“Are you serious?”
“I am. And they are.”
Mildred, feeling no faster than she had ever felt, pondered this riddle for some little time, while Mrs. Gessler sipped her coffee and seemed to be pondering something else. Presently she asked: “Is Wally married?”
“Why — not that I know of. No, of course he’s not. He was always gagging about how lucky the married ones were on income-tax day. Why?”
“I wouldn’t bring him over, if I were you.”
“Well, as you like.”
“Oh, it’s not that — he’s welcome, so far as that goes. But — you know. These are business friends of Ike’s, with their lady friends, all-right guys, trying to make a living same as anybody else, but a little rough, and a little noisy. Maybe they spend too much time on the sea, playing around in their speedboats. And the girls are the squealing type. None of them are what you ought to be identified with, specially when you’ve got a single young man on your hands, that’s already a little suspicious of your morals, and—”
“Do you think I’m taking Wally seriously?”
“You ought to be, if you’re not. Well if not, why not? He’s a fine, upstanding, decent young man, that looks a little like a pot-bellied rat, but he’s single and he’s working, and that’s enough.”
“I don’t think he’d be shocked at your party.”
“I haven’t finished yet. It’s not a question of whether you’re making proper use of your time. What are your plans, so far as you know them?”
“Well, he’s coming here and—”
“When?”
“Seven.”
“That’s mistake No. 1. Baby, I wouldn’t let that cluck buy your dinner. I’d sit him right down and give him one of those Mildred Pierce specials—”
“What? Me work when he’s willing to—”
“As an investment, baby, an investment in time, effort, and raw materials. Now shut up and let me talk. Whatever outlay it involves is on me, because I’ve become inspired and when inspired I never count little things like costs. It’s going to be a perfectly terrible night.” She waved a hand at the weather, which had turned gray, cold, and overcast, as it usually does at the peak of a California spring. “It won’t be no fit night out for man nor beast. And what’s more, you’ve already got dinner half fixed, and you’re not going to have things spoil just because he’s got some foolish notion he wants to take you out.”
“Just the same, that was the idea.”
“Not so fast, baby — let us pause and examine that idea. Why would he want to take you out? Why do they ever want to take us out? As a compliment to us, say they. To show us a good time, to prove the high regard they have for us. They’re a pack of goddam liars. In addition to being dirty bastards, and very dumb clucks, they are also goddam liars. There’s practically nothing can be said in favor of them, except they’re the only ones we’ve got. They take us out for one reason, and one reason only: so they can get a drink. Secondarily, so we can get a drink, and succumb to their fell designs after we get home, but mainly so they can have a drink. And, baby, right there is where I come in.”
She ducked out the screen door, ran across the yards, and presently was back with a basket, in which were quite a few bottles. She set them out on the kitchen table, then resumed her talk. “This stuff, the gin and the Scotch, is right off the boat, and better than he’s tasted in years. All the gin needs is a little orange juice, and it’ll make a swell cocktail; be sure you cut it down plenty with ice. Now this other, the wine, is straight California, but he doesn’t know it, and it’s O.K. booze, so lean on it. That’s the trick, baby. Handle the wine right and the high-priced stuff will last and last and last. Fill him up on it — much as he wants, and more. It’s thirty cents a quart, half a cent for the pretty French label, and the more he drinks of that, the less he’ll want of Scotch. Here’s three reds and three whites, just because I love you, and want you to get straightened out. With fish, chicken and turkey, give him white, and with red meat, give him red. What are you having tonight?”
“Who says I’m having anything?”
“Now listen, have we got to go all over that? Baby, baby, you go out with him, and he buys you a dinner, and you get a little tight, and you come home, and something happens, and then what?”
“Don’t worry. Nothing’ll happen.”
“Oh something’ll happen. If not tonight, then some other night. Because if it don’t happen, he’ll lose interest, and quit coming around, and you wouldn’t like that. And when it happens, it’s Sin. It’s Sin, because you’re a grass widow, and fast. And he’s all paid up, because he bought your dinner, and that makes it square.”
“He must have a wonderful character, my Wally.”
“He’s got the same character they’ve all got, no better and no worse. But — if you bought his dinner, and cooked it for him the way only you can cook, and you just happened to look cute in that little apron, and something just happened to happen, then it’s Nature. Old Mother Nature, baby, and we all know she’s no bum. Because that grass widow, she went back to the kitchen, where all women belong, and that makes it all right. And Wally, he’s not paid up, even a little bit. He even forgot to ask the price of the chips. He’ll find out. And another thing, this way is quick, and the last I heard of you, you were up against it, and couldn’t afford to waste much time. You play it right, and inside of a week your financial situation will be greatly eased, and inside of a month you’ll have him begging for the chance to buy that divorce. The other way, making the grand tour of all the speako’s he knows, it could go on for five years, and even then you couldn’t be sure.”
“You think I want to be kept?”
“Yes.”
For a while after that, Mildred didn’t think of Wally, at any rate to know she was thinking of him. After Mrs. Gessler left, she went to her room and wrote a few letters, particularly one to her mother, explaining the new phase her life had entered, and going into some detail as to why, at the moment, she wouldn’t be able to sell the anchors. Then she mended some of the children’s clothes. But around four o’clock, when it started to rain, she put the sewing basket away, went to the kitchen, and checked her supplies from the three or four oranges in reserve for the children’s breakfast to the vegetables she had bought yesterday in the market. The chicken she gave a good smelling, to make sure it was still fresh. The quart of milk she took out of the icebox with care, so as not to joggle it, and using a tiny ladle intended for salt, removed the thick cream at the top and put it into a glass pitcher. Then she opened a can of huckleberries and made a pie. While that was baking she stuffed the chicken.
Around six she laid a fire, feeling a little guilty that most of the wood consisted of the dead limbs Bert had sawed off the avocado trees the afternoon he left. She didn’t build it in the living room. She built it in the “den,” which was on the other side of the chimney from the living room and had a small fireplace of its own. It was really one of the three bedrooms, and had its own bathroom, but Bert had fixed it up with a sofa, comfortable chairs, and photographs of the banquets he had spoken at, and it was here that they did their entertaining. The fire ready to light, she went to the bedroom and dressed. She put on a print dress, the best she had. She examined a great many stockings, found two that showed no signs of runs, put them on. Her shoes, by careful sparing, were in fair shape, and she put on simple black ones. Then, after surveying herself in the mirror, admiring her legs, and remembering to bend the right knee, she threw a coat around her and went to the den. Around ten minutes to seven she put the coat away and turned on one button of heat. Then she pulled down the shades and turned on several lamps.