Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain Page A

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 emotionshe 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?’
    ‘OK. 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 got 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 there, 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