Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“Oh Lord no!”

His voice, look, and gesture were those of a man pained beyond expression at an insinuation utterly grotesque. But Mildred, nearly two years in the restaurant business, was not fooled. She said: “I think you do.”

“Mildred — you leave me without any idea — what to say to you. I’ve — run into a little bad luck — that’s true. My mother has — we all have. But — it’s nothing that involves — small amounts. I can still — hold up my end of it — if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“I want you to play in that game.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Wait a minute.”

She found her handbag, took out a crisp $20 bill. Going over to him she slipped it in the breast pocket of his coat. He took it out, with an annoyed grimace, and pitched it back at her. It fell on the floor. She picked it up and dropped it in his lap. With the same annoyed grimace, very much annoyed this time, he picked it up, started to pitch it back at her again, then hesitated, and sat there snapping it between his fingers, so it made little pistol shots. Then, without looking at her: “Well — I’ll pay it back.”

“That’s all right.”

“I don’t know when — two or three things have to be straightened out first — but it won’t be very long. So — if it’s understood to be strictly a loan—”

“Any way you want.”

That week, with the warm June weather, her business took a sharp drop. For the first time, she had to skip an installment on Veda’s piano.

The next week, when he changed his mind about going to a speakeasy that he liked, she slipped $10 into his pocket, and they went. Before she knew it, she was slipping him $10’s and $20’s regularly, either when she remembered about it, or he stammeringly asked her if he could tap her for another small loan. Her business continued light, and when the summer had gone, she had managed to make only three deposits on the piano, despite hard scrimping. She was appalled at the amount of money he cost, and fought off a rising irritation about it. She told herself it wasn’t his fault, that he was merely going through what thousands of others had already gone through, were still going through. She told herself it was her duty to be helping somebody, and that it might as well be somebody that meant something to her. She also reminded herself she had practically forced the arrangement on him. It was no use. The piano had become an obsession with her by now, and the possibility that it was slipping away from her caused a baffled, frustrated sensation that almost smothered her.

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 realize 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 pretense. 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 whole Roosevelt family, and regarded Franklin Delano as a phony and a joke. His gags about the Pie Wagon, once easily patronizing 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 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 of tail 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 of tail. You’ve taken me to mountain shacks and back-street 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.”