Mildred Pierce (9 page)

In the kitchen, Mr Chris and Ida were in a huddle, evidently talking about her. From their expressions as they started toward her, she sensed that the verdict was unfavourable, and she waited miserably for them to get it over with, so she could get away from Ida, and the Filipino dish washers, and the smell, and the noise, and drearily wonder what she was going to do next. But as they passed Archie, he looked up and made a gesture such as an umpire makes in calling a man safe at the plate. They looked surprised, but that seemed to settle it. Mr Chris said ‘hokay, hokay’, and went into the dining-room. Ida came over to Mildred. ‘Well personally, Mildred, I don’t think you’re suited to the work at all, and Mr Chris, he wasn’t a bit impressed either, but the Chef thinks you’ll do, so against our better judgment we’re going to give you a trial.’

Mildred remembered the reconstructed club sandwich and the little nod she had received from Archie, realised that it was indeed important to be in good with the Chef. But by now her dislike of Ida was intense, and she made no effort to keep the
acid out of her voice as she said: ‘Well, please thank Archie for me and tell him I hope I won’t disappoint him.’ She spoke loud enough for Archie to hear, and was rewarded with a loud ursine cackle.

Ida went on: ‘Your hours are from eleven in the morning, ten-thirty if you want breakfast, to three in the afternoon, and if you want lunch then, you can have it. We don’t do a big dinner business here, so we only keep three girls on at night, but they take turns. You’re on call twice a week from five to nine, same wages as in the daytime. Sundays we’re closed. You’ll need white shoes. Ask for nurses’ regulation at any of the stores, two ninety-five. Well, what’s the matter, Mildred, don’t you want the job?’

‘I’m a little tired, that’s all.’

‘I don’t wonder, the way you trot.’

When she got home, the children had just arrived from school. She gave them milk and cookies and shooed them out to play. Then she changed her dress and put slippers on her aching feet. She was about to lie down, when she heard a yoo-hoo, and Mrs Gessler joined her, in a somewhat dark humour. Ike, it appeared, hadn’t come home last night. He had phoned around nine, telling her of a hurry call that would prevent his arrival until next morning. It was all in his line of work, he had appeared at ten as he said he would, and yet . . . The extent to which Mrs Gessler trusted Ike, or anybody, was evidently very slight.

Mildred presently asked: ‘Lucy, can you lend me three dollars?’

‘More if you want it.’

‘No thanks. I’ve taken a job, and need some things.’

‘Right away?’

‘In the morning.’

Mrs Gessler went out, and Mildred went back to the kitchen to make her some tea. When she came back she sat down gratefully to the smoking cup, and flipped Mildred a bill. ‘I didn’t have three, but here’s five.’

‘Thanks. I’ll pay it back.’

‘What kind of a job?’

‘Oh – just a job.’

‘I’m sorry . . . But if it’s that kind of a job, I hope you picked
a five-dollar house. You’re too young for the two-dollar trade, and personally I wouldn’t like sailors.’

‘I’m a waitress. In a hash-house.’

‘It rhymes up the same way.’

‘Just about.’

‘That’s funny, though. It was none of my business, but all the time you were answering those ads, and trying to get hired on as a saleswoman, or whatever it was – I kept wondering to myself why you didn’t try something like this.’

‘Why, Lucy?’

‘Suppose you did get a job as a saleswoman? What would you get for it? No matter how they figure it up, when you’re selling goods you get paid on commission, because it stands to reason if you weren’t making commission they wouldn’t pay you. But who’s buying any goods? You’d have just stood around some store, all day long, waiting for the chance to make a living, and not making it. People eat, though, even now. You’ll have something coming in. And then, I don’t know. It may sound funny, but at selling, I’d say you just weren’t the type. At
this
, though—’

All that Mrs Boole had said, all that Miss Turner had said, all that her bowels had told her, after that trip to Beverly Hills, came sweeping over Mildred, and suddenly she dived for the bathroom. The milk, the sandwich, the tea, all came up, while moaning sobs racked her. Then Mrs Gessler was beside her, holding her head, wiping her mouth, giving her water, leading her gently to bed. Here she collapsed in a paroxysm of hysteria, sobbing, shaking, writhing. Mrs Gessler took her clothes off, massaged her back, patted her, told her to let it come, not to try to hold back. She relaxed, and cried until tears gushed down her face, and let Mrs Gessler wipe them away as they came. After a long time she was quiet, but it was a glum, hopeless quiet. Then: ‘I can’t do it, Lucy! I – just – can’t – do – it.’

‘Baby! Do what?’

‘Wear a uniform. And take their tips. And face those awful people. They called me names. And one of them grabbed my leg. Ooh – I can feel it yet. He put his hand clear up to—’

‘What do they pay you?’

‘Twenty-five cents an hour.’

‘And tips extra?’

‘Yes.’

‘Baby, you’re nuts. Those tips will bring in a couple of dollars a day, and you’ll be making – why, at least twenty dollars a week, more money than you’ve seen since Pierce Homes blew up. You’ve got to do it, for your own sake. Nobody pays any attention to that uniform stuff any more. I bet you look cute in one. And besides, people have to do what they can do—’

‘Lucy, stop! I’ll go mad! I’ll—’

At Mrs Gessler’s look, Mildred pulled herself together, at least tried to make intelligible her violent outburst. ‘That’s what they’ve been telling me, the employment people, everybody, that all I’m good for is putting on a uniform and waiting on other people, and—’

‘And maybe they’re right, just at the present moment. Because maybe what they’re trying to tell you is exactly what I’m trying to tell you. You’re in a spot. It’s all right to be proud, and I love you for it. But you’re starving to death, baby. Don’t you suppose my heart’s been heavy for you? Don’t you know I’d have sent roast beef in here, or ham, or whatever I had, every night, except that I knew you’d hate me for it? You’ve just got to take this job—’

‘I know it. I can’t, and yet I’ve got to.’

‘Then if you’ve got to you’ve got to, so quit bawling.’

‘Promise me one thing, Lucy.’

‘Anything.’

‘Don’t tell anybody.’

‘I wouldn’t even tell Ike.’

‘I don’t care about Ike, or any of these people, what they think. It’s on account of the children, and I don’t want anybody at all to know it, for fear somebody’ll say something to them. They mustn’t know it – and specially not Veda.’

‘That Veda, if you ask me, has some funny ideas.’

‘I respect her ideas.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t understand her. She has something in her that I
thought I had, and now I find I haven’t. Pride, or whatever it is. Nothing on earth could make Veda do what I’m going to do.’

‘That pride, I wouldn’t give a snap of my finger for it. You’re quite right about her. Veda wouldn’t do it herself, but she’s perfectly willing to let you do it and eat the cake.’

‘I want her to have it. Cake – not just bread.’

During the six weeks Mildred had been looking for work, she had seen quite a little of Wally. He had dropped around one night, after the children had gone to bed, and was quite apologetic about what he had said, and penitently asserted he had made a sap of himself. She said there were no hard feelings, and brought him into the den, though she didn’t bother to light a fire or serve a drink. But when he sat down beside her and put his arm around her, she got up and made one of her little speeches. She said she would be glad to see him any time, she wanted him as a friend. However, it must be distinctly understood that what was past was past, not to be brought up again under any circumstances. If he wanted to see her on that basis, she would try to make him welcome, and she really wanted him to come. He said gee that was swell of her, and if she really meant it, it was okey-doke by him.

Thereafter he dropped by rather often, arriving usually around nine, for she didn’t want the children to know quite how much she was seeing him. Once, when they were spending a weekend at the Pierces’, he came on Saturday evening and ‘took her out’. She expressed a preference for a quiet place, for she was afraid the print dress wouldn’t pass muster anywhere else, so they took a drive and ate in a roadside inn near Ventura. But one night, when her affairs were beginning to get desperate, he happened to sit beside her on the sofa again, and she didn’t move. When he put his arm around her, in a casual, friendly kind of way, she didn’t resist, and when he pulled her head on his shoulder she let it stay there. They sat a long time without speaking. So, with the door tightly locked, the shades pulled down, and the keyhole stuffed up, they resumed their romance there in the den. Romance, perhaps, wasn’t quite the word, for of that emotion
she felt not the slightest flicker. Whatever it was, it afforded two hours of relief, of forgetfulness.

This evening, she found herself hoping that Wally might come, so she wouldn’t have to think about the uniform she would have to buy in the morning, or the sentence she would begin serving. But when the bell rang she was a little surprised, for it was only a few minutes after seven. She went to the door, and instead of Wally standing there, it was Bert. ‘Oh. Why – hello, stranger.’

‘Mildred, how are you?’

‘Can’t complain. How’s yourself?’

‘OK. Just thought I’d drop around for a little visit, and maybe pick up a couple of things I left in the desk, while I’m about it.’

‘Well, come in.’

But suddenly there were such whoops from the back of the house that any further discussion of his business had to be postponed indefinitely. Both children came running, and were swept into his arms, and solemnly measured, to determine how much they had grown since he saw them. His verdict was ‘at least two inches, maybe three’. As Mildred suspected he had seen them both the previous weekend, this seemed a rapid rate of growth indeed, but if this was supposed to be a secret, she didn’t care to unmask it, and so acquiesced in three inches, and it became official. She brought them all back to the den, and Bert took a seat on the sofa, and both children snuggled up beside him. Mildred told him the main news about them: how they had got good report cards from school, how Veda was doing splendidly with her piano practice, how Ray had a new tooth. It was forthwith exhibited, and as it was a molar, required a deal of cheek-stretching before it came clearly into view. But Bert admired it profusely, and found a penny to contribute, in commemoration thereof.

Both children showed him their new possessions: dolls, brought by Mrs Gessler from San Pedro a few days before; the gold crowns they were to wear at the pageant that would mark the closing of school in two weeks; some balls, translucent dice, and perfume bottles they had obtained in trades with other children. Then Bert asked Mildred about various acquaintances,
and she answered in friendly fashion. But as this took the spotlight off the children, they quickly became bored. After a spell of ball-bouncing, which Mildred stopped, and a spell of recitations from the school pageant, which wound up in a quarrel over textual accuracy, Ray began a stubborn campaign to show Daddy the new sand bucket her grandfather had given her. As the bucket was in the garage, and Mildred didn’t feel like going out there, Ray began to pout. Then Veda, with an air of saving a difficult situation, said: ‘Aren’t you terribly thirsty, Father? Mother, would you like me to open the Scotch?’

Mildred was as furious as she ever permitted herself to get at Veda. It was the same old Scotch, and she had been saving it against that dreadful day when she might have to sell it, to buy bread. That Veda even knew it existed, much less how to open it, she had no idea. And if it were opened, that meant that Bert would sit there, and sit there, and sit there, until every drop of it was gone, and there went her Scotch, and there went her evening.

At Veda’s remark, Ray forgot about the sand bucket, and began to shriek: ‘Yes, Daddy, we’re going to have a drink, we’re going to get drunk!’ When Bert said, ‘I might be able to stand a drink, if coaxed,’ Mildred knew the Scotch was doomed. She went to the bedroom, got it out of the closet, went to the kitchen, and opened it. She turned out ice cubes, set glasses on a tray, found the lone seltzer siphon that had been there since winter. When she was nearly done, Veda appeared. ‘Can I help you, Mother?’

‘Who asked you to go snooping around my closet to find out whether there was any liquor there or not?’

‘I didn’t know there was any secret about it.’

‘And hereafter, I’ll do the inviting.’

‘But Mother, it’s Father.’

‘Don’t stand there and look me in the eye and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know you had no business saying what you did, and you knew it at the time, I could tell by the cheeky look on your face.’

‘Very well, Mother. It shall be as you say.’

‘And stop that silly way of talking.’

‘But I remind you, just the same, that there was none of this
kind of stinginess when Father was doing the inviting. Things have indeed changed here, and not for the better, alas! One might think peasants had taken over the house.’