Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

All the way home Mildred fumed at the way Mr. Treviso had treated them. She said she had never seen anything like that in her life. If he didn’t like the way Veda had played the piece, he could have said so like a gentleman, instead of acting like that. And the very idea, having an appointment with two ladies for four o’clock, keeping them waiting until a quarter to five, and then, when they had barely got in the door, telling them a story about toilet paper . If that was the only man in Los Angeles that Mr. Hannen had any respect for, she certainly had her opinion of Mr. Hannen’s taste. A lot of this expressed Mildred’s very real irritation, but some of it was to console Veda, by taking her side after an outrageous episode. Veda said nothing, and when they got home she jumped out of the car and ran in the house. Mildred followed, but when she got to Veda’s room, it was locked. She knocked, then knocked again, sharply. Then she commanded Veda to open the door. Nothing happened, and inside there was silence. Letty appeared, and asked in a frightened way what the trouble was. Paying no attention to Letty, Mildred ran out to the kitchen, grabbed a chair, and ran outside. A sudden paralyzing fear had come over her as to what Veda might be doing in there. Putting the chair near the house, she stood on it and raised the screen. Then she stepped into the room. Veda was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the same unseeing way she had stared at the floor of the car. Her hands were still clenching and unclenching, and her features looked thick. Mildred, who had expected at the very least to see an empty iodine bottle lying around somewhere, first felt relieved, then cross. Unlocking the door, she said: “Well my goodness, you don’t have to scare everybody to death.”

“Mother, if you say my goodness one more time I shall scream, I shall scream!”

Veda spoke in a terrible rasping whisper, then closed her eyes. Stiffening and stretching out her arms as though she were a figure on a crucifix, she began to talk to herself, in a bitter voice, between clenched teeth. “You can kill it — you can kill it right now — you can drive a knife through its heart — so it’s dead, dead, dead — you can forget you ever tried to play the piano — you can forget there ever was such a thing as a piano — you can—”

“Well my g—. Well for heaven’s sake, the piano isn’t the only thing on earth. You could — you could write music.” Pausing, Mildred tried to remember what Bert had said that day, about Irving Berlin, but just then Veda opened her eyes. “You damned, silly-looking cluck, are you trying to drive me insane? ... Yes, I could write music. I can write you a motet, or a sonata, or a waltz, or a cornet solo, with variation — anything at all, anything you want. And not one note of it will be worth the match it would take to burn it. You think I’m hot stuff, don’t you? You, lying there every day, dreaming about rainbows. Well, I’m not. I’m just a Glendale Wunderkind. I know all there is to know about music, and there’s one like me in every Glendale on earth, every one-horse conservatory, every tank-town university, every park band. We can read anything, play anything, arrange anything, and we’re just no good. Punks. Like you. God, now I know where I get it from. Isn’t that funny? You start out a Wunderkind, then find out you’re just a goddam punk.”

“Well, if that’s the case, it certainly does seem peculiar that he wouldn’t have known it. Mr. Hannen, I mean. And told you so. Instead of—”

“Do you think he didn’t know it? And didn’t tell me? He told me every time he saw me — my tunes stunk, my playing stunk, everything I did stunk — but he liked me. And he knew how I felt about it. Christ, that was something, after living with you all my life. So we went on with it, and he thought perhaps Old Man Maturity, as he called him, might help out, later. He will like hell. In this racket you’ve got it or you haven’t, and — will you wipe that stupid look off your face and stop acting as if it was somebody’s fault?”

“It certainly would seem, after all that work—”

“Can’t you understand anything at all? They don’t pay off on work, they pay off on talent! I’ m just no good! I’M NO GOD-DAMN GOOD AND THERE’S NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT!”

When a shoe whizzed past her head, Mildred went out, picked up her handbag, and started over to Beverly. She felt no resentment at this tirade. She had got it through her head at last that something catastrophic had happened to Veda, and that it was completely beyond her power to understand. But that wouldn’t stop her from trying, in her own way, to think what she could do about it.

In a day or so, feeling that Veda was the victim of some sort of injustice, Mildred decided that the Messrs. Hannen and Treviso weren’t the only teachers in Los Angeles; that battles aren’t won by quitting, but by fighting hard; that Veda should go on with her music, whether the great masters liked it or not. But when she outlined this idea to Veda, the look from the bed cut her off in the middle of a sentence. Then, unable to give up the idea that Veda was “talented,” she decided that aesthetic dancing was the thing. There was a celebrated Russian dancer who often dined at Laguna, and this authority was sure that with Veda’s looks and good Russian instruction, things might still be straightened out. But at this Veda merely yawned. Then Mildred decided that Veda should enter one of the local schools, possibly Marlborough, and prepare herself for college. But this seemed a bit silly when Veda said: “But Mother, I can’t roll a hoop anymore.”

Yet Veda continued to mope in her room, until Mildred became thoroughly alarmed, and decided that whatever the future held, for the present something had to be done. So one day she suggested that Veda call up some of her friends and give them a little party. Conquering her loyalty to the house, the conviction that it was good enough for anything Veda might want to do in it, she said: “If you don’t want to ask them here, why not Laguna? You can have a whole room to yourself. I can have Lucy fix up a special table, there’s an orchestra we can get, and afterwards you can dance or do anything you want.”

“No, Mother. Thanks.”

Mildred might have persisted in this, if it hadn’t been for Letty, who heard some of it. In the kitchen she said to Mildred: “She ain’t going to see none of them people. Not them Pasadena people.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you know? After she’s been Mr. Hannen’s candy kid? The one that was going to New York and play the pyanner so they’d all be hollering for her? You think she’s going to see them people now, and just be Veda? Not her. She’s the queen, or she don’t play. She ain’t giving no party, and you ain’t either.”

“I’ve simply got to do something.”

“Can’t you leave her alone?”

Letty, a devoted worshipper of Veda’s by now, spoke sharply, and Mildred left the kitchen, lest she lose her temper. Leaving Veda alone was something that hadn’t entered her mind, but after she cooled off she thought about it. However, she was incapable of leaving Veda alone. In the first place, she had an honest concern about her. In the second place, she had become so accustomed to domineering over the many lives that depended on her, that patience, wisdom, and tolerance had almost ceased to be a part of her. And in the third place, there was this feeling she had about Veda, that by now permeated every part of her, and colored everything she did. To have Veda play the piece about rainbows, just for her, was delicious. To have her scream at her was painful, but bearable, for at least it was she that was being screamed at. To have her lying there on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and not even thinking about her, was an agony too great to be borne. Even as she was trying to be detached, to weigh Letty’s remark fairly, she was deciding that where Veda really belonged was in pictures, and meditating a way whereby a director, one of Ida’s customers, could be induced to take an interest. This brilliant scheme, however, was never put to the test. Veda snapped out of it. Appearing at Laguna one night, she blithely ordered a cocktail, downed a $3.50 steak, and mingled sociably with everybody in the place. Casually, before she left, she asked Mildred if she could order some new clothes, explaining she had been embarrassed to go anywhere “in these rags.” Mildred, delighted at any sign of reviving interest, overlooked the cocktail and told her to order anything she wanted.