Mildred Pierce (8 page)

‘It’s perfectly all right, but on little things, especially with an inexperienced woman, I find it well to begin at the beginning. Do sit down. We’ve many things to talk about, and it’ll make me quite uncomfortable to have you standing there.’

‘This is all right.’

‘Mildred, I
invited
you to sit
down
.’

Her throat throbbing, tears of rage swimming into her eyes, Mildred sat down, while Mrs Forrester spoke grandly of her plans for reorganising the house. Apparently it was her intended husband’s house, though what she was doing in it, in negligee, a full month before the wedding, she didn’t bother to explain. Mildred, it appeared, would have her own quarters, above the garage. She herself had two children by a former marriage, and of course no fraternisation between children could be permitted, though there need be no trouble about that, as Mildred would have her own entrance on the lane, and ‘all such questions can be worked out’. Mildred listened, or tried to, but suddenly a vision leaped in front of her eyes. She saw Veda, haughty, snobbish Veda, being told that she had to come in the back way, and that she couldn’t fraternise with Forrester offspring. Then Mildred knew that if she took this place she would lose Veda. Veda would go to her father, her grandfather, the police, or a park bench, but not even whips could make her stay with Mildred, in the Forrester garage. A surge of pride in the cold child swept over her, and she stood up. ‘I don’t think I’m quite the person you want here, Mrs Forrester.’

‘The
Mistress
terminates the
interview
, Mildred.’

‘Mrs Pierce, if you don’t mind. And I’m terminating it.’

It was Mrs Forrester’s turn to shoot up as though her legs were made of springs, but if she contemplated further instruction in the relation of the servant to the Mistress, she thought better of it. She found herself looking into Mildred’s squint, and it flickered somewhat ominously. Pressing a button, she announced coldly: ‘I’ll have Harris show you out.’

‘I’ll find my way, thank you.’

Picking up her handbag, Mildred left the library, but instead of turning towards the kitchen, she marched straight for the front door, closing it calmly behind her. She floated to the bus stop on air, rode into Hollywood without seeing what she was passing. But when she found she had got off too soon, and had to walk two blocks for the Glendale connection, she wilted and moved on trembling legs. At Hollywood Boulevard, the bench was full, and she had to stand. Then everything began spinning around,
and the sunshine seemed unnaturally bright. She knew she had to sit down, or topple over, right there on the sidewalk. Two or three doors away was a restaurant, and she lurched into it. It was crowded with people eating lunch, but she found a small table against the wall, and sat down.

After picking up the menu, and dropping it quickly so the girl wouldn’t notice her trembling hands, she asked for a ham sandwich, with lettuce, a glass of milk, and a glass of water, but she was an interminable time getting served. The girl puttered about, complained of the service that was demanded of her, and the little that she got for it, and Mildred had a vague suspicion that she was being accused of stealing a tip. She was too near collapse for argument, however, and beyond repeating that she wanted the water right away, said nothing. Presently her order arrived, and she sat apathetically munching it down. The water cleared her head, and the food revived her, but there was still a quivering in her bowels that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the walking, fretting, and quarrelling she had done all morning. She felt gloomy indeed, and when she heard a resounding
slap
, a few inches from her ear, she barely turned her head. The girl who had served her was facing another girl, and even as Mildred looked, proceeded to deal out a second loud slap. ‘I caught you, you dirty little crook! I caught you red-handed, right in the act!’

‘Girls!
Girls
!’

‘I caught her! She’s been doing it right along, stealing tips off my tables! She stole ten cents off eighteen, before that lady sat down, and now she stole fifteen out of a forty-cent tip right here –
and I seen her do it
!’

In a moment the place was like a beehive, with other girls shouting their accusations, the hostess trying to restore order, and the manager flying out of the kitchen. He was a rotund little Greek with flashing black eyes, and he summarily fired both girls and apologised profusely to the customers. When the two of them sullenly paraded out, in their street clothes, a few minutes later, Mildred was so lost in her reflections that she didn’t even give her girl a nod. It was not until the hostess appeared in an
apron, and began serving orders, that she woke up to the fact that she was face to face with one of the major decisions of her life. They needed help, that was plain, and needed it now. She stared at the water glass, twisted her mouth into a final, irrevocable decision. She would not do this kind of work, if she starved first. She put a dime on the table. She got up. She went to the cashier’s desk, and paid her check. Then, as though walking to the electric chair, she turned around, headed for the kitchen.

T
he next two hours, to Mildred, were a waking nightmare. She didn’t get the job quite as easily as she had supposed she would. The proprietor, whose name was apparently Makadoulis, but whom everybody addressed as Mr Chris, was willing enough, especially as the hostess kept shrilling in his ear: ‘You’ve got to put somebody on! It’s a mess out there! It’s a mess!’ But when the girls saw Mildred, and divined what she was there for, they gathered around, and passionately vetoed her application, unless Anna was taken back. Anna, she gathered, was the girl who had waited on her, and the aggressor in the fight, but as all of them apparently had been victims of the thefts, they seemed to regard her as their representative in a sense, and didn’t propose to have her made a goat. They argued their case in quite a noisy fashion, letting the counters pile up with orders while they screamed, and making appropriate gestures. One of these gestures swiped a plate into space, with a club sandwich on it. Mildred caught it as it fell. The sandwich was wholly wrecked, but she put it together again, with deft fingers, and restored it to its place on the counter. The Chef, a gigantic man addressed as Archie, watched her exhibition of juggling with impassive stolidity, but when the reconstructed sandwich was back on the counter he gave her a curt nod. Then he began banging on the steam table with the palm of his hand. This restored quiet as nothing else had been able to do. Mr Chris turned to the girls. ‘Hokay, hokay.’

The question of Anna being thus settled, the hostess hustled
Mildred back to the lockers, where she unlocked a door and held out a menu. ‘Take off your dress and while I’m finding a uniform to fit, study this menu, so you can be some use. What size do you wear?’

‘Ten.’

‘You worked in a restaurant before?’

‘No.’

‘Study it, specially prices.’

Mildred took off her dress, hung it in the locker, and stared at the menu. There were fifty-five- and sixty-five-cent lunches on it, as well as appetisers, steaks, chops, desserts, and fountain drinks, most of these bearing fancy names that were unintelligible to her. In spite of her best concentration most of it was a jumble. In a minute or two the hostess was back with her uniform, a pale blue affair, with white collar, cuffs, and pockets. She slipped into it. ‘And here’s your apron. You furnish your uniform; it comes off your first check, three ninety-five; you get it at cost, and you keep it laundered. And if you don’t suit us, we charge you twenty-five cents rent on the uniform; that comes out of your check too, but you don’t have the whole uniform to pay for unless we really take you on. The pay is twenty-five cents an hour, and you keep your own tips.’

‘And what’s your name, Miss?’

‘Ida. What’s yours?’

‘Mildred.’

They started for the dining-room, but going through the kitchen Ida kept talking into her ear. ‘I’m giving you a light station, see? Three, four, five, and six, all them little booths against the wall. That’s so you don’t get no fours. Singles and twos are easier. All them that’s just come in, you take them, and them that’s already started on their lunches, I’ll take care of them myself. That’s so you don’t get mixed up on them other girls’ books.’

They reached the dining-room, and Ida pointed out the station. Three of the tables were occupied by people who had given their orders before the fight started, the fourth by a pair of women who had just come in. All were getting annoyed at the
delay in the service. But still Mildred wasn’t permitted to start. Ida led her to the cashier, a fish-faced blonde who began savagely telling Ida of the complaints she had received, and of the five people who had already walked out. Ida cut her off, had her issue Mildred a new book. ‘You’ve got to account for every check, see? In here you mark your number, you’re No. 9. Here you mark the number of the table, here the number of customers on the check. Down here, put down everything they order, and the first thing you got to learn: don’t make no mistake on a check. It’s all booked against you, and if you make a mistake, it’s deducted,
and you got to pay for it
.’

With this ominous warning in her ears, Mildred at last approached the two women who were waiting to have their orders taken, handed them their menus, and inquired what they were going to have. They replied they weren’t sure they were going to have anything, and wanted to know what kind of place this was anyway, to let people sit around without even asking them if they minded waiting. Mildred, almost in hysteria by now with what she had been through that day, felt a hot impulse to take them down a few notches, as she had taken Mrs Forrester. However, she managed a smile, said there had been a little trouble, and that if they could just be patient a minute of two, she would see they were served at once. Then, taking a quick plunge at the only thing she remembered about the menu, she added: ‘The roast chicken is awfully good today.’

Slightly mollified, they chose chicken on the sixty-five-cent lunch, but one of them said loudly: ‘See there’s no gravy on mine in any way, shape, or form. I hate brown gravy.’

‘Yes, Miss. I’ll remember.’

Mildred started for the kitchen, barely missing a girl who appeared at the out door. Swerving in time, she dived through the in door and called to Archie: ‘Two roast chicken. One without gravy.’

But the ubiquitous Ida was at her elbow, calling frantically to Archie: ‘Hold one gravy, hold it!’ Then she yanked Mildred aside, and half screamed at her: ‘You got to call it right! You can’t work nowhere without you’re in good with the Chef, and
you got to call it right for him. Get this: If there’s any trimmings they don’t want, you don’t call it
without
’em, you call it
hold ’em
!’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘You got to be in good with the Chef !’

Dimly Mildred began to understand why that great paw, banging on the steam table, had restored order when Mr Chris had been mobbed like a Junebug in a flock of angry hens. She had observed that the waitresses dipped their own soup, so she now got bowls and filled them with the cream of tomato that her customers had ordered. But there was no surcease from Ida. ‘Pick up your starters! Pick up your starters!’ At Mildred’s blank look, Ida grabbed two plates of salad from the sandwich counter, whipped two pats of butter on to two small plates, and motioned Mildred to get the four plates in there, quick. ‘Have they got water?’

‘Not yet.’

‘For crying out loud.’

Ida made a dive for the lift spigot, drew two glasses of water, slid them expertly so they fetched up beside the four plates. Then she pitched two napkins up against the water glasses. ‘Get in there with them – if they haven’t walked out on you.’

Mildred blinked helplessly at this formidable array. ‘Well – can I have a tray?’

In despair, Ida picked up plates, glasses, and napkins, so they were spread across her fingers like playing cards, and balanced halfway up her arm. ‘Get the soup, and come on.’ She was gone before Mildred could recover from the speed of her legerdemain. The soup Mildred picked up gingerly, kicking the
out
door open as she saw the others doing. Taking care not to spill any of it, she eventually reached the table. Ida was smoothing the two women down, and from their glances Mildred knew it had been fully explained to them that she was a new girl, and that allowances had to be made for her. At once they began amusing themselves by calling her January and Slewfoot. Lest she show resentment, she started for the kitchen, but it seemed impossible to get away from Ida. ‘Pick up something! Don’t never make a trip, in or out, without something in your hand. You’ll trot all
day and you’ll never get done! Get them dirty dishes over there, on No. 3. Pick up something!’

The afternoon dragged on. Mildred felt stupid, heavy, slow, and clumsy. Try as she would to ‘pick up something’, dirty dishes piled on her tables, and unserved orders in the kitchen, until she thought she would go insane from the confusion. Her trouble, she discovered, was that she hadn’t the skill to carry more than two dishes at a time. Trays were prohibited here, Ida informed her, because the aisles were so narrow they would lead to crashes, and this meant that everything had to be carried by hand. But the trick of balancing half a dozen dishes at a time was beyond her. She tried it once, but her hand crumpled under the weight, and a hot fudge sundae almost went on the floor. The climax came around three o’clock. The place was empty by then and the fish-faced cashier came back to inform her she had lost a check. The subsequent figuring showed that the check was for fifty-five cents, which meant that her whole hourly wage was lost. She wanted to throw everything in the place at the cashier’s head, but didn’t. She said she was sorry, gathered up the last of her dirty dishes, and went back with them.