Beaches (34 page)

She got slowly out of bed, threw on her green terry-cloth robe, and walked downstairs.

“Hi,” Bertie said as she dropped the saucepan she’d been holding while she tried to figure out where it was supposed to be stored.

“Over the stove,” Cee Cee said.

Bertie picked the pot up and stood on her toes in order to reach the cabinet over the stove.

“Gee, I asked him,” she said.

“Asked who?” Cee Cee said. “What?”

“Michael. To see Nina. I called him this morning, about an hour ago, and I said, ‘Listen, Michael, here we all are in Los Angeles. You, me, and Nina. None of us planned it, but we’re here. Doesn’t it seem to you as if it was predestined? Well, it does to me. And I thought it would be the best idea in the whole round world if I brought Nina to breakfast today and you could finally be with your daughter.’ ”

Cee Cee felt inside the pocket of her robe for a cigarette. She walked over to the stove, put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it on the flame of the gas burner.

“What’d he say?” she asked at the same time she inhaled.

“He said no,” Bertie answered. “And at first I got upset and tried to argue with him, but then I stopped, Gee. Do you know why? Because even though he said no,

I heard a little maybe in his voice. And that’s a good sign, because that means when I see him this morning I can talk him into it. I know I can. He wants to meet her. How could he not want to? She’s his daughter. And now she’s not a little crying infant anymore. Now she’s a person with ideas, and she’ll be able to charm him, don’t you think?”

“Bert, this guy is heartless. You keep forgetting that. You’re gonna get your hopes up and he’s gonna disappoint you.”

“He won’t, Gee. And Nina has to meet him. See that he exists. He has to let her, even if it’s just this once.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to shower. If Nina’s still asleep when I leave, please, when she wakes up, just tell her I needed to do some shopping this morning, and that I’ll be back a little after noon. Thanks, Gee.”

Before Cee Cee could respond, Bertie swept up the steps carrying her coffee mug with her, Cee Cee stood in the kitchen silently until she heard the bathroom door close and the shower start. Then she said out loud, “The fucking son of a bitch,” and poured herself a cup of coffee.

The smell of Bertie’s perfume called Opium still hung in the air long after she’d run nervously out the front door after asking Cee Cee, “How do I look? Do you think I look okay?” Cee Cee had reassured her that as always she looked better than anyone in the world.

A few minutes later, Cee Cee was sprawled on the deck outside surrounded by the newspaper, her coffee cup, and three scripts her agent had sent over for her to read. Jeez, little kids slept late. She’d always thought they woke up real early in the morning and bugged their parents. Not Nina, though. She was obviously still out like a friggin’ light.

An hour later, Cee Cee finished reading one of the scripts and hated it so much that she threw it across the deck. She was hungry. Maybe she’d wake up Nina and take her to lunch. To some place where they had forks. Hah! The kid was weird. There was no doubt about that.

Cee Cee opened the door to the guest bedroom slowly, but Nina wasn’t in her bed.

“Nina,” Cee Cee called out. Must be in the guest bathroom. No. The door to the guest bathroom was open and Cee Cee looked inside. Bertie’s pretty flowered cosmetic bag sat on the sink.

“Nina?” No answer.

Cee Cee looked in every room upstairs, then every room downstairs, then walked out onto the deck, even though she knew the kid couldn’t have gotten past her to go outside.

“Nina?” Weird.

Cee Cee walked in her bare feet down the few steps to the beach and looked both ways. To the north, the beach was empty of people as far as she could see. To the south were a few blankets of sunbathers in the distance, but none seemed to have a child with them.

Cee Cee walked back up to the house and checked the garage and the road outside. Maybe Nina had somehow gone out to the beach and started walking, then couldn’t find her way back or recognize the house or …

“Nina?”

Cee Cee was out on the deck again. Kids. Christ. What was she doing with a kid around, anyway? Kids were nothin’ but trouble, and now this pain-in-the-ass kid with her weird hung-up personality was pulling some stupid disappearin’ act and Cee Cee had to find her. Had to. Shit. She was the goddamned babysitter, for chrissake. South. If the kid had any class she would have headed south. That was where the real fancy houses were. Cee Cee decided to walk south on the beach and look for her. She walked down to the water, thinking she would have a better view of the whole beach if she walked along the shoreline.

Nina. Where the fuck was she?

Later, when Cee Cee told Bertie how it happened, she said she wasn’t sure what it was that made her look

back at the house, but when she did, something pink and very still caught her eye. Something under the deck of the old wooden Cape Cod house.

“Nina,” Gee Cee yelled. And then she ran toward the house.

Nina didn’t move. Just sat staring out at the sea. She was wearing bright pink baby-doll pajamas. “You okay, kid?” Cee Cee asked, out of breath now as she fell to a sitting position on the sand a few feet away from the little girl. Nina didn’t look at her.

“Yeah,” Nina said.

“When’d you come out here? I didn’t even see you,” Cee Cee said.

“You were asleep,” Nina said. “It was real early.”

“When your mom got up?” Cee Cee asked, edging a little closer, and realizing for the first time that she was still dressed in the terry-cloth robe.

“Right after,” Nina said. “But she didn’t see me neither ‘cause she was on the telephone.”

Oh, shit, Cee Cee thought. Oh, no.

“So did you just come right out here, or did you go downstairs and have a glass of O.J.?” Cee Cee asked, and actually crossed her fingers behind her back, hoping what she knew was true might not be.

“Huh-uh,” Nina answered, then reached down and started picking at the toenail on the big toe of her right foot. “I didn’t want breakfast ‘cause I wasn’t hungry,” she said. “So I sat on the floor in the hallway for a while.”

“Bet you could eat a horse now though, right?” Cee Cee said. “How ‘bout I make a nice big breakfast?” Cee Cee tried.

“No, thank you.”

“Lunch, maybe? Great big plate of spaghetti? I like spaghetti. It doesn’t like me though. Gives me thunder thighs. But I’m crazy about it. Crazy enough to take you out for some right now. Want some spaghetti?”

“No, thank you.”

“You gonna stay here all day or what?”

Nina nodded.

“Forever?”

Nina nodded again.

“Well, you’re gonna miss a lot of real good times if you do,” Cee Cee said, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket. No matches. “Parties. Like the one we’re having on Sunday.”

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Nina said, looking at the cigarette. “My mom stopped last year.”

“I know,” Cee Cee said, “but I can’t.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m too uptight,” she answered. Christ. Now she had to answer to a kid?

“You mean like toonies?” Nina asked, brightening.

“What?” Cee Cee asked her.

“Toonies uptight.”

Cee Cee was getting very uncomfortable. It was hot and musty under the deck, and she wanted to go inside and take a shower, and then have some lunch, for chrissake. She was starving.

“Like in the song,” Nina said.

Cee Cee had had enough. Kids could manipulate you after a while, just by pouting, and this one wanted to sit here under the goddamn deck and chat. She was just about to get up and say, Listen, you little brat, you woke up, you tiptoed around, and you probably heard your mother begging your father to meet you and you’re pissed off ‘cause he said no. Well, you know what? Life is tough. Real tough. But as she started to stand, the meaning came to her.

“You mean ‘Ballin’ the Jack’?” she asked Nina. “That song?”

“Uh-huh,” Nina said. “I learned it in my dancing school class.”

“You swing ‘em to the left and you swing *em to the

right,” Cee Cee said, and Nina smiled, and then they both sang:

Step around the floor kinda nice and light.

And Cee Cee deliberately stopped as Nina’s perfect little voice sang:

And then you twist around and twist around with all your might.

Nina, proud of herself, grinned a grin Cee Cee hadn’t seen on her ever before. It was Bertie’s grin.

“I learned it in my dancing school class, too,” Cee Cee said. “Did you do this with your hands?” she asked, holding her hands up to her face as if they were a frame.

“No. We did this,” Nina said, putting her little hands on her little hips.

“Why don’t you come up to the deck,” Cee Cee said, “and I’ll show you the way I learned it.”

Nina got up slowly and shook the sand from her legs and the seat of her pajamas.

“Race you,” she said.

The Polo Lounge was buzzing with people talking and laughing, and every table Bertie could see was full. She felt queasy and shaky and afraid. It was five years since she’d seen Michael. He sat at the bar facing away from the door. She looked for a moment at the curly hair, now with a lot of gray in it, and the spot on the back of his head which had been balding a tiny bit, showed much more scalp than she remembered. Then, as if he felt her looking at him, Michael turned, saw her, smiled, and stood.

They walked toward one another and hugged, a formal hug. His smell, and the feeling of his arms, even the coldness of the hug felt familiar to Bertie. The maitre d’ led them to a table in a far corner.

“Well, how are you?” Michael asked, after a moment. And for that second, it seemed to Bertie as if he honestly wanted to know.

“I’m good,” Bertie said, “This meeting feels a little odd, but I’m good.”

A defensive look crossed Michael’s eyes. “Bert, you called me,” he said.

Bertie wanted so badly to be cool. To say the right thing. To be able, without a scene, to let him know how she felt. Michael, of course it’s odd. You’re the absent father of our six-year-old child. She looks like you, behaves like you, reminds me every day of my life when I look at her that you’re not there and haven’t once seen her face or let her see yours. And every time she asks me why you don’t come to see her, I want to shriek, don’t ask me. Call him. Your father. Call the cold, withholding, repressed, self-important son of a bitch, and ask him why he won’t.

But instead, Bertie put her hand over his and told him how glad she was to see him and how good she thought he looked. His eyes softened and the waitress came, and they ordered Bloody Marys. After they’d each had one and Michael ordered another round, he looked down at the table and asked Bertie, “What does she know about me?”

“That you left before she was born, so it had nothing to do with her. That you’re a very busy man and that’s why you’ve never come to see her, and that maybe someday you will.” Bertie hoped he couldn’t hear the pleading in her voice.

Michael didn’t say anything. Just took the pink Sweet ‘n’ Low packs from the little green holder and made small piles of them across the table in front of his place.

“That’s true, I guess. I mean, maybe someday I will.”

Once when Bertie was in the third grade she saw a tough boy in her class, Daniel McNally, twist the arm of Sharon Acklin, who screamed, and then Donny Kraft took

the girl’s other arm and twisted it. Bertie was horrified, and she ran at both boys with such fierce anger that even though she was a tiny little girl, she frightened them away. Later, when she described the event to her mother, she said she was always so afraid of those boys herself that she wasn’t sure what had made her suddenly so brave. Rosie laughed and told her that sometimes it was easier to have guts for someone else. Now she would have guts for Nina.

“How about today, Michael? How about now? This “week? Please. Not for me. Not for you-but for Nina. Even if it’s just so in school, when the kids make Father’s Day cards, she can make one, too, and send it off to you. She needs that, Michael. Just that little bit. I promise I won’t ask for more.”

Michael’s face reddened.

“No,” he said. “I told you my answer this morning on the phone. I thought about it all night, Bert, and I’m sorry, I don’t feel like she’s my child. I’ll support her all of her life, but I don’t have any feelings about her and I don’t want to.”

Bertie sat for a moment, letting what he’d just said really sink in. Wanting to remember how hateful he was so she’d never in a weak moment think their divorce was a mistake. Then she stood.

“Is the visit over?” Michael asked.

Bertie didn’t respond. She made her way to the door of the Polo Lounge and out through the pink and green lobby of the hotel.

“Okay, sit down. Sit down, Mom. Sit down.” “Bert, for chrissake. Sit down and get ready for this.” “You all right, Mom? Sit down. Watch me. Watch

this.”

“Bert . . . you okay?”

Bertie could only nod as Nina and Cee Cee pulled

her to the deck chair, and then, full out, with the glorious

ocean waves smashing to the shore as their backdrop, Cee Cee, in her green terry-cloth robe, a bathroom plunger for her cane, and Nina, still in her pink baby-doll pajamas, a yardstick from the local hardware store for her cane, sang:

First you put your two knees close up tight . , ,

Michael, How could a man not want to see, even for a moment, a child he’d created?

Then you swing ‘em to the left And ya swing ‘em to the right . . .

Nina sang in her little girl version of Cee Cee’s soul voice. Cee Cee winked at Bertie as the two of them moved into the dance steps.

Step around the floor kinda nice and light . . .

And now they both shimmied. Nina wasn’t exactly sure how, but it was a good try.

Twist around and twist around With all your might . . .

That was a conversation she had waited nearly seven years to have. Always harboring the hope that there was some part of Michael that was loving or warm or tender and would reach out for Nina. The hopelessness of the situation began to depress her, but she stopped it, caught herself, shook it off, and refused to let it hurt.