I'll Be There (30 page)

There was no doubt she had been, as Bertie promised on her deathbed, good for Cee Cee. An anchor in an insane world, and despite the many errors Cee Cee knew she had made along the way, she could tell the reverse was also true. This was a child whose own mother had said about her when she was only six, “I feel lucky she’s not wearing a tweed suit and carrying a briefcase.” Well, that had to be because

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Nina had spent her early years being as straitlaced as her stickup the-ass father, and more selfconscious about propriety than her lovable but working-too-hard-to-be-gracious mother. Now she laughed with a peal of a giggle so heartfelt it made Cee Cee laugh to hear it, and she talked on the phone too much, and rushed off to the mall after school, and fell asleep over her homework, and pined over certain boys in her class, and went gaga at the sight of certain movie stars, and seemed to have as normal a teenager life as anybody could.

She had a crowd of friends from school who came exploding into their house, rushing past Cee Cee and up to Nina’s room where they slammed the door behind them, then jabbered in shrill rapid-fire voices punctuated by outbursts of laughter with just enough hysteria in them to tell Cee Cee they had to be talking about boys. And eventually when their curfews dictated, they would brush past Cee Cee as they ran the other way, and the house would fall silent. Normal, of course, but Cee Cee hated to admit how left out she felt, knowing those girls had access to a part of Nina that, except for a moment here and there, had slipped away from their relationship completely.

The plop-downwithsnackstogetheronthecouchbythetelevision days were over. The “stay and let’s talk before lights out” requests, and “tell me more about my mother” sessions, which always served to make them feel closer to one another, were a part of a little girl phase that was no more. And saddest of all was the absence of those admiring looks Nina used to give her, the ones with just a little bit of awe in them, that had lately been replaced by new expressions, which alternated between impatient tolerance and exasperated disdain.

Fifteen seeks liberation, yet she still finds many roads closed to her because of her age. So she compromises by pulling away from her family, manifested in sparse conversation, a locked bedroom door or meals eaten separately.

Ain’t that the truth, Cee Cee thought, always relieved to learn from the books she read that others had gone through this before her.

This morning she looked at the most recent picture of Nina, which sat on the antique breakfront the studio had left in Cee Cee’s office from the previous tenant, a director who had moved on to another studio after three failed films in a row at this one. The photo was an

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eight-by-ten taken by one of those photographers who comes around to the schools, sets up a makeshift studio where he shoots portraits of each of the students, then charges the parents some whopping amount of money to buy them. And Cee Cee, who frequently referred to herself as “the queen of overkill,” had naturally ordered the jazziest package the guy was selling, including a key ring with Nina’s picture inside a tiny frame. Then she sent one of the photos off to Hal, one to her father and his wife, and even broke down and sent one to Nina’s aunt, AnitathejewelthiefBennet.

There was something in Nina’s eyes in that particular picture that maybe only someone as close to her as Cee Cee would notice, and the only way to describe it, the word that floated through Cee Cee’s mind every time she looked at it, was haunted. There was an unmistakable pain Cee Cee sensed there behind the forced smile she knew the photographer must have insisted on before he would snap the shutter, and no matter where she was in the large executive office at the studio, no matter from what angle or at what distance, she could feel the pain: when she sat at her desk talking on the phone, wheeling and dealing and arguing with the big bosses about what she thought worked and didn’t work for the films her production company was developing; and when she sat tailor-fashion on the sofa instead of stiffly behind the desk, trying to communicate with the screenwriters so they would feel she was working with them and wouldn’t be intimidated by all the stardom heaped on her after the success of her last few films.

Lately she would find herself looking long at that one school picture, certain in some mother’s inner knowing spot that the hollow eyed girl looking back was more troubled than she let on. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such big intuition on her part. Maybe her worries had more to do with the recent outbursts of anger she’d seen from Nina. The anger toward Cee Cee seemed to come from nowhere and Cee Cee couldn’t shrug it off. Instead, Nina’s anger could light a fire in Cee Cee’s stomach that flared into her chest where she would carry it all day, unable to concentrate completely on anything.

“You look gross in that dress,” Nina would say, and even if Cee Cee had thought when she put the dress on that she looked great in it, she would instantly pull it off and change to another one. “You’re too old for those shorts.” “Would you go to my school meeting looking like a parent instead of some weirdo? …. You really bombed on Letter

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man last night.” “Why would they want you to host Saturday Night Live? Are they desperate?”

Any of those comments taken alone was hurtful, but accompanied by Nina’s venomous reading, they could make Cee Cee have to sit quietly and remind herself that she was the grownup, the parent, and had to stay in control, and remember how much the kid must be hurting herself to lash out like that. To try to stay composed and not to do what she would if those remarks had come from anyone else, which was to let loose with a big “Fuuuuck You!!!”

It seemed tunny now that in anticipation of Nina’s teens, Cee Cee had told herself the legendary mother-and-daughter bloodlettings were reserved for the genetically related. Certain that all the qualities she had detested in Leona were the same ones she saw and hated in herself. Therefore, she concluded, she and Nina would be spared that ritual separation dance. After all, there was precious little if anything of Cee Cee that Nina had taken on. And that was the faulty thinking she had used to lull herself into believing they would beat the odds. But the war between them was escalating, genes or no genes, and Cee Cee was afraid she wouldn’t be able to handle much more of it. Last week there had been a big stab in the gut when both of them happened to find themselves in the kitchen foraging for snacks.

“Some girl at school who doesn’t know who I am was talking about going to the movies and seeing this really great actress who she wants to be just like?” she said. She was starting to pick up that California speech rhythm, where statements ended as questions, from the kids at school. “And you’re not going to believe who the actress was?”

Cee Cee knew the girl at school was probably talking about her.

Her new picture was in wide release and was doing great business. “Meryl Streep,” she joked.

“No, you!” Nina said, ignoring the joke and devouring her fourth chocolate chip cookie while Cee Cee, who prudently cut an apple in

half and then ate only one of the halves, looked on in envy.

“Well, did you thank her?” Cee Cee asked.

“Why would I thank her?” Nina asked, a black cloud of anger filling her eyes. “She wasn’t talking about me.” And in a huff she wrapped a few more cookies in a paper napkin, shoved them into the pocket of her robe, and left the room.

“Well, didn’t you tell her that I’m your …” The unfinished sen

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tence hung in the air. I’m your what? Her guardian, Cee Cee would think. It sounds like a matron in a prison. Looking back, she remembered a million reasons she had given herself over the last seven years for not going through with a legal adoption of Nina. Sometimes the reason was her certainty the kid would never go for it, wouldn’t want to change her name, and would never really think of Cee Cee as a parent no matter what Cce Cee did, so the idca of going through a ceremony to get a piece of paper saying she was the parent seemed false and unnecessary. After all, she had made a will leaving everything to her father and Nina anyway, so she didn’t have to adopt the kid to make her her heir.

And then there had always been Cee Cee’s fear that starting adoption proceedings might rock their precarious boat, stir up the are of that prick Michael Barron, who could rear his ugly head and do God knows what. Or, worse yet, Bertie’s Aunt Neetie could come crawling out of the woodwork to use the whole issue as a way to extort money to buy herself some jewelry. Of course, now Cee Cee knew the truth about both of those people after meeting up with them, which was that neither really gave a shit about the kid and would probably agree to let Cee Cee adopt her. But still she didn’t call her lawyers and tell them to ready the adoption papers.

Now she decided she wasn’t doing anything about it because they were past it. Nina was a woman, for God’s sake, and at this stage going through some legal ceremony to say she was Cee Cee’s daughter was completely after the fact. Nina would probably laugh if Cee Cee even brought it up, and think it was dumb. She doesn’t want to be related to me anyway, Cee Cee thought. Related to me, hah! She doesn’t even want to have a meal with me.

That night when Cee Cee walked in he front door carrying a briefcase filled with scripts in one hand and some costume designer’s renderings in another, she heard the telephone ringing insistently, so she put everything she was holding down in a heap on the kitchen counter and grabbed the receiver. The call was for Nina. A boy. When boys had first started calling, Cee Cee would run into Nina’s room and do a little dance and sing, “A boy! A boy! Thank heaven it’s a boy!” And Nina would laugh. But the adolescent hormones were flying and these days even a smile from Cee Cec when she told her who was waiting on the phone was a reason for a flare-up.

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“Neen?” Cee Cee hollered, but there was no answer, and Antonia must have been in the laundry room because the answering machine wasn’t on, and the housekeeper usually answered the phone if Nina didn’t. “Neen?” Nothing. “Hold on,” Cee Cee said into the phone to the boy whose name she didn’t ask, not wishing to risk, under the new rules, seeming too nosy, then she pushed the hold button and hurried upstairs. She could hear the shower in Nina’s bathroom, which was probably why Nina hadn’t heard the phone.

“Neen?” Cee Cee knocked on Nina’s bathroom door, but the running water made it impossible for Nina to hear her, so she tried the door. It was unlocked and she pushed it open. Through the glass shower she could see steam rising around the back of Nina’s long naked body, and Nina with her head thrown back appearing to love the water as it flowed down her. She was slim and longwaisted, Cee Cee noted with guilt about what she always thought of as her own weight problem. Skinnier than Cee Cee remembered. Of course she hadn’t seen her without clothes on in ages. Unlike some of her friends who sometimes wore shorts and halter tops, Nina was modest about her developing body, and most of the time dressed in clothes to conceal it.

Maybe, Cee Cee thought, she should just close the door unnoticed, and go back to the phone and take a message. The boy could call Nina back. But then she reconsidered. Teenaged boys were as weird as teenaged girls. The boy might think it was a rejection if Nina didn’t take his call. “Nina!” This time Nina heard her and she turned, and when she saw Cee Cee standing in the open door of her bathroom, the horrible rage that filled her face was so fierce, for a split second Cee Cee thought it had to be a joke. It was no joke.

“Get out of here. Get the luck out of here. Can’t I have a minute of privacy? What do you want?” She was shaking as she opened the shower door and steam poured into the room, and she reached for a giant bath towel, which she threw around her shoulders as if it was a long cape, and now she stood there, wet hair matted against her head, her skinny body trembling, her eyes red with tears.

“Jeez, I’m sorry,” Cee Cee said, feeling stunned and helpless. “I came to tell you you had a phone call,” and she left the bathroom, walked into her own room, and sat on her bed feeling stunned. Now it was going too far. Now she felt as if Nina really did hate her in that

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same narrow-eyed and blood-boiling way she remembered hating Leona, and being flesh and blood had nothing to do with it. Maybe every teenager hated every parent in that same way until they separated, until they had their own identity, and then the crisis would pass. That’s what it said in all the books.

Trying to communicate with a teen can be a weary two-step. Forward to closeness, retreat to confrontation. Treat them like a child, they feel patronized; treat them like an adult, they feel anxious. A good way to handle this forward/backward motion is to see it for what it is: part of the long haul to adulthood. Intense though these times are, they will soon pass unless you get all snarled up in them.

For a few minutes after reading the paragraphs of advice in those books, Cee Cee would feel relief. Then her own anger would rise and all reason would spill away, because to be on the receiving end of the kind of wrath Nina had just shown was like getting a kick in the gut, and the pain of rejection it created inside Cee Cee was worse than any desperation she ever felt when a man walked out on her. Certainly far more hurtful than reading some scathing review of her work, because this one hit her so deep inside that, until she started raising a kid, she hadn’t even known that place existed. It was hard to believe someone could open you up and twist your vital organs until they ached because you cared about them so much.

She was tired and tense herself, and working too hard, and she always felt apologetic for thinking that thought, because it seemed to be what Hal would call “a high-class problem,” since it was great to be a successful star after so many years of what a recent New }brk Times article called “the vicissitudes of La Bloom’s career.” Somehow those studio boys in suits expected her to move from picture to picture without a pause in between, convincing her that this time if she built up “a body of work” she would “never slide back” again. Slide back. That meant doing television, or worse yet Vegas or Atlantic City.