Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [38]
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 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 any more. 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