Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

Having Veda turn into Irving Berlin, with or without a million bucks in the bank, wasn’t exactly what Mildred had in mind for her. In her imagination she could see Veda already, wearing a pale green dress to set off her coppery hair, seated at a big piano before a thousand people, grandly crossing her right hand over her left, haughtily bowing to thunderous applause — but no matter. The spirit was what counted. Bert spun her dreams for her, while she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and Arline poured him more coffee, from a percolator, the way he liked it. It was the middle of the afternoon before Mildred returned to earth, and said suddenly: “Bert, can I ask a favor?”

“Anything, Mildred.”

“It’s not why I asked you here. I just wanted to tell you about it. I knew you’d want to hear.”

“I know why you asked me. Now what is it?”

“I want that piano, at Mom’s.”

“Nothing to it. They’ll be only too glad—”

“No, wait a minute. I don’t want it as a gift, nothing like that at all. I just want to borrow it until I can get Veda a piano that—”

“It’s all right. They’ll—”

“No, but wait a minute. I’m going to get her a piano. But the kind of piano that she ought to have, I mean a real grand, costs eleven hundred dollars. And they’ll give me terms, but I just don’t dare take on any more debt. What I’m going to do, I’m going to open a special account, down at the bank, and keep putting in, and I know by next Christmas, I mean a year from now, I can manage it. But just now—”

“I only wish I could contribute a little.”

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

Quickly she put her hand over his and patted it. “You’ve done plenty. Maybe you’ve forgotten how you gave me the house outright, and everything that went before, but I haven’t. You’ve done your share. Now it’s my turn. I don’t mind about that, but I do want them to know, Mom and Mr. Pierce I mean, that I’m not trying to get anything from them. I just want to borrow the piano, so Veda can practice at home, and—”

“Mildred.”

“Yes?”

“Will you just kindly shut up?”

“All right.”

“Everything’s under control. Just leave it to me.”

So presently, the piano was carted down, and on January 2, Mildred went to the bank and deposited $21, after multiplying carefully, and making sure that $21 a week, at the end of a year, would almost exactly equal $1,100.

Mildred was in such a panic over the bank holiday, as well as other alarms that attended to Mr. Roosevelt’s inauguration, that she paid scant attention to anything except her immediate concerns. But when her apprehension slacked off, she began to notice that Monty seemed moody and abstracted, with little of the flippancy that was normally part of him. Then, in a speakeasy one night, the sharp way he glanced at the check told her he didn’t have much money with him. Then another night, when he revoked an order for a drink he obviously wanted, she knew he was hard up. But it was Veda who let the cat out of the bag, Walking home from the restaurant one night, she suddenly asked Mildred: “Heard the news?”

“What news, darling?”

“The House of Beragon is ge-finished. It is ffft, fa-down-go-boom, oop-a-doop-whango. Alas it is no more. Pop goes the weasel.”

“I’ve been suspecting something like that.”

Mildred said this quickly, to cover the fact that she actually had been told nothing at all, and, for the rest of the walk home was depressed by the realization that Monty had suffered some sort of fantastic reverses without saying a word to her. But soon curiosity got the better of her. She lit a fire in the den, had Veda sit down, and asked for more details. “Well, Mother, I really don’t know a great deal about it, except that it’s all over Pasadena, and you hardly hear anything else. They had some stock, the Duenna, that’s his mother, and the Infanta, that’s his sister. Stock in a bank, somewhere in the East. And it was assessable, whatever that means. So when the bank didn’t open it was most unfortunate. What is assessable?”

“I heard some talk about it, when the banks were closed. I think it means that if there’s not enough money to pay the depositors, then the stockholders have to make it good.”

“That’s it . That explains about their assets being impounded, and why they’ve gone to Philadelphia, the Duenna and the Infanta, so papers can’t be served on them. And of course when Beragon Brothers, dear old Beragon Brothers, founded in 1893 — when they went bust, that didn’t help any, either.”

“When did that happen?”

“Three or four months ago. Their growers, the farmers that raised the fruit, all signed up with the Exchange, and that was what cooked Monty’s goose. He didn’t have any bank stock. His money was in the fruit company, but when that folded his mother kicked in. Then when the bank went under she had nothing to kick. Anyway there’s a big sign on the lawn, ‘For Sale, Owner Must Sacrifice,’ and Monty’s showing the prospective buyers around.”

“You mean their house?”

“I mean their palatial residence on Orange Grove Avenue, with the iron dogs out front and the peacock out behind — but a buyer had better show up pretty soon, or Monty’ll be eating the peacock. It certainly looks as though the old buzzard will have to go to work.”

Mildred didn’t know whether she was more shocked at the tale she heard or Veda’s complete callousness about it. But one thing was clear: Monty wanted no sympathy from her, so for a time she ate with him, drank with him, and slept with him under the pretense that she knew nothing whatever. But presently the thing became so public, what with pieces in the paper about the sale of his polo ponies, the disappearance of the Cord in favor of a battered little Chevrolet, and one thing and another, that he did begin to talk about it. But he always acted as though this were some casual thing that would be settled shortly, a nuisance while it lasted, but of no real importance. Never once did he let Mildred come close to him in connection with it, pat him on the head, tell him it didn’t really matter, do any of the things that in her scheme of life a woman was expected to do under these circumstances. She felt sorry for him, terribly upset about him. And yet she also felt snubbed and rebuffed. And she could never shake off the feeling that if he accepted her as his social equal he would act differently about it.

And then one night she came home to find him with Veda, waiting for her. They were in the den, having a furious argument about polo, which continued after she sat down. It seemed that a new team had been organized, called The Ramblers: that its first game would be at San Diego, and that Monty had been invited to make the trip. Veda, an expert on such matters, was urging him to go. “There’d better be one eight-goal man with that outfit, or they can stop calling it The Ramblers and call it Mussolini Reviewing the Cavalry, because that’s what it’s going to be, all right. Just a one-way parade of horses, and they won’t wake up until the score is about forty to nothing.”

“I’ve got too much to do.”

“Such as what?”

“This and that.”

“Nothing whatever, if I’m any good at guessing. Monty, you’ve got to go with them. If you don’t, they’re sunk. It’ll be embarrassing. And they’ll simply ruin your horses. After all, they’ve got some rights.”

Polo was a complete mystery to Mildred. How Monty could sell his ponies and still be riding them she couldn’t understand, and chiefly she couldn’t understand why he was riding them, or anybody was. And yet it tore her heart that he should want to go, and not be able to, and it kept bothering her long after Veda had gone to bed. When he got up to go she pulled him down beside her, and asked: “Do you need money?”