“How?”
“It’s taken care of.”
“From Veda?”
“Never mind. I got ‘em.”
At the look on Mildred’s face, Bert quickly crossed over, took her hand. “Now what’s the use of acting like that? Yes, she called me up, and the tickets are there waiting for me. And she’ll call you up, of course she will. But why would she be calling you in the morning, like she did me? She knows you’re never home then. And then another thing, she’s probably been busy. I hear they run those singers ragged, rehearsing them, the day of a broadcast. O.K., they’ve got her there, where she can’t get to a phone or anything, but that’s not her fault. She’ll call. Of course she will.”
“Oh no. She won’t call me.”
As Bert didn’t know the full details of Veda’s departure from home, his optimism was understandable. He evidently regarded the point as of small importance, for he began to talk amiably, sipping his rye. He said it certainly went to show that the kid had stuff in her all right, to get a spot like that with a big jazz band, and nobody giving her any help but herself. He said he knew how Mildred felt, but she was certainly going to regret it afterwards if she let a little thing like this stand in the way of being there at the kid’s first big chance. Because it was a big chance all right. The torch singers with these big name bands, they’re in the money, and no mistake about it. And sometimes, if they had the right hot licks on their first broadcast, they hit the big time overnight.
Mildred let a wan, pitying smile play over her face. If Veda had got there, she said, it was certainly all right with her. Just the same, it certainly seemed funny, the difference between what Veda might have been, and what she was. “Just a year or two ago, it was a pleasure to listen to her. She played all the classical composers, the very best. Her friends were of the best. They weren’t my friends, but they were of the best. Her mind was on higher things. And then, after Mr. Hannen died, I don’t know what got into her. She began going around with cheap, awful people. She met that boy. She let Wally Burgan poison her mind against me. And now, Hank Somerville. Well, that’s the whole story — from Beethoven to Hank Somerville, in a little over a year. No, I don’t want to go to the broadcast. It would make me too sad.”
Truth to tell, Mildred had no such critical prejudice against Mr. Somerville, or the torch canon, as her remarks might indicate. If Veda had called her up, she would have been only too glad to regard this as “the first move,” and to have gone adoringly to the broadcast. But when Veda called Bert, and didn’t call her, she was sick, and her sickness involved a bad case of sour-grapes poisoning: so far as she was concerned, torch was the lowest conceivable form of human endeavor. Also, she hated the idea that Bert might go without her. She insisted that he take Mrs. Biederhof, but he got the point, and miserably mumbled that he guessed he wouldn’t go. Then suddenly she asked what advantage there was in going to the studio. He could hear it over the radio. Why not ride with her to Laguna and hear it there? He could have his dinner, a nice big steak if he wanted it, and then later she would have Mrs. Gessler put the radio on the veranda, and he could hear Veda without going to a lot of useless trouble. At the mention of steak, poor Bert perked up, and said he’d often wanted to see her place at Laguna. She said come right along, she’d be starting as soon as Tommy brought the car. He said O.K., and went legging it home to change into clothes suitable to a high-class place.
At Laguna, Mildred was indifferent to the impending event, and had little to say to the girls, the cooks, and the customers who kept telling her about Veda’s picture in the paper, and asking her if she wasn’t excited that her daughter was on the air. Bert, however, wasn’t so reticent. While his steak was on the fire, he held court in the bar, and told all and sundry about Veda, and promised that if hot licks were what it took, the kid had them. When the hour drew near, and Mrs. Gessler plugged in the big radio on the veranda, he had an audience of a dozen around him, and extra chairs had to be brought. Two or three were young girls, there were two married couples, and the rest were men. Mildred had intended to pay no attention to the affair at all, but along toward 8:25, curiosity got the better of her. With Mrs. Gessler she went outside, and there was a lively jumping up to give her a seat. One or two men were left perched on the rail.
The first hint she got that Veda’s performance might not be quite the torchy affair that Bert had taken for granted came when Mr. Somerville, early in the program, affected to faint, and had to be revived, somewhat noisily, by members of his band. The broadcast had started in the usual way, with the Krazy Kaydets giving the midshipmen’s siren yell and then swinging briskly into Anchors Aweigh. Then Mr. Somerville greeted his audience, and then he introduced Veda. When he asked if Veda Pierce was her real name, and she said it was, he wanted to know if her voice was unduly piercing. At this the kaydets rang a ship’s gong, and Veda said no, but her scream was, as he’d find out if he made any more such remarks. The studio audience laughed, and the group on the veranda laughed, especially Bert, who slapped his thigh. A man in a blue coat, sitting on the rail, nodded approvingly. “She put that one across all right.”
Then Mr. Somerville asked Veda what she was going to sing. She said the Polonaise from Mignon, and that was when he fainted. While the kaydets were working over him, and the studio audience was laughing, and the ship’s gong was clanging, Bert leaned to the man in the blue coat. “What’s it about?”
“Big operatic aria. The idea is, it’s a little over the kaydets’ heads.”
“Oh, now I get it.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll knock it over.”
Mildred, who found the comedy quite disgusting, paid no attention. Then the kaydets crashed into the introduction. Then Veda started to sing. Then a chill, wholly unexpected, shot up Mildred’s backbone. The music was unfamiliar to her, and Veda was singing in some foreign language that she didn’t understand. But the voice itself was so warm, rich, and vibrant that she began to fight off the effect it had on her. While she was trying to get readjusted to her surprise, Veda came to a little spray of rippling notes and stopped. The man in the blue coat set his drink on a table and said: “Hey, hey, hey!”
After a bar or two by the orchestra, Veda came in again, and another chill shot up Mildred’s back. Then, as cold prickly waves kept sweeping over her, she really began to fight her feelings. Some sense of monstrous injustice oppressed her: it seemed unfair that this girl, instead of being chastened by adversity, was up there, in front of the whole world, singing, and without any help from her. Somehow, all the emotional assumptions of the last few months were stood on their head, and Mildred felt mean and petty for reacting as she did, and yet she couldn’t help it.
Soon Veda stopped, the music changed slightly, and the man in the blue coat sipped his drink. “O.K. so far. Now for the flying trapeze.” When Veda started again, Mildred gripped her chair in sheer panic. It seemed impossible that anybody could dare such dizzy heights of sound, could even attempt such vocal gymnastics, without making some slip, some dreadful error that would land the whole thing in ruin. But Veda made no slip. She went on and on, while the man in the blue coat jumped down from the rail, squatted by the machine, and forgot his drink, forgot everything except what was pouring out into the night. Bert and the others watched him with some sort of fascinated expectancy. At the end, when the last, incredibly high note floated over the finale of the orchestra, he looked up at Mildred. “Jesus Christ, did you hear it? Did you—”
But Mildred didn’t wait for him to finish. She got up abruptly and walked down toward Mrs. Gessler’s flowers, waving back Bert and Mrs. Gessler, who called after her, and started to follow. Pushing through the bushes, she reached the bluff overlooking the sea, and stood there, lacing her fingers together, screwing her lips into a thin, relentless line. This, she needed nobody to tell her, was no descent from Beethoven to Hank Somerville, no cheap venture into torch. It was the coming true of all she had dreamed for Veda, all she had believed in, worked for, dedicated her life to. The only difference was that the dream that had come true was a thousand times rosier than the dream she had dreamed. And come what might, by whatever means she would have to take, she knew she would have to get Veda back.