Mildred Pierce (24 page)

And she was all too human, and the cuts she had received from him demanded their revenge. She began to order him around: timid requests that he haul Veda to Mr Hannen’s, so she wouldn’t have to take the bus, now became commands; she
curtly told him when he was to show up, when he was to be back, whether he was to have his dinner at the restaurant or at the house, and when she would join him afterwards. In a hundred small ways she betrayed that she despised him for taking her money, and on his side, he did little to make things better. Monty, alas, was like Bert. A catastrophic change had taken place in his life, and he was wholly unable to adjust himself to it. In some way, indeed, he was worse off than Bert, for Bert lived with his dreams, and at least they kept him mellow. But Monty was an amateur cynic, and cynics are too cynical to dream. He had been born to a way of life that included taste, manners, and a jaunty aloofness from money, as though it were beneath a gentleman’s notice. But what he didn’t realise was that all these things rested squarely on money: it was the possession of money that enabled him to be aloof from it. For the rest, his days were dedicated to play, play on which the newspapers cast a certain agreeable importance, but play nevertheless. Now, with the money gone, he was unable to give up the old way of life, or find a new one. He became a jumble of sorry fictions, an attitude with nothing behind it but pretence. He retained something that he thought of as his pride, but it had no meaning, and exhibited itself mainly in mounting bitterness toward Mildred. He carped at her constantly, sneered at her loyalty to Mr Roosevelt, revealed that his mother knew the Roosevelt family, and regarded Franklin Delano as a phony and a joke. His gags about the Pie Wagon, once easily patronising and occasionally funny, took on a touch of malice, and Veda, ever fashionable, topped them with downright insolence. The gay little trio wasn’t quite so gay.

And then one night in the den, when Mildred tucked another 20 dollars into his pocket, he omitted his usual mumble about paying it back. Instead, he took out the bill, touched his forelock with it, and said: ‘Your paid gigolo thanks you.’

‘I don’t think that was very nice.’

‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

‘Is that the only reason you come here?’

‘Not at all. Come what may, swing high, swing low, for better or for worse, you’re still the best piece I ever had, or ever could imagine.’

He got this off with a nervous, rasping little laugh, and for a few seconds Mildred felt prickly all over, as though the blood were leaving her body. Then her face felt hot, and she became aware of a throbbing silence that had fallen between them. Sheer pride demanded that she say something, and yet for a time she couldn’t. Then, in a low, shaking voice, she said: ‘Monty, suppose you go home.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I think you know.’

‘Well, by all that’s holy, I
don’t
know!’

‘I told you to go.’

Instead of going, he shook his head, as though she were incredibly obtuse, and launched into a dissertation on the relations between the sexes. The sense of it was that as long as this thing was there, everything was all right; that it was the strongest bond there was, and what he was really doing, if she only had sense enough to know it, was paying her a compliment. What she really objected to was his language, wasn’t it? If he had said it flowery, so it sounded poetic, she would have felt differently, wouldn’t she?

But every moment or two he gave the same nervous, rasping laugh, and again she was unable to speak. Then, gathering herself with an effort, she rose to one of her rare moments of eloquence. ‘If you told me that, and intended it as a compliment, it might have been one, I don’t know. Almost anything is a compliment, if you mean it. But when you tell me that, and it’s the only thing you have to tell me, then it’s not a compliment. It’s the worst thing I ever had said to me in my life.’

‘Oh, so you want the I-love-you scene.’

‘I want you to go.’

Hot tears started to her eyes, but she winked them back. He shook his head, got up, then turned to her as though he had to explain something to a child. ‘We’re not talking about things. We’re talking about words. I’m not a poet. I don’t even want to be a poet. To me, that’s just funny. I say something to you my own way, and wham you go moral on me. Well, what do I do now? It’s a pure question of prudery, and—’

‘That’s a lie.’

Her lungs were filling with breath now, so much that she felt it would suffocate her. Her face screwed up into the squint, and the glittering tears made her eyes look hard, cold, and feline. She sat perfectly still, her legs crossed, and looked at him, where he stood facing her on the other side of the room. After a long pause she went on, in a passionate, trembling voice. ‘Since you’ve known me, that’s what I’ve been to you, a “piece”. You’ve taken me to mountain shacks and backstreet speakeasies, you’ve never introduced me to your friends – except for a few men you’ve brought over to dinner sometimes – or your mother, or your sister, or any member of your family. You’re ashamed of me, and now that you’re in my debt, you had to say what you just said to me, to get even. It’s not a surprise to me. I’ve known it all along. Now you can go.’

‘None of that is true.’

‘Every word of it is true.’

‘So far as my friends go—’

‘They mean nothing to me.’

‘—It hadn’t occurred to me you’d care to meet any of them. Most of them are dull, but if meeting them means anything to you, that’s easy fixed. So far as my mother goes—’

‘She means nothing to me either.’

‘—So far as my mother goes, I can’t do anything about her now, because she’s away, and so is my sister. But you may have forgotten that with this restaurant of yours you keep somewhat peculiar hours. To have arranged a meeting would have been idiotically complicated, so I did the best I could. I took your daughter over there, and if you knew anything about social conventions at all, you’d know that I was dealing in my own way with what otherwise would have been a situation. And certainly my mother took all the interest in Veda she could be expected to take – a little more interest than you seemed to be taking, I sometimes thought.’

‘I – didn’t complain on that score.’

In her heart, Mildred knew that Monty was being as dishonest about Veda as he was being about the rest of it. Obviously, he liked Veda, and found her an amusing exhibit to drag around, no doubt because she was precisely the kind of snob that he was
himself, and that most of his friends were. And also, by doing so much for the child, he could neatly sidestep the necessity of doing anything about the mother. But to argue about it would jeopardise the enchanted life that Veda now led, so Mildred veered off in a new direction. ‘Monty, why don’t you tell the truth? You look down on me because I work.’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘No. You look down on everybody that works, as you practically admitted to me the first night I was with you. All right, I work. It’s not at all elegant work, but it’s the only work I can do. I cook food and sell it. But one thing you’d better get through your head sooner or later:
You’ll
have to go to work—’

‘Of course I’m going to work!’

‘Ha-ha. When?’

‘As soon as I get the damned house sold, and this mess straightened out that we’ve got ourselves into. Until that’s over, work, for me, is out of the question. But as
soon
as it’s over—’

‘Monty, you just make me laugh. I used to be married to a real estate company, and there’s no use trying to kid me about houses, and how to get rid of them. There’s nothing about that place that can’t be put in the hands of an agent, and handled like any other. No, it’s not that. You’d rather live there, so you can have an address on Orange Grove Avenue, and cook your own eggs in the morning, and drive over to the club in the afternoon, and have your dinner here with Veda,
and take your spending money from me
– than work. That’s all, isn’t it?’

‘Sure.’

His face broke into a sunny smile, he came over, roughly pushed her into a little heap, took her in his arms. ‘I don’t know anybody I’d rather take money from than you. Your paid gigolo is damned well satisfied.’

She pushed his arms away, trying to repulse him. But she was taken by surprise, and her struggles had no steam in them. Try as she would, she couldn’t resist the physical effect he had on her, and when she finally yielded, the next hour was more wanton, more shamefully exciting, than any she remembered. And yet, for the first time, she felt an undertone of disgust. She didn’t forget that not once had the 20-dollar bill been mentioned,
not once had he offered to give it back. They parted amicably, he apologising for the offending remark, she telling him to forget what she had said, as she was upset, and didn’t mean it. But both of them meant it, and neither of them forgot.

‘B
aby, what are you doing about Repeal?’

‘You mean the Repeal of Prohibition?’

‘Yeah, just that.’

‘Why, I don’t see how it affects me.’

‘It affects you plenty.’

Mrs Gessler, having coffee with Mildred just before closing time, began to talk very rapidly. Repeal, she said, was only a matter of weeks, and it was going to stand the whole restaurant business on its head. ‘People are just crazy for a drink, a decent drink, a drink with no smoke or ether or formaldehyde in it, a drink they can have out in the open, without having to give the password to some yegg with his face in a slot. And places that can read the handwriting on the wall are going to cash in, and those that can’t are going to pass out. You think you’ve got a nice trade here, don’t you? And you think it’ll stick by you, because it likes you, and likes your chicken, and wants to help a plucky little woman get along? It will like hell. When they find out you’re not going to serve them that drink, they’re going to be sore and stay sore. They’re going to tag you for a back number and go some place where they get what they want. You’re going to be out of luck.’

‘You mean I should sell
liquor
?’

‘It’ll be legal, won’t it?’

‘I wouldn’t even consider such a thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘Do you think I’d run a
saloon
?’

Mrs Gessler lit a cigarette, began snapping the ashes impatiently into Mildred’s Mexican ashtrays. Then she took Mildred to task for prejudice, for stupidity, for not being up with the times. Mildred, annoyed at being told how to run her business, argued back, but for each point she made Mrs Gessler made two points. She kept reminding Mildred that liquor, when it came back, wasn’t going to be the same as it had been in the old days. It was going to be respectable, and it was going to put the restaurant business on its feet. ‘That’s what has ailed eating houses ever since the war. That’s why you’re lucky to get a lousy 85 cents for your dinner, when if you could sell a drink with it, you could get a buck, and maybe a buck and a quarter. Baby, you’re not talking sense, and I’m getting damned annoyed at you.’

‘But I don’t know anything about liquor.’

‘I
do
.’

Something about Mrs Gessler’s manner suggested that this was what she had been trying to lead up to all the time, for she lit another cigarette, eyed Mildred sharply, and went on: ‘Now listen: You know and I know and we all know that Ike’s in the long-and short-haul trucking business. Just the same, Repeal’s going to hit him hard. We’ll have to do something, quick, while he reorganises. That means
I’ll
have to do something. So how’s this? You put in the booze, and I’ll take charge of it for you, for a straight ten per cent of what I take in, plus tips, if, as, and when there are any, and if, as and when I’m not too proud to pick them up – which ain’t likely, Baby. It ain’t even possible.’

‘You? A
bartender
?’

‘Why not? I’ll be a damned good one.’

This struck Mildred so funny that she laughed until she heard a girdle seam pop. In spite of work, worry, and everything she could do about it, she was getting the least little bit fat. But Mrs Gessler didn’t laugh. She was in dead earnest, and for the next few days nagged Mildred relentlessly. Mildred still regarded the whole idea as absurd, but on her trips downtown in connection with the pie business, she began to hear things. And then, as state after state fell in line for Repeal, she hardly heard anything else: every proprietor, from Mr Chris to the owners of
the big cafeterias, was in a dither to know what to do, and she began to get frightened. She had to talk to somebody, and on such matters she hadn’t much confidence in Bert, and none at all in Monty. On a sudden inspiration she called up Wally. She saw him quite a lot, in connection with their real estate relations, but their previous relation, by the curious twists of human memory, had by tacit consent been completely erased, so it had never existed. Wally came over one afternoon, listened while Mildred explained her quandary, then shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re backing and filling about, course you’ll sell liquor.’

‘You mean I’ll have to, to hold my trade?’

‘I mean there’s
dough
in it.’

He looked at her with his familiar stare, that was at the same time so vague and so shrewd, and her heart gave a little thump. It was the first time, for some reason, that this aspect of the problem had occurred to her. He went on, a little annoyed at her stupidity: ‘What the hell? Every drink you sell will be about eighty per cent profit even at what you have to pay for your liquor. And it’ll pull in more people for the dinner trade. If Lucy Gessler wants to take it over, then OK. If she don’t know about booze, I don’t know who does. Get going on it, and get going now. It’s coming, fast. And be sure you put on your sign, Cocktails.
That’s
what they’re waiting for. Put a red star in front of it, so they know
you
know it’s important.’