Mildred Pierce

Chapter 4

The next two hours, to Mildred, were a waking nightmare. She didn’t get the job quite as easily as she had supposed she would. The proprietor, whose name was apparently Makadoulis, but whom everybody addressed as Mr. Chris, was willing enough, especially as the hostess kept shrilling in his ear: “You’ve got to put somebody on! It’s a mess out there! It’s a mess!” But when the girls saw Mildred, and divined what she was there for, they gathered around, and passionately vetoed her application, unless Anna was taken back. Anna, she gathered, was the girl who had waited on her, and the aggressor in the fight, but as all of them apparently had been victims of the thefts, they seemed to regard her as their representative in a sense, and didn’t propose to have her made a goat. They argued their case in quite noisy fashion, letting the counters pile up with orders while they screamed, and making appropriate gestures. One of these gestures wiped a plate into space, with a club sandwich on it. Mildred caught it as it fell. The sandwich was wholly wrecked, but she put it together again, with deft fingers, and restored it to its place on the counter. The Chef, a gigantic man addressed as Archie, watched her exhibition of juggling with impassive stolidity, but when the reconstructed sandwich was back on the counter he gave her a curt nod. Then he began banging on the steam table with the palm of his hand. This restored quiet as nothing else had been able to do. Mr. Chris turned to the girls. “Hokay, hokay.”

The question of Anna being thus settled, the hostess hustled Mildred back to the lockers, where she unlocked a door and held out a menu. “Take off your dress and while I’m finding a uniform to fit, study this menu, so you can be some use. What size do you wear?”

“Ten.”

“You worked in a restaurant before?”

“No.”

“Study it, specially prices.”

Mildred took off her dress, hung it in the locker, and stared at the menu. There were fifty-five-and sixty-five-cent lunches on it, as well as appetizers, steaks, chops, desserts, and fountain drinks, most of these bearing fancy names that were unintelligible to her. In spite of her best concentration most of it was a jumble. In a minute or two the hostess was back with her uniform, a pale blue affair, with white collar, cuffs, and pockets. She slipped into it. “And here’s your apron. You furnish your uniform; it comes off your first check, three ninety-five; you get it at cost, and you keep it laundered. And if you don’t suit us, we charge you twenty-five cents’ rent on the uniform; that comes out of your check too, but you don’t have the whole uniform to pay for unless we really take you on. The pay is twenty-five cents an hour, and you keep your own tips.”

“And what’s your name, Miss?”

“Ida. What’s yours?”

“Mildred.”

They started for the dining room, but going through the kitchen Ida kept talking into her ear. “I’m giving you a light station, see? Three, four, five, and six, all them little booths against the wall. That’s so you don’t get no fours. Singles and twos are easier. All them that’s just come in, you take them, and them that’s already started on their lunches, I’ll take care of them myself. That’s so you don’t get mixed up on them other girls’ books.”

They reached the dining room, and Ida pointed out the station. Three of the tables were occupied by people who had given their orders before the fight started, the fourth by a pair of women who had just come in. All were getting annoyed at the delay in service. But still Mildred wasn’t permitted to start. Ida led her to the cashier, a fish-faced blonde who began savagely telling Ida of the complaints she had received, and of the five people who had already walked out. Ida cut her off, had her issue Mildred a new book. “You’ve got to account for every check, see? In here you mark your number, you’re No. 9. Here you mark the number of the table, here the number of customers on the check. Down here, put down everything they order, and the first thing you got to learn: don’t make no mistake on a check. It’s all booked against you, and if you make a mistake, it’s deducted, and you got to pay for it.”

With this ominous warning in her ears, Mildred at last approached the two women who were waiting to have their orders taken, handed them their menus, and inquired what they were going to have. They replied they weren’t sure they were going to have anything, and wanted to know what kind of place this was anyway, to let people sit around without even asking them if they minded waiting. Mildred, almost in hysteria by now with what she had been through that day, felt a hot impulse to take them down a few notches, as she had taken Mrs. Forrester. However, she managed a smile, said there had been a little trouble, and that if they could just be patient a minute or two, she would see they were served at once. Then, taking a quick lunge at the only thing she remembered about the menu, she added: “The roast chicken is awfully good today.”

Slightly mollified, they chose chicken on the sixty-five-cent lunch, but one of them said loudly: “See there’s no gravy on mine in any way, shape, or form. I hate brown gravy.”

“Yes, Miss. I’ll remember.”

Mildred started for the kitchen, barely missing a girl who appeared at the out door. Swerving in time, she dived through the in door and called to Archie: “Two roast chicken. One without gravy.”

But the ubiquitous Ida was at her elbow, calling frantically to Archie: “Hold one gravy, hold it!” Then she yanked Mildred aside, and half screamed at her. “You got to call it right! You can’t work nowhere without you’re in good with the Chef, and you got to call it right for him. Get this: If there’s any trimmings they don’t want, you don’t call it without ’em, you call it hold ’em!”

“Yes, Miss.”

“You got to be in good with the Chef!”

Dimly Mildred began to understand why that great paw, banging on the steam table, had restored order when Mr. Chris had been mobbed like a Junebug in a flock of angry hens. She had observed that the waitresses dipped their own soup, so she now got bowls and filled them with the cream of tomato that her customers had ordered. But there was no surcease from Ida. “Pick up your starters! Pick up your starters!” At Mildred’s blank look, Ida grabbed two plates of salad from the sandwich counter, whipped two pats of butter into two small plates, and motioned Mildred to get the four plates in there, quick. “Have they got water?”

“Not yet.”

“For crying out loud.”

Ida made a dive for the lift spigot, drew two glasses of water, slid them expertly so they fetched up beside the four plates. Then she pitched two napkins up against the water glasses. “Get in there with them — if they haven’t walked out on you.”

Mildred blinked helplessly at this formidable array. “Well — can I have a tray?”

In despair, Ida picked up plates, glasses, and napkins, so they were spread across her fingers like playing cards, and balanced halfway up her arm. “Get the soup, and come on.” She was gone before Mildred could recover from the speed of her legerdemain. The soup Mildred picked up gingerly, kicking the out door open as she saw the others doing. Taking care not to spill any of it, she eventually reached the table. Ida was smoothing the two women down, and from their glances Mildred knew it had been fully explained to them that she was a new girl, and that allowances had to be made for her. At once they began amusing themselves by calling her January and Slewfoot. Lest she show resentment, she started for the kitchen, but it seemed impossible to get away from Ida. “Pick up something! Don’t never make a trip, in or out, without something in your hand. You’ll trot all day and you’ll never get done! Get them dirty dishes over there, on No. 3. Pick up something!”

The afternoon dragged on. Mildred felt stupid, heavy, slow, and clumsy. Try as she would to “pick up something,” dirty dishes piled on her tables, and unserved orders in the kitchen, until she thought she would go insane from the confusion. Her trouble, she discovered, was that she hadn’t the skill to carry more than two dishes at a time. Trays were prohibited here, Ida informed her, because the aisles were so narrow they would lead to crashes, and this meant that everything had to be carried by hand. But the trick of balancing half a dozen dishes at a time was beyond her. She tried it once, but her hand crumpled under the weight, and a hot fudge sundae almost went on the floor. The climax came around three o’clock. The place was empty by then and the fish-faced cashier came back to inform her she had lost a check. The subsequent figuring showed that the check was for fifty-five cents, which meant that her whole hourly wage was lost. She wanted to throw everything in the place at the cashier’s head, but didn’t. She said she was sorry, gathered up the last of her dirty dishes, and went back with them.

In the kitchen, Mr. Chris and Ida were in a huddle, evidently talking about her. From their expressions as they started toward her, she sensed that the verdict was unfavorable, and she waited miserably for them to get it over with, so she could get away from Ida, and the Filipino dish washers, and the smell, and the noise, and drearily wonder what she was going to do next. But as they passed Archie, he looked up and made a gesture such as an umpire makes in calling a man safe at the plate. They looked surprised, but that seemed to settle it. Mr. Chris said “hokay, hokay,” and went into the dining room. Ida came over to Mildred. “Well, personally, Mildred, I don’t think you’re suited to the work at all, and Mr. Chris, he wasn’t a bit impressed either, but the Chef thinks you’ll do, so against our better judgment we’re going to give you a trial.”

Mildred remembered the reconstructed club sandwich and the little nod she had received from Archie, realized that it was indeed important to be in good with the Chef. But by now her dislike of Ida was intense, arid she made no effort to keep the acid out of her voice as she said: “Well please thank Archie for me and tell him I hope I won’t disappoint him.” She spoke loud enough for Archie to hear, and was rewarded with a loud, ursine cackle.

Ida went on: “Your hours are from eleven in the morning, ten thirty if you want breakfast, to three in the afternoon, and if you want lunch then, you can have it. We don’t do a big dinner business here, so we only keep three girls on at night, but they take turns. You’re on call twice a week from five to nine, same wages as in the daytime. Sundays we’re closed. You’ll need white shoes. Ask for nurses’ regulation at any of the stores, two ninety-five. Well what’s the matter, Mildred, don’t you want the job?”

“I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

“I don’t wonder, the way you trot.”

When she got home, the children had just arrived from school. She gave them milk and cookies and shooed them out to play. Then she changed her dress and put slippers on her aching feet. She was about to lie down, when she heard a yoo-hoo, and Mrs. Gessler joined her, in a somewhat dark humor. Ike, it appeared, hadn’t come home last night. He had phoned around nine, telling her of a hurry call that would prevent his arrival until next morning. It was all in his line of work, he had appeared at ten as he said he would, and yet... The extent to which Mrs. Gessler trusted Ike, or anybody, was evidently very slight.

Mildred presently asked: “Lucy, can you lend me three dollars?”

“More if you want it.”

“No, thanks. I’ve taken a job, and need some things.”

“Right away?”

“In the morning.”

Mrs. Gessler went out, and Mildred went back to the kitchen to make her some tea. When she came back she sat down gratefully to the smoking cup, and flipped Mildred a bill. “I didn’t have three, but here’s five.”

“Thanks. I’ll pay it back.”

“What kind of a job?”

“Oh... just a job.”

“I’m sorry... But if it’s that kind of a job, I hope you picked a five-dollar house. You’re too young for the two-dollar trade, and personally I wouldn’t like sailors.”

“I’m a waitress. In a hash-house.”

“It rhymes up the same way.”

“Just about.”

“That’s funny, though. It was none of my business, but all the time you were answering those ads, and trying to get hired on as a saleswoman, or whatever it was — I kept wondering to myself why you didn’t try something like this.”

“Why, Lucy?”

“Suppose you did get a job as a saleswoman? What would you get for it? No matter how they figure it up, when you’re selling goods you get paid on commission, because it stands to reason if you weren’t making commission they wouldn’t pay you. But who’s buying any goods? You’d have just stood around some store, all day long, waiting for the chance to make a living, and not making it. People eat, though, even now. You’ll have something coming in. And then, I don’t know. It may sound funny, but at selling, I’d say you just weren’t the type. At this, though—”

All that Mrs. Boole had said, all that Miss Turner had said, all that her bowels had told her, after that trip to Beverly Hills, came sweeping over Mildred, and suddenly she dived for the bathroom. The milk, the sandwich, the tea, all came up, while moaning sobs racked her. Then Mrs. Gessler was beside her, holding her head, wiping her mouth, giving her water, leading her gently to bed. Here she collapsed in a paroxysm of hysteria, sobbing, shaking, writhing. Mrs. Gessler took her clothes off, massaged her back, patted her, told her to let it come, not to try to hold back. She relaxed, and cried until tears gushed down her face, and let Mrs. Gessler wipe them away as they came. After a long time she was quiet, but it was a glum, hopeless quiet. Then: “I can’t do it, Lucy! I — just — can’t — do — it.”

“Baby! Do what?”

“Wear a uniform. And take their tips. And face those awful people. They called me names. And one of them grabbed my leg. Ooh... I can feel it yet. He put his hand clear up to—”

“What do they pay you?”

“Twenty-five cents an hour.”

“And tips extra?”

“Yes.”

“Baby, you’re nuts. Those tips will bring in a couple of dollars a day, and you’ll be making — why, at least twenty dollars a week, more money than you’ve seen since Pierce Homes blew up. You’ve got to do it, for your own sake. Nobody pays any attention to that uniform stuff any more. I bet you look cute in one. And besides, people have to do what they can do—”

“Lucy, stop! I’ll go mad! I’ll-”

At Mrs. Gessler’s look, Mildred pulled herself together, at least tried to make intelligible her violent outburst. “That’s what they’ve been telling me, the employment people, everybody, that all I’m good for is putting on a uniform and waiting on other people, and—”

“And maybe they’re right, just at the present moment. Because maybe what they’re trying to tell you is exactly what I’m trying to tell you. You’re in a spot. It’s all right to be proud, and I love you for it. But you’re starving to death, baby. Don’t you suppose my heart’s been heavy for you? Don’t you know I’d have sent roast beef in here, or ham, or whatever I had, every night, except that I knew you’d hate me for it? You’ve just got to take this job—”

“I know it. I can’t, and yet I’ve got to.”

“Then if you’ve got to, you’ve got to, so quit bawling.”

“Promise me one thing, Lucy.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t tell anybody.”

“I wouldn’t even tell Ike.”

“I don’t care about Ike, or any of these people, what they think. It’s on account of the children, and I don’t want anybody at all to know it, for fear somebody’ll say something to them. They mustn’t know it — and specially not Veda.”

“That Veda, if you ask me, has some funny ideas.”

“I respect her ideas.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t understand her. She has something in her that I thought I had, and now I find I haven’t. Pride, or whatever it is. Nothing on earth could make Veda do what I’m going to do.”

“That pride, I wouldn’t give a snap of my finger for it. You’re quite right about her. Veda wouldn’t do it herself, but she’s perfectly willing to let you do it and eat the cake.”

“I want her to have it. Cake — not just bread.”

During the six weeks Mildred had been looking for work, she had seen quite a little of Wally. He had dropped around one night, after the children had gone to bed, and was quite apologetic about what he had said, and penitently asserted he had made a sap of himself. She said there were no hard feelings, and brought him into the den, though she didn’t bother to light a fire or serve a drink. But when he sat down beside her and put his arm around her, she got up and made one of her little speeches. She said she would be glad to see him any time, she wanted him as a friend. However, it must be distinctly understood that what was past was past, not to be brought up again under any circumstances. If he wanted to see her on that basis, she would try to make him welcome, and she really wanted him to come. He said gee that was swell of her, and if she really meant it, it was okey-doke by him.

Thereafter he dropped by rather often, arriving usually around nine, for she didn’t want the children to know quite how much she was seeing him. Once, when they were spending a weekend at the Pierces’, he came on Saturday evening and “took her out.” She expressed a preference for a quiet place, for she was afraid the print dress wouldn’t pass muster anywhere else, so they took a drive and ate in a roadside inn near Ventura. But one night, when her affairs were beginning to get desperate, he happened to sit beside her on the sofa again, and she didn’t move. When he put his arm around her, in a casual, friendly kind of way, she didn’t resist, and when he pulled her head on his shoulder she let it stay there. They sat a long time without speaking. So, with the door tightly locked, the shades pulled down, and the keyhole stuffed up, they resumed their romance, there in the den. Romance, perhaps, wasn’t quite the word, for of that emotion she felt not the slightest flicker. Whatever it was, it afforded two hours of relief, of forgetfulness.

This evening, she found herself hoping that Wally might come, so she wouldn’t have to think about the uniform she would have to buy in the morning, or the sentence she would begin serving. But when the bell rang she was a little surprised, for it was only a few minutes after seven. She went to the door, and instead of Wally standing there, it was Bert. “Oh. Why — hello, stranger.”

“Mildred, how are you?”

“Can’t complain. How’s yourself?”

“O.K. Just thought I’d drop around for a little visit, and maybe pick up a couple of things I left in the desk, while I’m about it.”

“Well come in.”

But suddenly there were such whoops from the back of the house that any further discussion of his business had to be postponed indefinitely. Both children came running, and were swept into his arms, and solemnly measured, to determine how much they had grown since he saw them. His verdict was “at least two inches, maybe three.” As Mildred suspected he had seen them both the previous weekend, this seemed a rapid rate of growth indeed, but if this was supposed to be a secret, she didn’t care to unmask it, and so acquiesced in three inches, and it became official. She brought them all back to the den, and Bert took a seat on the sofa, and both children snuggled up beside him. Mildred told him the main news about them: how they had good report cards from school, how Veda was doing splendidly with her piano practice, how Ray had a new tooth. It was forthwith exhibited, and as it was a molar, required a deal of cheek-stretching before it came clearly into view. But Bert admired it profusely, and found a penny to contribute, in commemoration thereof.

Both children showed him their new possessions: dolls, brought by Mrs. Gessler from San Pedro a few days before; the gold crowns they were to wear at the pageant that would mark the closing of school in two weeks; some balls, translucent dice, and perfume bottles they had obtained in trades with other children. Then Bert asked Mildred about various acquaintances, and she answered in friendly fashion. But as this took the spotlight off the children, they quickly became bored. After a spell of ball-bouncing, which Mildred stopped, and a spell of recitations from the school pageant, which wound up in a quarrel over textual accuracy, Ray began a stubborn campaign to show Daddy the new sand bucket her grandfather had given her. As the bucket was in the garage, and Mildred didn’t feel like going out there, Ray began to pout. Then Veda, with an air of saving a difficult situation, said: “Aren’t you terribly thirsty, Father? Mother, would you like me to open the Scotch?”

Mildred was as furious as she ever permitted herself to get at Veda. It was the same old Scotch, and she had been saving it against that dreadful day when she might have to sell it, to buy bread. That Veda even knew it existed, much less how to open it, she had no idea. And if it were opened, that meant that Bert would sit there, and sit there, and sit until every drop of it was gone, and there went her Scotch, and there went her evening.

At Veda’s remark, Ray forgot about the sand bucket, and began to shriek: “Yes, Daddy, we’re going to have a drink, we’re going to get drunk!” When Bert said, “I might be able to stand a drink, if coaxed,” Mildred knew the Scotch was doomed. She went to the bedroom, got it out of the closet, went to the kitchen, and opened it. She turned out ice cubes, set glasses on a tray, found the lone seltzer siphon that had been there since winter. When she was nearly done, Veda appeared. “Can I help you, Mother?”

“Who asked you to go snooping around my closet to find out whether there was any liquor there or not?”

“I didn’t know there was any secret about it.”

“And hereafter, I’ll do the inviting.”

“But, Mother, it’s Father.”

“Don’t stand there and look me in the eye and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know you had no business saying what you did, and you knew it at the time, I could tell by the cheeky look on your face.”

“Very well, Mother. It shall be as you say.”

“And stop that silly way of talking.”

“But I remind you, just the same, that there was none of this kind of stinginess when Father was doing the inviting. Things have indeed changed here, and not for the better, alas. One might think peasants had taken over the house.”

“Do you know what a peasant is?”

“A peasant is a — very ill-bred person.”

“Sometimes, Veda, I wonder if you have good sense.”

Veda stalked out, and Mildred grimly arranged the tray, wondering why Veda could put her so easily on the defensive, and hurt her so.

Having a drink was a gay ritual in the household, one that had started when Bert made his bathtub gin, and that proceeded on its prescribed course tonight. First he poured two stiff drinks for the children, cluck-clucking loudly at what rummies they were getting to be, and observing that he didn’t know what the younger generation was coming to anyway. Then he poured two light drinks for himself and Mildred, containing perhaps two drops of liquor apiece. Then he put in ice and fizz water, set the drinks on the tray and offered them around. But by a fascinating switcheroo, which Mildred never quite understood, he always contrived to give the children the light drinks, himself and Mildred the others. So adroit was this sleight-of-hand, that the children, in spite of their sharpest watching and concentrating, never got the drinks that were supposedly prepared for them. In the day when all the drinks were exactly the same color, there was always a delightful doubt about it: Bert said the children had got their drinks, and as there was at least a whiff of juniper in all the glasses, they usually decided to agree. Tonight, although the switcheroo went off as smoothly as ever, the color of the Scotch betrayed him. But on his plea of fatigue, and the need of a stimulant, they agreed to accept the light drinks, so he set one of the stiff ones for Mildred, and took the other himself.

It was a ritual, but after the preliminaries were out of the way, it was enjoyed by each child differently. To Veda, it was an opportunity to stick out her little finger, to quaff elegantly, to play Constance Bennett. She regarded it as an occasion for high-toned conversation, and plied her father with lofty questions about “conditions.” He replied seriously, and at some length, for he regarded such inquiries as signs of high mentality on Veda’s part. He said that while things had been mighty bad for some time, he now saw definite signs of improvement, and believed “we’re due to turn the corner pretty soon.”

But to Ray, it was a chance to “get drunk,” as she called it, and this she did with the utmost enthusiasm. As soon as she got half of her fizz water down, she jumped up and began spinning around in the middle of the floor, laughing at the top of her lungs. Mildred caught her glass when this started, and held it for her, and she spun around until she was dizzy and fell down, in a paroxysm of delight. Something always caught in Mildred’s throat when this wild dance began. She felt, in some vague way, that she ought to stop it, but the child was so delightful that she never could make herself do it. So now she watched, with the tears starting out of her eyes, for the moment forgetting the Scotch. But Veda, no longer the center of the stage, said: “Personally, I think it’s a disgusting exhibition.”

Ray now went in to the next phase of the ritual. This was a singsong recitation her father had taught her, and went as follows:

However, as Ray recited it, there were certain changes. “Beasts,” was a little beyond her, so the line became “the birds and the bees.” “Auburn” was a little difficult too, so the old baboon acquired a coat of “old brown hair.” The “monkety-monk” was such a tempting mouthful that he became the “monkety-monkety-monkety-monkety-monk,” a truly fabulous beast. While she was reciting, her father contrived to slip off his belt and stuff the buckle down the back of his neck, so that suddenly, when he pulled the free end over his head and began trumpeting on all fours, he was a sufficiently plausible elephant for any animals’ fair. Ray began circling around, coming nearer and nearer with her recitation. When she was almost on him, and had tweaked his trunk two or three times, he gave a series of mighty sneezes, so that they completely prostrated him. When he opened his eyes Ray was nowhere to be seen. He now went into a perfect dither of anxiety over what had happened to her, put his head in the fireplace and called loudly up the chimney: “Monkety, monkety, monk.”

“Have you looked in the closet?”

“Mildred, I bet that’s just where she is.”

He opened the closet, put his head in, and called: “Hey.” Mildred suggested the hallway, and he looked out there. Indeed, he looked everywhere, becoming more alarmed every minute. Presently, in a dreadful tone, he said: “Mildred, you don’t suppose that monk was completely atomized, do you?”

“I’ve heard of things like that happening.”

“That would be terrible.”

Veda picked up her glass, stuck out her little finger, took a fastidious sip. “Well, Father, I don’t really see why you should get so upset about it. It seems to me anybody could see she’s right behind the sofa.”

“For that, you can go to bed.”

Mildred’s eyes blazed as she spoke, and Veda got up very quickly. But Bert paid no attention. He draped the belt over his head again, got down on his hands and knees, said “woof-woof,” and charged around the sofa with the cutout open. He grabbed the ecstatically squealing Ray in his arms, said it was time they both went to bed, and how would they like Daddy to tuck them in? As he raised the child high in the air, Mildred had to turn her head, for it seemed to her that she loved Bert more than she could love any man, so that her heart was a great stifling pain.

But when he came back from the tucking in, put the belt on his trousers again, and poured himself another drink, she was thinking sullenly about the car. It didn’t occur to her that he was the half-dozenth person she had been furious at that day, and that all of them, in one way or another, were but the faces worn by her own desperate situation. She was a little too literal-minded for such analysis: to her it was a simple matter of justice. She was working, he wasn’t. He wasn’t entitled to something that would make things so much easier for her, and that he could get along well enough without. He asked her again how she had been, and she said just fine, but all the time her choler was gaining pressure, and she knew that before long it would have to come out.

The bell rang, and she answered. But when Wally gave her a friendly pat on the bottom she quickly whispered: “Bert’s here.” His face froze for a moment, but then he picked up his cue with surprising convincingness. In a voice that would be heard all over the house, he bellowed: “Why, Mildred! Say I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age! Gee you’re looking great! Say, is Bert in?”

“He’s right in here.”

“I’ll only be a minute, but I got to see him.”

If Wally elected to believe Bert still lived here, Bert evidently preferred to follow suit. He shook hands with a fine show of hospitality, offered a drink as though the liquor were his own, and asked how was every little thing quite as though nothing had happened. Wally said he had been trying to see him for a couple of months now, over something that had come up, and so help him God, this was the first chance he had had. Bert said don’t tell him he simply didn’t know what made the time fly. Wally said it was those three houses in Block 14, and what he wanted to know was, had any verbal promise been made at the time of the sale that the corporation would put a retaining wall in the rear? Bert said absolutely not, and launched into details as to how the lots were sold. Wally said it had all sounded pretty funny to him, but he wanted to make sure.

Mildred half listened, no longer in any humor for Wally, her mind on the car, and thinking only how she would begin. But then a perfectly hellish idea entered her mind, and she no sooner thought of it than she acted on it. “My but it’s hot in here! Aren’t you boys uncomfortable in those coats? Don’t you want to take them off?”

“I think she said something, hey, Bert?”

“I’ll say she did.”

“Don’t get up. I’ll take them.”

They took off their coats, and she draped them over her arm, and stepped into the closet to put them on hangers. When she had them nicely hung up, she slipped her fingers into Bert’s change pocket, and there, as she knew it would be, was the key to the car. She took it out, slipped it into her shoe. When she came out of the closet she picked up her drink, which she had barely touched. “I think I’ll get tight.”

“ ’Atta girl!”

“Lemme freshen it for you.”

Bert put fresh ice in her glass, and a little more liquor, and a squirt of seltzer, and she took two or three quick swallows. She tinkled her ice, told the story of Harry Engel and the anchors, which amused the two gentlemen greatly. When she finished, she felt the key tickling her instep, and let out the first ripple of real laughter that had come out of her in months. She had a charming laugh, a little like Ray’s, and it startled the two men, too, so for a time they laughed with her, as though there had never been a Depression, a break-up of marriage, or a sour feeling over who got the job with the receiver.

But Wally, evidently a little nervous, and more than a little uncertain about his status, decided presently that he had to leave. Bert took him ceremoniously to the door, but he discovered that he had forgotten his coat, and this gave him a chance to dash back for a quick word with Mildred. “Hey, is he back? I mean, is he living here?”

“Just saying hello.”

“Then I’ll be seeing you.”

“I certainly hope so.”

When Bert came back he resumed his seat, took a meditative sip out of his glass, and said: “Looked like he hadn’t heard anything. About us, I mean. I figured there was no need to tell him.”

“You did exactly right.”

“What he don’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Certainly not.”

The bottle was getting low now, but he poured himself another drink, and got around to what he had come for. “Before I go, Mildred, remind me to get a couple things out of the desk. Nothing important, but might as well take them along.”

“Can I find them for you?”

“My insurance policy.”

His voice was a little ugly, as though he expected an argument. The policy was for $1,000, paid-up value $256, and he had never taken out more because he didn’t believe in insurance as an investment, preferring A. T. & T. There had been wrangles about it, Mildred insisting that if anything happened to him “it’s the one thing between the children and the poor-house.” Yet she knew it was the next item for sacrifice, and obviously he was bracing himself for opposition. But she blandly got it for him, and he said “Thanks, Mildred.” Then, apparently relieved at the easy way he got it, he said: “Well, goddam it, how you been, anyway?”

“Just fine.”

“Let’s have another drink.”

They had the last two in the bottle, and then he said he had to go. Mildred got him his coat, and took him to the door, and submitted to a teary kiss, and he went. Quickly she turned out the lights, went to the bedroom, and waited. Sure enough, in a few minutes the bell rang. She opened, and he was standing there, looking a little foolish. “Sorry to bother you, Mildred, but my car key must have fallen out of my pocket. You mind my looking?”

“Why, not at all.”

He went back to the den, snapped on the light, and looked all over the floor where he had been playing with Ray. She watched him with pleased, slightly boozy interest. Presently she said: “Well come to think of it, perhaps I took that key.”

“You took it?”

“Yes.”

“Well gimme it. I got to go home. I...”

She stood smiling as the dreadful truth dawned on him, and his face sagged numbly. Then she stepped quickly aside as he pawed at her. “I’m not going to give it to you, and there’s no use in your trying to take it from me, because I’ve got it in a place where I don’t think you’ll find it. From now on, that car’s mine. I’m working, and I need it, and you’re not, and you don’t need it. And if you think I’m going to pound around on my feet, and ride busses, and lose all that time, and be a sap, while you lay up with another woman and don’t even use the car, you’re mistaken, that’s all.”

“You say you’re working?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then O.K. Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

“Would you like me to ride you back?”

“ ’Preciate that very much.”

“You staying with Maggie?”

“Prefer not to say where I’m staying. I’m staying where I’m staying. But if you drop me by Maggie’s, it’s all right. Got to see her for a minute, so you can drop me there — if it’s convenient for you.”

“Anywhere’s convenient for me.”

They went out together, and got in the car. Fishing the key out of her shoe they started off, and rode silently to Mrs. Biederhof’s, where she said she was awfully glad he dropped around, and wanted him to feel welcome any time, not only for the children’s sake but for her sake. He solemnly thanked her, said he had enjoyed the evening, and opened the door to get out. Then he grabbed for the key. However, she had foreseen exactly that contingency, and palmed the key as soon as she turned on the ignition. She laughed, quite gaily malicious. “Didn’t work, did it?”

“Guess it didn’t.”

“Good night, Bert. And I have a couple of old brassieres at the house, tell her. They’re clean and fresh and she can have them any time she drops around.”

“Listen, goddam it, you got the car. Now kindly shut up.”

“Anything you say.”

She pulled away and drove home. When she got there the light was still on, and everything was as she had left it. Glancing at the gas, she saw there were two gallons in the tank, and kept on straight ahead. At Colorado Avenue she turned. It was the first through boulevard she had been on, and the traffic signals were off, with yellow blinkers showing. She gave the car the gun, excitedly watching the needle swing past 30, 40, and 50. At 60, on a slight upgrade, she detected the gravelly sound of ping, made a mental note to have the carbon removed. Then she eased off a little on the gas, breathed a long, tremulous sigh. The car was pumping something into her veins, something of pride, of arrogance, of regained self-respect, that no talk, no liquor, no love, could possibly give. Once more she felt like herself, and began thinking about the job with cool detachment, instead of shame. Its problems, from balancing the dishes to picking up starters, flitted through her mind one after another, and she almost laughed that a few hours ago they had seemed formidable.

When she put the car in the garage, she inspected the tires with a flashlight, to see how they looked. She was pleased to find that there was considerable rubber left, so that new ones wouldn’t be needed at once. Then she ran humming into the house, turned out the light, and undressed, in the dark. Then she went to the children’s room, put her arms around Veda, and kissed her. As Veda stirred sleepily, she said: “Something very nice happened tonight, and you were the cause of it all, and I take everything back that I said. Now go to sleep and don’t think about it any more.”

“I’m so glad, Mother.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”