"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 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 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, ma.s.saged 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. n.o.body 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 a.s.serted' 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 Sat.u.r.day evening and "took her out." She expressed a preference for a quiet place, for she was afraid the print dress wouldn't pa.s.s 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—h.e.l.lo, 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 eome 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 balibouncing, 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 gla.s.ses on a tray, found the lone seltzer siphon that had been there since winter. When she was nearly done, Veda appeared. "Can I he-lp 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 gla.s.ses, 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 too-k 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 gla.s.s 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 into the next phase of the ritual. This was a sing-song recitation her father had taught her, and went as follows:

I went to the animals' fair, The birds and the beasts were there, The old baboon By the light of the moon Was combing his auburn hair; The monkey he got drunk, And fell on the elephant's trunk, The elephant sneezed And fell on his knees— And what became of the monkety-monk?

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 atomized, do you?"

"I've heard of things like that happening."

"That would be terrible."

Veda picked up her gla.s.s, 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 stuffing 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 a.n.a.lysis: to her it was a simple matter of justice. She was working, he wasn't. He wasn't ent.i.tled 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 c.o.o.n'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 bow was every little thing quite as though nothing had happened. Wally said be had been trying to- see him for a couple of months now, over something that had come up, and so help him G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.lish 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 gla.s.s, 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 h.e.l.lo."

"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 gla.s.s, 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 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 poorhouse." 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, G.o.ddam it, how you been, anyway?"

"Just fine."