Bert winked, and Mildred quickly clutched his hand to her cheek. "All right, eleven years and eight months, if you've got to bring that up. And I'm glad it was only eight months, how do you like that? Any boob can have a child nine months after she gets married. But when it was only eight, that proves I loved you, doesn't it?"
"Me too, Mildred."
Mildred covered his hand with kisses, and for a time they said nothing, and let the radio moan. Then Bert said: "You want me to talk to that girl?"
"I can't ask her for money, Bert."
"Then I'll do it. I'll drop over there this afternoon, and bring it up friendly, and let her know what she's got to do. It's just ridiculous that you should have your back to the wall, and she be living off you, and rolling in dough."
"No, no. I'll morgtage the house. In Glendale."
"And what good will that do you? You raise five grand on it, you square up for a few weeks, and then you're right back where you started. She's got to kick in, and keep on kicking."
They ran up the beach to Sunset Boulevard and rode homeward in silence. Then unexpectedly Bert pulled over, stopped, and looked at her. "Mildred, you've got to do it yourself."
". . . Why?"
"Because you've got to do it tonight."
"I can't, it's late, she'll be asleep—"
"I can't help how late it is, or whether she's asleep, or she's not asleep. You've got to see her. Because you forgot, and I forgot, and we both forgot who we're dealing with. Mildred, you can't trust Wally Burgan, not even till the sun comes up. He's a cheap, chiseling little crook, we know that. He was my pal, and he crossed me, and he was your pal, and he crossed you. But listen, Mildred: He was Veda's pal too. Maybe he's getting ready to cross her. Maybe he's getting ready to grab her dough—"
"He can't, not for corporate debts—"
"How do you know?"
"Why, he—"
"That's it, he told you. Wally Burgan told you. You believe everything he says? You believe anything he says? Maybe that meeting tonight was just a phony. Maybe he's getting ready to compel you to take over Veda's money, as her guardian, so he can attach it. She's still a minor, remember. Maybe you, I, and Veda will all have papers slapped on us today. Mildred, you're seeing her tonight. And you're getting her out of that house, so no process server can find you. You're meeting me at the Brown Derby in Hollywood for breakfast, and by that time I'll be busy. There'll be four of us at that table, and the other one will be a lawyer."
Conspiratorial excitement carried Mildred to Veda's room, where necessity might never have driven her there. It was after three when she came up the drive, and the house was dark, except for the hail light downstairs. She put the car away, walked on the grass to keep from making a noise, and let herself in the front door. Putting the light out, she felt her way upstairs, carefully staying on the carpeting, so her shoes would make no clatter. She tiptoed along the hall to Veda's room and tapped on the door. There was no answer. She tapped again, using the tips of her fingers, to make only the softest sound. Still there was no answer. She turned the knob and went in. Not touching any light switch, she tiptoed to the bed, and bent down to touch Veda, to speak to her, so she wouldn't be startled. Veda wasn't there. Quickly she snapped on the bed light, looked around. Nobody was in the room, and it hadn't been slept in. She went to the dressing room, to the bathroom, spoke softly. She opened a closet. Veda's things were there, even the dress she had put on tonight, before Mildred went to Laguna. Now puzzled and a little alarmed, Mildred went to her own room, on the chance Veda had gone there to wait for her, and fallen asleep, or something. There was no sign of Veda. Mildred went to Monty's room, and rapped. Her tempo was quickening now, and it was no finger rap this time. It was a sharp knuckle rap. There was no answer. She rapped, again, insistently. Monty, when he spoke, sounded sleepy, and quite disagreeable. Mildred said it was she, to let her in, she had to see him. He said what about, and why didn't she go to bed and let him sleep? She rapped again, imperiously this time, and commanded him to let her in. It was about Veda.
When he finally came to the door, half opened it, and found what Mildred wanted, he was still more annoyed. "For God's sake, is she an infant? Suppose she's not there, what do I do then? I went to bed—I don't know what she did. Maybe she went somewhere. Maybe she had a blowout. Maybe she's looking at the moon. It's a free country."
"She didn't go anywhere."
"How do you know?"
"Her dress is there."
"Couldn't she have changed it?"
"Her car is there."
"Couldn't she have gone with somebody else?"
This simple possibility hadn't even occurred to Mildred, and she was about to apologize and go back to her room when she became aware of Monty's arm. He was leaning on it, but it was across the door, in a curious way, as though to bar her from the room. Her hand, which was resting on the door casing, slipped up, ifipped the light switch. Veda was looking at her, from the bed.
Monty, his voice an emasculated, androgynous yell, crammed all the bitterness, the futility of his life into a long, hysterical denunciation of Mildred. He said she had used him for her special purposes ever since she had met him. He said she was incapable of honor, and didn't know what it meant to stand by her commitments. He recalled the first $20 she had given him, and how she had later begrudged it. He worked down to their marriage, and correctly accused her of using him as bait to attract the errant Veda. But, he said, what she had forgotten was that he was live bait, and the quarry and the bait had fallen in love, and how did she like that? And what was she going to do about it? But there was considerable talk about money mixed in with the chase, and what it added up to was that he had shown his independence of one woman who had been keeping him, with a pie wagon, by switching over and letting another woman keep him, with a voice.
Mildred, however, barely heard him. She sat in the little upholstered chair, near the door, her hat on the side of her head, her handbag in her lap, her toes absurdly turned in. But while her eyes were on the floor, her mind was on the lovely thing in the 'bed, and again she was physically sick at what its presence there meant. When Monty had talked some little time, stalking gauntly about in his pajamas, Veda interrupted him with affectionate petulance: "Darling! Does it make any difference what such nitwits do, or whether they pay, or even know what a commitment is? Look what a pest she is to me. I literally can't open my mouth in a theatre, or a radio studio, or anywhere, that she isn't there, bustling down the aisle, embarrassing me before people, all to get her share of the glory, if any. But what do I do? I certainly don't go screaming around the way you're doing. It would be undignified. And very—" here Veda stifled a sleepy yawn—"very bad for my throat. . . . Get dressed now, and we'll clear out, and leave her to her pie plates, and by lunch time it'll merely seem funny."
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 path 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 o
nce said was a woman's right. It was 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 jelly fish 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 slaty 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 his 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 night dresses, 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 gray 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 realization 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!"
CHAPTER XVII
IT WAS CHRISTMAS again on Pierce Drive, a balmy golden California Christmas. Mildred, after the most crushing period of 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 had paralyzed 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 fulfill 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, 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 took him for a long ride, down toward 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 seei'ng 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. But most of this had been spent in Reno, and the rest of it was rapidly melthg. Yet she had resolved they were going 'to have Christmas, and bought Bert a new suit, and Veda one of the big automatic phonographs, and 'several albums of records. This bit of recklessness restored her to a touch of her old self, and 'she was a little gay as Letty announced dinner. Bert had made eggnog, 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, e poomkin!'"
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 11ps 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."