I'll Be There (6 page)

“I left one of my Cee Cee Bloom albums with my roommate,

Heidi,” Nina said as she slid into the 0assenger seat.

“You had one of my albums with you?”

“I had all of them. They were with my things Aunt Neetie sent from Florida.”

“And that girl Heidi wanted it?” Cee Cee asked with surprise, starting the car.

Nina turned to look at her and nodded. “After I told her who you were.”

“So you gave her yours?”

“I traded it to her. I figured I could always get another one, and she gave me a black turtleneck sweater.”

I’LL BE THERE

“Well, who do you think got the better deal?” Cee Cee asked, pulling out of the parking lot, so positive now that taking Nina home with her was the right thing to do, her heart seemed to lift in her chest as they sailed along Highway 1.

“Oh she did. Because the album was autographed.”

“What did I write on it?”

“You didn’t write anything. 1 autographed it for you,” Nina told her. There was a long silence, then Cee Cee reached over and touched Nina on the top of the head.

“Thanks, kid,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome, Cee,” Nina said, grinning as the car headed toward home.

Seven hours later when they arrived in Los Angeles, it was dark, but the outside lights at Cee Cee’s house were on and Hal waited for them at the front door. When he hugged Cee Cee to welcome her, she wondered if he could smell the heavy odor of death she knew had to be in her hair and her clothes. He didn’t mention it. All he said was “Welcome home.”

“This is Nina,” she told him as Nina followed behind her. Hal waved a little wave at Nina, who nodded shyly in return, and within minutes the tired-eyed little girl was bored with their conversation about telephone messages and mail and took off on her own to explore the house.

“I would have had a room ready for her,” Hal said apologetically, “but I thought you were dropping her off at boarding school.” He was carrying some of the suitcases upstairs, with Cee Cee behind him carrying the rest.

“Boarding school did not work out,” she said as Hal dropped some of the suitcases containing Bertie’s things and Cee Cee’s small overnight bag in her room, and she looked around at the familiarity of it, thinking how long it had been since the last time she slept in that bed, and about all that had happened to her since then. “It was an idea whose time had not yet arrived, and may I say it fostered hostility

and fear and scads of ugly resentment.”

“No kidding?” Hal said.

“No kidding. But I’m all right now.” The two friends smiled. “Nina was great about it, a trooper in fact, but I knew leaving her there

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would mean cheating her out of what I promised Bert I would do, and also promised myself I would do, so I figured what the hell. I keep thinking about that ‘Peanuts’ cartoon I have pinned to the wall in the kitchen where Charlie Brown is sitting against a rock saying ‘I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time!’ Well, for the first few years, that’ll be me, and then maybe I’ll mellow out.”

Hal squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re both okav.”

They stood at the top of the stairs and shared a gentle hug, until Cee Cee pulled away to listen to the music she heard floating up from downstairs in the music room. Nina had put one of Cee Cee’s albums on the turntable there and was listening to it.

Nights are long since you went away I dream about you all through the day My buddy, my buddy

Nobody quite so true.

Hal, who had played backup piano on the recording session of that album, listened a little mistily to the music, then nodded remembering. “That was the first cut,” he reminded Cee Cee.

“Yeah,” Cee Cee said, sighing. “And it’s always the deepest.” Then she put her arm around Hal, and the two of them walked downstairs to be with Nina, listening to the song as it rose.

Miss your voice, the touch of your hand Just long to know that you understand My buddy, my buddy

Your buddy misses you.

I’LL BE THERE

ANDREWS, KROLL, SCHULTZ AND STEIN

Dear Cee Cee,

Per our recent telephone conversation, I reiterate how sorry I was to hear of the death of your friend Roberta Barron. Although I never met her, you told me more than once how important her friendship was to you. Regarding your role as guardian of her minor child, I am enclosing the following forms: a petition for your appointment as guardian of the person of Nina Barron and a waiver of notice and consent. Per Mrs. Barron’s attorney in Sarasota, I will also forward copies of the waiver to Roberta Barron’s aunt Anita Bennet in Miami Beach, Florida, and the child’s natural father, Michael Barron in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The petition will be filed with the State of California and a date for a hearing will be set for sometime within the next six months depending on how much independent investigation the court wishes to make before appointing a guardian. Despite what you told me on the phone about the ominous words from Mrs. Barron’s representatives, rest assured that the court will give great weight to Mrs. Barron’s nomination.

Because the firm of Barmen and Wolk in Florida has been appointed as guardian to the estate, and the child’s natural father has shown no interest in Nina since birth, and the aunt is elderly and I gather relieved to be rescued from the responsibility, I foresee no problems in closing this matter swiftly.

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Aain, please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss, and if you have any questions reardin these documents please feel free to call.

Sincerely,

Jim Andrews

I’LL BE THERE

Dear Cee Cee,

I got the waiver yesterday from the California court, and I signed it because I know that’s what my niece said she wanted. Personally I worry about the welfare of a child who is living in that kind of environment where there are so many terrible types. (No offense meant towards you, but you know how most people in your line of work behave. Like that Cher and others I don’t have to mention.) I have also put in the envelope a copy of something which I went over to the library to the copy machine to make for you. It’s a letter which was sent to me by my niece, a few months before she died. You can tell by what she says in it that it was sent during the time when she still intended to give Nina to me instead of to you. I came across it last night and thought that maybe you should have it because of what it says. The handwriting in it is so poor and childlike that she must have already been very ill when she sent it off, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t really in her right mind at the end. Now and then I get a letter from Nina. If you could make her write to me more often, it would cheer me and my husband quite a bit.

Sincerely,

Anita Bennet

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Dear Aunt Neet,

I have begun this letter to you again and again over the last few weeks, each time destroying the draft halfway through, probably to deny that eventually I would have to finish and send it, since my intention herein is to outline some of my thoughts about your future with Nina, and that brings home the very painful point that you in fact will be having a future with her, and I will not. Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that my rapidly declining physical health will soon prohibit my getting a letter of this sort off to you at all, and it’s crucial to me that you understand what it is I am about to set down here.

Essentially what I want to write to you, and had the situation been otherwise would have preferred to say in person, has to do with what I will call her care and feeding after I’m gone.

To begin with, let me say that from the very first day of her somewhat unorthodox life Nina has been the dearest and best girl in the world. Yes, she is willful at times and bossy too, but I think that comes mostly as a result of being the fatherless daughter of a living father who, though he admits that she exists by sending money, continues to refuse to see her. That has never been easy for her and I’m sure it never will be. That said, I have to tell you I am terrified that her further rage at my death will tear the goodness from her. And that’s why, even though I know you will do everything you can to take splendid physical care of her, educating her per my lawyers, etc., there is so much more that she will need in order to survive.

Oh, Aunt Neet, what I’m trying to say is please, please, please, love her.t Try to look beyond her very proper little person facade and you won’t be able to resist loving her. See the funny spark in her. appreciate her wonderful mind and indulge her wild imaginings. And as many times as you can find a moment, promise me without a doubt that you will take her in your arms and hug her long and hard. Let her feel grownup arms around her, reassuring her that even though it seems as though events have conspired against her, she really is loved and special, and maybe that will serve to give her hope that down the line she will be able to find some happiness of her own.

I don’t care ifhergrades in school are not the highest in the class. I don’t care if her room is perfectly neat, though I realize I can’t dictate the rules for your home. I don’t even care if she’s sometimes irreverent and more outlandish than I

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ever was. (Which heaven knows, wouldn’t take much, after old Straight Arrow’s life. The only unusual thing I ever did was to raise her alone, and I thank God for that decision every day.)

Thank you, Aunt Neetie. My memories of the times I spent with you during y childhood are many and precious to me. You were my mother’s dearest sister, and she would approve of my leaving Nina in your care. The truth is, you are my only real family, and I am grateful that you have agreed to shoulder the enormous burden of raising my girl… y dear dear girl.

Know that I will be looking on from wherever my spirit lights, smiling with gratitude on both you and Uncle Herb.

Roberta

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IRIS RAINER DART

Dear Aunt Neetie:

I have only known you as Aunt Neetie, so I hope it’s okay if I call you that.

I’m sending this to say thank you a lot for the copy of Bertie’ s letter to you. I knew about the letter but in the middle of all the stuff that’s been going on here, I guess I forgot about it. What I’m trying to say is that if you look closely at the original, you’ll understand that the reason I already knew about the letter is because the person with the lousy handwriting wasn’t Bertie, it was me. She dictated it to me one day when I first started caring for her during her illness, and she was feeling too bad to write it herself.

The one thing I want you to know for sure is that she was not in any way out of her mind when she wrote it, or when she agreed to let me have Nina instead of sending her to you.

I’m knocking myself out to try and carry out Bert’s wishes for Nina. And I promise I’ll tell the kid to write you more often.

Cee Cee

I’LL BE THERE

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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

August 1990

THERE WAS no missing Kevin in a crowd. It wasn’t just his rolling walk that always stuck out so dramatically when he moved down the street with the other boys, but the high-spirited whinny of a voice ringing above the others, as he cracked endless jokes, teasing his friends mercilessly, always confident not one of them would dare to retaliate.

Cee Cee caught sight of him the minute he walked out of the front door of the school, and she watched him, surrounded by his usual gang, as they all walked down the front path. She had been sitting outside the school in her car for half an hour, waiting to tell Kevin the news face-to-face, afraid if she didn’t get there early she would miss him. Her hands clutched the steering wheel at ten and two o’clock, the way her teacher at the California Driving School had taught her to do so long ago, only now she was parked.

See me, Kevie, Cee Cee thought, staring at his face, which was contorted with animation while he told a story to a few of the guys who responded with a laugh so raucous mat even Cee Cee at a distance was sure it had to have been a dirty joke. See me, Kevie, she thought again, and then as if in answer, he looked right at her, nodded a special Kevin nod, and then moved away from the others toward her car as she opened the window on the passenger side.

“You cruising high schools now, lady?” he asked leaning in the window. “I mean, I know a good man is hard to find.., but really, Cee.”

Cee Cee got out of the car and walked to where he was standing to give him a hug, startled when she did at the bony frailness under the layered clothes.

I’LL BE TttERE

“Kevin,” she said, “I guess you know what’s been going on in our lives.”

“I’ve known for a long time.”

“Hey, Myers, you coming with us or what?” a voice yelled from the parking lot.

“Tell him I’m taking you home,” Cee Cee said. “Please.” “I’ve got a ride,” Kevin hollered. “What’d you say?” the kid hollered back.

“He’s got a ride,” Cee Cee shouted back toward the parking lot.

“Wow, you’ve got a nice set of lungs. Ever think about being a

singer?” Kevin laughed at his own cuteness.

Cee Cee opened the car door for him.

“Get in,” she said to him, “before I punch your lights out.” “Oooh, sweet-talk me and you own me,” he said, and sank slowly onto the black leather seat of the BMW. Cee Cee walked around to her side, got in, and started the car. She drove back to the Coast Highway and when she reached the parking lot just north of the pier she made a right and pulled the car into a parking spot facing the sea. It was a clear day and there was a line of white sailboats on the horizon. Cee Cee could tell by the way Kevin’s right hand held on to the open window that he was bracing himself for the worst. Bad news, otherwise why would she have come to tell him in person?