Beaches (17 page)

“It’s like what Patricia Neal had,” Neetie had told her on the phone, giving Bertie hope that her mother, like Patricia Neal, would somehow bravely retrain whatever parts of her body had been damaged and pull through. Not her mother. Bertie thought of the children at the Home for Crippled Children where she worked. About the hours of physical therapy they struggled through every day and how slow their progress was, in spite of all their zeal to be stronger. Rosie could never make it through that kind of struggle.

The taxi was on Collins Avenue heading downtown. The paper with Michael’s directions was still clutched in her hand. ST.
JOSEPH’S
HOSPITAL
.
MIAMI
BEACH
. I.C.U.
INTENSIVE
CARE
UNIT
.
COME
RIGHT
IN
THROUGH
EMERGENCY
.

Michael had spoken to Neetie after Bertie heard the news. Bertie had handed him the phone because she was sobbing so violently that Neetie could only say, “Please, Bertie. Please.”

Michael had written down the directions to the hospital. Michael had packed Bertie’s clothes. Michael had driven Bertie to the airport, taken her to the
VIP
Lounge because the plane’s departure was delayed an hour, and made her have a Coke to drink. “It’s free,” he said. Twenty-five dollars to belong to the
VIP
Lounge, which they never used. This was a twenty-five-dollar Coke. She had laughed at that to herself and then felt guilty. She was laughing. Rosie, on the other hand, was . . . don’t say it. Say it or not, she was sure this was it.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If only she could stop her thoughts.

“Take a Valium,” Michael said.

Those were his last words. Not, good-by. Not, I love you. Not, I hope she gets well. “Take a Valium.”

Maybe if she cried she’d feel better. She tried to cry, then decided there was no such thing as trying to cry. You either cried or you didn’t. How did actresses do it in the movies?

Without looking, Bertie could feel the Miami Beach buildings the taxi was passing. Pink and white and glitter-filled stucco-fronted hotels. The ones that had been the most beautiful were now the poor cousins to the modern high-rise condominiums. Maybe she wasn’t looking because it was festive and she was going to a hospital where . . . Bertie forced her head to turn, then closed her eyes immediately. Her first glimpse out the window had taken her breath away like a blow to the stomach.
CARILLON
HOTEL
.
FEB
. 14-28.
CEE
CEE
BLOOM
.

Cee Cee was here. In Miami Beach. Performing at the Carillon, which, Bertie realized, as the taxi pulled up and stopped outside a large pink Spanish building, was

right around the corner from the hospital. February 14-28. Today was, what-the twentieth or twenty-first?

Cee Cee again. Only a few weeks ago, Bertie and Michael had been at a dinner party at the home of Marshall, one of Michael’s law partners, and Marshall’s wife, Sheila.

“Eat a lot of hors d’oeuvres,” Sheila said, ” ‘cause we can’t have dinner until after Ed Sullivan.”

“My wife has a lot of class,” Marshall said, grabbing Sheila around the waist and pulling her close to him. Sheila giggled and kissed her husband on the cheek with a big
MWAH
sound. Bertie envied their playfulness.

“She’d serve us dinner in front of the television every night if I let her,” Marshall said.

“That’s not true. Only for Ed Sullivan. I love Ed Sullivan. Tonight he’s having David Frye. I love David Frye.”

They were sitting in Marshall and Sheila’s rumpus room. There were two other couples. When Ed Sullivan said, “And now, a really wonderful . . . really, really wonderful singer,” Bertie tapped her foot on the linoleum floor. She was hungry. God, Bertie thought, wouldn’t it be crazy if the really wonderful singer was Cee Cee? No. That would be impossible because Cee Cee wasn’t famous enough to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. You had to be a big star to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. So it wouldn’t be Cee Cee.

“Direct from the Broadway show Whatserface,” Ed said.

Good heavens, Bertie thought. I think that’s the name of the show that she’s in. Rosie had clipped a review from The New York Times.

“Let’s welcome …” Ed Sullivan put his hand out and said, “Cee Cee,” and he put his hand up to his face, paused a minute, and said, “Bloom.”

Then there was some music and there she was. Cee Cee. Singing. Belting out a wonderful song. Bertie’s face

was flushed and her heart was pounding. She looked out of the corner of her eye at Michael for some reaction. There was none. He sat at the end of the sofa watching, his left hand toying with an ashtray on the end table next to the sofa. Lifting the ashtray and gently placing it back on the table, again and again.

“This girl’s fabulous,” Sheila said after Cee Cee had sung about half the song.

“Yeah, Bertie knows her,” Michael said. No one heard him but Bertie.

When the song finished, the applause was peppered with people in the audience shouting bravo. Bertie excused herself, went to Sheila and Marshall’s powder room and splashed cold water on her face. Cee Cee again.

And now she was here, in Miami.

Bertie paid the taxi fare and carried her suitcase into the corridor. The smell and the feeling of the hospital filled her senses, and her head began to pound. It’s only a hospital, she told herself. The Home for Crippled Children is kind of a hospital. You should be used to the way a place like this feels. But she wasn’t.

“Excuse me.” She heard her voice sounding very tiny. “My mother is in I.C.U. and I don’t want to take my suitcase there . . . and I don’t know where exactly to . . .”

“Just put the suitcase in there,” a busy nurse said.

Bertie dragged the case a few more feet and put it in a closet. What if someone took it? So what? Have to get to Mother before she … oh, God.

“Elevator to the third floor,” the nurse said coldly. Why not? It wasn’t her mother.

I.C.U. and an arrow. Bertie rounded the corner and entered the room. Neetie was there. Neetie was a younger version of her mother, and for a split second when Bertie saw her, she thought it was her mother. Yes, maybe it had been, please, dear God, a joke they were playing just to get Bertie to come to Miami. Neetie looked at Bertie for what seemed like a long time before she real-

ized it was Bertie. Her eyes were half-closed and she got up slowly and put her arms around her sister’s child. That’s what she always called Bertie. “My sister’s child. I love you as if you were my own.”

Bertie didn’t move. Neetie’s smell engulfed her. Jean Nate. It was the way Neetie always smelled. The way her house in Pittsburgh had smelled all the time. There were giant bottles of it all over her funny little house. The house that Bertie used to think was magical because it had three telephone lines, with three different telephone numbers, all unlisted. Only later, when Bertie found out that Uncle Herbie was a bookie and what a bookie did, did the three telephones with the three different telephone numbers lose their magic.

“Come,” Neetie said, taking Bertie’s arm.

Bertie’s heart raced. She knew Neetie was taking her to see her mother, and she wasn’t ready. Ready? More make-up? Her mother was in a coma. Patricia Neal, remember? Coronary Care Unit. Doesn’t that mean heart attack? Swinging doors. Little cubicles. Nurses. Someone’s in an oxygen tent. Which one is … Neetie moved her. Guided her. Take a deep breath. Not too many. Don’t hyperventilate. Cubicle seven and . . . oh, my God, no, please, God, don’t let it be. Mother. Mommy. Oh, God.

Tubes. In every part of her. Tubes. The ominous one was in her nose. There was a computer connected to her with numbers that got higher and lower.

Bertie was afraid to look at Neetie. Neetie was used to it. She had seen it before. Since yesterday.

Yesterday in Pumpernicks. Rosie had to go to the ladies’ room. She was fine. Neetie had finished her corned beef sandwich, a little more coffee, please, when she heard the screams. In Pumpernicks there had been screams before.

“Some alta kocker croaks in here once a week,” a lady from New York with too much eye make-up said.

Neetie finished her coffee. A crowd was gathering by the ladies’ room. Neetie looked at her watch.

Maybe we’ll take a little walk on Collins, then we’ll go back to my place and see how Herbie’s doing, she thought. Then later, if Herbie’s busy, Rosie and I will go see a movie. Rosie. Where the hell was . . . Neetie heard the ambulance and stood up to see where it was headed.

No, it couldn’t be. She walked toward the ladies’ room. The door was open. A few people were inside. A heavy man wearing a flower print shirt was sitting on the floor beside the woman who had collapsed. Next to him a waitress was holding a pair of sandals. They were the sandals Neetie had picked for Rosie in Burdines.

“Rosie,” Neetie said. “Oh, not my Rosie.”

“Mom,” Bertie said.

“She can’t hear you. She doesn’t know it’s you. The doctor told me.”

“I don’t believe it. Mom.”

The numbers got higher. Heartbeat increases.

“I’m here, Mom,” Bertie said.

The tubes were moving liquids in and out. Intravenous. Catheter. There were slurping sounds with each labored breath.

“Look at her eyes,” Bertie said.

Rosie’s head was way back, probably to help the tubes to stay in, and her eyes looked as if they were half-open.

“Sometimes they flutter,” Neetie said. “Sometimes, I swear she wants to open them and look at me.”

A nurse entered briskly. For a second Bertie thought she was about to throw them out of the room. There had been a sign on the way in that said something about visiting I.C.U. rooms only on the hour, but it must have been the pained look on Bertie’s face, or maybe her resemblance to Rosie that told the nurse she was the daughter and damn the rules.

Bertie felt Neetie’s hand on her arm, trying to direct her out of the room, but she didn’t move. There was something telling her that maybe, if she stayed there, stood there, sang songs to Rosie, talked to her, read to her, tirelessly, constantly, that Rosie might wake up and respond.

“Mom,” she said. She was too embarrassed by the nurse’s presence to sing. If only she had the nerve, she would lean over the bed and sing “Poor Butterfly,” It was the song Rosie used to sing to her when she was a child to get her to feel better.

“Mom.” Bertie said it a little louder. She wanted to scream it out, but she was afraid the nurse would be shocked and tell her she had to leave because screaming was against hospital policy.

Bertie saw a nun walk through the corridor and enter one of the cubicles. That’s right. This was a Catholic hospital. This was probably a good time to be a Catholic, Bertie thought. To have a lot of faith.

She remembered reading some article about the Lennon Sisters while she was waiting at the beauty salon to get her hair cut one day. The Lennon Sisters’ father had been shot and killed by a man who was such a crazed fan of theirs that he wrote letters to them, saying he believed he was the real husband of Peggy. Or was it Kathy, the prettiest one? Then one day, so the article said, the man approached the Lennon Sisters’ father, who was on the golf course at the time, and demanded to know where to find Peggy, or Kathy, or whichever one he thought he was married to. The Lennon Sisters’ father wouldn’t tell the man, so the man killed the Lennon Sisters’ father. Shot him. The horrible part came when the police finally found the murderer. He was dead. He had shot himself, at least that’s what they said. But somehow, his body was in the trunk of his own car, surrounded by piles of fan magazines.

The Lennon Sisters were Catholic, and Bertie couldn’t remember now exactly what the article said, but mostly it was about how the Lennon Sisters believed it was “God’s will,” and they accepted it with peace in their hearts. And even in the photographs where they were coming out of the church from the funeral, they looked peaceful and serene and accepting.

Neetie edged her to the door, and Bertie took another look back at Rosie. There was no polish on her mother’s fingernails now. Bertie couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother’s nails without polish. And her hair. It looked like straw. She’d been bleaching it some yellowy color; now the roots were showing. If Rosie were awake and could see herself she would say, “Oh, my God. Don’t I look like hell?”

“Mom,” Bertie said.

“Come.” Neetie moved her out of the cubicle and through the big swinging doors through the corridor to the waiting room.

A woman of about forty was sleeping on one of the plastic couches. She was using a raincoat as a blanket.

“Mrs. Koven,” Neetie said, seeing Bertie look at the woman. “Her husband had a very serious heart attack. A young man, too. Forty-one.”

Bertie sat on a hard chair and tried to think what to do next.

Neetie went on. “She told me last night she’s been here for eleven days and nights straight. Doesn’t leave the waiting room except to go and sit by his bed and cry. Her daughter brings her food and clothes. She eats in here and changes in there.” Neetie pointed to a door that must obviously be a rest room. She seemed very interested in the woman’s case. She lit a cigarette and offered one to Bertie, who took it gratefully.

They sat and smoked. Bertie felt drained. She wanted to curl up on one of the plastic couches and cover herself with a raincoat, like the wife of the man with the heart

attack, but she knew there was too much to do. Things to take care of. Like what? she thought. Doctors. Yes.

“Where’s my mother’s doctor? Who’s her doctor?”

“A little guy,” Neetie said. “He was the one who was here when they admitted her. Spatz? Spitz? Something like that.”

“Where is he?”

“He’ll be here later.”

“When?”

Neetie shrugged. “Last night he said he’d be here tomorrow. That’s today. So I guess later.”

Bertie put her cigarette out and stood up. “I have to talk to him.”

She walked out into the hall. Bertie had just seen a look in Neetie’s eyes that she recognized. It was a look she herself sometimes gave Michael when she felt grateful to him for taking over some difficult situation. A situation she had tried to handle herself, but couldn’t. A look of relief that said, now that you’re here, and you’re going to be in charge, I can become helpless again. Bertie knew from the look that Neetie expected her to take over, believed that Bertie, who hadn’t even been able to pack her own suitcase to make the trip here, would now do it all. She would force the doctors to pay attention, she would make sure they got the information they needed. Yes. She would somehow put it all together to make Rosie well. Bertie looked at the big black doors of the coronary care unit. There was a nurses’ station in there. She could go in and find out from one of the nurses how to reach Rosie’s doctor.