Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain [99]
All the way home Mildred fumed at the way Mr. Treviso had treated them. She said she had never seen anything like that in her life. If he didn't like the way Veda had played the piece, he could have said so like a gentleman, instead of acting like that. And the very idea, having an appointment with two ladies for four o'clock, keeping them waiting until a quarter to five, and then, when they had barely got in the door, telling them a story about toilet paper. If that was the only man in Los Angeles that Mr. Hannen had any respect for, she certainly had her opinion of Mr. Hannen's taste. A lot of this expressed Mildred's very real irritation, but some of it was to console Veda, by taking her side after an outrageous episode. Veda said nothing, and when they got home she jumped out of the car and ran in the house. Mildred followed, but when she got to Veda's room, it was locked. She knocked, then knocked again, sharply. Then she commanded Veda to open the door. Nothing happened, and inside there was silence. Letty appeared, and asked in a frightened way what the trouble was. Paying no attention to Letty, Mildred ran out to the kitchen, grabbed a chair, and ran outside. A sudden paralyzing fear had come over her as to what Veda might be doing in there. Putting the chair near the house, she stood on it and raised the screen. Then she stepped into the room. Veda was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the same unseeing way she had stared at the floor of the car. Her hands were still clenching and unclenching, and her features looked thick. Mildred, who had expected at the very least to see an empty iodine bottle lying around somewhere, first felt relieved, then cross. Unlocking the door, she said: "Well my goodness, you don't have to scare everybody to death."
"Mother, if you say my goodness one more time I shall scream, I shall scream!"
Veda spoke in a terrible rasping whisper, then closed her eyes. Stiffening and stretching out her arms as though she were a figure on a crucifix, she began to talk to herself, in a bitter voice, between clenched teeth. "You can kill it—you can kill it right now—you can drive a knife through its heart—so it's dead, dead, dead—you can forget you ever tried to play the piano—you can forget there ever was such a thing as a piano—you can—"
"Well my g—. Well for heaven's sake, the piano isn't the only thing on earth. You could—you could write music." Pausing, Mildred tried to remember what Bert had said that day, about Irving Berlin, but just then Veda opened her eyes. "You damned, silly-looking cluck, are you trying to drive me insane? . . . Yes, I could write music. I can write you a motet, or a sonata, or a waltz, or a cornet solo, with variation—anything at all, anything you want. And not one note of it will be worth the match it would take to burn it. You think I'm hot stuff, don't you? You, lying there every day, dreaming about rainbows. Well, I'm not. I'm just a Glendale Wunderkind. I know all there is to know about music, and there's one like me in every Glendale on earth, every one-horse conservatory, every tank-town university, every park band. We can read anything, play anything, arrange anything, and we're just no good. Punks. Like you. God, now I know where I get it from. Isn't that funny? You start out a Wunderkind, then find out you're just a goddam punk."
"Well, if that's the case, it certainly does seem peculiar and he wouldn't have known it. Mr. Hannen, I mean. And I told you so. Instead of—"
"Do you think he didn't know it? And didn't tell me? He told me every time he saw me—my tunes stunk, my playing stunk, everything I did stunk—but he liked me. And he