Beaches (24 page)

“Well, now I’m here,” Cee Cee said, and blew a smoke ring, “so you’ll be better.”

But she wasn’t. The nausea awakened her every day. Cee Cee would hear her in the bathroom and put the pillow over her head to close out the ugly sound. At noon, when Cee Cee woke up and emerged from the yellow bedroom, she’d find Bertie sitting pale at the kitchen table trying to eat “just one little piece of toast,” which is what Rosie used to say to her when she wasn’t hungry.

And by the third day, Cee Cee was getting on Bertie’s nerves. She would stand in the kitchen in her flimsy little robe, half open, her now-chunky body sticking out here and there, and she’d make herself a huge breakfast with food she bought the day she’d arrived (she had taken Bertie’s car and come back three hours later with what she announced was “a shitload of food”). So there was always

sausage and bacon cooking, or cheddar-cheese omelettes and onions, and every whiff of the food made Bertie worse.

But the food was the least of it. Cee Cee dropped her clothes everywhere. Bathing suit in the lanai, shoes in the living room, jacket on the floor. The floor! Near the front door! If Rosie were alive, she’d die just hearing that, Bertie thought, picking up the jacket and putting it in the closet. And picking up the shoes on the morning of the third, or was it the fourth day, when she took the shoes to Cee Cee’s room? And after a quick tap on the door, which she was sure would suffice, since it was late in the afternoon, Bertie pushed the door open and a startled Cee Cee, who had her finger on one side of her nose, and was leaning over the mirror and the white line of powder, said, “Shit … I guess I shoulda locked the fuckin’ door.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “why are you doing that?” She was shocked and she didn’t hide it. She’d never seen anyone do anything like that.

“To kill my appetite,” Cee Cee said without looking up. She inhaled the cocaine. “I do it every day.”

Cocaine. Bertie had read enough articles to know what it looked like. Cee Cee using cocaine. In her house.

“Well, it doesn’t work,” Bertie blurted out. “You’ve been eating like a pig.” She was sorry she said it, but Cee Cee wasn’t fazed.

“I know,” Cee Cee said, “and with the calories in the booze . . . shit, I’m gonna be the fuckin’ Goodyear blimp by next week.” She opened a little case she’d been holding in her hand and scooped out some more of the cocaine and lined it up on the mirror.

“Cee Cee,” Bertie said quietly, “why are you doing that?”

Cee Cee inhaled the line through a rolled-up piece of paper, and when she had, she scrunched up her face for a minute and looked long at Bertie, who stood there, appalled.

“I’m doing it,” she said, her voice sounding unlike

Bertie had ever heard it before, “because I’m a very lonely semisuperstar who has everything there is except the one thing that I want, which is a man who will place his naked body on top of my naked body and say to me and mean it, ‘Cee Cee, you are the only woman in the world I ever care to touch, hold, kiss, caress, and love, and I will never leave you. So, have my babies, won’t you please, and if you never want to sing another note, that’s okay, too, ‘cause I’ll take care of you forever.’ ”

“And you think sniffing white stuff is going to get you that?”

“You sniff glue, you snort cocaine,” Cee Cee, obviously annoyed by the intrusion, said in that same shrill, panicky, weird voice. “And no, it may not get me that, but it does dull the pain of knowing I’m probably not ever going to get it. At least I think it dulls it. A little. Sometimes.” Cee Cee chewed on her lower lip while she thought about it. “No, it doesn’t,” she said after a moment. “Anyway, don’t judge me, you skinny bitch. You could have any man you wanted. Anytime. You’ll get over Michael in a week or two, and you’ll be beating them away from your door. All of ‘em wanting to jump all over your gorgeous bod. Not one of ‘em wanting this little porker,” Cee Cee said.

Cee Cee’s eyes were very sad and angry as she threw her robe open so Bertie could see her nakedness. A mass of bulges and flab. A wave of nausea passed over Bertie, but the anger she was feeling was more powerful than the sickness, and as Cee Cee closed her robe and was about to sit down on the bed, Bertie grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Gee, Gee,” she said, “why are you doing this? Do you want to be Judy Garland? And die some dramatic show business death? Be a legend? Have stories about your neuroses passed around Hollywood for years after you die? Or make yourself fat and pitiful and hooked on drugs till you take too much?”

“Bertie, this isn’t heroin. I know what I’m doing.”

Cee Cee looked annoyed now. Pestered. The way Bertie had seen her look at Leona when she tried to boss her.

“Then tell me why you’re doing this.” Bertie’s eyes were flashing. She took her hands from Cee Cee’s shoulders. And put her arms around herself. Hugging herself, trying to stop herself from shaking with anger.

Cee Cee sat on the unmade bed, which Bertie realized hadn’t been made in the four days since Cee Cee’s arrival. In fact, the whole room was a mess, clothes everywhere, full ashtrays. It was as if the room had taken on Cee Cee’s frazzled, uncombed personality. Bertie remembered how the room had looked when Rosie had visited. Meticulous Mommy, Michael had called her. “I hope your mother doesn’t get out of bed to go to the bathroom at night-knowing her, she’ll make the bed each time she goes.”

Cee Cee didn’t look at Bertie. She looked out the window at the ocean softly playing on the white sand. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t do it here,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Coke. I guess you should know now that I didn’t come here for you. I came because I’ve been going with a guy for six months and just found out he fucks twelve-year-old boys, and last month a studio gave me this great new part in a movie, only when I got there for my first meeting they said I was too fat and they took it away from me. So I figured I’d come here and clean up my act. I figured being with you would make you rub off on me-only I’m not doing so great, am I?”

Bertie looked into the oval mirror over the chest of drawers at the picture she saw The two of them. They looked to her like two gray-faced harridans with furrowed brows. One too fat, the other too thin, in the slovenly bedroom, and no one outside the bedroom caring about either of them. Certainly not Michael, who hadn’t called Bertie once since he left, and Cee Cee’s bisexual boyfriend wasn’t exactly beating the door down, either. Gee

Gee’s father was the only remaining parent either of them had, and he was in a convalescent home somewhere. The loneliness of it all filled her with an aching sadness.

“Gee, let’s help each other,” Bertie said softly. “We can. You’ll stop the drugs, and I won’t let you eat and you make me eat. We’ll take long walks any time you want to have cocaine. I’ll go to the health-food store and we’ll get some good food and we’ll take care of one another and . . .” Bertie couldn’t finish the sentence. The color drained from her face and she quietly left the guest room so she could throw up in her own bathroom.

The crowd of women that had been sitting in the doctor’s waiting room when Bertie and Cee Cee arrived was nearly all gone. It would be Bertie’s turn any minute.

“You want me to come in with you?” Cee Cee asked. “I only want to ‘cause I got an idea this doctor keeps the good magazines in there. Like Vogue and stuff. I mean this Highlights For Children is fuckin’ boring bullshit.”

An elegant blond woman in her late thirties who was sitting in a far corner of the waiting room looked up huffily from her copy of Parents magazine. Cee Cee nodded. “See,” she said to Bertie, “she agrees with me.” Bertie closed her eyes. Cee Cee! Why did she even talk to her? The woman started to read the magazine again, then changed her mind, decided to speak her piece, and looked right at Cee Cee.

“You know, a woman like you who’s in the public eye ought to have a responsibility and watch her filthy mouth. Otherwise, you should go back to Hollywood, because this is the wrong place for trash like you.”

“Well, this is certainly the right place for you,” Cee Cee said to the woman, then turned to Bertie for affirmation. “I mean, isn’t this the office of the cunt doctor?”

The door from the doctor’s office opened and a nurse emerged. “Mrs. Barron?”

Bertie stood and took Cee Cee by the arm. “You’d

better come in with me,” she said, and despite a raised eyebrow she was getting from the nurse, she pulled Cee Cee into the examining room with her.

“I feel like a voyeur,” Cee Cee said as Dr. Wechsler moved the speculum inside of Bertie. “Contrary to Hollywood rumor, I’ve never seen one of these from this angle.”

Bertie and Arthur Wechsler both laughed.

“But I’ll bet yours is cuter than most, Bert,” she said. “What do you think, Doc?”

Cee Cee wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe the young doctor blushed.

When he first walked into the room to examine Bertie, he’d looked at Cee Cee, then away, then quickly back again and said, ‘My God, you are you. Oh, my God. Am I dreaming?” Arthur Wechsler, Bertie’s cute bachelor gynecologist, was behaving like a child meeting Santa Claus.

“I’ve seen every movie you’ve made,” he said to Cee Cee while he checked Bertie’s breast for lumps.

“Ouch,” Bertie said. “Tender. They’re very tender, Arthur.”

“I saw you on Broadway in Sarah! At the Alvin Theatre, and I cried real tears. . . . Breathe.” He was tapping Bertie’s abdomen. “I was so in love with you.” Cee Cee grinned. He was cute. She wished she wasn’t looking so fat, but Arthur Wechsler didn’t seem to notice. He was obviously thrilled to meet the Cee Cee Bloom. He had blue eyes and black hair, what there was of it. He was bald on top and he had a black beard with flecks of gray in it. Sweet looking. Very sweet, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“Get dressed and come into my office,” he said to Bertie. “You did a urine specimen, right?”

Bertie nodded.

When the doctor closed the door, Cee Cee grinned. “Cute,” she said. “Real cute. I’d never let anyone that cute check my parts. Unless he was doing it unofficially.”

Both friends laughed.

There were no pictures of wives or kids on Dr. Wechsler’s desk or his wall. Cee Cee noticed that right off.

“You’re pregnant,” he said to Bertie.

Bertie thought she’d heard him wrong. “Pregnant- that’s crazy,” she said. “I can’t be pregnant. I mean, I never was before,” and then she realized what a silly thing that was to say.

Arthur Wechsler shrugged. “You are now.”

“Sweet heaven,” Bertie said. “One time. Do you know we had sex one time in six months?”

“That’s all it takes,” Cee Cee said, and chuckled.

“Not happy with the father?”

“Getting a divorce,” Bertie said. “We tried for ten years to make me pregnant.”

Cee Cee fidgeted in her chair. “I think the son of a bitch did this on purpose.”

Bertie sighed. “Well, look, let’s not go on about it. Let’s just set up a time when I can check into the hospital and get-”

“No.” Cee Cee jumped to her feet. “You’re not getting anything. We’re having it. We are gonna have this baby.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, wishing Cee Cee would just mind her own business, “I can’t have a baby alone.”

“Hey, who said alone? I’ll stick around for a while. Or come back and forth. And Artie here is gonna be there- not to mention little Cecilia, my godchild. So whaddya mean, alone?”

“No,” Bertie said.

Cee Cee looked very serious, but she had to be joking.

“Then have her and give her to me.” Cee Cee was pacing.

Arthur Wechsler was smiling. Bertie could tell he

couldn’t wait to call somebody, his girlfriend, somebody, and tell them he’d just met Cee Cee Bloom in his office.

“Bert,” Cee Cee said, “you’ve wanted a baby all your life. You can’t not do it ‘cause Michael’s gone. Don’t you get it? That’s the good news. Now at least the kid won’t have to grow up being influenced by Michael’s schmucky personality.”

Arthur Wechsler laughed, one of those laughs where the person who’s laughing can’t help himself.

“Oh, you know Michael?” Cee Cee asked Wechsler, who laughed again.

Bertie looked at the doctor, wishing that he’d stop laughing and say, “Cee Cee’s right. Have the baby.” Or even that he’d say, “Your friend may be great in the movies, but she’s wrong about babies. You shouldn’t have one unless the father’s in residence.” But Dr. Wechsler wasn’t even looking at Bertie. He was looking at Cee Cee, smiling a smile that looked like the smile of a sixth-grade boy as he asked her, “You married?”

“No more,” Cee Cee said. “You?”

“Never.”

Now Cee Cee was smiling.

Bertie couldn’t believe this. A courtship was taking place in front of her, between her little bald gynecologist and her overweight movie-star friend in the middle of the worst crisis of her life, and neither one of them cared about her.

“I want to know how come no one grabbed you yet, Doc,” Cee Cee said. “I thought a Jewish doctor was every girl’s dream.”

“I am definitely every girl’s dream,” answered Wechsler with an expression on his face Bertie could only describe as cute. “That’s why-I’m so picky.”

Bertie was really feeling sick now. She swallowed hard, hoping the nausea would go away. The banter between the doctor and Cee Cee was moving along at a clip. Bertie focused her eyes on and tried to read every word

on every framed diploma on the doctor’s wall, hoping to shut out the conversation, wanting to tell them both to shut up, when finally the intercom buzz from Wechsler’s desk jarred him back to reality.

The doctor grabbed the receiver. “Yes? Uh . . . okay. Tell her I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and turned to Bertie, serious again.

“You don’t have to decide now,” he said, “as long as you decide within a few weeks.”

“Nah,” Cee Cee said, taking Bertie’s arm and standing her up. “She’s decided already. We’re having it.”

Arthur Wechsler took Cee Cee’s hand and shook it heartily. His eyes never left hers, even when he patted Bertie on the arm and said, “Let me know.”

In the parking lot, Cee Cee did a little dance of celebration and insisted they go and have a champagne lunch at the Colony Tennis Club, and after a few sips of champagne, Bertie was starting to think that maybe having a cuddly little person to take care of would be healing, strengthening, give her a reason not to want to swim out to the edge of the world and fall off. Then Cee Cee dragged her into Baby Makes Three, a baby-clothing store, and they looked at lacy dresses and tiny patent leather Maryjanes and baby blue jeans and fringed vests in a size zero, and little stuffed lambs, and then they stopped at Pompano Pete’s overlooking the water and had a few Bloody Marys and laughed about the idea of Cee Cee’s never going back to Hollywood.