Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [43]
"What have you got to do with that?"
"You're my wife, aren't you?"
She turned away quickly, thrust her hands into the dough, tried to remember that arguing with Bert was like arguing with a child. Presently she heard him saying: "I probably know ten times as much about federal taxes as Wally Burgan does, and all I can say is it sounds to me like a lot of hooey. It comes down to a straight question of collusion: Is there any, or isn't there? In all cases involving collusion, the burden of proof is on the government, and in this case there can't be any proof, because I can testify, any time they call me, that there wasn't any."
"Bert, don't you see that it isn't a question of proving anything to a court, one way or another? It's whether they let me have the property or they don't. And if I don't get a divorce, they won't."
"No reason for them to act that way at all."
"And what am I going to tell Wally?"
"Just refer him to me."
Bert patted his thighs, stood up, and seemed to regard the discussion as closed. She worked furiously at the dough, tried to keep quiet, then wheeled on him. "Bert. I want a divorce."
"Mildred, I heard all you said."
"What's more, I'm going to get one."
"Not unless I say the word."
"How about Maggie Biederhof?"
"And how about Wally Burgan?"
In his palmiest days as a picture extra, Bert never did such a take'm as he did at that moment, with the dough doing service as a pie. It caught him square in the face, hung there a moment, then parted to reveal tragic, injured dignity. But by the time it had cascaded in big blobs to the floor, dignity had given way to hot anger, and he began to talk. He said he had friends, he knew what was going on. He said she ought to know by now she couldn't pull the wool over his eyes. Then he had to go to the sink to wash his face, and while he clawed the dough away, she talked. She taunted him with not making a living for his family, with standing in her way every time she tried to make the living. He tried to get back to the subject of Wally, and she shrilled him down. He said O.K., -but just let her try to bring Maggie Biederhof into it, and see what happened to her. He'd fix it so she'd never get a divorce, not in this state she wouldn't. As she screamed once more that she would have a divorce, she didn't care what he did, he said they'd see about that, and left.
Mrs. Gessler listened, sipped her tea, shook her head. "It's the funniest thing, baby. Here you lived with Bert—how long was it?—ten or twelve years, and still you don't understand him, do you?"
"He's got that contrary streak in him."
"No he hasn't. Once you understand Bert, he's not contrary at all. Bert's like Veda. Unless he can do things in a grand way, he's not living, that's all."
"What's grand about the way he acted?"
"Look at it, for once, the way he looks at it. He doesn't care about the church, or the law, or Wally. He just put all that in to sound big. What's griping him is that he can't do anything for the kids. If he has to stand up in court and admit he can't pay one cent for them, he'd rather die."
"Is he doing anything for them now?"
"Oh, but now is just a trifling detail, a temporary condition that he doesn't count. When he puts over a deal—"
"That'll be never."
"Will you just let me talk for a while? It's his fear of being a flat tire, I'm telling you, at one of those big dramatic moments of any man's life, that's making him dog it. But he can't hold out very long. For one thing, there's the Biederhof. She won't like it when she finds out you asked for a divorce and he wouldn't give it to you. She's going to wonder if he really loves her—though how anybody could love her is beyond me. And all the time, he's got it staring him in the face that the harder he makes it for you the harder he's making it for the kids. And Bert, he loves those kids, too. Baby, Bert's on the end of the plank, and there's nowhere for him to jump but off."
"Yes, but