“Damn it, your legs are still immoral.”
“You think they’re bowed?”
“Stop waving them around.”
“I asked you—”
“No.”
Around dark, she grew sentimentally weepy. “Monty, I couldn’t live here without you. I couldn’t, that’s all.”
Monty lay still, and smoked a long time. Then, in a queer, shaky voice he said: “I always said you’d make some guy a fine wife if you didn’t live in Glendale.”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“If you move to Pasadena, yes.”
“You mean if I buy this house.”
“No — it’s about three times as much house as you need, and I don’t insist on it. But I will not live in Glendale.”
“Then all right!”
She snuggled up to him, tried to be kittenish, but while he put his arm around her he continued sombre, and he didn’t look at her. Presently it occurred to her that he might be hungry, and she asked if he would like to ride to Laguna with her, and have dinner. He thought a moment, then laughed. “You’d better go to Laguna alone, and I’ll open myself another can of beans. My clothes, at the moment, aren’t quite suitable to dining out. Unless, of course, you want me to put on a dinner coat. That mockery of elegance happens to be all I have left.”
“We never had that New Year’s party yet.”
“Oh didn’t we?”
“And we don’t have to go to Laguna... I love you in a dinner coat, Monty. If you’ll put one on, and then drive over with me while I put on my mockery of elegance, we can step out. We can celebrate our engagement. That is, if we really are engaged.”
“All right, let’s do it.”
She spanked him on his lean rump, hustled him out of bed, and jumped out after him. She was quite charming in such moments, when she took absurd liberties with him, and for one flash his face lit up, and he kissed her before they started to dress. But he was sombre again when they arrived at her house. She put out whiskey, ice, and seltzer, and he made himself a drink. While she was dressing he wandered restlessly about, and then put his head in her bedroom and asked if he could put a telegram on her phone. “I’d like Mother to know.”
“Would you like to talk to her?”
“It’s a Philadelphia call.”
“Well my goodness, you act as if it was Europe. Certainly call her up. And you can tell her it’s all settled about the house, at thirty thousand, without any foolish deductions of five hundred and twenty dollars, or whatever it was. If that’s what’s been worrying her, tell her not to worry anymore.”
“I’d certainly love to.”
He went to the den, and she went on with her dressing. The blue evening dress was long since outmoded, but she had another one, a black one, that she liked very well, and she had just laid it out when he appeared at the door. “She wants to speak to you.”
“Who?”
“Mother.”
In spite of success, money, and long experience at dealing with people, a qualm shot through Mildred as she sat down to the phone, in a hastily donned kimono, to talk to this woman she had never met. But when she picked up the receiver and uttered a quavery hello, the cultured voice that spoke to her was friendship itself. “Mrs. Pierce?”
“Yes, Mrs. Beragon.”
“Or perhaps you’d like me to call you Mildred?”
“I’d love it, Mrs. Beragon.”
“I just wanted to say that Monty has told me about your plan to be married, and I think it splendid. I’ve never met you, but from all I’ve heard, from so many, many people I always felt you were the one wife for Monty, and I secretly hoped, as mothers often do, that one day it might come to pass.”
“Well that’s terribly nice of you, Mrs. Beragon. Did Monty tell you about the house?”
“He did, and I do want you to be happy there, and I’m sure you will. Monty is so attached to it, and he tells me you like it too — and that’s a big step toward happiness, isn’t it?”
“I would certainly think so. And I do hope that some time you’ll pay us a visit there, and, and—”
“I’ll be delighted. And how is darling Veda?”
“She’s just fine. She’s singing, you know.”
“My dear, I heard her, and I was astonished — not really of course, because I always felt that Veda had big things in her. But even allowing for all that, she quite bowled me over. You have a very gifted daughter, Mildred.”
“I’m certainly glad you think so, Mrs. Beragon.”
“You’ll remember me to her?”
“I certainly will, Mrs. Beragon.”
She hung up flushed, beaming, sure she had done very well, but Monty’s face had such an odd look that she asked: “What’s the matter?”
“Where is Veda?”
“She — took an apartment by herself, a few months ago. It bothered her to have all the neighbors listening while she vocalized.”
“That must have been messy.”
“It was — terrible.”
Within a week, the Beragon mansion looked as though it had been hit by bombs. The main idea of the alterations, which were under the supervision of Monty, was to restore what had been a large but pleasant house to what it had been before it was transformed into a small but hideous mansion. To that end the porticoes were torn off, the iron dogs removed, the palm trees grubbed up, so the original grove of live oaks was left as it had been, without tropical incongruities. What remained, after all this hacking, was so much reduced in size that Mildred suddenly began to feel some sense of identity with it. When the place as it would be began to emerge from the scaffolding, when the yellow paint had been burned off with torches and replaced with a soft white wash, when green shutters were in place, when a small, friendly entrance had taken the place of the former Monticello effect, she began to fall in love with it, and could hardly wait until it was finished. Her delight increased when Monty judged the exterior sufficiently advanced to proceed with the interior, and its furnishings. His mood continued dark, and he made no more allusions to the $520, or Glendale, or anything of a personal kind. But he seemed bent on pleasing Mildred, and it constantly surprised her, the way he was able to translate her ideas into paint, wood, and plaster.
About all she was able to tell him was that she “liked maple,” but with this single bone as a clue, he reconstructed her whole taste with surprising expertness. He did away with paper, and had the walls done in delicate kalsomine. The rugs he bought in solid colors, rather light, so the house took on a warm, informal look. For the upholstered furniture he chose bright, inexpensive coverings, enunciating a theory to Mildred: “In whatever pertains to comfort, shoot the works. A room won’t look comfortable unless it is comfortable, and comfort costs money. But on whatever pertains to show, to decoration alone, be a little modest. People will really like you better if you aren’t so damned rich.” It was a new idea to Mildred, and appealed to her so much that she went around meditating about it, and thinking how she could apply it to her restaurants.
He asked permission to hang some of the paintings of his ancestors, as well as a few other small pictures that had been stored for him by friends. However, he didn’t give undue prominence to these things. In what was no longer a drawing room, but a big living room, he found place for a collection of Mildred Pierce, Inc.: Mildred’s first menu, her first announcements, a photograph of the Glendale restaurant, a snapshot of Mildred in the white uniform, other things that she didn’t even know he had saved — all enlarged several times, all effectively framed, all hung together, so as to form a little exhibit. At first, she had been self-conscious about them, and was afraid he had hung them there just to please her. But when she said something to this effect, he put down his hammer and wire, looked at her a moment or two, then gave her a compassionate little pat. “Sit down a minute, and take a lesson in interior decorating.”