Beaches (7 page)

“You’ll get your chance soon,” he said, as though he could read her mind. And he walked away.

Shit, Cee Cee thought. Why hadn’t she said something funny, witty, even shocking to him? He had finally talked to her, and she had stood there like a blob. What could she say? That every night when the room was quiet, when she was positive the others were asleep and she moved her hand slowly into her pajama bottoms, through her wiry hair, to touch those throbbing little folds that ached to be caressed, she was thinking of him? Oh, sure.

Cee Cee watched Perry move through the crowd. The men envied him, she could tell, and the women were all over him. Even the older ones. He flirted and joked and kissed them lightly on the cheek and moved on to the next, scattering a bit of attention on each, so no one would leave unsatisfied.

A waiter with a little round tray passed out glasses of champagne. Cee Cee spotted Bertie as she emerged from the ladies’ room. Bertie took a glass from the tray, and her eyes sought out Cee Cee as she made her way across the room. Cee Cee thought it was amazing what poise Bertie had, just reaching for the glass like that. I mean, after all, she was only-what? Sixteen? Holy shit. She was so … Cee Cee took a deep breath, and just as Bertie was about halfway back, John Perry, on his way through the crowd, caught her arm.

Bertie looked at him and flushed. Perry said something with a smile. Bertie nodded and laughed. Cee Cee was straining to hear, but the fucking jukebox was blaring The Supremes and she couldn’t hear anything. Should she walk over there? Should she stay where she was and grit her teeth in silence? Goddamn it. Bertie didn’t even belong here, and she wouldn’t have even come here if Cee Cee hadn’t told her’she’d be doing summer stock here. She would have stayed in Pittsburgh, where Cee Cee wished she’d go back to, right now.

“Perry said he’d drive me to Ship Bottom,” Bertie said breathlessly as she reached Cee Cee.

“Great.”

“He’s adorable. Looks so young. Offered me a job at the theater. What’s an apprentice?”

“Cleans the theater, builds scenery, works props and costumes. No pay.”

“He said he’d pay me.”

“Great,” Cee Cee said.

“I may get to be here all summer. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

The waiter with the tray walked by. He had one glass of champagne left. Cee Cee reached for it. A woman in a white dress reached for it, too, and Cee Cee was left holding out an empty hand. As she lowered the hand, Bertie took it and squeezed it.

“I’m so glad to be here, Gee,” Bertie said, and Cee Cee heard the exclamation points in her voice. “Now you and I will get to be real friends. You know?”

Cee Cee knew, but as much as she wanted to be real friends with somebody, especially somebody who once told her she was proud of her, she didn’t know if that could ever happen.

The next day, Perry put Bertie to work on costumes because she told him sewing was her specialty. And it was. Right from the start she had good ideas about how to add a little row of sequins here or a little piece of satin there to make a frumpy dress or suit look glamorous on stage. But it was to her friend Cee Cee’s costumes that she paid the most attention.

Bertie was very thoughtful. That was the word Leona used when she talked about Cee Cee’s cousin Myra. Myra was thoughtful, too. She sent Cee Cee a card every year on her birthday, and every year Cee Cee would open the card and feel a pang of guilt because not only did she not know when Myra’s birthday was, she didn’t even know the names of Myra’s three children. (Sherry, Beth, Evan? Susan, Bobbie, Kevin?)

Even when Cee Cee was only in the chorus of My Fair Lady (“Sorry, Gee, maybe next week,” Bertie said

sweetly when the cast list went up and Peggy Longworth was playing Eliza), Bertie had made sure Cee Cee had the prettiest dress in the “Ascot Gavotte” number. And she always gave Cee Cee a little gift on opening night. Even if it was just a flower with a “break a leg” note attached to it. And she was an expert with hair. She would meet Cee Cee early at the theater and help her work on her hair. First she’d set it with big giant rollers to straighten all the frizz, and later she would brush it out so the top was straight and help Cee Cee pin up the back so she had an elegant up-do.

Sometimes, after the shows, on nights when Cee Cee was too keyed up to sleep, the two girls would go out for coffee and talk.

“Do you ever wonder about men?” Bertie asked one night, making circles with her spoon in her coffee, stirring it again and again, even though she drank it black.

“Who?” Cee Cee asked.

“Men,” Bertie said. “Like the ones you go out with on dates?”

It took a minute to sink in. Cee Cee didn’t go out on many dates, and when she did, she still thought of the guys who came nervously to her door not as men, but as boys. Men were Mr. Solomon, Mr. Colfax, and Mr. Cooperman, her father’s gin rummy club.

Bertie put the spoon down on the table and put her two hands around the coffee cup.

“I mean,” she said, “when you look at a man, doesn’t it ever go through your mind what it would be like to be-”

“Doing it with him?” Cee Cee blurted out, finishing Bertie’s sentence, at the same time Bertie was finishing the sentence by saying, “married to him.”

Cee Cee was embarrassed. Sex was something she wondered about all the time. Not just about how it would be with the boys she went out with on dates, but about ones she saw on television, or in the pizza place or some-

times on the subway. But marriage. No. Never. She didn’t want to get married.

“I’m too busy thinkin’ about my career,” Cee Cee said, shaking her head. “No gettin’ married for me till I’m so old and feeble I need someone to wheel me into the sun at the old folks’ home. That’s when I’ll get married.”

Bertie was serious.

“But what about all those years without a man? Won’t you get-”

“Horny?” Cee Cee said.

“Lonely,” Bertie said. “I mean, sometimes I think about my poor mother …”

Cee Cee remembered from a letter long ago that Bertie’s father died when Bertie was only three.

“Now there’s a woman who, even though she would never tell anyone, is probably desperately-”

“Lonely,” Cee Cee said.

“No,” Bertie said. “Horny,” and they both laughed, Bertie with a close-mouthed giggle that made her face red, and Cee Cee with a guffaw so loud that the few other people in the coffee shop turned to look at her.

Bertie never ate dinner at the cast house. She always ate with Neetie before the show, and then Neetie would drive her to the theater. One night, she asked Cee Cee to join them. Neetie picked them both up in her station wagon after the afternoon rehearsal.

It was Cee Cee’s first glimpse of her. She was dark-haired and skinny like Bertie, and she had a very good tan. But she was very quiet. Even though she drove with both hands on the wheel, she still managed to hold a cigarette in the right hand and a handkerchief in the left hand, and as they drove silently to Ship Bottom, she would alternate. First the right hand to her face so she could puff on the cigarette, then back to the wheel, then the left hand to her eyes so she could wipe away a tear, then back to the wheel, then the cigarette again.

Cee Cee watched her, fascinated. Jesus Christ! If she

made a mistake she would go puff on the handkerchief and put the cigarette in her eye. She giggled at the thought.

Cee Cee noticed that Bertie was thoughtful of Neetie, too. She helped get dinner on the table and wash the dishes, even though she’d been sewing all day and Neetie had only been sitting on the beach puffing and wiping. Neetie never said one word to Cee Cee until she dropped the girls back at the theater. Cee Cee said, “Nice meeting you,” and Neetie said, “Yeah.”

Boy, you’d think living in that house would depress anybody, but Bertie was always cheerful and a pleasure to be around, and there was no doubt about it. She and Cee Cee were becoming best friends, even though Cee Cee thought that was an asshole way to describe it.

Cee Cee woke up with a start and looked around. The first few times she’d done this in the middle of the night, it had taken her a few sleepy minutes to remember where she was. This time she knew immediately where she was and she felt fine, but she was wide awake and it was one forty-five. She could see the little travel clock her father had bought her, after she came home breathlessly that day to tell him she got the job.

“Luminous dial,” he said proudly, as though he’d invented it himself. She would have to write and tell him how valuable the luminous dial was to her when she woke up in the middle of the night. Maybe not. He would worry she wasn’t getting enough rest. He worried about everything. That Leona was pushing Cee Cee too much, to which Leona always said, “Butt out.” That Leona was eating too much, to which Leona always said, “Too bad.” That Cee Cee had no interest in college, to which Leona always said, “So what?” And then Nathan, Cee Cee’s sweet father, would shrug and sit down and open the newspaper in front of his face, not so much because he was interested in the news, but to hide. She should write

to him and tell him how well she was doing, finally. He would be glad.

She would tell him about Bertie and how much fun they had. And how she was making other friends, too. How every morning at breakfast Richie Day, who was very cute, would tease her by singing (badly), “Does your mu-ther know you’re out-Ce-cilia? Does she know that I’m a-bout ta steal ya?” And how, when after all those weeks of playing crummy chorus parts, Cee Cee finally got the part of Lola in Damn Yankees, Peggy Longworth hugged her and said, “You deserve it.” And how when Mrs.- Godshell made macaroni and cheese (puke) for dinner last Friday and all the dancers decided to go out for dinner instead, they invited Cee Cee to come along. Everything was perfect.

Okay, so there was one little thing bothering her, but nothing she would tell Nathan in a letter, especially a letter Leona would open and devour before Nathan got home from work. It was Bertie and John Perry. She felt like a jerk even thinking about it. It wasn’t that Bertie was doing anything, exactly. Jesus, this was stupid, but it was the way Cee Cee saw them laughing together sometimes, or the way she saw him give Bertie little pats on the ass he never gave anyone else. Maybe it wasn’t Bertie’s part of it so much-but, well, here she was, Cee Cee finally playing a lead, and Perry still not paying any attention to her. Christ, Bertie was a costume girl. That’s all. Bertie wasn’t belting out, “A little brains, a little talent,” until it knocked everyone dead at rehearsals, and Perry still seemed to like her better, anyway. All he ever said to Cee Cee during rehearsals was, “Got your lines down, Gee Cee?

Lines down? Even in the sixth-grade play, she’d had her lines down the first day.

And sometimes, when Cee Cee was trying to rehearse her song with Jay Miller at the piano, Perry would be laughing with Bertie.

Cee Cee hated herself for thinking even one crummy

thought about Bertie, who was spending every day making a wonderful dress from scratch for Lola’s dance number where she teases Joe, “Whatever Lola wants.” Bertie promised the dress would look “really spectacular” (with exclamation points).

Bertie was so sweet. And she couldn’t really be involved with John Perry. How crazy. Jesus, she was only sixteen and he was in his thirties. That would be nuts. He could get arrested or something. Probably it looked that way because Bertie was such a big flirt. She flirted with everybody. She batted those long, gorgeous eyelashes at every guy. Even that old “faygelah” (Leona’s word) Moro Rollins, who joked when Bertie fitted his pinstripe trousers for Henry Higgins that it was “the best time he’d had in weeks.” Who was he trying to kid?

Cee Cee drifted off to sleep.

The beach was peaceful early in the morning. And now, in the middle of July, it was hot enough to get a tan by nine o’clock. Cee Cee lay on her stomach on a towel reviewing the lyrics to her songs. Sunday was becoming her favorite day. The theater was dark and everyone was pretty much free to work alone on lines or routines, unless the show was in a crisis, which Damn Yankees wasn’t. Cee Cee knew she should have put some oil on her back, but she also knew if she got oil on her hands she’d end up getting it all over the musical score, and besides, she didn’t feel like it. She felt comfortable and warm and happy. Even the dancers had told her what a great job she was doing. That was a real compliment because Lola was a part a dancer could have played if only the singing wasn’t so hard. But Cee Cee could sing and dance, too. So she got it. The show would open tomorrow night. She couldn’t wait.

“Hi.”

Cee Cee looked up. It was Bertie. In a ruffled two-piece suit. Boy, she was pretty. Even though the sun was

behind her and Cee Cee couldn’t see all of her features, she still looked pretty.

“Neetie let me have the car all day,” she said, spreading her towel next to Cee Cee’s.

“That’s great,” Cee Cee said.

“No, it isn’t,” Bertie said, plopping down and reaching for Cee Cee’s suntan oil. “She only did it because she feels guilty.” There was a silence as Cee Cee wondered what the tearful Neetie could feel guilty about.

“We’re leaving on Tuesday morning.”

Cee Cee felt a terrible pang and turned on her side to face Bertie.

“No! Why?”

“Oh, Herbie’s been calling her. He says he misses her and loves her, and didn’t mean to go with that other girl since Neetie’s the only one for him, and lots of other stuff like that. Frankly, I think the other girl probably got tired of him. He’s a creep. Anyway, she’s chomping at the bit to get back to him. She wanted to leave this morning, but I talked her into waiting at least until I saw your show open.”

“Can’t you stay without her?”

“Nope. I called my mother this morning and asked her. I told her the other apprentices lived in an apartment near the theater, and I could move in there, and that I really wanted to stay and be with you, and she didn’t care. She said, ‘Roberta, you’re only sixteen, and I still decide what’s best for you, and I want you to come home!’ I’m furious at her.”

Cee Cee couldn’t speak. She had imagined that she and Bertie would be together all summer. Now it was all ruined.