Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [69]
"If it's pro-Hoover I don't want to hear it."
"It's about Veda."
"What's she up to now?"
"Music. . . . Well what the hell, it's not up to me to give you any advice. All I know is how the kid feels."
"She takes lessons."
"She takes lessons from some cheap little ivory thumper over in Glendale, and she has a squawk. She doesn't think she's getting anywhere. Well—it's none of my affair."
"Go on."
"I think she's got something."
"I always said she had talent."
"Saying she has talent and doing the right thing about it are two different things. If you don't mind my saying so, I think you know more about pies than you do about music. I think she ought to be put under somebody that can really take charge of her."
"Who, for instance?"
"Well, there's a fellow in Pasadena that could do wonders with her. You may have heard of him—Charlie HanDen, quite well-known, up to a few years ago, in the concert field. Then his lungs cracked up and he came out here. Doesn't do much now. Organist, choir master, whatever you call it, at our church, leads a quiet life, but takes a few pupils. I'm sure I can get him interested in her. If he takes her on, she'll be getting somewhere."
"When did you learn so much about music?"
"I don't know a thing about it. But my mother does. She's been a patroness of the Philharmonic for years and she knows all about it. She says the kid s really got it."
"Of course I never met your mother."
This slightly waspish remark Monty let pass without answering, and it was some minutes before he went on. "And another thing that makes me think she's got it is the way she works at it. All right, all I know is horses, but when I see a guy on top of one, out there in the morning when there's nobody else around, popping away with a mallet to improve his backhand, I think to myself, maybe one day he'll be a polo player."
"Isn't that something to be."
"It's the same way with her. So far as I know, she never misses a day on that dry-goods box at her grandfather's, and even when she comes over to Mother's she does her two hours of exercises every morning, before she'll even talk about tennis, or riding, or whatever Mother has in mind for her. She works, and you don't even have to be a musician to figure that out."
In spite of her almost religious conviction that Veda had talent, Mildred wasn't much impressed: she knew Veda too well to read the evidence quite as Monty read it. Veda's earnest practicing at Mrs. Beragon's might mean a consuming passion for music, and it might mean a consuming passion for letting the whole household know she was around. And Mr. Hannen might have been a celebrated pianist once, but the fact that he was now organist at one of Pasadena's swank churches cast a certain familiar color over his nomination as teacher. All in all, Mildred was sure she detected one of Veda's fine schemes. And in addition to that, she resented what was evidently becoming a small conspiracy to tell her what she should do about her child, and the implication that what she was already doing, by Pasadena standards, wasn't anything like good enough.
So for some time she said nothing about this subject to Veda. But it kept gnawing on her mind, setting up the fear that perhaps she was denying the child something she really ought to have. And then one night Veda broke into a violent denunciation of Miss Whittaker, the lady to whom Mildred had been paying 50c a week to give Veda lessons; but something about the tirade didn't have the usual phony sound to it. Troubled, Mildred asked suddenly if Mr. Hannen, of Pasadena, would be better. This produced such excited dancing around that she knew she was in for it. So she called up, made