Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

Mrs. Gessler looked at it intently. “He’s on call all the time, too. All he needed was a chance. Next week he’s getting a new truck, streamlined.”

“Is everything all right upstairs?”

Mildred had reference to the terms of Mrs. Gessler’s employment. She didn’t get $30 a week and 2 per cent of the gross, as Ida did. She got $30 and 1 per cent, the rest of her pay being made up of free quarters in the upper part of the house, with light, heat, water, food, laundry, and everything furnished. Mrs. Gessler nodded. “Everything’s fine. Ike loves those big rooms, and the sea, and the steaks, and — well, believe it or not he even likes the flowers. ‘Service with a gardenia’ — he’s thinking of having it lettered on the new truck. We’re living again, that’s all.”

Mildred never cooked anything herself now, or put on a uniform. At Glendale, Mrs. Kramer had been promoted to cook, with an assistant named Bella; Mrs. Gessler’s place was taken by a man bartender, named Jake; on nights when Mildred was at Beverly or Laguna, Sigrid acted as hostess, and wore the white uniform. Mildred worked from sunup, when her marketing started, until long after dark; she worked so hard she began to feel driven, and relieved herself of every detail she could possibly assign to others. She continued to gain weight. There was still something voluptuous about her figure, but it was distinctly plump. Her face was losing such little color as it had had, and she no longer seemed younger than her years. In fact, she was beginning to look matronly. The car itself, she discovered, took a great deal out of her, and she engaged a driver named Tommy, older brother to Carl, who drove the truck. After some reflection she took him to Bullock’s and bought him a uniform, so he could help on the parking lots. When Veda first saw him in this regalia, she didn’t kiss him, as she had kissed the car. She gave her mother a long, thoughtful look, full of something almost describable as respect.

And in spite of mounting expenses, the driver, the girl Mildred engaged to keep the books, the money kept rolling in. Mildred paid for the piano, paid off the mortgages Bert had plastered on the house; she renovated, repainted, kept buying new equipment for all her establishments, and still it piled up. In 1936, when Mr. Roosevelt came up for reelection, she was still smarting from the tax she had paid on her 1935 income, and for a few weeks wavered in her loyalty. But then business picked up, and when he said “we planned it that way,” she decided she had to take the bitter with the sweet, and voted for him. She began to buy expensive clothes, especially expensive girdles, to make her look thin. She bought Veda a little car, a Packard 120, in dark green, “to go with her hair.” On Wally’s advice, she incorporated, choosing Ida and Mrs. Gessler as her two directors, in addition to herself. Her big danger, Wally said, was the old woman in Long Beach. “O.K., she’s crossing against the lights, Tommy had his brakes on when he hit her, she’s not hurt a bit, but when she finds out you’ve got three restaurants just watch what she does to you. And it works the other way around too. Sooner or later you’re going to have those five people that got ptomaine poisoning, from the fish, or say they did. And what those harpies do to you, once they get in court, will be just plain murder. You incorporate, your personal property is safe.” The old woman in Long Beach, to say nothing of the five harpies on their pots, fretted Mildred terribly, as many things did. She bought fantastic liability insurance, on the car, on the pie factory, on the restaurants. It was horribly expensive, but worth it, to be safe.

Through all the work, however, the endless driving, the worry, the feeling there were not enough hours in the day for all she had to do, one luxury she permitted herself. No matter how the day broke, she was home at three o’clock in the afternoon, for what she called her “rest.” It was a rest, to be sure, but that wasn’t the main idea. Primarily it was a concert, with herself the sole auditor. When Veda turned sixteen, she persuaded Mildred to let her quit high school, so she could devote her whole time to music. In the morning she did harmony, and what she called “paper work.” In the afternoon she practiced. For two hours she practiced exercises, but at three she began to practice pieces, and it was then that Mildred arrived. Tiptoeing in the back way, she would slip into the hall, and for a moment stand looking into the living room, where Veda was seated at the satiny black grand. It was a picture that never failed to thrill her: the beautiful instrument that she had worked for and paid for, the no less beautiful child she had brought into the world; a picture moreover, that she could really call her own. Then, after a soft “I’m home, darling,” she would tiptoe to her bedroom, lie down, and listen. She didn’t know the names of many of the pieces, but she had her favorites, and Veda usually played one. There was one in particular, something by Chopin, that she liked best of all, “because it reminds me of that song about rainbows.” Veda, somewhat ironically, said: “Well Mother, there’s a reason”; but she played it, nevertheless. Mildred was delighted at the way the child was coming along; warm, shy intimacy continued, and Mildred laughed to think she had once supposed that Monty had something to do with it. This, she told herself, was what made everything worthwhile.

One afternoon the concert was interrupted by a phone call. Veda answered, and from the tone of her voice, Mildred knew something was wrong. She came in and sat on the bed, but to Mildred’s “What is it darling?” returned no answer at once. Then, after a few moments of gloomy silence, she said: “Hannen’s had a hemorrhage.”

“Oh my, isn’t that awful!”

“He knew it was coming on. He had two or three little ones. This one caught him on the street, while he was walking home from the post office. The ambulance doctor made a mess of it — had him lifted by the shoulders or something — and it’s a lot worse than it might have been. Mrs. Hannen’s almost in hysterics about it.”

“You have to go over there. At once.”

“Not today. He’s all packed in icebags, and they give him some kind of gas to inhale. It’s just hell.”

“Is there something I could do? I mean, if there are any special dishes he needs, I can send anything that’s wanted, hot, all ready to serve—”

“I can find out.”

Veda stared at the Gessler house, now for rent. Then: “God, but I’m going to miss that damned he-bear.”

“Well my goodness, he’s not gone yet.”

Mildred said this sharply. She had the true California tradition of optimism in such matters; to her it was almost blasphemous not to hope for the best. But Veda got up heavily and spoke quietly. “Mother, it’s bad. I know from the way he’s been acting lately that he’s known it would be bad, when it came. I can tell from the way she was wailing over that phone that it’s bad... And what I’m going to do I don’t know.”

Special dishes, it turned out, were needed desperately, on the chance that the stricken man could be tempted to eat, and in that way build up his strength. So daily, for a week, a big hamper was delivered by Tommy, full of chicken cooked by Mildred herself, tiny sandwiches prepared by Ida, cracked crab nested in ice by Archie, sherries selected by Mrs. Gessler. Mildred Pierce, Inc., spit on its hands to show what it could do. Then one day Mildred and Veda took the hamper over in person, together with a great bunch of red roses. When they arrived at the house, the morning paper was still on the grass, a market circular was stuffed under the door. They rang, and there was no answer. Veda looked at Mildred, and Tommy carried the things back to the car. That afternoon, a long incoherent telegram arrived for Mildred, dated out of Phoenix, Ariz., and signed by Mrs. Hannen. It told of the wild ride to the sanitarium there, and begged Mildred to have the gas turned off.