Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain Page B

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 thiskind 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 colour, 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 colour 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, forhe 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,