Mildred Pierce (17 page)

She called the hospital at eight the next morning, and after getting a favourable report, stayed on the phone, crowding her business into the next two hours. Around ten, she loaded her pies into the car, made the rounds of delivery, and arrived at the hospital about eleven. She was surprised to find Dr Gale already there, whispering in the corridor with a big hairy man in an undershirt, with tattoo marks on his arm. He called Mildred aside. ‘Now I don’t want you to get alarmed. But her temperature’s gone up. It’s a hundred and four now, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it, and I don’t like that thing on her lip.’

‘You mean it could be infected?’

‘I don’t know, and there’s no way to tell. I’ve taken a smear from the pimple, another from the mucus that’s coming from her nose, and a couple of CC’s of blood. They’re on their way to the laboratory now. They’ll ring me as soon as they possibly can.
But Mildred, here’s the point. If we’ve got trouble there, she can’t wait for any lab report. She’s got to have a transfusion, right away. Now I’ve got this man here, he’s a professional donor, but it’s his means of livelihood, and he won’t go in the room till he gets his twenty-five dollars. It’s entirely up to you, but—’

Without a thought of what twenty-five dollars would do to her little reserve, Mildred was writing the cheque before he finished talking. The man demanded an endorsement. Dr Gale signed, and Mildred, her hands sweating with fear, went into the sickroom. She had that same terrible feeling in her bowels that she had had that day on the boulevard. The child’s eyes were dull, her face hot, her whimpering a constant accompaniment to her rapid breathing. There was a new strip on her lip, a bigger one, covering a pack of gauze stained with the livid red of mercuro-chrome. A nurse looked up, but didn’t stop spooning ice into the fluttering little mouth. ‘This happened after I talked to you, Mrs Pierce. She had a nice night, temperature constant, and we thought she’d be all right in a few hours. Then just like that it went up.’

Ray began to fret, and the nurse began talking to her, saying it was her mother, and didn’t she know her mother? Mildred spoke to her. ‘It’s Mamma, darling.’

‘Mamma!’

Ray’s voice was a wail, and Mildred wanted to gather her into her arms, but she merely took one of the little hands and patted it. Then Dr Gale came in, and other doctors, in white smocks, and nurses, and the donor, his sleeves rolled high this time, showing a veritable gallery of tattoo marks. He sat down, and Mildred stood like a woman of stone while a nurse swabbed his arm. Then she went out in the corridor and started walking up and down, quietly, slowly. Somehow, by a supreme effort of will, she made time pass. Then two nurses came out of the room, then one of the doctors, then the donor, and some orderlies. She went in. The same nurse, the one who had spoken to her before, was at the head of the bed, busy with thermometer and watch. Dr Gale was bent over, peering intently at Ray. ‘Her temperature’s down, doctor.’

‘Good.’

‘A hundred and one.’

‘That’s just great. How’s the pulse?’

‘Down too. To ninety-six.’

‘That’s wonderful. Mildred, I’ve probably put you to a lot of expense over nothing. Just the same—’

They walked out to the corridor, came to an angle, went on. He resumed talking in a casual way: ‘I hated to do it, Mildred, just hated to slap that outlay on you – though I’ll see that every charge is as reasonable as they can make it. But if I had it to do over again, I’d tell you just what I told you before. You see, here’s what we’re up against. An infection above the mouth drains into the lateral sinus, and that means the brain. Now with that little pip on her lip there was no way to tell. Every symptom she had spelled grippe, but just the same, all of those symptoms
could
have been caused by strep, and if we had waited until we were sure, it would have been too late. The way she’s reacting to that transfusion shows it was all a false alarm – but I’m telling you, if it had been that other, and we hadn’t moved fast, I’d never have forgiven myself, and neither would you.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘These things happen, they can’t be helped.’

Somewhere on the floor a buzzer sounded, then sounded again, sharply, insistently. It seemed to Mildred that Dr Gale turned rather quickly, that their saunter was no longer a saunter. As they approached the room an orderly hurried past them, carrying hot-water bottles. He entered the room. When they went in, the nurse was jamming them under the covers, which were thick with extra blankets she had already piled on. ‘She’s having a chill, doctor.’

‘Orderly, get Dr Collins.’

‘Yes, sir.’

From the ice that was forming around her heart, Mildred knew it was no false alarm this time. She sat down, watched Ray’s face turn white, then blue; when the little teeth began to chatter she looked away. An orderly came in with more bottles, which the nurse pushed under the covers without looking up. He was followed by Dr Collins, a short, heavy man who bent
over Ray and studied her as though she were an insect. ‘It’s the pimple, Dr Gale.’

‘I can’t believe it. She reacted to that transfusion—’

‘I know it.’

Dr Collins turned to an orderly and snapped orders in a curt, clipped voice: for oxygen, adrenalin, ice. The orderly went. Both doctors studied Ray in silence, the chattering of her teeth the only sound in the room. After a long time the nurse looked up. ‘Her pulse is faster, Dr Collins.’

‘What is it?’

‘A hundred and four.’

‘Take off the hot-water bottles.’

As the nurse pulled out the hot-water bottles and dropped them to the floor the room began to fill. Other nurses appeared, wheeling an oxygen apparatus and a white table full of vials and syringes. They stood around, as though waiting. Ray’s teeth stopped chattering and her face lost the blue look. Then red spots appeared on her cheeks, and the nurse felt her forehead. ‘Her temperature’s rising, Dr Collins.’

‘Take off the blankets.’

Two nurses stripped off the blankets and a third stepped forward with icebags, which she packed around Ray’s head. For a long time they were all motionless, and there was no sound except Ray’s laboured breathing, and the first nurse’s report on the pulse: ‘A hundred and twelve . . . A hundred and twenty-four . . . A hundred and thirty-two . . .’

Presently Ray was panting like a little dog, and her whimpering had a pitiful note in it that made Mildred want to cry out against the injustice that one so small, so helpless, should have to bear such agony. But she sat perfectly still, not distracting by so much as a movement the attention of those on whom Ray’s chance depended. The child’s struggle went on and on, and then suddenly Mildred tightened. The breathing stopped for a second, then resumed in three or four short, harrowing gasps, then stopped altogether. Dr Collins motioned quickly, and two nurses stepped forward. They had scarcely begun their rapid lifting and lowering of Ray’s arms before Dr Gale had the mask of the oxygen apparatus over her face, and Mildred caught the thunder-storm
smell of the gas. Dr Collins filed the neck of a vial, snapped it off. Quickly filling a syringe, he lifted the covers and jabbed it into Ray’s rump. The first nurse had Ray’s wrist, and Mildred saw her catch Dr Collins’s eye and glumly shake her head. The artificial respiration went steadily on. After a minute or two, Dr Collins refilled his syringe, again jabbed it into Ray’s rump. Another minute went by, and Mildred saw glances exchanged between nurses. As Dr Collins refilled his syringe, she stood up. She knew the truth, and she also knew that one more jab into the lifeless little bottom would be more than she could stand. She lifted the mask of the oxygen apparatus, bent down, kissed Ray on the mouth, and pulled the sheet over her face.

She was sitting in the alcove again, but here it was Dr Gale who broke down, not she. The cruel suddenness of it had left her numb, as though she had no capacity to feel, but as he approached, his stoop was a tottering slump. He dropped down beside her, took off his glasses, massaged his face to keep it from jerking. ‘I knew it. I knew it when I saw that orderly, running with the bottles. From then on there was no hope. But – we do everything we can. We can’t give up.’

Mildred stared straight ahead of her, and he went on: ‘I loved her like she was mine. And there’s only one thing I can say. I did everything I could. If anything could have saved her, that transfusion would – and she had it. And you too, Mildred. We both did everything that could have been done.’

They sat for a few minutes, both swallowing, both locking their teeth behind twitching lips. Then, in a different tone, he asked: ‘You got any choice on an undertaker, Mildred?’

‘I don’t know any undertaker.’

‘I generally recommend Mr Murock, out there in Glendale, just a few blocks from you. He’s reasonable, and won’t run up charges on you, and he’ll attend to everything the way most people want it done.’

‘If you recommend him, then it’s all right.’

‘I’ll call him.’

‘Is there a phone around?’

‘I’ll find you one.’

He took her to a little office on the same floor, and she sat down and dialled Mrs Biederhof. She asked for Bert, but he was out, and she said: ‘Mrs Biederhof, this is Mildred Pierce. Will you tell Bert that Ray died a few minutes ago? At the hospital. I wanted him to know right away.’

There was a long, bellowing silence, and then: ‘Mrs Pierce, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him just as soon as I can find him, but I want to tell you that I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. Now, is there anything I can do?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Can I take Veda for a little while?’

‘No, thanks ever so much.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Biederhof.’

She drove home mechanically, but after a few blocks she began to dread the stop signals, for sitting there, waiting for the light to change, she would have time to think, and then her throat would clutch and the street begin to blur. When she got home, Bert came out to meet her, and took her into the den, where Letty was trying to quiet Veda. Letty went back to the kitchen, and Veda broke into loud sobs. Over and over, she kept saying: ‘I owed her a nickel! Oh, Mother, I cheated her out of it, and I meant to pay it back, but –
I owed her a nickel
!’

Soothingly, Mildred explained that if she really meant to pay it back, this was the main thing, and presently Veda was quiet. Then she began to fidget. Mildred kissed her and said: ‘Would you like to go over to your grandfather’s, darling? You could practise your piano lessons, or play, or whatever you want to do.’

‘Oh Mother, do you think it would be right?’

‘Ray wouldn’t mind.’

Veda trotted out of the house, and Bert looked a little shocked. ‘She’s a child, Bert. They don’t feel things the way we feel them. It’s better that she not be here while – arrangements are being made.’

Bert nodded, wandered about the room. A match in the fireplace caught his attention, and he stooped to pick it up. So doing, he bumped his head. If he had been hit with an axe he
couldn’t have collapsed more completely. Instinctively, Mildred knew why: poking into the fireplace had brought it all back, the game he used to play with Ray, all the gay nonsense between the elephant and the monk. Mildred led him to the sofa, took him in her arms. Then together, in the darkened room, they mourned their child. When he could speak, he babbled of Ray’s sweet, perfect character. He said if ever a kid deserved to be in heaven she did, and that’s where she was all right. Goddam it, that’s where she was. Mildred knew this was a solace from a pain too great for him to bear: that he was taking refuge in the belief she wasn’t really dead. Too realistic, too literal-minded, to be stirred much by the idea of heaven, she nevertheless craved relief from this aching void inside of her, and little heat lightnings began to shoot through it. They had an implication that terrified her, and she fought them off.

The phone rang. Bert answered, and sternly said that there had been a death in the family, and that Mrs Pierce couldn’t possibly talk business today. Mildred barely heard him. The restaurant seemed remote, unreal, part of a world that no longer concerned her.

Around three-thirty, Mr Murock arrived. He was a roly-poly little man, and after seven seconds of purring condolences, he got down to brass tacks. Everything in connection with the body had been taken care of. In addition, notices had been placed in the afternoon papers, though the morning notices would have to wait until Mildred decided when she wanted the funeral, so perhaps that should be the first thing to consider. Mildred tried to get her mind on this, but couldn’t. She was grateful to Bert when he patted her hand and said he would attend to all that. ‘Fact of the matter, Pop wants to stand the expense, anyhow. He and Mom, they both wanted to come over when I came, but I told them to wait a little while.’

‘I’m glad you came alone.’

‘But Pop, he wants to stand the expense.’

‘Then you attend to it.’

So Bert talked to Mr Murock, apparently knowing instinctively what she wanted. He set the time of the funeral at noon
the next day. ‘No use stringing it out’, a point to which Mr Murock instantly agreed. The grave could be dug in the Pierce family plot in Forest Lawn Cemetery, which had been acquired on the death of the uncle who left Bert the ranch. Services were to be conducted at the house, by the Rev. Dr Aldous, whom Mr Murock said he knew very well, and would call at once. Dr Aldous was Bert’s rector, and for a miserable moment Mildred felt ashamed that she could claim no rector as her own. As a child she had gone to the Methodist Sunday School, but then her mother had begun to shop around, and finally wound up with the astrologers who had named Veda and Ray. Astrologers, she reflected unhappily, didn’t quite seem to fill the bill at this particular time.