Beaches (26 page)

“What?” Bertie asked.

“I mean a straight person,” Cee Cee said. “A person Arthur’s mother would like. Bert, I almost choked on those words. I don’t believe they came out of my mouth.” And they both laughed.

“Cee Cee, you’re not-”

“Wondering if I could become an ordinary person? You bet I am. Wondering if I could be Mrs. Arthur Wechsler? Bertie, last night we did it for the first time. It was fantastic, and Arthur said … he loves me, Bertie. Even though I’m fat and divorced, and I used to snort a lot of coke, which I told him, and had lots of men, and

some of ‘em were major dopers, and we both know I won’t exactly fit in with his friends who I haven’t met yet, but he told me they’ve all seen my movies. ... He loves me.”

Bertie wasn’t sure, but it looked like Cee Cee was going to cry. “He should love you, Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “because you’re great.”

The two friends hugged, and while they were hugging, they each said the same words at the same time:

“Let’s go shopping.”

Bertie knew every shop in town, and it was fun to go into them with Cee Cee and Cee Cee’s unlimited budget. Bertie had never really thought much about how recognizable Cee Cee was, even after Arthur Wechsler’s starstruck reaction, until they were walking through the shopping area and people stopped to stare and nudge their friends and point at Cee Cee, who with the weight loss was starting to look more like she did in her movies.

“I’m fainting because it’s you,” the saleswoman in John Baldwin said as Cee Cee modeled a white wool suit.

Cee Cee smiled at the saleswoman, then looked at herself in the three-way mirror. “This one makes me look like a nurse in a very fancy hospital,” she said.

“I think it’s perfect for mother-meeting,” Bertie told her.

Cee Cee bought the white suit, the same suit in navy and in black, and silk shirts in brown and white and black, a black crew-neck sweater and a white lace blouse, and cashmere sweaters in burgundy and red. Black loafers and plain black pumps, plain gray pumps, and burgundy pumps with a bow.

Except for the orange hair, she was almost unrecognizable in the clothes. Each time she emerged from the dressing room to model an outfit for Bertie, she looked to Bertie like Cee Cee playing some strange role. As she paid for the clothes with her charge card, she said to Bertie, “If his mother hates me on the first meeting, I’ll

bring everything back.” Bertie laughed. The salesgirl looked nervous and said to Cee Cee, “What was that, dear?” Before they left the store Cee Cee gave her autograph to one of the saleswomen, who had asked by saying, “It’s for my granddaughter who idolizes you. Could you please write, ‘To Stacey Bruckner.’ ” Cee Cee did, smiling and all the while trying to discuss with Bertie if the white was better for Arthur’s mother or the black.

“I’m scared, Bert,” Cee Cee said as they put the packages in the trunk of Bertie’s Cadillac. “Isn’t it nuts? I’ve sung in front of trillions of people all over the world, sometimes I had the flu, once even pneumonia, when I had to go on and my heart pounded and I felt clammy and afraid, but I did it, and wowed em! And now on Wednesday I’m meeting a little sixty-year-old Jewish lady, and I’m a basket case from thinkin’ about how to act like a real person with her. You know? That’s what it is. Acting. Like if I had some part where I had to play a real together person? That’s what I’m doin’, Bert. I’m doin’ it with Artie, too. Acting. I don’t say fuck or shit or cunt in front of him. Never. Or even call him an asshole. I mean he’s not one. But that’s not why I don’t do it, I mean even as a joke like I sometimes do, because he’s a gentleman and he makes me want to not be some flashy show-business type, some star, because you know why?”

The two women got into the car, and Bertie pulled out and headed down toward the shore.

“Because I don’t trust what I have. What I am in the world. This famous-person shit. Because it fucks you over. It gives you fake highs and makes you think you’re so hot no one can get anywhere near you. And for a few minutes you’re sure no one is prettier than you, no one is smarter, no one is sexier, and no one sings better, and you carry that with you like it’s some possession, some precious stone in your pocket. Then, as the days go by, you know what happens? You start feelin’ for it. Checking your pocket to see if it’s still there or if you let it fall out

through a hole, or maybe it got stolen, or you left it somewhere, and lots of times you’re panicked because it makes you think you can’t live without the high, and if you lose it you’ll be nobody. Nowhere. A bag lady. Sometimes I see those ladies, the ones who live in between buildings, and I think, if I don’t make a good movie soon-no, a great movie, where people in the audience go home crying about how heroic I was, or how funny I was-I’m gonna end up living in between buildings, too.”

Cee Cee rolled her window down, and took a deep breath of the salty air. The breeze blew her red curls away from her face, and as Bertie glanced at her, she looked cherubic and happy suddenly as she spoke.

“I know what counts is being married to someone solid, Bert. Someone who loves you every day. Because that’s worth somethin’. That doesn’t fuck you over.”

“Cee Cee, you’re crazy. John loved you every day. I don’t want to put a damper on this fantasy you’re having, but I’m afraid you’re thinking that marriage is going to save you, and it doesn’t. And I don’t know why you think it will, because you thought that last time, and it didn’t. Gee, I know you’re unhappy in Hollywood now, and you’re looking for some fast solution to feel better, so you think it should be Arthur Wechsler, and maybe it is. But you need to take your time.”

“Bert, John loved me, but he couldn’t take my success in show business. Arthur doesn’t care if I’m Cee Cee Bloom or the cleaning lady.”

Bertie had stopped the car for a red light just then, and when she looked into Cee Cee’s eyes, they both knew what Cee Cee had just said was a lie. The cleaning lady ; would not be invited to meet Arthur Wechsler’s mother.

The mother-meeting went wonderfully well. Cee Cee bought a bouquet of flowers and took them with her to present to Ethel Wechsler, who had spent the entire day over a brisket: “Even though my son offered to take me to

the Colony Tennis Club for a nice piece of fish, I said, listen, a girl like that probably would like a nice Jewish meal sometimes. ... So aren’t you glad?” Cee Cee said she was very glad, and then she looked at Arthur’s baby pictures, and also his teenaged pictures.

It wasn’t a lie that he was balding when he was a teen, but he was also gorgeous and smart, Ethel Wechsler said, several times. A Harvard graduate. And when the phone rang, and Ethel Wechsler answered it and had spoken to the party on the other end of the line for a while, she came out of the kitchen where she had taken the call and asked Cee Gee if she’d mind saying hello to her sister, Arthur’s favorite aunt, who loved her in Sarah!, which she’d seen six times. Cee Cee said, of course, she’d say hello. So Ethel dragged the telephone out of the kitchen and brought it to her.

Arthur was all smiles. He held Cee Gee’s hand and looked lovingly into her eyes. Then the aunt, whose name was Fanny, said, “Don’t try and kid me, I know it’s not Cee Cee Bloom on the phone because if you are, you’ll sing something from Sarah!”

Cee Cee laughed. Arthur put his head next to hers and she held out the earpiece of the receiver so Arthur could listen to Aunt Fanny with her cute little Yiddish accent say, “So nu. So sing.”

Cee Cee was uncomfortable. She looked at Arthur and he nodded as if she should go ahead. This was his favorite aunt. Cee Cee took a breath and sang in full voice:

Needing so much love, I stand before you. Needing so much love, How I adore you.

Aunt Fanny screamed, “Oy, my God, Cee Cee Bloom. Oy, my God.”

And as the proud Ethel Wechsler took the phone out

of Cee Cee’s hand and walked a few feet and said into the receiver, “Would I lie to you? . . . She’s crazy about my Arthur,” her Arthur was kissing Cee Cee a thank-you kiss for pleasing his mother and also Aunt Fanny. A very grateful kiss.

“He was even more grateful later,” Cee Cee told Bertie happily. “Mmmmm, I’m crazy about him. And the mother, Ethel-she likes me. When we went back to his place, she called there. She calls him every night. Of course, she doesn’t know I’m there, but she called and said I’m much more attractive in person and that so long as he was happy she was happy, too. And, Bert, early this morning, when the sun was coming up, he told me she has a ring that his father, who’s dead now, gave to her when they got engaged, and when he finally gets married it’s going to go to the woman he marries. Isn’t that sweet, Bert? They’re sweet people.”

“Sweet,” Bertie said, still convinced the bubble was a bubble.

Bertie’s nausea was gone, and she was beginning to feel stronger, healthy and hungry and eager to start showing so she could believe in her pregnancy. So far the only thing that was different was the size of her breasts, and the fact that she was no longer menstruating. But she was frequently sad and depressed and lonely.

Cee Cee was completely involved in her romance. It was all she talked about when she wasn’t having lunch with the wife of one of his friends, who told her over an avocado stuffed with crabmeat: “I never thought you’d be so real like this and talk to people who are just Sarasota people,” or going to open houses of the most expensive waterfront homes. “Just taking a peek,” she said to Bertie when she brought home the fact sheets on all the houses. It was a long time before she took a good look at Bertie one afternoon and saw the sadness that filled her eyes.

“Bert,” she said one day, “I’d be the last one to say

this to you, but maybe you ought to call Michael. Tell him you’re-”

“Did that already. He told me to get rid of it,” Bertie said.

“Oh.” And that was all. No more discussion. Cee Cee didn’t want to discuss Bertie’s problems. She was flying. She didn’t need Bertie. She didn’t need anyone.

Until after the phone call that night. When Bertie answered it, she heard the hushed sound of the longdistance line and when the man asked for Cee Cee, Bertie asked his name, and when Bertie told Cee Cee it was “someone named Allan,” Cee Cee, who had been putting on her make-up because Arthur was picking her up in one hour, turned pale under all the blusher.

She took the phone in the kitchen and closed the door.

“Hello,” Bertie heard her say, but then went quickly back into her bedroom because even though she would have loved to know who could make Cee Cee look that afraid, it wasn’t right to listen to someone else’s calls.

After about fifteen minutes, Bertie heard Cee Cee in the living room, and then back in the guest room; she wanted to go in and ask her who that was and if she was okay, but . . . this was dumb. Allan was probably her agent. It was probably about a job, and Cee Cee was afraid to get offered a job, because if she did, she’d have to choose between taking the job and going away, or turning it down and staying here with Arthur. Of course that was it. A job.

But when Cee Cee opened the door and Bertie looked at her eyes, she knew the call hadn’t been about a job. She also knew Cee Cee had probably just used cocaine.

“Where’re my suitcases?” she asked.

“Your what?”

“Suitcases,” Cee Cee said. “I’m leaving.”

“For-”

“Home,” Cee Cee said.

“Gee, you can’t. Arthur’s due here in-”

“Bert,” Cee Cee said, “there’s a real big difference between wanting someone and wanting to want someone. Arthur Wechsler is the right man for me, so I want to want him. But the honest-to-God truth is I love Allan Jackson. He’s an unemployed guitar player who fucks boys when he’s not fucking me. He says he’ll lay off the boys for a while and give me a shot-and I’m leavin’, Bert. I have to be with him. Have to. I heard his voice on the phone and I said to myself, he owns you. You asshole. Face up to it. For whatever reason, he owns you. More than John did. Light-years more than this nice Jewish boy I wanted to love so I could go straight. Sometimes one person taps into another in some real deep place where no one else has been or can get to-and once you’ve been touched there, no other kind of love works for you. I had that with Allan, and I don’t want to live without it.”

She didn’t even try to call Arthur Wechsler, just called a taxi, dressed quickly, packed without a word. All the new clothes looked odd next to the sequined clothes, as though the bag was being packed for two different people.

“Gee, are you sure you-”

“Positive,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky and shrill again, and Bertie noticed the small mirror was sitting on the dresser again.

When she looked away from the mirror and back at Cee Cee, their eyes met and Cee Cee’s were filled with pain.

“I tried,” she said, “and I almost …” She shook her head. “It was a lie,” she said.

The taxi horn honked. She hugged Bertie a fast hug, then picked up one of her suitcases and the hanging bag. Bertie picked up the other suitcase, and they walked toward the door. When Bertie opened it, Percy the black cabdriver in the Hawaiian shirt stood smiling in the doorway.

“Miss Cee Cee going home?” he said.

“Yes,” Bertie answered, and she burst into tears.

Percy took the bags, and Cee Cee and Bertie hugged again,

“I love you and I already love the baby,” Cee Cee said, “and I’ll come back soon. I promise I will-for her, because she needs me.” And then she was out the door.

Bertie closed the front door. Numb. She leaned against the door and thought about it all, from the phone call when Bertie first told Cee Cee about Michael’s leaving, through her arrival-and the days filled with stories and fantasies of how Cee Cee could change and be more “Bertie-ish,” as she said.

Bertie must have been very deep in thought because when the doorbell rang it made her jump. She turned quickly to open the door and Arthur Wechsler stood, one foot on the step, the other on the path. He was carrying a small bouquet and looked more dapper than ever; it even seemed as if he had more hair.

“Hello, Arthur,” Bertie said.

“Hi there,” he said, and the smell of his wonderful cologne came wafting into the room. “Where’s my girl?”