her determination ‘to be something before I die’. Presently he asked when she was going to open. ‘Thursday. The cook’s night out. I mean everybody’s cook.’

‘Next Thursday?’

‘At six o’clock.’

‘Am I invited?’

‘Of course you are.’

She switched off the lights, and for a moment they were standing there in the dark, with the smell of paint all about them. Then she caught him in her arms. ‘Kiss me, Monty. I guess I’ve fallen for you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about all this?’

‘I don’t know. I was going to, but I was afraid you might just think it was funny.’

‘I’ll be here Thursday. With bells.’

‘Please. It won’t be the same without you.’

He took her home, handed her to the door, made sure she had her key. As she was waving goodbye to the disappearing Cord she heard her name called. Automatically she looked towards the Gesslers’, but their house was still dark. Then she saw a woman coming across lawns, and saw it was Mrs Floyd, who lived two doors away.

‘Mrs Pierce?’

There was a sharp note in the voice, and Mildred had a quick prescience that something was wrong. Then, in a tone of virtuous indignation that the whole street could hear, Mrs Floyd cut loose. ‘Where in the world have you been? They’ve been a-trying to reach you ever since last night, and –
where have you been
?’

Mildred choked back an impulse to tell her it was none of her business where she had been, managed to inquire civilly: ‘What did they want with me, Mrs Floyd?’

‘It’s your daughter.’

My—’

‘Your daughter Ray. She’s got the flu, and they’ve taken her to a hospital, and—’

‘Which hospital?’

‘I don’t know which hospital, but—’

Mildred dashed into the house and back to the den, snapping on lights as she went. As she picked up the phone a horrible feeling came over her that God had had her number, after all.

A
s Mom made her dozenth remark about Mildred’s disappearance over the weekend, Mildred’s temper flared. It had been, indeed, a trying hour. She had rung a dozen numbers without finding out anything, while Mrs Floyd sat there and kept up a running harangue about mothers who run off with some man and leave other people to take care of their children. As a last resort she had rung Mrs Biederhof, and while that lady told her which hospital Ray had been taken to, and one or two other things, her syrupy good wishes hadn’t exactly put Mildred in a good humour. Now, after a dash to Los Angeles and a quick look at Ray, she was sitting with Bert, Veda, Mom, and Mr Pierce at one end of the hospital corridor, waiting for the doctor, listening to Bert rehearse exactly what had happened: Ray had been dull Friday night, and then yesterday at the beach, when she seemed to be running a temperature, they had called Dr Gale, and he had advised taking her to a hospital. Mom interrupted Bert and corrected: The doctor hadn’t done no such thing. He had ordered her home and they had taken her home. But when they got there with her the house was all locked up and they rang him again. It was
then
that he ordered her to a hospital, because there was no other place to take her. Mildred wanted to ask what was the matter with the Pierces’ house, but made herself swallow it back.

Bert took up the story again: There was nothing serious the matter, just a case of grippe, not flu, as Mildred had been told. ‘That strip of adhesive on her lip don’t mean a thing. They
opened a little pimple she had, that’s all.’ Mom took the floor again, making more insinuations, until Mildred said: ‘I don’t know that it’s any of your business where I was, or anybody else’s.’

Mom turned white, and sat bolt upright, but Mr Pierce spoke quickly, and she sank back, her lips compressed. Then Mildred, after trying to keep quiet, went on: ‘I was at Lake Arrowhead, if you have to know. When some friends invited me up to their cottage by the lake, I didn’t see why I was the one person on earth that had to stay home. Of course I should have. That I readily admit. But I didn’t know at the time that I had a set of in-laws that couldn’t even find place for a sick child that had been left in their care. I’ll certainly know better next time.’

‘I think Mother’s perfectly right.’

Up to now, Veda had been coldly neutral, but when she heard about the swank cottage by the lake, she knew exactly where she stood. Bert looked unhappy, and said nothing. Mr Pierce had a solemn rebuke: ‘Mildred, everybody did the best they knew, and I don’t see any need for personal remarks.’

‘Who started these personal remarks?’

Nobody had an answer for this, and for a time there was silence. Mildred had little appetite for the wrangle, for deep down in her heart she had a premonition that Ray was really sick. After an interminable time Dr Gale arrived. He was a tall, stooped man who had been the family doctor ever since Veda was born. He took Mildred into the sickroom, looked at Ray, listened to the night nurse’s whisper. Then he spoke reassuringly: ‘We get a lot of these cases, especially at this time of year. They shoot up a temperature, start running at the nose, refuse everything you give them to eat, and you’d think they were blowing up something really bad. Then next day they’re out running around. Though I don’t mind telling you I’m glad we’ve got her here instead of home. Even in a case of grippe you can’t be too careful.’

‘I’m glad you opened that pimple. I meant to, day before yesterday – and then I forgot it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t open it. Those things, the rule is to let them strictly alone, especially on the upper lip. I didn’t open
it. I put that little strip over it to keep her fingers off it, that’s all.’

Mildred took Veda home, improvising a tale about the people who had stopped by Saturday and invited her up to the lake. She named no names, but made them quite rich and high-toned. She was undressed, with the light out, before she remembered her pies. It was three o’clock before she got to bed, and she was exhausted.

All next day she had an unreasoning, hysterical sense of being deprived of something her whole nature craved: the right to sit with her child, to be near it when it needed her. And yet the best she could manage was a few minutes in the morning, an hour after supper. She had got to the hospital early, and wasn’t at all reassured by the nurse’s cheery talk. And her heart had contracted when she saw Ray, all her bubbling animation gone, her face flushed, her breathing laboured. But she couldn’t stay. She had to go, to deliver pies, to pay off painters, to check on announcements, to contract for chickens, to make more pies. It was dinner time before she got another respite, and then she couldn’t eat. She fidgeted while Letty served Veda, then loaded Veda in the car, and took her in for another vigil. Home again, she put Veda to bed, but when she went to bed herself, she couldn’t sleep.