Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“No, there haven’t. And right there’s where I suggest you get better acquainted with your own daughter. She’s a strange child. Girls her own age don’t interest her. She likes older women—”

“If they’re rich.”

“Anyway, she’s damned nice to them. And it’s unusual as hell. And you can’t blame them for liking it. And liking her. But as for her trying to throw some kind of a shindig for them, what are you trying to do, make me laugh?”

In some elusive, quicksilver way that she couldn’t get her finger on, Mildred felt the argument slipping away from her, and like Veda, she abandoned logic and began to scream: “You’ve set her against me! I don’t care a bit for your fine talk — you’ve set her against me!”

Monty lit a cigarette, smoked sullenly a few moments without speaking. Then he looked up. “Ah! So this is why you came. Stupid of me not to have thought of it sooner.”

“I came because I was invited.”

“On a night like this?”

“It’s as good a time as any other.”

“What a nice little pal you turned out to be... Funny — I had something to say, too.”

He looked with a little self-pitying smile into the fire, evidently decided to keep his intentions to himself, then changed his mind. “... I was going to say you’d make a fine wife for somebody — if you didn’t live in Glendale.”

She had been feeling outpointed, but at this all her self-righteousness came back. Leaning forward, she stared at him. “Monty, you can still say that? After what I’ve said to you? Just to have somebody take care of you, you’d ask me to marry you? Haven’t you any more self-respect than that?”

“Ah, but that’s what I was going to say.”

“Monty, don’t make it any worse than it is. If I got excited about it, you were going to let it stay said. If I didn’t, you were going to pretend that was what you were going to say. Gee, Monty, but you’re some man, aren’t you?”

“Now suppose you listen to what I am going to say.”

“No, I’m going home.”

She got up, but he leaped at her, seized her by both arms, and flung her back in her chair. The little glittering points of light in his eyes were dancing now, and his face was drawn and hard. “Do you know why Veda never invites anybody to that house of yours? Do you know why nobody, except that string-bean that lives next door, ever goes there?”

“Yes — because you set her against me and—”

“Because you are a goddam varlet, and you’re afraid to have people come there, because you wouldn’t know what to do about them — you just haven’t got the nerve.”

Looking into his contorted face, she suddenly had the same paralyzed, shrunken feeling she had had the morning Miss Turner told her off, and sent her over to the housekeeper’s job, because there was nothing else she could do. And she kept shrinking, as Monty went on, pouring a torrent of bitter, passionate invective at her. “It’s not her. It’s not me. It’s you. Doesn’t that strike you as funny? That Veda has a hundred friends, here, there, everywhere she goes, and that you haven’t any? No, I’m wrong — you have one. That bartender. And that’s all. Nobody ever gets invited to your house, nobody—”

“What are you talking about? How can I give parties, or invite people, with a living to make? Why you—”

“Living, my eye! That’s the alibi, not the reason. You damned little kitchen scullion, you’d tell me who’s setting your child against you? Me? Listen, Mildred. Nobody but a varlet would give a second’s thought to what you’ve been talking about tonight. Because that’s the difference. A lady doesn’t care. A varlet does.”

He walked around, panting, then turned on her again. “And I like a fool, like a damned idiot, I once thought maybe I’d been mistaken, that you were a lady, and not a varlet. That was when you handed me the $20 bill that night, and I took it. And then I took more. I even gave you credit for something. God knows what it is, some sense of humor that only an aristocrat ever has, and asked you for money. And then what? Could you go through with it? The very thing that you yourself started? A lady would have cut her heart out before she let me know the money meant anything. But you, before I had even fifty bucks out of you, you had to make a chauffeur out of me, didn’t you? To get your money’s worth? A lackey, a poodle dog. You had to rub it in. Well no more. I’ve taken my last dime off you, and God willing, before my sun goes down, I’ll pay you back. Why you scum, you — waitress. I guess that’s one reason I love Veda. She wouldn’t pick up a tip. That’s one thing she wouldn’t do — and neither would I.”

“Except from me.”

White with rage, she opened her evening bag, took out a crisp $10 bill, threw it at his feet. He took the fire tongs, picked it up, dropped it on the fire. When the flame flared up he took out a handkerchief and mopped his face.

For a time, nothing was said by either of them, and when their panting had died down, Mildred began to feel ashamed, defeated, and miserable. She had said it all, had goaded him to say it all too, those things that she knew he felt, and that left her crumpled and unable to answer. Yet nothing had been settled: there he was and there she was. As she looked at him, she saw for the first time that he was tired, worn, and haggard, with just a touch of middle age dragging at what she had always thought of as a youthful face. Then a gush of terrible affection for him swept over her, compounded of pity, contempt, and something motherly. She wanted to cry, and suddenly reached over and rubbed his bald spot. For a long time, it had been a little joke between them. He made no move, but he didn’t repulse her either, and when she leaned back she felt better. Then again she heard the rain, and for the first time was afraid of it. She drew the coat around her. Then she picked up Manhattan No. 3, drank half of it, set it down again. Without looking at her, he filled her glass. They sat a long time, neither of them looking at the other.

Then abruptly, as though he had solved a very difficult problem, he banged his fist on the arm of his chair, and said: “Damn it, what this needs is the crime of rape!”

He came over, put one arm around her, slipped the other under her legs, and carried her into the bedroom. A little moaning laugh escaped her as he dumped her down on the hummocksy bed. She felt weak and drugged. In a moment, the brocaded coat was off, was sliding to the floor. She thought of her dress, and didn’t care: she wanted him to rip it off her, to tear it away in shreds, if he had to, so he got her out of it. But he wasn’t ripping it off. He was fumbling with the zipper, and for a moment her fingers were over his, trying to help. Then something stirred inside of her, an unhappy recollection of what she had come for, of what had been piling up between them these last few months. She fought it off, tried to make it sink under the overwhelming blend of liquor, man, and rain. It wouldn’t sink. If she had lifted a mountain, it couldn’t have been harder than it was to put both palms in Monty’s face, push him away, squirm off the bed, and lurch to her feet. She grabbed both coats, ran into the other room. He was after her, trying to drag her back, but she fought him off as she snatched up the galoshes and dashed into the dark hall.

Somehow, she got through the ghostly rooms, down the stairs, and to the front door. It was locked. She twisted the big brass key, and at last was on the portico, in the cold wet air. She pulled on both coats, stepped into the galoshes. Then suddenly the light came on, and he was beside her, reaching for her, trying to pull her back. She dashed out into the rain, yanked the cloth off the car, let it fall in the mud, and jumped in. As she snapped on the lights and started the motor, she could see him under the light, gesticulating at her, expostulating with her. There was nothing of passion in his face now. He was angrily telling her not to be a fool, not to go out in the storm.