Mildred Pierce

Chapter 5

Within a few days, Mildred’s financial troubles had eased a little, for she quickly became the best waitress in the place, not only at giving service, but at bagging tips. The trick of balancing dishes she learned by practicing after the children had gone to bed. She used tin plates, weighting them with stones from the garden, and got so that she could spread three on the fingers of her left hand, lay two more on her arm, remember not to stick her tongue out, and go sailing around the kitchen table without dropping any.

Tips, she knew instinctively, were a matter of regular customers who left dimes instead of nickels. She cultivated men, as all the girls did, as they were better tippers than women. She thought up little schemes to find out their names, remembered all their little likes, dislikes, and crotchets, and saw that Archie gave them exactly what they wanted. She had a talent for quiet flirtation, but found that this didn’t pay. Serving a man food, apparently, was in itself an ancient intimacy; going beyond it made him uncomfortable, and sounded a trivial note in what was essentially a solemn relationship. Simple friendliness, coupled with exact attention to his wants, seemed to please him most, and on that basis she had frequent invitations to take a ride, have dinner, or see a show. At first she didn’t quite know what to do about them, but soon invented a refusal that wasn’t a rebuff. She would say she wanted him to “keep on liking her,” that he “might feel differently if he saw her when she wasn’t in uniform.” This had the effect of arousing a good lively fear that perhaps she wasn’t so hot in her street clothes, and at the same time of leaving enough pity for the poor working girl to keep him coming back, so she could serve his lunch. Having her leg felt, it turned out, was practically a daily hazard, and this she found best not to notice. Even a leg feeler, if properly handled, could be nursed into a regular who left good tips, no doubt to prove he really had a heart of gold.

She held aloof from the restaurant itself, and the people connected with it. This wasn’t entirely due to her ideas of social superiority. In her own mind, she was highly critical of the kitchen, and was afraid to get drawn into talk, for fear she would say what she thought, and lose her job. So she confined her observations to Mrs. Gessler, and every night gave a savage account of the way things were done. Her special grievance was the pies. They were bought from the Handy Baking Company, and Mrs. Gessler often laughed loudly at Mildred’s description of their uninviting appearance, their sticky, tasteless filling, and their hard, indigestible crusts. But in the restaurant she held her peace, until one day she heard Ida bawling out Mr. Chris. “I’m that ashamed to put it on the table! I’m that ashamed to ask a customer to eat it! It’s just awful, the pie you put out here, and expect people to pay for it.” Mr. Chris, who took all bawlings-out with a martyred shrug, merely said: “Maybe a pie is lousy, but what you expect, times like these now? If he no eat, see me, I hokay a new check.” Mildred opened her mouth to take Ida’s side, and hotly proclaim that a new check wouldn’t make the pie taste any better. But at that moment it flashed through her mind that perhaps the real remedy was to get the pie contract herself. With the chance to make these precious dollars, her whole attitude changed. She knew she had to capture Ida, and not only Ida, but everybody else in the place.

That afternoon she was rather more helpful to the other girls than strict ethics demanded, and later, at lunch, sat down with them and got sociable. Meanwhile, she reflected what she was going to do about Ida. She was working that evening, and after the place closed, noticed Ida hurrying out with a glance at the clock, as though she might be catching a bus. Holding the door open, she asked: “Which way do you go, Ida? Maybe I could give you a lift.”

“You got a car?”

“Anyway, it goes.”

“Me, I live on Vermont. Up near Franklin.”

“Why it’s right on my way. I live in Glendale.”

The iciness was gone by the time they climbed in the car. As they parted, Mildred asked Ida if she’d like her to stop by and pick her up, on the way over in the morning. From then on Ida had a ride, and Mildred had a better station, and more importantly, she had Ida’s ear, with no possible interruptions, for a considerable time every day. They became bosom friends, and somehow the talk always got around to pies. Ida was bitter indeed at the product Mr. Chris offered his customers, and Mildred listened sympathetically. And then one night she innocently inquired: “What does he pay for those pies?”

“If he pays two bits, he’s being swindled.”

“Yes, but how much.”

“I don’t know... Why?”

“I make pies. And if he pays anything at all, I’d meet the price and make him some that people would really want to eat. I’d make him some that would be a feature.”

“Could you do it, honest?”

“I sell them all the time.”

“Then I’ll find out what he pays.”

From then on, pies became a feverish conspiracy between Mildred and Ida, and one Sunday Mildred drove over to Ida’s with a fine, wet, beautifully made huckleberry pie. Ida was married, to a former plasterer not working at the moment, and Mildred suspected that a pie might help with the Sunday night supper. Next day, during the luncheon rush, while Mr. Chris had stepped over to the bank to get more change, Ida stopped Mildred in the aisle, and said in a hoarse stage whisper: “He pays a straight thirty-five cents for them and takes three dozen a week.”

“Thanks.”

That night, Ida was full of the information she had filched from the file, and on Mildred’s calculation that she could furnish pies at thirty-five cents, she became masterful. “You leave it to me, Mildred. Just leave it to me. You won’t have to say one word. I’ve been knowing it all along I had to have a showdown about them pies, and now it’s coming. Just leave it all to me.”

The showdown, next morning, was a little noisier than Mildred had expected. Mr. Chris said he had dealt with the Handy Baking Company for years, and wasn’t going to change, and Ida said he’d been losing customers for years too, and didn’t have sense enough to know it. And besides, Ida went on, here’s a girl that makes grand pies, and what was the matter, didn’t he want customers? Mr. Chris said not to bother him, he was busy. Ida said look at the variety she’s got, cherry, huckleberry, strawberry—

“No chilly, no hooklabilly, no strawbilly!” Mr. Chris fairly shouted his emphasis. “All a pieces fall down in a juice, waste half a pie, no good! Appliss, poomkin, limmon — no other kind, won’t have’m.”

At this Ida went into the dining room, beckoning Mildred after her. When they were alone she whispered excitedly: “You heard what he said? Apple, pumpkin, lemon — no other kind. That means he wants to switch, but he’s too bullheaded to say so. Now listen, Mildred. Tomorrow you bring three pies, one apple, one pumpkin, one lemon. Just three, no more. And I’ll see that they’re served. They’re samples, but you’ve got to remember one thing: It’s got to be his idea.”

Ida put her head through the door and beckoned, and Anna came out. Anna, the girl with the sock, had been reinstated some time before. Ida pulled her into the huddle. “Listen, Anna, you heard what I said to him in there?”

“Ida, them pies are a disgrace, and—”

“O.K., then you do just like I say, and we’ll get Mildred’s pies in here, ’stead of them cow pies we got now. Anna, they’re just wonderful. But you know how he is, so tomorrow, when I put out the samples Mildred’s going to bring, you put the bee on him and say that’s what he’s been up to all along. Then he thought it up, and we break through his bullheadedness.”

“Just leave it to Little Orphan Annie.”

“And put it on thick.”

“I’ll take that Greek like Grant took Richmond. Don’t worry, Mildred. We’ll sell your pies for you.”

Mildred had a warm, wet-eyed feeling toward them both, and decided that Anna rated a free pie now and then, too. That afternoon she made the samples, and next morning Ida took charge of them herself, hurrying back to the kitchen with them like a spy carrying bombs. Changing into her uniform, Mildred was as nervous as an actress on opening night, and when she went into the kitchen there was expectancy in the air. Mr. Chris was at his desk, in the corner, and presently got up and went over to the out door. Here he posted, with a thumbtack, a piece of cardboard on which was written, in his Mediterranean handwriting the special order for the day:

All gathered around and looked at it. Ida went over to the desk, picked up the blue pencil, came back to the door and added:

One by one, the girls filed in the dining room.

Lunch had barely started when Mildred managed to sell two pieces of pie. Mr. Rand, one of her regular customers, came in early with another man, and when she handed him the menu to pick out his dessert, she asked innocently: “Would you care for a piece of pie, Mr. Rand? The lemon is very good today.”

Mr. Rand looked at his companion. “That just shows how much principle she’s got. The pie stinks, she knows it stinks, and yet she says the lemon is very good today. Lay off the pie — unless you’re really tired of this life, and prefer to be dead.”

“We have a new line of pie today, Mr. Rand.”

“Well — is it any good?”

“You try a piece. I think you’ll like it.”

The other man chose chocolate ice cream, and Mildred hurried to the kitchen to get the orders. As she came back with both desserts and the coffee, her heart gave a leap as she heard a customer say: “That pie looks good.” When she set it in front of Mr. Rand the other man didn’t even let her put the ice cream down. “Say, I want some of that! Can I switch?”

“Why certainly!”

“Principle? She’s got principle plus. Say, that meringue looks two inches thick.”

By noon, the lemon pie was a few smears of filling in an empty plate, and by one o’clock, all three pies were gone. By three, Ida had opened up on Mr. Chris, with everybody standing around, to watch the result. She said just look how them pies went. She said the lemon was gone before she could even turn around, and one customer wanted a second cut, and she didn’t have it to give him. She said it was just terrible what the people said, when Mildred’s pies ran out and she had to serve the bakery pies. To all of this, Mr. Chris made no reply whatever, merely hunching over his desk, and acting as though he was deaf. Ida plowed on, louder and louder. She said there was one lady, in a party of four, that wanted to know where they got such wonderful pies, and when she pointed out Mildred, she was that amazed. Mr. Chris twisted uneasily, and said not to bother him, he was busy, and—

“So that’s what you was up to!”

He jumped up, and found Anna’s finger not six inches from his nose, leveled at him as though it were a six-shooter. Giving him no time to recover, she went on: “So that’s why you been asking all them questions about Mildred! That’s why you been foxing around! And who told you she made pies, I’d like to know? Well can you beat that. Every time you take your eye off him he’s up to something!”

To this not unflattering harangue Mr. Chris at first returned a blank stare. Then he burst into loud laughter, and pointed a derisive finger at Ida, as though it was a great joke on her. Ida professed to be highly indignant, that he should “let her go on like that” when he knew about Mildred’s pies all the time, and had already made up his mind to take them. The more she talked the louder he laughed, and then, after he had wiped his streaming eyes, the bargain was struck. There was a little difficulty about price, he trying to beat Mildred down to thirty cents, but she held out for thirty-five, and presently he agreed. That night Mildred stood treat to Ida and Anna in a speako Wally had taken her to, and helped Anna pick up a man at a nearby table. Still with her first half-dozen pies to make, she drove home very late, full of a gulpy love for the whole human race.

On the strength of her new contract, she had a phone put in, and began to drum up more trade with the neighborhood customers, on the theory that a few extra pies were no more trouble, but that the extra money would be so much velvet. For pies one at a time, she had charged, and still charged, eighty-five cents each. Shortly, as a result of the neighborhood trade, there dropped into her lap another restaurant contract. Mr. Harbaugh, husband of one of her customers, spoke of her pies one night at the Drop Inn, a cafeteria on Brand Boulevard, not far from Pierce Drive, and they called her up and agreed to take two dozen a week. So within a month of the time she went to work as a waitress, she was working harder than she knew she could work, and still hold out until Sunday, when she could sleep. Taking care of the children was out of the question, so she engaged a girl named Letty, who cooked the children’s lunch and dinner, and helped with the washing, stirring, and drudgery that went with the pies. She bought two extra uniforms, so she could launder all three at once, over the weekend. This chore, however, she did in the bathroom, behind locked doors. She made no secret of the pies; she couldn’t very well. But she had no intention that either the children or Letty should know about the job.

And yet, tired as she was most of the time, there was a new look in her eye, even a change in her vocabulary. Talking with Mrs. Gessler, she spoke of “my pies,” “my customers,” “my marketing”; the first personal pronouns predominated. Unquestionably she was becoming a little important, in her own eyes, at least, a little conceited, a little smug. Well, why not? Two months before, she barely had pennies to buy bread. Now she was making eight dollars a week from her Tip-Top pay, about fifteen dollars on tips, more than ten dollars clear profit on pies. She was a going concern. She bought a little sports suit, got a permanent.

Only one thing bothered her. It was now late in June, and on July 1 seventy-five dollars was due on the mortgages. Her affluence was recent, and she had saved less than fifty dollars toward what she needed, but she was determined not to worry. One night, driving with Wally, she said abruptly: “Wally, I want fifty dollars out of you.”

“You mean — now?”

“Yes, now. But it’s to be a loan, and I’ll pay you back. I’m making money now, and I can let you have it in a month, easy. But the interest is due on those mortgages Bert took out, and I’m not going to be foreclosed out of my home for a measly fifty bucks. I want you to get it to me tomorrow.”

“O.K. I think I got it.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Hell, I’ll write you a check tonight.”

One day not long after that, she came home to find Letty in one of her uniforms. She hadn’t bought uniforms for Letty yet. She had her put an apron on, over the wash dresses she came to work in, and said the uniform question would be postponed until it was certain she was satisfactory. Now, seeing Letty in restaurant regalia, she felt her face prickle, but left the kitchen for fear of what she might say. But Letty caught the look and followed. “I told her you wouldn’t like it, Mrs. Pierce. I told her right off, but she hollered and carried on so I put it on, just to keep her quiet.”

“Who hollered and carried on?”

“Miss Veda, ma’am.”

“Miss Veda.”

“She makes me call her that.”

“And she told you to put that uniform on?”

“Yes’m.”

“Very well. It’s quite all right, if that’s how it happened, but you can take it off now. And hereafter, remember I’m giving orders around here, not Miss Veda.”

“Yes’m.”

Mildred made her pies, and nothing more was said about it that afternoon, or at dinner, Veda taking no notice of Letty’s change of costume. But after dinner, when Letty had gone home, Mildred summoned both children to the den, and talking mainly to Veda, announced they were going into the question of the uniform. “Certainly, Mother. It’s quite becoming to her, don’t you think?”

“Never mind whether it’s becoming or not. The first thing I want to know is this: Those uniforms were on the top shelf of my closet, under a pile of sheets. Now how did you happen to find them there?”

“Mother, I needed a handkerchief, and went to see if any of mine had been put with your things by mistake.”

“In the closet?”

“I had looked everywhere else, and—”

“All your handkerchiefs were in your own top drawer, and they still are, and you weren’t looking for any handkerchief at all. Once more you were snooping into my things to see what you could find, weren’t you?”

“Mother, how can you insinuate such—”

“Weren’t you?”

“I was not, and I resent the question.”

Veda looked Mildred in the eye with haughty, offended dignity. Mildred waited a moment, and then went on: “And how did you happen to give one of those uniforms to Letty?”

“I merely assumed, Mother, that you had forgotten to tell her to wear them. Evidently they had been bought for her. If she was going to take my things to the pool, I naturally wanted her decently dressed.”

“To the pool? What things?”

“My swimming things, Mother.”

Little Ray laughed loudly, and Mildred stared bewildered. School being over, she had left a book of bus tickets, so the children could go down and swim in the plunge at Griffith Park. But that Letty was included in the excursion she had no idea. It quickly developed, however, that Veda’s notion of a swim in the pool was for herself and Ray to go parading to the bus stop, with Letty following two paces behind, all dressed up in uniform, apron, and cap, and carrying the swimming bags. She even produced the cap, which Mildred identified as the collar of one of her own dresses. It had been neatly sewed, so as to make a plausible white corona, embroidered around the edges.

“I never heard of such goings-on in my life.”

“Well, Mother, it seems to me wholly proper.”

“Does Letty go in swimming?”

“Certainly not.”

“What does she do?”

“She sits by the pool and waits, as she should.”

“For Miss Veda, I suppose?”

“She knows her place, I hope.”

“Well hereafter, there’ll be no more Miss Veda. And if she goes with you to the pool, she goes in her own clothes, and she has a swim. If she hasn’t a suit, I’ll get her one.”

“Mother, it shall be as you say.”

Little Ray, who had been listening to all this with vast delight, now rolled on the floor, screaming with laughter, and kicking her heels in the air. “She can’t swim! She can’t swim, and she’ll get drownded! And Red will have to pull her out! He’s the life guard, and he’s stuck on her!”

At this, Mildred began to understand Letty’s strange conduct, and had to laugh in spite of herself. Veda thereupon elected to regard the inquest as closed. “Really, Mother, it seems to me you made a great fuss over nothing. If you bought the uniforms for her, and certainly I can’t imagine who else you could have bought them for — then why shouldn’t she wear them?”

But Veda had slightly overdone it. In a flash, from the special innocence with which she couldn’t imagine who else the uniforms could have been bought for, Mildred divined that she knew the truth, and that meant the whole thing had to be dealt with fundamentally. For Veda’s purpose, in giving Letty the uniform, might be nothing more sinister than a desire to make a peafowl’s progress to the pool, but it might be considerably more devious. So Mildred didn’t act at once. She sat looking at Veda, the squint hardening in her eye; then she scooped up Ray in her arms, and announced it was time to go to bed. Undressing her, she played with her as she always did, blowing into the buttonholes of the little sleeping suit, rolling her into bed with a loud whoosh and a final blow down the back of her neck. But all the time she was thinking of Veda, who never took part in these frivolities. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see her, cramped in front of the dressing table for a period of primping, whose main object seemed to be the spreading of as many combs, brushes, and bottles in front of her as the table would hold. She was none too agreeable about it when Mildred finished with Ray, and ordered her to the den for more talk. She got up angrily and threw down a brush. “Ye Gods — what now?”

When they got to the den, Mildred closed the door, sat down in the armchair, and stood Veda in front of her. “Why did you give Letty that uniform?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mother, haven’t I told you once? How often do I have to tell you? I won’t have you questioning me this way. Good night — I’m going to bed.”

Mildred caught her arm, pulled her back. “You knew, when you gave it to Letty, that that was my uniform, didn’t you?”

“Your uniform?”

Veda’s simulation of surprise was so cool, so calculated, so insolent, that Mildred waited longer than she usually did, when angered. Then she went on: “I’ve taken a job as a waitress in a restaurant in Hollywood.”

“As a — what?”

“As a waitress, as you very well know.”

“Ye gods! Ye—”

Mildred clipped her on the cheek, but she gave a short laugh, and brazenly finished: —“gods and little fishes!”

At this, Mildred clipped her a terrific wallop on the other cheek, that toppled her to the floor. As she lay there, Mildred began to talk. “So you and your sister can eat, and have a place to sleep, and a few clothes on your backs. I’ve taken the only kind of a job I could get, and if you think I’m going to listen to a lot of silly nonsense from you about it, you’re mistaken. And if you think your nonsense is going to make me give up the job, you’re mistaken about that, too. How you found out what I was doing I don’t know—”

“From the uniform, stupid. You think I’m dumb?”

Mildred clipped her again, and went on: “You may not realize it, but everything you have costs money, from the maid that you ordered to go traipsing with you to the pool, to your food, and everything else that you have. And as I don’t see anybody else doing anything about it—”

Veda had got up now, her eyes hard, and cut in: “Aren’t the pies bad enough? Did you have to degrade us by—”

Mildred caught her by both arms, threw her over one knee, whipped the kimono up with one motion, the pants down with another, and brought her bare hand down on Veda’s bottom with all the force her fury could give her. Veda screamed and bit her leg. Mildred pulled loose, then beat the rapidly reddening bottom until she was exhausted, and Veda screamed as though demons were inside of her. Then Mildred let Veda slide to the floor, and sat there panting and fighting the nausea that was swelling in her stomach.

Presently Veda got up, staggered to the sofa, and flung herself down in tragic despair. Then she gave a soft laugh, and whispered, in sorrow rather than in anger: “A waitress.”

Mildred now began to cry. She rarely struck Veda, telling Mrs. Gessler that “the child didn’t need it,” and that she “didn’t believe in beating children for every little thing.” But this wasn’t the real reason. The few times she had tried beating, she had got exactly nowhere. She couldn’t break Veda, no matter how much she beat her. Veda got victory out of these struggles, she a trembling, ignoble defeat. It always came back to the same thing. She was afraid of Veda, of her snobbery, her contempt, her unbreakable spirit. And she was afraid of something that seemed always lurking under Veda’s bland, phony toniness: a cold, cruel, coarse desire to torture her mother, to humiliate her, above everything else, to hurt her. Mildred apparently yearned for warm affection from this child, such as Bert apparently commanded. But all she ever got was a stagy, affected counterfeit. This half loaf she had to accept, trying not to see it for what it really was.

She wept, then sat with a dismal feeling creeping over her, for she was as far from settling the main point as she had ever been. Veda had to be made to accept this job she had taken, else her days would be dull misery, and in the end she would have to give it up. But how? Presently, not conscious of having hatched any idea, she began to talk. “You never give me credit for any finer feelings, do you?”

“Oh, Mother, please — let’s not talk about it anymore. It’s all right. You’re working in a — in Hollywood, and I’ll try not to think about it.”

“As a matter of fact, I felt exactly about it as you do, and I certainly would never have taken this job if it hadn’t been that I—” Mildred swallowed, made a wild lunge at something, anything, and went on: “—that I had decided to open a place of my own, and I had to learn the business. I had to know all about it and—”

At least Veda did sit up at this, and show some faint sign of interest. “What kind of a place, Mother? You mean a—”

“Restaurant, of course.”

Veda blinked and for a dreadful moment Mildred felt that this didn’t quite meet Veda’s social requirements either. Desperately she went on: “There’s money in a restaurant, if it’s run right, and—”

“You mean we’ll be rich?”

“Many people have got rich that way.”

That did it. Even though a restaurant might not be quite the toniest thing that Veda could imagine, riches spoke to the profoundest part of her nature. She ran over, put her arms around her mother, kissed her, nuzzled her neck, insisted on being punished for the horrible way she had acted. When Mildred had given her a faltering pat on the bottom, she climbed into the chair, and babbled happily to Mildred about the limousine they would have, and the grand piano, on which she could practice her music.

Mildred gladly promised all these things, but later, when Veda was in bed and she herself was undressing, she wondered how long she could keep up the pretense, and whether she could get another job before her bluff was called. And then a hot, electric idea flashed through her mind. Why not have her own restaurant? She looked in the mirror, and saw a calculating, confident woman’s face squinting back at her. Well, why not? Her breath began to come just a little bit fast as she canvassed her qualifications. She could cook, she had such a gift for it as few ever have. She was learning the business; in fact, so far as pies went, she was in business already. She was young, healthy, stronger than she looked. She had two children, all she wanted, all she could be expected to bring into the world, so there need be no more of that. She was implacably determined to get ahead, somehow. She put on her pajamas, turned out the light, but kept walking around the room, in the dark. In spite of herself, the limousine, the chauffeur, and the grand piano began to gleam before her eyes, but as real this time, not imaginary. She started for bed, then hurried to the children’s room. “Veda?”

“Yes, Mother. I’m awake.”

She went over, knelt down, put her arms around the child, hugged her passionately. “You were right, darling, and I was wrong. No matter what I say, no matter what anybody says, never give up that pride, that way you have of looking at things. I wish I had it, and — never give it up!”

“I can’t help it, Mother. It’s how I feel.”

“Something else happened tonight.”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing to tell. Only now I feel it, now I know it, that from now on things are going to get better for us. So we’ll have what we want. Maybe we won’t be rich, but — we’ll have something. And it’ll all be on account of you. Every good thing that happens is on account of you, if Mother only had sense enough to know it.”

“Oh Mother, I love you. Truly I do.”

“Say it again... Say it — just once — more.”