Monty, his voice an emasculated, androgynous yell, crammed all the bitterness, the futility of his life into a long, hysterical denunciation of Mildred. He said she had used him for her special purposes ever since she had met him. He said she was incapable of honor, and didn’t know what it meant to stand by her commitments. He recalled the first $20 she had given him, and how she had later begrudged it. He worked down to their marriage, and correctly accused her of using him as bait to attract the errant Veda. But, he said, what she had forgotten was that he was live bait, and the quarry and the bait had fallen in love, and how did she like that? And what was she going to do about it? But there was considerable talk about money mixed in with the chase, and what it added up to was that he had shown his independence of one woman who had been keeping him, with a pie wagon, by switching over and letting another woman keep him, with a voice.
Mildred, however, barely heard him. She sat in the little upholstered chair, near the door, her hat on the side of her head, her handbag in her lap, her toes absurdly turned in. But while her eyes were on the floor, her mind was on the lovely thing in the bed, and again she was physically sick at what its presence there meant. When Monty had talked some little time, stalking gauntly about in his pajamas, Veda interrupted him with affectionate petulance: “Darling! Does it make any difference what such nitwits do, or whether they pay, or even know what a commitment is? Look what a pest she is to me. I literally can’t open my mouth in a theatre, or a radio studio, or anywhere, that she isn’t there, bustling down the aisle, embarrassing me before people, all to get her share of the glory, if any. But what do I do? I certainly don’t go screaming around the way you’re doing. It would be undignified. And very—” here Veda stifled a sleepy yawn — “very bad for my throat... Get dressed now, and we’ll clear out, and leave her to her pie plates, and by lunch time it’ll merely seem funny.”
Monty went to his dressing room, and for a time there was silence, except for Mildred’s breathing, which was curiously heavy. Veda found cigarettes on the floor, and lit one, and lay there smoking in the way she had acquired lately, sucking the smoke in and letting it out in thick curls, so it entered her mouth but didn’t reach her throat. Mildred’s breathing became heavier, as though she were an animal, and had run a distance, and was panting. Monty came out, in tweeds, a blue shirt, and tan shoes, his hat in one hand, a grip in the other. Veda nodded, squashed out her cigarette. Then she got up, went to Monty’s mirror, and began combing her hair, while little cadenzas absentmindedly cascaded out of her throat, and cold drops cascaded over Mildred’s heart. For Veda was stark naked. From the massive, singer’s torso, with the Dairy quaking in front, to the slim hips, to the lovely legs, there wasn’t so much as a garter to hide a path of skin.
Veda, still humming, headed for the dressing room, and Monty handed her the kimono, from the foot of the bed. It was then that Mildred leaped. But it wasn’t at Monty that she leaped, her husband, the man who had been untrue to her. It was at Veda, her daughter, the girl who had done no more than what Mildred had once said was a woman’s right. It was a ruthless creature seventeen years younger than herself, with fingers like steel from playing the piano, and legs like rubber from riding, swimming, and all the recreations that Mildred had made possible for her. Yet this athlete crumpled like a jellyfish before a panting, dumpy little thing in a black dress, a hat over one ear, and a string of beads that broke and went bouncing all over the room. Somewhere, as if from a distance, Mildred could hear Monty, yelling at her, and feel him, dragging at her to pull her away. She could feel Veda scratching at her eyes, at her face, and taste blood trickling into her mouth. Nothing stopped her. She clutched for the throat of the naked girl beneath her, and squeezed hard. She wrenched the other hand free of Monty, and clutched with that too, and squeezed with both hands. She could see Veda’s face getting red, getting purple. She could see Veda’s tongue popping out, her slaty blue eyes losing expression. She squeezed harder.
She was on the floor, beside the bed, her head ringing from heavy blows. Across the room, in the kimono now, huddled in a chair, and holding on to her throat, was Veda. She was gasping, and Monty was talking to her, telling her to relax, to lie down, to take it easy. But Veda got to her feet and staggered out of the room. Mildred, sensing some purpose in this exit, and taking its evil nature for granted, scrambled up and lurched after her. Monty, pleading for an end to “this damned nonsense,” followed Mildred. Letty and Frieda, in night dresses, evidently aroused by the commotion, stared in fright at the three of them, as Veda led the way down the big staircase. They made in truth a ghastly procession, and the gray light that filtered in seemed the only conceivable illumination for the hatred that twisted their faces.
Veda turned into the living room, reeled over to the piano, and struck a chord. Then her breath came fast, as though she was going to vomit, but Mildred, a horrible intuition suddenly stabbing at her, knew she was trying to sing. No sound came. She struck the chord again, and still there was no sound. On the third try, a dreadful croak, that was like a man’s voice and yet not like a man’s voice, came out of her mouth. With a scream she fell on the floor, and lay there, writhing in what appeared to be convulsions. Mildred sat down on the bench, sick with the realization of what she had done. Monty began to weep hysterically, and to shout at Mildred: “Came the dawn!.. Came the dawn — God, what a dawn!”
Chapter 17
It was Christmas again on Pierce Drive, a balmy golden California Christmas. Mildred, after the most crushing period of life, was beginning to live again, to hope that the future might hold more than pain, or even worse, shame. It wasn’t the mad, spinning collapse of her world that had paralyzed her will, left her with the feeling that she must wear a veil, so she needn’t look people in the eye. The loss of Mildred Pierce, Inc., had been hard. It had been doubly hard because she would always know that if Wally Burgan had been a little less brutal, if Mrs. Gessler had been a little more loyal, and not gone off on her four-day drunk, telephoning the news of Ike’s blonde at hourly intervals, with reversed charges, from Santa Barbara to San Francisco — she might have weathered the storm. These calls had been one of the features of her stay in Reno, that six-week fever dream in which she constantly listened to Mr. Roosevelt, and couldn’t get it through her head that she couldn’t vote for him this year, as she would be a resident of Nevada, not of California. And it had been hard, the wilting discovery that she could no longer do business under her own name. That, it turned out, was still owned by the corporation, and she thought bitterly of the many debts she owed to Wally.
But what had left her with a scar on her soul that she thought nothing could ever heal, was a little session, lasting barely an hour, with a stenographer and a pair of attorneys. It seemed that Veda, the day after she left the hospital, reported as usual at the broadcasting studio, for rehearsal with the Pleasant Orchestra. The rough, male voice that came out of the amplifiers wasn’t quite what Pleasant had contracted for, and the conductor had called the rehearsal off. Veda, that day and the day after, had insisted that she was willing to go through with her contract. Thereupon Pleasant had gone to court to have the contract annulled, on the ground that Veda was no longer able to fulfill it.