Mildred Pierce (41 page)

Monty went to his dressing-room, and for a time there was silence, except for Mildred’s breathing, which was curiously heavy. Veda found cigarettes on the floor, and lit one, and lay there smoking in the way she had acquired lately, sucking the smoke in and letting it out in thick curls, so it entered her mouth but didn’t reach her throat. Mildred’s breathing became heavier, as though she were an animal, and had run a distance, and was panting. Monty came out, in tweeds, a blue shirt, and tan shoes, his hat in one hand, a grip in the other. Veda nodded, squashed out her cigarette. Then she got up, went to Monty’s mirror, and began combing her hair, while little cadenzas absentmindedly cascaded out of her throat, and cold drops cascaded over Mildred’s heart. For Veda was stark naked. From the massive, singer’s torso, with the Dairy quaking in front, to the slim hips, to the lovely legs, there wasn’t so much as a garter to hide a patch of skin.

Veda, still humming, headed for the dressing-room, and Monty handed her the kimono, from the foot of the bed. It was then that Mildred leaped. But it wasn’t at Monty that she leaped, her husband, the man who had been untrue to her. It was at Veda, her daughter, the girl who had done no more than what Mildred had once said was a woman’s right. It was at a ruthless creature seventeen years younger than herself, with fingers like steel from playing the piano, and legs like rubber from riding, swimming, and all the recreations that Mildred had made possible for her. Yet this athlete crumpled like a jellyfish before a panting, dumpy little thing in a black dress, a hat over one ear, and a string of beads that broke and went bouncing all over the room. Somewhere, as if from a distance, Mildred could hear Monty, yelling at her, and feel him, dragging at her to pull her away. She could feel Veda scratching at her eyes, at her face, and taste blood trickling into her mouth. Nothing stopped her. She clutched for the throat of the naked girl beneath her, and squeezed hard. She wrenched the other hand free of Monty, and clutched with that too, and squeezed with both hands. She could
see Veda’s face getting red, getting purple. She could see Veda’s tongue popping out, her slatey blue eyes losing expression. She squeezed harder.

She was on the floor, beside the bed, her head ringing from heavy blows. Across the room, in the kimono now, huddled in a chair, and holding on to her throat, was Veda. She was gasping, and Monty was talking to her, telling her to relax, to lie down, to take it easy. But Veda got to her feet and staggered out of the room. Mildred, sensing some purpose in this exit, and taking its evil nature for granted, scrambled up and lurched after her. Monty, pleading for an end to ‘this damned nonsense’, followed Mildred. Letty and Frieda, in nightdresses, evidently aroused by the commotion, stared in fright at the three of them, as Veda led the way down the big staircase. They made in truth a ghastly procession, and the grey light that filtered in seemed the only conceivable illumination for the hatred that twisted their faces.

Veda turned into the living-room, reeled over to the piano, and struck a chord. Then her breath came fast, as though she was going to vomit, but Mildred, a horrible intuition suddenly stabbing at her, knew she was trying to sing. No sound came. She struck the chord again, and still there was no sound. On the third try, a dreadful croak, that was like a man’s voice and yet not like a man’s voice, came out of her mouth. With a scream she fell on the floor, and lay there, writhing in what appeared to be convulsions. Mildred sat down on the bench, sick with the realisation of what she had done. Monty began to weep hysterically, and to shout at Mildred: ‘Came the dawn! . . . Came the dawn – God, what a dawn!’

I
t was Christmas again on Pierce Drive, a balmy golden California Christmas. Mildred, after the most crushing period of her life, was beginning to live again, to hope that the future might hold more than pain, or even worse, shame. It wasn’t the mad, spinning collapse of her world that paralysed her will, left her with the feeling that she must wear a veil, so she needn’t look people in the eye. The loss of Mildred Pierce, Inc., had been hard. It had been doubly hard because she would always know that if Wally Burgan had been a little less brutal, if Mrs Gessler had been a little more loyal, and not gone off on her four-day drunk, telephoning the news of Ike’s blonde at hourly intervals, with reversed charges, from Santa Barbara to San Francisco – she might have weathered the storm. These calls had been one of the features of her stay in Reno, that six-week fever dream in which she constantly listened to Mr Roosevelt, and couldn’t get it through her head that she couldn’t vote for him this year, as she would be a resident of Nevada, not of California. And it had been hard, the wilting discovery that she could no longer do business under her own name. That, it turned out, was still owned by the corporation, and she thought bitterly of the many debts she owed to Wally.

But what had left her with a scar on her soul that she thought nothing could ever heal, was a little session, lasting barely an hour, with a stenographer and a pair of attorneys. It seemed that Veda, the day after she left the hospital, reported as usual at the broadcasting studio, for rehearsal with the ‘Pleasant’ Orchestra.
The rough, male voice that came out of the amplifiers wasn’t quite what Pleasant had contracted for, and the conductor had called the rehearsal off. Veda, that day and the day after, had insisted that she was willing to go through with her contract. Thereupon ‘Pleasant’ had gone to court to have the contract annulled, on the ground that Veda was no longer able to fulfil it.

Veda’s attorney, brother of Mr Levinson, her agent, felt it necessary to prove that Veda’s vocal condition was due to no fault of her own. Thus it was that Mildred, before she moved out of the Beragon mansion and advertised it for rent, before she went to Reno for the divorce, before she even got the ice bags off her head, had to give a deposition, telling about the quarrel, and how she had throttled Veda, so she had lost her voice. This was painful enough, even though neither attorney pressed her for an exact account of what the quarrel was about, and let her ascribe it to ‘a question of discipline’. But the next day, when the newspapers decided this was a strange, exciting, and human story, and published it under big headlines, with pictures of Mildred and Veda, and insets of Monty, and hints that Monty might have been back of the ‘question of discipline’, then indeed was the albatross publicly hung on Mildred’s neck. She had destroyed the beautiful thing that she loved most in the world, and had another breakdown, and couldn’t get up for some days.

Yet when Veda came to Reno, and elaborately forgave her, and there were more pictures, and big stories in the papers, Mildred was weepily grateful. It was a strange, unnatural Veda who settled down with her at the hotel, a wan, smiling wraith who talked in whispers, on account of the condition of her throat, and seemed more like the ghost of Veda than Veda herself. But at night, when she thought about it, it all became clear to Mildred. She had done Veda a wrong, and there was but one way to atone for it. Since she had deprived Veda of her ‘means of livelihood’, she must provide the child a home, must see that she would never know want. Here again was a familiar emotional pattern, with new excuses. But Bert felt about it as she did. She sent him 50 dollars, asking if he could come up and see her, and explaining that she couldn’t go to see him, as she wasn’t permitted to leave the state of Nevada until her divorce was
granted. He came up the next weekend, and she look him for a long ride, down towards Tonopah, and they threshed it out. Bert was greatly moved by the details of Veda’s arrival, and forgiveness. Goddam it, he said, but that made him feel good. It just went to show that when the kid was seeing the right kind of people, she was true blue inside, just what you’d want her to be. He agreed that the least Mildred could do was provide Veda a home. To her stammering inquiry as to whether he wanted to help her provide it, he gravely said he didn’t know anything he’d like better. He was up for two more weekends, and after the divorce there was a quiet courthouse wedding. To Mildred’s surprise, Veda wasn’t the only guest. Mr Levinson showed up, saying he happened to be in town on business, and was a sucker for rice.

The days after Thanksgiving had been bleak and empty for Mildred: she couldn’t get used to it that the Pie Wagon was no longer hers, that she had nothing to do. And she couldn’t get used to it that she was cramped for small money. She had mortgaged the house on Pierce Drive, into which she had now moved, obtaining 5,000 dollars. But most of this had been spent in Reno, and the rest of it was rapidly melting. Yet she had resolved they were going to have Christmas, and bought Bert a new suit, and Veda one of the big automatic gramophones, and several albums of records. This bit of recklessness restored to her a touch of her old self, and she was a little gay as Letty announced dinner. Bert had made egg-nog, and it felt warm and pleasant, and as the three of them went back to the dining-room she suddenly remembered she had bumped into Mr Chris the day before, at the Tip-Top, and he was furious at the pies that were being delivered to him by Mildred Pierce, Inc., ‘He couldn’t believe it when I told him I had nothing more to do with it, but when I asked him how he’d like to have some of my pies, he almost kissed me. “Hokay, hokay, any time, bring ’m in, appliss, limmon, a poompkin!”’

She was so pleased at the way she imitated Mr Chris’s dialect that she started to laugh, and they all started to laugh. Then Bert said if she felt like making pies again, just leave the rest to him. He’d sell them. Veda laughed, pointed at her mouth, whispered
that she’d eat them. Mildred wanted to jump up and kiss her, but didn’t.

The doorbell rang. Letty went to answer it, returned in a moment with a puzzled look on her face. ‘The taxi man’s there, Mrs Pierce.’

‘Taxi? I didn’t order any taxi.’

‘Yes’m, I’ll tell him.’

Veda stopped Letty with a gesture. ‘I ordered it.’

‘
You
ordered it.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

Veda got up from her untouched turkey, and calmly faced Mildred. ‘I decided some time ago that the place for me is New York, and I’m leaving in a little while from Union Air Terminal, in Burbank. I meant to tell you.’

Bewildered, Mildred blinked at Veda’s cold, cruel eyes, noted that Veda was now talking in her natural voice. A suspicion flashed into her mind. ‘Who are you going with?’

‘Monty.’

‘Ah.’

All sorts of things now began to flit through Mildred’s mind, and piece themselves together: remarks by Mr Hobey, the Sunbake promoter, the big forgiveness scene in Reno, featured by the newspapers, the curious appearance of Mr Levinson at her wedding. Then, while Veda still stood coldly smiling, Mildred began to talk, her tongue licking her lips with quick, dry motions like the motions of a snake’s tongue. ‘I see it now . . . You didn’t lose any voice, you just thought faster than anybody else, that night . . . If you could make me say I choked you, then you could break your contract with Pleasant, the company that gave you your first big chance. You used to sing full chest, like a man, and you could do it again, if you had to. So you did, and you made me swear to all that, for a court record, so the newspapers could print it. But then you found out you’d gone a little too far. The newspapers found out about Monty, and that wasn’t so good for the radio public. So you came to Reno, and had pictures of yourself taken, with me in your arms. And at my wedding, to your father. And you even invited that Levinson to be there, as though he meant anything to me. Anything to cover up, to hide
what had really been going on, the love affair you’d been having with your mother’s husband, with your own stepfather.’

‘Anyway, I’m going.’

‘And I know perfectly well why you’re going. Now the publicity has blown over a little, you’re going to sing for Sunbake, for 2,500 dollars a week. All right – but this time, don’t come back.’

Mildred’s voice rose as she said this, and Veda’s hand involuntarily went to her throat. Then Veda went to her father, and kissed him. He kissed her, and patted her, but his eyes were averted, and he seemed a little cold. Then she left. When the taxi door slammed, and it had noisily pulled away, Mildred went to the bedroom, lay down, and began to cry. Perhaps she had something to cry about. She was thirty-seven years old, fat, and getting a little shapeless. She had lost everything she had worked for, over long and weary years. The one living thing she had loved had turned on her repeatedly, with tooth and fang, and now had left her without so much as a kiss or a pleasant goodbye. Her only crime, if she had committed one, was that she had loved this girl too well.

Bert came in, with a decisive look in his eye and a bottle of rye in his hand. In masterful fashion he sloshed it once or twice, then sat down on the bed. ‘Mildred.’

‘Yes?’

‘To hell with her.’

This remark only served to step up the tempo of Mildred’s sobs, which were approaching a wail already. But Bert took hold of her and shook her. ‘I said, to hell with her!’

Through the tears, the woe, Mildred seemed to sense what he meant. What it cost her to swallow back her sobs, look at him, squint, and draw the knife across an umbilical cord, God alone knows. But she did it. Her hand tightened on his until her finger nails dug into his skin, and she said: ‘OK, Bert. To hell with her!’

‘Goddam it, that’s what I want to hear! Come on, we got each other, haven’t we? Let’s get stinko.’

‘Yes – let’s get stinko.’