I'll Be There (22 page)

“Anita, this is Cee Cee Bloom.”

“Oh, hello, Cee Cee.”

Cee Cee knew she should ask about Neetie’s husband, or maybe

make small talk to be polite, but she couldn’t think of any.

“How’s Nina?” she asked.

“Why, she’s a perfect angel,” Neetie said, and without another Word she handed the phone to Nina.

“H’lo?”

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“Neen, we can go home tomorrow. I called my office and they made us reservations on Pan Am at two. The car will pick you up at noon.”

“Okay.” “Neen.” “Yes?”

“Are you glad to be going home?”

“Urn… yes.”

Cee Cee had the limousine pick her up first and then to Neetie’s pick up Nina. She’d considered having the car pick Nina up first in order to avoid Neetie completely, but she knew that was wrong and that she had to be adult about this. Now as the long black car pulled up outside the Versailles and she saw Neetie and her husband waiting with Nina, she braced herself for the first meeting with the woman in more years than she wanted to count. Looked at her and remembered seeing her just before Bertie’s mother died, in the same hospital where Nathan had just been signed off on by his doctor as “strong as an ox.”

The poor old uncle croaked out a hello to Cee Cee and Nina gave her a welcoming hug, and as the driver opened the trunk of the limousine and put Nina’s bag inside, Uncle Herb gave Nina a little pat and excused himself to go upstairs, and Cee Cee stood face-to-face with Neetie on the curb with the Miami Beach sun beating down on them and she could feel Neetie’s dark eyes burning a hole right through her face. Stay even, Cee Cee told herself. In two minutes you and Nina will be out of here. If you can pull this one encounter off like a lady for Nina’s sake, you’ll have moved up in your own eyes and in hers.

“She was very, very well behaved,” Neetie said.

“She always is,” Cee Cee said.

“And your father is okay now?” Nice of her.

“Recovering comfortably from the surgery, thanks for asking.”

“Well, Herb and I enjoyed her. Unfortunately he’s under the weather.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

The driver closed the trunk. Almost out of here, Cee Cee said to

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herself, almost the fuck out of here. Neetie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and lit one. She’s nervous, Cee Cee thought. More nervous about this confrontation than I am. Hah! But when Neetie put the hand holding the cigarette up to her face again, and Cee Cee saw the green flash of light on her hand, her heart lurched and all bets were off.

“Neetie, what are you doing wearing that ring?” She couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out, and for a second thinking maybe it was Neetie’s own ring and that she’d said something dumb.

“Nina gave it to me,” Neetie answered with her head up just a little too high so as to look defensive, but she looked worried. Cee Cee glanced over at Nina, who nodded to confirm that what Neetie said was true, but the little girl’s face told the whole story.

“What did you say to make her give it to you?” Cee Cee asked, straining to keep her voice under control.

“Nina, what did I say?” Neetie asked shrilly. “Nothing. I wanted her to have it,” Nina said. A lie. “Why?” Cee Cee demanded.

“Because she doesn’t have any memento of her sister.”

“No,” Cee Cee said, able to imagine the coercing that must have taken place over the last few days. “Neetie, Bertie left that ring to Nina, and I want you to give it back to her.”

“You’re nuts,” Neetie said. “Who in the hell do you think you’re talking to? You can’t come here and tell me and my flesh and blood what to do about things that don’t concern you.”

A well-dressed older couple walked out of the front door of the Versailles. Cee Cee spoke quietly but with great clarity. “Neetie, give the kid the ring back right now, because if you don’t I promise you I’ll cause a scene out here in front of the Versailles that’ll make Louis the Fourteenth spin in his grave like a chicken on a spit. I know you conned this child out of something her mother wanted her to have forever and she so goodhearted she gave it to you. She’s a soft touch, which is why she came to see you in the first place, but I can tell you as sure as I’m alive that I’m not so soft and she’s not leaving here and I’m not either without her mother’s ring. Now hand it over.”

There was an expression of hatred on Neetie’s face that made Cee Cee’s heart race. She could feel her blood moving angrily through her

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body and she knew she would gladly miss her flight to Los Angeles and the next week’s worth of flights if that’s what it would take to get the ring back for Nina.

“Very dramatic, Cee Cee,” Neetie said, now trying the soft-voice technique herself. “Is that little speech from one of your movies?”

Good shot, you nasty cunt, Cee Cee thought, but what she said a

little louder this time was, “You want to see my movies? Tell you what. If you don’t give me the ring, I’ll get in and drive the limo through the plate-glass window of the building the way I did in the bar scene in Jilted.” Out of the corner of her eye Cee Cee looked at Nina, who had a tight-lipped look on her face which after their years together Cee Cee knew very well was holding in a smile. “Or I’ll stand in the street with a bullhorn the way I did in The Long Walk when I played the prison guard. Remember that one, Neetie? Only instead of barking orders I’ll tell your nice neighbors that you steal from kids.”

Neetie’s tan faded and her horrified face was a pasty color of beige now. “You Hollywood trash,” she said, “I could have gone to court a hundred times and taken this child away from you and maybe I still will if you don’t mind your own business and get your trampy little self out of my —” But before she could finish her sentence, out of the building in a burst of gold lamfi and rhinestones came Mrs. Altschuler and Mrs. Haber, the ladies from the pool.

“It’s Cee Cee,” they both squealed, and they were each carrying writing pads and pens, which they proffered in a request for autographs, and Nina watched as Neetie tried to regain her composure and Cee Cee instantly turned into the charming gracious star she always was for her fans. Fussing over the women as much as they fussed over her.

“Hi, girls,” she said. “Is it hot enough for you? Oh, honey, I love your necklace.”

“Anita keeps us posted on everything you do,” Mrs. Haber said. “We think it’s so nice that you and Nina make such an effort to be close to her.”

Cee Cee looked into Neetie’s black, angry, frustrated-by-theintrusion eyes, and saw a flash of embarrassment.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Cee Cee said, “Neetie is Nina’s family, which naturally makes her my family. In fact, just as you came out the door,

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she was about to give Nina a ring that belonged to her sister Rose. Nina’s grandmother. Isn’t that generous of her?”

“Ooh, let’s see. Gorgeous! You’re giving that to her, Anita?”

As the women waited, Neetie slowly and reluctantly pulled the

ring from her finger and placed it into Nina’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, Aunt Neet,” Nina said, giving her a little hug. “Ahhh,” Mrs. Altschuler said. “That’s adorable.”

“Listen,” Mrs. Haber said, “my mother, rest her soul, always told me, ‘If you don’t have your family, who do you have?’”

Cee Cee and Nina rode for a long time in the airconditioned hiss of the limousine, each of them thinking over the last few days, before Nina, who had been looking out the window at the causeway, said quietly, “I thought you told me we should be nice and loving to our families, but you were pretty mean to Neetie.”

“You know what?” Cee Cee said. “In her case I’ll make an exception.”

They were almost at the airport when Cee Cee looked down at the seat and noticed Nina’s hand there, realizing for the first time it was actually big enough to wear the emerald ring. Not quite big enough for it to fit on her ring finger, so she had put it on her index finger. Cee Cee placed her hand over Nina’s and patted it gently.

For the next few weeks she spoke with Nathan several times a day. He grumbled and railed about everything from the medication and the nurses to the bad reception on his hospital television. One day when she called him the doctor was in the room, and Nathan put him on the phone. “Cee Cee,” Doctor Feiffer said, as if he was greeting an old friend, “he’s doing so well, I recommended he take a trip out West. Think you can handle that?”

Cee Cee heard Nathan in the background saying something like, “Hey! You’re the doctor, for chrissake. Don’t ask her, tell her.” Two weeks later when he arrived in Los Angeles he made it clear, even on the ride from the airport, that he was only staying for a short time because a Harriet Goldstein “from Philly” was already counting the days until his return to Miami Beach because when he did they were probably going to “shack up.”

On the first night as he sat at dinner Cee Cee watched him talking

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with his mouth full and getting so much spaghetti sauce on his face and then his napkin, that when Nina asked to be excused to go to the kitchen to get herself more milk, she gentled the napkin away from him and took it to the kitchen with her to replace it.

“She likes me,” Nathan said, looking at the still-swinging door to

the kitchen. “And it’s a good thing too.”

“Why is that?” Cee Cee asked, knowing she was taking the bait.

“Because at this stage of the game, she’s my only real chance at being a grandpa.”

Cee Cee smiled, then felt a wistful pang. “Yeah, I guess I am getting a little past the time when I can give you a grandchild.”

“Hey, listen,” Nathan said, “on the wall of the occupational therapy room at the convalescent home, they had a sign with a quote from Satchell Paige. A colored baseball player, before your time, a great man. It said ‘How old would you be, if you didn’t know how old you was?’”

Cee Cee laughed. “So what’s the answer for you?” she asked.

“Two months ago, eighty-five. Today, twenty-five. How ‘bout you?”

“Some mornings twenty-six, other mornings a hundred and twenty-six.”

“So on one of the mornings when you’re twenty-six, grab some guy and make a baby,” he said, laughing a funny snorting laugh Cee Cee knew she sometimes used herself. “I’m a modern guy. A free thinker,” he said.

Nina came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk and a fresh white cloth napkin, which she slid onto Nathan’s lap with what looked like the expertise of a headwaiter. Nathan smiled a thank-you, then looked at Cee Cee. “See? What’d I tell you?” he asked.

On the weekend he took Nina to Disneyland. It was the first visit

for each of them and when they came home at ten at night, sunburned, exhausted, each wearing mouse ears with their names embroidered on the front, and both of them farther off the ground than the half a dozen Mylar helium balloons they were carrying, Cee Cee, who opened the front door to let them in, wasn’t sure which of them she envied more.

Every night Nathan would call his girlfriend in Miami Beach and when she answered, Cee Cee could overhear him open the conversa

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tion by saying, “Hiya, hot stuff.” He had the twinkle of the sheik of Araby every day now, and she felt tied to him, close to him, saw Nina blossom by having his attention, and she felt sad thinking about how overbearing her mother must have been with him to have kept this kind of spirit down.

One night when she got home, Nina and Nathan were throwing a Frisbee back and forth on the beach. It was already dark, so they were playing by the floodlights from the deck of the house. Nathan was showing off and catching the Frisbee behind his back, and Nina was shrieking loudly and diving for the Frisbee onto the sand. Cee Cee just stood on the deck and watched them for a long time before she called out to announce that she was home.

After a few days, Nina was able to tell Cee Cee lots of things she’d discovered about Nathan that Cee Cee had never known or imagined. Things that, when Nina told them to her, made Cee Cee laugh out loud. That Nathan liked his corned beef lean and his women fat. That he did a very funny imitation of a character named Rochester, who he told her used to be on the Jack Benny radio show, and that he loved to sing. Sing! Cee Cee couldn’t believe it. The only song she’d ever heard him sing was “The Sheik of Araby.”

That night while she brushed Nina’s hair, a before-bed custom that had started in Carmel, Nina excitedly told her that she and Nathan

had a surprise for her. “Great,” Cee Cee said, tugging at a tangle. “Ouch.” “Sorry.”

“And after I get my nightgown on we want you to sit in the living room so we can show it to you. It’s a duet, like when I sang ‘Ballin’ the Jack’ with you when I was little, except that this one has a little harmony to it, so sometimes I have to hold my ears so I don’t get mixed up and sing his part instead of mine.”

“What’s the song?” If it’s “The Sheik of Araby,” I’ll kill him, Cee Cee thought.

“You’ll see,” Nina said, sliding her nightgown on over her head and running down the hall to the guest room to get Nathan.

As Cee Cee sat on the living-room sofa getting ready to be the audience, Nathan came bounding into the living room as excited as a child, followed by Nina who whispered some conspiratorial words into his ear, then hid behind the drapes as Nathan stepped up onto

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the brick hearth, held his hand up to his face as if he had a microphone, aid said, “And now, direct from the Sands Hotel in Las

Vegas, Nevada, that famous singing team of Nathan and Ninotchka.”

/

Ninotchka was his pet name for Nina.

“No, Nina Barron,” came Nina’s whispered voice from behind th

drapes. Her bare feet were sticking out.

“Excuse me, Nathan Bloom and Nina Barron.”

Nina emerged, blushing and all smiles, the braces on her teeth gleaming as they caught the light from a living-room table lamp, her bangs hanging in her eyes, and she looked nervously at Nathan, who gave her a nod, then she began to sing in some barely recognizable minor key, “I really can’t stay.”