Mildred Pierce (37 page)

About all she was able to tell him was that she ‘liked maple’, but with this single bone as a clue, he reconstructed her whole taste with surprising expertness. He did away with paper, and had the walls done in delicate kalsomine. The rugs he bought in solid colours, rather light, so the house took on a warm, informal look. For the upholstered furniture he chose bright, inexpensive coverings, enunciating a theory to Mildred: ‘In whatever pertains to comfort, shoot the works. A room won’t look comfortable unless it is comfortable and comfort costs money. But on whatever pertains to show, to decoration alone, be a little modest. People will really like you better if you aren’t so
damned
rich.’ It was a new idea to Mildred, and appealed to her so much that she went around meditating about it, and thinking how she could apply it to her restaurants.

He asked permission to hang some of the paintings of his ancestors, as well as a few other small pictures that had been stored for him by friends. However, he didn’t give undue prominence to these things. In what was no longer a drawing-room, but a big living-room, he found place for a collection of Mildred Pierce, Inc.: Mildred’s first menu, her first announcements, a photograph of the Glendale restaurant, a snapshot of Mildred in the white uniform, other things that she didn’t even know he had saved – all enlarged several times, all effectively framed, all hung together, so as to form a little exhibit. At first, she had been self-conscious about them, and was afraid he had hung them there just to please her. But when she said something to this effect, he put down his hammer and wire, looked at her a moment or two, then gave her a compassionate little pat. ‘Sit down a minute, and take a lesson in interior decorating.’

‘I love lessons in decorating.’

‘Do you know the best room I was ever in?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘It’s that den of yours, or Bert’s rather, over in Glendale. Everything in that room meant something to that guy. Those banquets, those foolish-looking blueprints of houses that will
never be built, are a part of him. They do things to you. That’s why the room is good. And do you know the worst room I was ever in?’

‘Go on, I’m learning.’

‘It’s that living-room of yours, right in the same house. Not one thing in it – until the piano came in, but that’s recent – ever meant a thing to you, or him, or anybody. It’s just a room, I suppose the most horrible thing in the world . . . A home is not a museum. It doesn’t have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to
you
. If they’re just phonies, bought in a hurry to fill up, it’ll look like that living-room over there, or the way this lawn looked when my father got through showing how much money he had . . . Let’s have this place the way
we
want it. If you don’t like the Pie Wagon corner, I do.’

‘I love it.’

‘Then it stays.’

From then on, Mildred began to feel proud of the house and happy about it, and particularly relished the last hectic week, when hammer, saw, phone bell, and vacuum cleaner mingled their separate songs into one lovely cacophony of preparation. She moved Letty over, with a room of her own, and Tommy, with a room and a private bath. She engaged, at Monty’s request, Kurt and Frieda, the couple who had worked for Mrs Beragon before ‘es went kaput’, as Kurt put it. She drove to Phoenix, with Monty, and got married.

For a week after this quiet courthouse ceremony she was almost frantic. She had addressed Veda’s announcement herself, and the papers were full of the nuptials, with pictures of herself and lengthy accounts of her career, and pictures of Monty and just as lengthy accounts of his career. But there was no call from Veda, no visit, no telegram, no note. Many people dropped in: friends of Monty’s mostly, who treated her very pleasantly, and didn’t seem offended when she had to excuse herself, in the afternoon at any rate, to go to work. Bert called with all wishes for her happiness, and sincere praise for Monty, whom he described as a
‘thoroughbred’. She was surprised to learn that he was living with Mom and Mr Pierce, Mrs Biederhof’s husband having struck oil in Texas, and she having joined him there. Mildred had always supposed Mrs Biederhof a widow, and so apparently had Bert. Yet the call that Mildred hoped for didn’t come. Monty, well aware by now that a situation of some sort existed with regard to Veda, rather pointedly didn’t notice her mood, or make any inquiries about it.

And then one night at Laguna, Mrs Gessler appeared around eight in a bright red evening dress, and almost peremptorily told Mildred to close the place, as she herself was invited out. Mildred was annoyed, and her temper didn’t improve when Archie took off his regimentals at nine sharp, and left within a minute or two. She was in a gloomy, irritable humour going home, and several times called Tommy down for driving too fast. Until she was at the door of her new house, she didn’t notice that a great many cars seemed to be parked out front, and even then they made no particular impression on her. Tommy, instead of opening for her, rang the bell twice, then rang it twice again. She was opening her mouth to say something peevish about people who forget their keys, when lights went up all over the first floor, and the door, as though of its own accord, swung slowly open, wide open. Then, from somewhere within, a voice, the only voice in the world to Mildred, began to sing. After a long time Mildred heard a piano, realised Veda was singing the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. ‘Here comes the bride’, sang Veda, but ‘comes’ was hardly the word. Mildred floated in, seeing faces, flowers, dinner coats, paper hats, hearing laughter, applause, greetings, as things in a dream. When Veda, still singing, came over, took her in her arms, and kissed her, it was almost more than she could stand, and she stumbled hurriedly out, and let Monty take her upstairs, on the pretext that she must put on a suitable dress for the occasion.

A few years before, Mildred would have been incapable of presiding over such a party: her commonplaceness, her upbringing, her sense of inferiority in the presence of ‘society people’, would have combined to make her acutely miserable, completely incompetent. Tonight, however, she was a completely charming
hostess and guest of honour, rolled into one. In the black evening dress, she was everywhere, seeing that people had what they wanted, seeing that Archie, who presided in the kitchen, and Kurt, Frieda, and Letty, assisted by Arline and Sigrid, from the Pie Wagon itself, kept things going smoothly. Most of the guests were Pasadena people, friends of Veda’s and Monty’s, but her waitress training, plus her years as Mildred Pierce, Inc., stood her in good stead now. She had acquired a memory like a filing cabinet, and had everybody’s name as soon as she heard it, causing even Monty to look at her with sincere admiration. But she was pleased that he had asked such few friends as she had: Mrs Gessler, and Ida, and particularly Bert, who looked unusually handsome in his dinner coat, and helped with the drinks, and turned music for Mr Treviso when Veda, importuned by everybody, graciously consented to sing.

Mildred wanted to cry when people began to leave, and then discovered that the evening had hardly begun. The best part came when she, and Veda, and Monty sat around in the small library, across from the big living-room, and decided that Veda should spend the night, and talked. Then Monty, not at all reverent in the presence of art, said: ‘Well, goddam it, how did you get to be a singer? When I discovered you, practically pulled you out of the gutter, you were a pianist, or supposed to be. Then I no sooner turn my back than you turn into some kind of a yodeller.’

‘Well, goddam it, it was an accident.’

‘Then report.’

‘I was at the Philharmonic.’

‘Yes, I’ve been there.’

‘Listening to a concert. And they played the Schubert Unfinished. And afterwards I was walking across the park, to my car, and I was humming it. And ahead of me I could see him walking along—’

‘Who?’

‘
Treviso
.’

‘Oh yes, the Neapolitan Stokowski.’

‘So I had plenty of reason for not walking to meet the honourable signor, because I’d played for him once, and he
wasn’t at all appreciative. So I slowed down, to let him get ahead. But then he stopped, and turned around, and looked, and then he came over to me, and said: “Was that you singing?” Well, I have to explain that I wasn’t so proud of my singing just about that time. I used to sing Hannen’s songs for him, whenever he wrote one, but he used to kid me about it, because I sang full chest, and sounded exactly like a man. He called me the Glendale Baritone. Well, that was Charlie, but I didn’t know why I had to take any kidding off Treviso. So I told him it didn’t concern him whether I was singing or not, but he grabbed me by the arm, and said it concerned him very much, and me. Then he took a card from his pocket, and a pen, and ran under a light, and wrote his address on it, and handed it to me, and told me to be there the next day at four o’clock, that it was important. So that night I had it out with myself. I knew, when he handed me the card, that he had no recollection he had ever seen me before, so there was no question of kidding.
But
– did I want to unlock that door again or not?’

‘What door?’

Monty was puzzled, but Mildred knew which door, even before Veda went on: ‘Of music. I’d driven a knife through its heart, and locked it up, and thrown the key away, and now here was Treviso, telling me to come down and see him tomorrow, at four o’clock. And do you know why I went?’

Veda was dead serious now, and looking at them both as though to make sure they got things straight. ‘It was because once he had told me the truth. I had hated him for it, the way he had closed the piano in front of me without saying a word, but it was his way of telling me, and it was the truth. So I thought maybe he was telling me the truth now. So I went. And for a week he worked on me, to get me to sing like a woman, and then it began to come the right way, and I could hear what he had heard that night out there in the park. And then he began to tell me how important it was that I become a musician. I had the voice, he said, if I could master music. And he gave me the names of this one and that one, who could teach me theory, and sight-reading, and piano, and I don’t know what-all.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, and did I get my revenge, for that day when he closed the piano on me. I asked him if there was a little sight-reading he wanted done, and he handed me the Inflammatus from Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Well nuts. I went through that like a hot knife through butter, and he began to get excited. Then I asked him if he had a little job of arranging he wanted done, and then I told him about Charlie, and reminded him I’d been in there before. Well, if he’d hit gold in Death Valley he couldn’t have acted more like a goof. He went all over me with instruments, little wooden hammers that he used on my knuckles, and calmer things that went over my nose, and gadgets with lights on them that went down my throat. Why he even—’

Veda made curious, prodding motions just above her midriff, while Monty frowned incredulously. ‘Yes! Believe it or not, he even dug his fingers into me. Well! I didn’t exactly know what to think, or do.’

Veda could make a very funny face when she wanted to, and Monty started to laugh. In spite of herself, so did Mildred. Veda went on: ‘But it turned out he wasn’t interested in love. He was interested in meat. He said it enriched the tone.’

‘The
what
?’

Monty’s voice rose to a whoop as he said this, and the next thing they knew, the three of them were howling with laughter, howling at Veda’s fullness as they had howled at Mrs Biederhof’s, that first night many years before.

When Mildred went to bed her stomach hurt from laughter, her heart ached from happiness. Then she remembered that while Veda had kissed her, that first moment when she had entered the house, she still hadn’t kissed Veda. She tiptoed into the room she had hoped Veda would occupy, knelt beside the bed as she had knelt so many times in Glendale, took the lovely creature in her arms and kissed her, hard, on the mouth. She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay, to blow through the holes in Veda’s pyjamas. And when she got back to her room she couldn’t bear it that Monty should be there. She wanted to be alone, to let these little laughs come bubbling out of her, to think about Veda.

Monty agreed to withdraw to the tack-room as he called the place where he stored his saddles, bridles, and furniture from the shack, with complete good humour – with more good humour, perhaps, than a husband should show, at such a request.

M
ildred now entered the days of her apotheosis. War was crashing in Europe, but she knew little of it, and cared less. She was drunk with the glory of the Valhalla she had entered: the house among the oaks, where dwelt the girl with the coppery hair, the lovely voice, and the retinue of admirers, teachers, coaches, agents, and thieves who made life so exciting. For the first time, Mildred became acquainted with theatres, opera houses, broadcasting studios, and such places, and learned something of the heartbreak they can hold. There was, for example, the time Veda sang in a local performance of Traviata, given at the Philharmonic under the direction of Mr Treviso. She had just had the delightful sensation of beholding Veda alone on the stage for at least ten minutes, and at the intermission went out into the lobby, to drink in the awestruck comment of the public. To her furious surprise, a voice behind her, a man’s voice, with effeminate intonation, began: ‘So that’s La Pierce, radio’s gift to the lyric muse. Well, there’s no use telling me, you can’t raise singers in Glendale. Why, the girl’s simply nauseating. She gargles it over her tonsils in that horrible California way, she’s off pitch half the time, and as for acting – did you notice her routine, after Alfredo went off? She had no routine. She planted one heel on that dime, locked both hands in front of her, and just stayed there until . . .’