MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA

1970

Bertie was too numb to look out the window of the taxi, and Miami Beach, at least from what she’d seen as she stood at the airport taxi stand, didn’t look at all the way it had in that James Bond movie.

“It’s like what Patricia Neal had,” Neetie had told her on the phone, giving Bertie hope that her mother, like Patricia Neal, would somehow bravely retrain whatever parts of her body had been damaged and pull through. Not her mother. Bertie thought of the children at the Home for Crippled Children where she worked. About the hours of physical therapy they struggled through every day and how slow their progress was, in spite of all their zeal to be stronger. Rosie could never make it through that kind of struggle.

The taxi was on Collins Avenue heading downtown. The paper with Michael’s directions was still clutched in her hand. ST. JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL. MIAMI BEACH. I.C.U. INTENSIVE CARE UNIT. COME RIGHT IN THROUGH EMERGENCY.

Michael had spoken to Neetie after Bertie heard the news. Bertie had handed him the phone because she was sobbing so violently that Neetie could only say, “Please, Bertie. Please.”

Michael had written down the directions to the hospital. Michael had packed Bertie’s clothes. Michael had driven Bertie to the airport, taken her to the VIP Lounge because the plane’s departure was delayed an hour, and made her have a Coke to drink. “It’s free,” he said. Twenty-five dollars to belong to the VIP Lounge, which they never used. This was a twenty-five-dollar Coke. She had laughed at that to herself and then felt guilty. She was laughing. Rosie, on the other hand, was…don’t say it. Say it or not, she was sure this was it.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If only she could stop her thoughts.

“Take a Valium,” Michael said.

Those were his last words. Not, good-by. Not, I love you. Not, I hope she gets well. “Take a Valium.”

Maybe if she cried she’d feel better. She tried to cry, then decided there was no such thing as trying to cry. You either cried or you didn’t. How did actresses do it in the movies?

Without looking, Bertie could feel the Miami Beach buildings the taxi was passing. Pink and white and glitter-filled stucco-fronted hotels. The ones that had been the most beautiful were now the poor cousins to the modern high-rise condominiums. Maybe she wasn’t looking because it was festive and she was going to a hospital where…. Bertie forced her head to turn, then closed her eyes immediately. Her first glimpse out the window had taken her breath away like a blow to the stomach. CARILLON HOTEL. FEB. 14–28. CEE CEE BLOOM.

Cee Cee was here. In Miami Beach. Performing at the Carillon, which, Bertie realized, as the taxi pulled up and stopped outside a large pink Spanish building, was right around the corner from the hospital. February 14–28. Today was, what—the twentieth or twenty-first?

Cee Cee again. Only a few weeks ago, Bertie and Michael had been at a dinner party at the home of Marshall, one of Michael’s law partners, and Marshall’s wife, Sheila.

“Eat a lot of hors d’oeuvres,” Sheila said, “’cause we can’t have dinner until after Ed Sullivan.”

“My wife has a lot of class,” Marshall said, grabbing Sheila around the waist and pulling her close to him. Sheila giggled and kissed her husband on the cheek with a big MWAH sound. Bertie envied their playfulness.

“She’d serve us dinner in front of the television every night if I let her,” Marshall said.

“That’s not true. Only for Ed Sullivan. I love Ed Sullivan. Tonight he’s having David Frye. I love David Frye.”

They were sitting in Marshall and Sheila’s rumpus room. There were two other couples. When Ed Sullivan said, “And now, a really wonderful…really, really wonderful singer,” Bertie tapped her foot on the linoleum floor. She was hungry. God, Bertie thought, wouldn’t it be crazy if the really wonderful singer was Cee Cee? No. That would be impossible because Cee Cee wasn’t famous enough to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. You had to be a big star to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. So it wouldn’t be Cee Cee.

“Direct from the Broadway show Whatserface,” Ed said.

Good heavens, Bertie thought. I think that’s the name of the show that she’s in. Rosie had clipped a review from The New York Times.

“Let’s welcome…” Ed Sullivan put his hand out and said, “Cee Cee,” and he put his hand up to his face, paused a minute, and said, “Bloom.”

Then there was some music and there she was. Cee Cee. Singing. Belting out a wonderful song. Bertie’s face was flushed and her heart was pounding. She looked out of the corner of her eye at Michael for some reaction. There was none. He sat at the end of the sofa watching, his left hand toying with an ashtray on the end table next to the sofa. Lifting the ashtray and gently placing it back on the table, again and again.

“This girl’s fabulous,” Sheila said after Cee Cee had sung about half the song.

“Yeah, Bertie knows her,” Michael said. No one heard him but Bertie.

When the song finished, the applause was peppered with people in the audience shouting bravo. Bertie excused herself, went to Sheila and Marshall’s powder room, and splashed cold water on her face. Cee Cee again.

And now she was here, in Miami.

Bertie paid the taxi fare and carried her suitcase into the corridor. The smell and the feeling of the hospital filled her senses, and her head began to pound. It’s only a hospital, she told herself. The Home for Crippled Children is kind of a hospital. You should be used to the way a place like this feels. But she wasn’t.

“Excuse me.” She heard her voice sounding very tiny. “My mother is in I.C.U. and I don’t want to take my suitcase there…and I don’t know where exactly to…”

“Just put the suitcase in there,” a busy nurse said.

Bertie dragged the case a few more feet and put it in a closet. What if someone took it? So what? Have to get to Mother before she…oh, God.

“Elevator to the third floor,” the nurse said coldly. Why not? It wasn’t her mother.

I.C.U. and an arrow. Bertie rounded the corner and entered the room. Neetie was there. Neetie was a younger version of her mother, and for a split second when Bertie saw her, she thought it was her mother. Yes, maybe it had been, please, dear God, a joke they were playing just to get Bertie to come to Miami. Neetie looked at Bertie for what seemed like a long time before she realized it was Bertie. Her eyes were half-closed and she got up slowly and put her arms around her sister’s child. That’s what she always called Bertie. “My sister’s child. I love you as if you were my own.”

Bertie didn’t move. Neetie’s smell engulfed her. Jean Naté. It was the way Neetie always smelled. The way her house in Pittsburgh had smelled all the time. There were giant bottles of it all over her funny little house. The house that Bertie used to think was magical because it had three telephone lines, with three different telephone numbers, all unlisted. Only later, when Bertie found out that Uncle Herbie was a bookie and what a bookie did, did the three telephones with the three different telephone numbers lose their magic.

“Come,” Neetie said, taking Bertie’s arm.

Bertie’s heart raced. She knew Neetie was taking her to see her mother, and she wasn’t ready. Ready? More make-up? Her mother was in a coma. Patricia Neal, remember? Coronary Care Unit. Doesn’t that mean heart attack? Swinging doors. Little cubicles. Nurses. Someone’s in an oxygen tent. Which one is…Neetie moved her. Guided her. Take a deep breath. Not too many. Don’t hyperventilate. Cubicle seven and…oh, my God, no, please, God, don’t let it be. Mother. Mommy. Oh, God.

Tubes. In every part of her. Tubes. The ominous one was in her nose. There was a computer connected to her with numbers that got higher and lower.

Bertie was afraid to look at Neetie. Neetie was used to it. She had seen it before. Since yesterday.

 

YESTERDAY IN PUMPERNICKS. Rosie had to go to the ladies’ room. She was fine. Neetie had finished her corned beef sandwich, a little more coffee, please, when she heard the screams. In Pumpernicks there had been screams before.

“Some alta kocker croaks in here once a week,” a lady from New York with too much eye make-up said.

Neetie finished her coffee. A crowd was gathering by the ladies’ room. Neetie looked at her watch.

Maybe we’ll take a little walk on Collins, then we’ll go back to my place and see how Herbie’s doing, she thought. Then later, if Herbie’s busy, Rosie and I will go see a movie. Rosie. Where the hell was…Neetie heard the ambulance and stood up to see where it was headed.

No, it couldn’t be. She walked toward the ladies’ room. The door was open. A few people were inside. A heavy man wearing a flower print shirt was sitting on the floor beside the woman who had collapsed. Next to him a waitress was holding a pair of sandals. They were the sandals Neetie had picked for Rosie in Burdines.

“Rosie,” Neetie said. “Oh, not my Rosie.”

 

“MOM,” BERTIE SAID.

“She can’t hear you. She doesn’t know it’s you. The doctor told me.”

“I don’t believe it. Mom.”

The numbers got higher. Heartbeat increases.

“I’m here, Mom,” Bertie said.

The tubes were moving liquids in and out. Intravenous. Catheter. There were slurping sounds with each labored breath.

“Look at her eyes,” Bertie said.

Rosie’s head was way back, probably to help the tubes to stay in, and her eyes looked as if they were half-open.

“Sometimes they flutter,” Neetie said. “Sometimes, I swear she wants to open them and look at me.”

A nurse entered briskly. For a second Bertie thought she was about to throw them out of the room. There had been a sign on the way in that said something about visiting I.C.U. rooms only on the hour, but it must have been the pained look on Bertie’s face, or maybe her resemblance to Rosie that told the nurse she was the daughter and damn the rules.

Bertie felt Neetie’s hand on her arm, trying to direct her out of the room, but she didn’t move. There was something telling her that maybe, if she stayed there, stood there, sang songs to Rosie, talked to her, read to her, tirelessly, constantly, that Rosie might wake up and respond.

“Mom,” she said. She was too embarrassed by the nurse’s presence to sing. If only she had the nerve, she would lean over the bed and sing “Poor Butterfly.” It was the song Rosie used to sing to her when she was a child to get her to feel better.

“Mom.” Bertie said it a little louder. She wanted to scream it out, but she was afraid the nurse would be shocked and tell her she had to leave because screaming was against hospital policy.

Bertie saw a nun walk through the corridor and enter one of the cubicles. That’s right. This was a Catholic hospital. This was probably a good time to be a Catholic, Bertie thought. To have a lot of faith.

She remembered reading some article about the Lennon Sisters while she was waiting at the beauty salon to get her hair cut one day. The Lennon Sisters’ father had been shot and killed by a man who was such a crazed fan of theirs that he wrote letters to them, saying he believed he was the real husband of Peggy. Or was it Kathy, the prettiest one? Then one day, so the article said, the man approached the Lennon Sisters’ father, who was on the golf course at the time, and demanded to know where to find Peggy, or Kathy, or whichever one he thought he was married to. The Lennon Sisters’ father wouldn’t tell the man, so the man killed the Lennon Sisters’ father. Shot him. The horrible part came when the police finally found the murderer. He was dead. He had shot himself, at least that’s what they said. But somehow, his body was in the trunk of his own car, surrounded by piles of fan magazines.

The Lennon Sisters were Catholic, and Bertie couldn’t remember now exactly what the article said, but mostly it was about how the Lennon Sisters believed it was “God’s will,” and they accepted it with peace in their hearts. And even in the photographs where they were coming out of the church from the funeral, they looked peaceful and serene and accepting.

Neetie edged her to the door, and Bertie took another look back at Rosie. There was no polish on her mother’s fingernails now. Bertie couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother’s nails without polish. And her hair. It looked like straw. She’d been bleaching it some yellowy color; now the roots were showing. If Rosie were awake and could see herself she would say, “Oh, my God. Don’t I look like hell?”

“Mom,” Bertie said.

“Come.” Neetie moved her out of the cubicle and through the big swinging doors through the corridor to the waiting room.

A woman of about forty was sleeping on one of the plastic couches. She was using a raincoat as a blanket.

“Mrs. Koven,” Neetie said, seeing Bertie look at the woman. “Her husband had a very serious heart attack. A young man, too. Forty-one.”

Bertie sat on a hard chair and tried to think what to do next.

Neetie went on. “She told me last night she’s been here for eleven days and nights straight. Doesn’t leave the waiting room except to go and sit by his bed and cry. Her daughter brings her food and clothes. She eats in here and changes in there.” Neetie pointed to a door that must obviously be a rest room. She seemed very interested in the woman’s case. She lit a cigarette and offered one to Bertie, who took it gratefully.

They sat and smoked. Bertie felt drained. She wanted to curl up on one of the plastic couches and cover herself with a raincoat, like the wife of the man with the heart attack, but she knew there was too much to do. Things to take care of. Like what? she thought. Doctors. Yes.

“Where’s my mother’s doctor? Who’s her doctor?”

“A little guy,” Neetie said. “He was the one who was here when they admitted her. Spatz? Spitz? Something like that.”

“Where is he?”

“He’ll be here later.”

“When?”

Neetie shrugged. “Last night he said he’d be here tomorrow. That’s today. So I guess later.”

Bertie put her cigarette out and stood up. “I have to talk to him.”

She walked out into the hall. Bertie had just seen a look in Neetie’s eyes that she recognized. It was a look she herself sometimes gave Michael when she felt grateful to him for taking over some difficult situation. A situation she had tried to handle herself, but couldn’t. A look of relief that said, now that you’re here, and you’re going to be in charge, I can become helpless again. Bertie knew from the look that Neetie expected her to take over, believed that Bertie, who hadn’t even been able to pack her own suitcase to make the trip here, would now do it all. She would force the doctors to pay attention, she would make sure they got the information they needed. Yes. She would somehow put it all together to make Rosie well. Bertie looked at the big black doors of the coronary care unit. There was a nurses’ station in there. She could go in and find out from one of the nurses how to reach Rosie’s doctor.

And then what? What would she say once she reached him? Make my mother well? She took a few steps toward the big doors. Her heart was pounding. She knew the nurses’ station was right outside of Rosie’s room, and she would have to look at Rosie again. Look at her and see those terrible tubes and the computer, and Rosie’s eyes, wanting to open and to see Bertie, see how she looked. Wanting to ask her the question she asked her nearly once a week: “Well? When are you going to make me a grandmother?” It always made Bertie feel guilty when she said that. “Make me a grandmother.” It wasn’t as if Bertie and Michael weren’t trying. Had been to specialist after specialist. And Bertie told Rosie that. But still she said it in person or on the phone at least once a week. “Make me a grandmother,” as if Bertie were deliberately holding out on her.

Bertie pushed the doors open and walked toward the nurses’ station. She decided not to look at Rosie, but she couldn’t help it. The nurse who had been in there must have moved Rosie’s arm to make it easier for the intravenous tube to get into her system, because now her right arm was kind of lifted over the metal railing that flanked the side of the bed, and Rosie’s index finger, with an unpolished nail, looked as if it was pointing toward the door of the room. Pointing at Bertie.

You didn’t make me a grandmother, the frozen gesture said to Bertie. And now look at me. I’m in a coma, and probably I’m going to die…without a grandchild.

“Yes,” the nurse said, looking up.

“Uh, I’m Mrs. White’s daughter, Roberta Barron,” Bertie heard herself say.

“Yes?”

“Uh, well, I wanted to know. Um. Would it be possible for you to tell me…” Bertie hated herself. Good God. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman and she sounded like a child.

“Could I speak to…I mean, who is my mother’s doctor?”

The nurse looked irritated.

“Which one is your mother?”

“Rose. White. Mrs. Rosie White.”

“Which room number?” the woman said impatiently.

“Room number?” Bertie looked anxiously at Rosie’s door. She didn’t see a number.

“That one,” she said, pointing.

“Seven,” the nurse said. Bertie looked all around the door of the room. She didn’t see a number seven anywhere. Her eyes caught Rosie’s pointing finger again, and she looked back at the nurse who was studying a chart.

“Myron Spatz,” the nurse said. “He was the admitting doctor.” She put the chart down and went back to her work. Bertie was nervous. “Can I speak to him?” she asked softly.

“Of course.”

“When?”

“When he gets here,” the nurse answered, as if to a child.

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know, dear,” the nurse said.

Bertie was feeling angry, and her stomach hurt. She remembered an ad she once saw. Maybe it was for the American Cancer Society. In the big letters of the ad it said something like AUNT MARTHA or AUNT MAGGY or some name like that, DIED OF SHAME. There was a picture of an old-fashioned-looking woman, and then in the smaller letters it said something about how this old-fashioned woman had been too embarrassed to examine her own breasts or to let a doctor examine them, so she never knew that she had breast cancer, and then she died. The moral was, don’t let this happen to you. Don’t be intimidated. Speak up and save your life. Rosie’s life. Bertie took a deep breath.

“I want to talk to him now,” she said.

The nurse didn’t even look up.

“Can I reach him at home?”

The nurse shuffled some papers. Bertie’s heart was pounding. She could turn and walk back out to the waiting room. She could tell Neetie the doctor wasn’t available just yet. She turned her eyes for a glance back at Rosie’s room. The finger was still pointing. She had to speak up or Rosie would die of shame like Aunt Martha or whatever her name was from the ad.

“I said,” she announced, surprising herself with the sound of this big new voice, “I want to talk to him now.” She paused for a moment as the next thought came to her. “Even if it means calling him at home.”

The nurse was silent for a long time. She didn’t look at Bertie.

Bertie’s mind raced. How did other people do this? Maybe if she was a man it would be different. Maybe then the nurse would be sweet, nice, even flirtatious. Saying, yes, sir, of course, sir. I’ll reach your mother’s doctor right away, but how about if I fix you some coffee first? Maybe this nurse didn’t like Bertie because she was pretty, and the nurse wasn’t, although she knew she couldn’t look too pretty, filled with Valium, and after that five-hour flight.

How could she get to her? She studied the woman for a moment when her eye caught the little plastic pin. Susan Byers, R.N. Susan Byers. Didn’t Susan Byers love a mother? Couldn’t she imagine what it was like for Bertie to see Rosie, who had fed Bertie, clothed her, hugged her, taught her to walk, to talk, sang “Poor Butterfly” to her when she was sick, called her “Puss” and “Mommy’s precious,” lying there helpless and dying? Unless somebody did something. Soon. Fast. Oh, God. Bertie felt the tears welling. There was a sob moving in her throat. No. She choked it back and leaned forward. She took a deep breath and leaned forward.

“Susan,” she said quietly.

The woman, surprised, looked up and into Bertie’s eyes.

“Susan, I know that you have an enormous amount of responsibility working in this unit, and I appreciate that and respect it. I’m grateful that my mother was brought to this hospital and am sure that she’s in good hands. But, I’m a stranger here, Susan.” The woman flinched a little every time Bertie said her name. “The last time I saw my mother she was very healthy, and now she’s in a coma, and I’m upset.” The tears were fighting to come, but Bertie fought them right back. “I know you’ll understand my need to see Dr. Spatz right away. So please tell me how we can arrange that. Okay, Susan?” No tears. Not yet. Control.

Suddenly the woman who looked back at Bertie was totally changed. She reached out and touched Bertie’s hand. Susan Byers, R.N. Bertie had been wrong. She was pretty. Maybe even prettier than Bertie. “I understand,” she said. “The reason I can’t call Dr. Spatz is because he’s en route. He’ll be here any minute.”

Now the tears could come.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Susan Byers said. Bertie knew she meant it. She also noticed now that Susan Byers was only about twenty-three years old.

Bertie walked into cubicle seven. The seven was very prominent over the door. She gently touched Rosie’s pointing finger.

“I love you, Mom,” she whispered, getting closer. And one of her tears fell on Rosie’s arm. Maybe it would be the way things happened in a fairy tale, and the fallen tear would awaken Rosie. And her awakening would awaken everyone else in the hospital who was unconscious. And they would all jump to their feet and sing, “There’s gonna be a great day,” as they danced through the hospital corridors. But Rosie didn’t move, and Bertie turned and walked toward the swinging doors. She looked back at Susan Byers, who was on the phone now, and Susan Byers smiled at her and waved a warm little wave. Bertie had handled it. So far. Maybe Rosie wasn’t going to die after all.

Bertie’s stomach was churning. She was hungry. Maybe Neetie would go and get sandwiches for them. No. Not if the doctor was due. Neetie would want to hear what he had to say. What did other people do about food around here? The lady whose husband had the heart attack had a daughter who brought her clothes and food. Maybe they could call Uncle Herb, or…

Cee Cee. How had Bertie forgotten that Cee Cee was appearing nightly right across the street? There had been so many other feelings bombarding her since her arrival that Cee Cee had slipped from her mind, but now she was back, lodged there. Cee Cee and Michael making love in Hawaii. All of those letters that came later. Letters Bertie couldn’t read, couldn’t look at. Hated even to touch as she marked them RETURN UNOPENED and put them back in her mailbox for the mailman to take. Only a few months ago, she had come upon the recognizable handwriting again in her pile of mail. This time the envelope was very large, as if purposely to get her attention, and underneath the place where it was addressed to Bertie, a note was printed in large letters: PLEASE BERT, I’M BEGGING YOU TO READ THIS.

Bertie had looked at the sealed envelope for a long time. She could just hear Cee Cee saying those words, I’M BEGGING YOU. It was so dramatic. Cee Cee was dramatic. That’s probably why she was such a good actress. And a successful one, too. In a play on Broadway. Rosie had seen a review of a play in which Cee Cee had appeared. She cut it out and gave it to Bertie one day at lunch. Later Bertie had heard her mother bragging about Cee Cee on the phone to a friend.

“Listen, my daughter’s pen pal, her very close girlfriend in New York, is in a play on Broadway,” she said, as if it had anything to do with her. And Bertie had fought the urge to pick up the extension phone and shout into it, “She’s so close she slept with my husband,” and slam it down.

That last envelope had taken on a life of its own. The large letters danced before Bertie’s eyes. Instead of sending it back immediately, she’d kept this one unopened in her drawer for nearly two weeks, trying to decide what to do. Once Bertie even held the envelope up to the light just to see if she could see a word or two. That’s when she really felt ridiculous. What did it matter? Cee Cee had done a terrible thing to her and it was over between them. Back to the mailbox the letter went, finally, and she wished Cee Cee would stop sending the damned letters. Every time one came she relived that scene in her mind. Waking to hear Michael and Cee Cee out there in the living room of the suite.

“Mrs. Barron?”

A short, round-faced, balding man emerged from the swinging doors of I.C.U.

“I’m Dr. Spatz.”

Neetie must have heard him because she came bounding out of the waiting room like a shot and stood very close to Bertie.

“This is my aunt, Mrs. Burton,” Bertie told Spatz.

He nodded at Neetie. Bertie saw that Neetie was trembling.

“My mother,” Bertie said.

“Yes. Mrs. White,” Spatz said. “I admitted her yesterday.”

Through the door of the waiting room, Bertie could see the woman whose husband had a heart attack, Mrs. Koven. She was eating a sandwich and French fries. A teenaged girl was sitting next to her eating a brownie. Bertie’s stomach growled.

“Mrs. Barron, your mother has suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage from a ruptured berry aneurism. That means she’s had bleeding in the layers around her brain from the blood vessels at the base of her brain.”

The doctor stopped talking. That was it. That was the whole thing.

Bertie felt weak. She was tired and very hungry. She wanted to ask the girl in the waiting room for some of her brownie, but the girl put the last bite in her mouth and wiped her face with a napkin. Now what?

Yes, Rosie. The doctor was waiting for Bertie to ask him something about Rosie.

“What do we do now?” Neetie asked.

“Will she live?” Bertie asked. Bertie was amazed how numb she’d become in the short time since she cried hysterically on the phone last night. Was it only last night?

“I’m afraid you’ll have to call in a neurosurgeon,” Spatz said. Bertie noticed that while he talked he rolled forward and rose onto his toes. Maybe he did that because he was short and if he spent part of the time on his toes he would seem taller.

“They will want to do a brain scan and an angiogram to find precisely where the berry aneurism is located. After that, they’ll probably want to operate.”

Neetie was chewing on her fingers. “Do you think my sister can live through an operation like that?” she asked softly.

The doctor merely gave Neetie a patronizing look. It was the look a waitress gave you when you called her over and asked if you could order now. Only when the waitress gave that look, she also said, “Sorry, that’s not my table.”

Whether Rosie would live or not wasn’t Spatz’s table.

“Which neurosurgeon?” Bertie asked.

“There are several on the staff here.”

“How do I find one?”

“They’ll give you a list.”

“How do I know who the best one is?”

That wasn’t Spatz’s table, either. He only told you what to do. Not how, with whom, or what the outcome might be. Bertie wanted to kick him.

“I’m sure you’ll find someone,” he said politely. “I’ll be by again tomorrow.” With one last rise onto his toes, he nodded, then turned and walked down the corridor.

 

CEE CEE’S THROAT HURT. And the goddamned sequined dress weighed a ton. Jesus, it was a good thing there were only five more days to this gig, otherwise Miami Beach was gonna do her in. With the heat, and the old people, and nothing to do all day. She couldn’t stay in the goddamned hotel room anymore or she’d go stir crazy. She couldn’t stay at the pool oiled up like a French fry, either. Because all those people kept coming up to her and saying “Oh, honey, you’re just like my grandchild, with that big mouth of yours. So come and let’s have our picture taken together.”

Well, sure. That was great for the first few days. It was better than great. It was what she’d waited for, for her whole life, and she played it to the hilt. Hugging the nice people. Clowning for their pictures. Thanking them over and over again when they said how sensational she was on The Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks ago, and how she was even better in the show last night. In fact, they were coming again to see her tonight. And she loved it most of all when she overheard them say to one another, “She’s such a nice person. So real.”

But now it was starting to get to her. Maybe it was because she was fighting with John about dumb little things every day and that was getting to her, too. When things were okay with John, everything else seemed good, but the minute the two of them got out of whack, everything turned to shit.

Like last week when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, John decided to try and get the hotel to give them a bigger suite. Cee Cee told him that was silly because she was perfectly happy in the suite they had now, but he had some kinda bug up his ass.

“Hey,” he said, “business in this place is better than ever, and it’s because you’re bringing the audience in. So why should you be staying in anything less than a penthouse suite?”

And he was so serious and redfaced when he said it that she shrugged and told him, “Fine. Let’s ask.” But when he called the management to ask, they told him they were sorry, but there wasn’t a penthouse suite available. Well, that made him really pissed, in a way Cee Cee hadn’t seen before. And he wouldn’t give up, either. He told the guy on the phone that the hotel ought to pay to move him and Cee Cee to another hotel where there was a penthouse suite available. The guy on the phone thought about it for a minute and then said he’d get back to John. But he never did.

After that John was more edgy than ever. He’d go down to the pool for a quick swim in the mornings, then he’d come back up to the hotel room and sit in the bathtub for hours. He’d start drinking wine around four o’clock. Then at eight o’clock he’d come down and sit at a table by the entrance to the showroom, and while Cee Cee was singing she could make him out back there, throwing down a few more drinks. And even though he told her every day that he loved her, she was scared.

Tonight he seemed better, she thought, pulling the heavy dress up to take it off. She was relieved when he’d begged off to stay in the suite and watch some old movie on TV. He said they could call room service after the show when she got upstairs, and he seemed more relaxed. Five more friggin’ days of Miami Beach. Then they’d go back to New York. They needed that. To be in the city in their own dumpy little apartment where they were comfortable.

Cee Cee hung the sequined dress on the rack, slipped a muumuu over her head, put some sandals on her feet, turned off the light in the dressing room, closed the door, and walked down the hall toward the service elevator.

She was hungry. Always after a show she got those hunger pangs like she could eat a friggin’ horse, and now she couldn’t think of one goddamned thing on the room service menu that appealed to her. Club sandwich. Blah. Salade Fruits de Mer. Yech. Meat. She needed a sandwich. Double decker. Maybe triple. What Nathan, her father, used to call a Dagwood sandwich. He’d pile the cheese on there, and then the cole slaw, and three different kinds of meat, with mustard and mayonnaise and then call out, “Hey, Cecilia, c’mere and take a bite out of this,” and Cee Cee would come into the kitchen and they’d both start laughing at how funny the sandwich was, until Leona came in, and said something shitty like, “even Cee Cee’s mouth ain’t big enough for that thing,” or, “Nate, you pig. Eat like a person. Not an animal, fa chrissake,” and ruin their laugh.

That deli across the street was open all night. Maybe they had something good. Maybe she’d walk in there and pick up a couple of sandwiches and take them back to the room and have a little picnic with John. That would cheer him up. She took her dark glasses out of her purse and put them on, just as the doors of the service elevator opened.

The lobby was dead. Old people go to bed early. The man at the front desk was reading a magazine and didn’t look up as Cee Cee walked by. She knew she must look a little weird with her stage makeup still on, dressed in her muumuu and wearing sunglasses at two in the morning. Maybe not. Maybe in Miami Beach that was the right way to look.

The warm night felt soothing, and even on a busy street like Collins Avenue, with bus fumes and odors wafting from the restaurants, Cee Cee could still smell the salty ocean air mixed with the perfume of the tropical growth that was planted in stucco planters around the outside of the hotel.

There were only four full tables in Pumpernicks, and nobody at any of them seemed to notice Cee Cee.

“Help you, hon?” a short waitress with blond hair and black roots asked. Cee Cee improvised the ingredients of two different sandwiches, and the waitress made them while she waited.

A couple who had to be at least in their eighties came through the door. They both walked very slowly. The man carried a cane. The woman had her arm through his, and they walked toward a booth not far from where Cee Cee was standing. Just as the woman was about to sit down on one side of the booth, the man lifted her wrinkled old hand to his lips and kissed it. The woman smiled a girlish smile at him and then she sat as he went to the other side of the booth and sat, too.

Cee Cee grinned. She wondered if the couple was on a date. No. These two had been married for at least fifty, maybe even sixty years. Christ. Would she have that kind of marriage with John? It had only been ten years, and the bickering was so bitter, sometimes she didn’t think she could stand it.

“Anything else, hon?” the waitress asked, handing Cee Cee the bag with the sandwiches. “I threw in a couple of pickles for you.”

“Thanks a lot,” Cee Cee said.

“And you pay the cashier up front.”

 

CEE CEE TWISTED THE key hard to the right and then pressed against the door to the suite with her shoulder, but the door didn’t budge. The dogs inside began yapping when they heard her out there. Shit. Maybe the key was supposed to go to the left. She’d better put the bag with the sandwiches down till she figured this out. Besides, her muumuu was starting to smell of the garlic that was seeping through the bag with the pickles. Every goddamned hotel door was different, to the right, to the left, pull first then push. Ah, the left and a little nudge from the hip did the trick. The suite was completely dark. The two poodles ran around her feet sniffing out the corned beef. John must have fallen asleep. Well, maybe she wouldn’t wake him, Cee Cee thought as she bent to pick up the bag of sandwiches. Maybe he needed this rest and she’d just nibble her sandwich, down a beer from the refrigerator, and then crawl in beside him.

Nah. He’d love it if she woke him. She’d bring in a couple of beers, rip open the deli bag, and tell him how great the show had gone, and which songs worked the best and…

“Cee?”

It was John’s sleepy voice calling from the bedroom. Great. He was awake. He was gonna loove these sandwiches.

“Baby, guess what I brought,” she said. The only light in the bedroom came from the orange end of the cigarette John was smoking. He had quit smoking years before, and just started again a few weeks ago. Right about the time Cee Cee was on The Ed Sullivan Show.

“Ayy,” she said. “I got something that’s gonna knock your socks off, Perry, so I hope you’re hungry.”

“Great,” he said. “But sit down first, okay?”

“Yeah, I will,” she said. “Soon as I unwrap these, and get us a couple of beers and feed the dogs and—”

“Sit down now, Cee,” John said. He sounded really serious. So serious she wished it wasn’t dark so she could see his face. Then maybe she could tell by his expression that he was kidding.

“Cee Cee,” he said. Her eyes were getting used to the dark, and she could see he was putting out what had become a cigarette butt. And then he reached for another cigarette.

“We both know that you’re a big talent,” he said. “The biggest. And I told you from the beginning that when you finally made it, no one was going to be bigger. Didn’t I say that?”

Cee Cee heard her heart in her ears. She tore a tiny piece of paper from the bag she was still holding and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. Both dogs jumped in her lap.

“Yeah, you said that. And the reason I’m so good is on account of you. You made me this good. I mean, because you’re always pushing me to do better and stuff.”

Now Cee Cee blessed the dark because she was biting her lip knowing that she had stretched the truth more than a little. Not that John didn’t push her. Because he did, but…For a long time neither of them said a word. Now and then John’s cigarette would glow as he puffed it. Cee Cee was more scared than before. It felt like something bad was going to happen any second, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She wanted to drop the sandwich bag and jump on him and say, Please, don’t leave me, J.P., you’re the only man who ever even liked me a lot, let alone loved me—so please don’t leave me. Only she didn’t. She just sat there in the dark room praying to God that he wouldn’t. That that wasn’t what this was all about. Just sat there listening to the lousy air conditioner drip. And then John said, in a really quiet voice, “Cee Cee, I think what I need is a woman who will bask in my glory.”

She knew it. He was saying what she had always been afraid he’d say eventually. That he couldn’t live like this anymore. That he’d given away his balls when he sold the Sunshine Theater. That he’d spent thirty-some years being hot shit, and now his big job in life was to carry her fuckin’ hair dryer. She was afraid he’d say that one day, and now there he was, saying it. But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t make him do that. It was all his idea. Anyway, it didn’t matter whose fault it was. Or whose idea it was. What mattered was she had to make him change his mind. Now.

“Well, what’re you gonna do about it?” she asked him, her voice filled with fear.

And after a moment he said, “I’m going to try and find another little theater. There’s one in Ohio I heard about.”

Then there was no sound but the air conditioner for a long time, and finally John said, “And I’m going to let you go ahead without me.”

“No,” Cee Cee said. “No. You’re not. Now just stop it,” she said, and she dropped the bag that she’d been hugging to herself, and lay on the bed next to him. She was crying. “You know if you’re going to Ohio, I’m going to go with you. I mean, I don’t want any success if you’re not there.” She could feel him crying, too. Felt his tears on her face.

After a minute he sat up and reached over to the night table and turned on the light. Then he looked at her face, and she was sure she must look horrible with tears smeared all over her goopy stage makeup.

“Now, baby,” John said. “We both know that isn’t true.”

“It is, it is,” she said, kissing his face. “J.P., take it back. Say you won’t go, honey. Say it.” She loved him. She was sure she loved him more than anyone had ever loved anyone in the world. Without another word, John made love to her. And then they slept tangled in one another’s arms and legs, and the next morning when she opened her eyes, barely awake yet, she saw him standing, showered and dressed, at the foot of the bed. He was holding his packed suitcase. He was so beautiful. No, she thought. Please. Don’t John.

“I love you, Cee,” he said. “A whole lot.”

And he was gone.

 

FOR FOUR DAYS BERTIE’S life was a cycle of sitting first on the plastic couch in the waiting room, sometimes awake, often asleep, while Neetie sat right next to Rosie’s bed; then Bertie would go to the plastic chair next to Rosie’s bed while Neetie moved out into the waiting room and had a cigarette, and finally Bertie would be in the stark white neon-lit ladies’ room, even if she didn’t have any need to use the bathroom. She thought that maybe she was going in there (and this made her laugh as it passed through her mind) for a change of scene.

The neurosurgeon was Dr. Metcalfe. He was slim and tall, with very short salt-and-pepper hair, and they had chosen him after Bertie called Michael. Michael called his father, Dr. Barron telephoned a Dr. Fishmann, with whom he’d gone to the University of Pittsburgh and who now practiced in Miami, and Fishmann called Metcalfe, who was on the staff of St. Joseph’s. Bertie had been terrified she would make the wrong choice. Certain that because Michael’s father was a doctor, he could come up with the name of some miracle worker to save Rosie.

Metcalfe was not a miracle worker.

They took Rosie’s inert body down for an angiogram one night while Bertie slept. The damage was too great for any surgery.

“Then what do we…” Neetie said, unable to ask the question.

“We wait,” Metcalfe said, answering the unfinished question.

At each mealtime one of the “cast members,” which was the way Bertie had come to think about the other people who were sitting similar vigils for their own parents or husbands or wives, would walk over to Pumpernicks and get sandwiches for the rest, so that it seemed to Bertie she now had eaten at least seventeen corned beef sandwiches with cole slaw and Russian dressing—one of the sandwiches at every meal. Bertie and Neetie hadn’t been asked to take a turn going for the food yet. Maybe it was because Neetie said very loudly one day in front of everyone that she’d die first “before I’d ever go back to that lousy Pumpernicks whose food probably did this to my sister.”

On the fifth day, when Mr. Heft offered to go over and pick up some deli for “a little nibble for everyone,” Bertie volunteered to go along to help carry. Mr. Heft’s wife was in Intensive Care after an operation. She was not doing well, it seemed, because on several occasions Bertie saw Mr. Heft sitting with a dark-haired woman who must be his daughter, and they were both crying. Mr. Heft had decided to leave just as Bertie emerged from Rosie’s cubicle, and it was Neetie’s turn to sit by the bed. Bertie said, “Back in a few minutes, Neet,” but when Neetie heard that Bertie was going to leave the hospital building, Bertie saw panic in her aunt’s eyes.

“It’s okay,” Bertie promised. “I just need a breath of air.”

As Bertie and Mr. Heft silently walked the few blocks from the hospital to Pumpernicks, Bertie realized how full her lungs had been, not just her lungs, but her clothes, her unwashed hair, her mouth, with the smell and the taste of the hospital. No, she couldn’t let Rosie die. Not even in her mind. She mustn’t put that negative energy out in the atmosphere. When Mr. Heft took Bertie’s elbow gently as they crossed the street, she realized she hadn’t even looked at him since they left I.C.U., her eyes had been so busy taking in the parts of the hospital she hadn’t seen or noticed on her way in.

Old people. Mostly old people in every room. Maybe because in this neighborhood there were mostly old people. Bertie remembered Uncle Herbie saying one time that Miami Beach was “God’s waiting room.”

“Your mom any better?” Mr. Heft asked her.

Bertie smiled and shook her head. She was starting to feel close to Mr. Heft. This morning he had shown her pictures of his married daughter Ruthie and her husband Max and their four kids. “Boy, do these kids love their grandma,” he said, pointing to the I.C.U. doors. “They couldn’t live without her,” he said, his lip trembling.

She also felt close to Mrs. Devlin, the tiny red-haired lady of about fifty who regaled them all, including some of the nuns the night before, over corned beef sandwiches, with the story of the mastectomy she herself had had two years before, which, when she told it, seemed like the funniest comedy routine anyone had ever done. Now, Mrs. Devlin was waiting for news of her husband, who had had brain surgery yesterday; but this morning she’d said to Mr. Heft, “Don’t worry, Heft honey, she’ll dance at the grandchildren’s weddings. I’m telling ya!”

A support system. That’s what they were for one another. Even Peter Gaché, the young man. He was very handsome. He looked like Hugh Hefner. But he didn’t sleep there with the rest of them. Instead, he came every day to visit his father, who’d had his third coronary. Gaché wore a suit and brought a fresh package of cookies from a bakery which he left in the waiting room for the others. The first day he had looked longingly at Bertie, who was certain the longing looks decreased in direct proportion to how dirty her hair became over the next four days, during which she did not dare leave the hospital.

Well, she was glad to be outside now. At last. To walk on Collins Avenue. Just to breathe. Just to—

CEE CEE BLOOM. FEB. 14–28. There it was again. That marquee. Cee Cee. Bertie thought about Cee Cee every day. Everything made her think about Cee Cee’s being in Miami Beach. Mrs. Devlin’s story. Bertie kept thinking that as funny as the story was, Cee Cee would have, could have, told it better. Late that night, while Bertie and Neetie sat on the plastic sofa in the waiting room, whispering because Mr. Heft was asleep, and munching leftover chocolate brownies from Pumpernicks, Neetie asked, “How is your girlfriend, that girl from Beach Haven? The singer. I saw her picture in some magazine. And then we watched her on Ed Sullivan.”

Bertie nodded.

“She’s here,” Bertie said.

“Where?”

“Miami Beach.”

“No kidding? So why haven’t you seen her?” Neetie asked loudly, loudly enough to make Mrs. Koven, who was sleeping as usual, covered with her raincoat, on one of the plastic sofas, turn over. “Is she staying near here?” Neetie asked.

“Neetie, should I go be with Cee Cee before I sit in I.C.U., or when I come out?” she snapped, and was instantly sorry.

“You’re right,” Neetie said. “Sometimes I forget for a minute.”

Of course, the real reason Bertie wasn’t looking up Cee Cee was one that Bertie could never tell Neetie or anyone else in the world.

The anger rose in Bertie again. Cee Cee Bloom. Bertie had to force her eyes away from the marquee. Cee Cee was a star. Just like she said she would be that time in Hawaii. Hawaii. Cee Cee and Michael.

Mr. Heft was pushing open the glass door of Pumpernicks, and holding it open for Bertie, and as they approached the deli counter, he pulled a small folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. The paper was a little limp from being against his perspiring body, and he peeled it open.

“What’ll it be, pop?” the clerk asked.

Mr. Heft read his deli order from the piece of paper to the clerk.

“Three corned beefs, two roast beefs, and a chopped liver with onion,” he said, and then looked apologetically at Bertie. “That chopped liver’s for me. I’m getting sick of corned beef.”

Bertie smiled and looked out the window toward the driveway of the Carillon Hotel directly across the street. A white Cadillac pulled up and stopped. What if the door of the Cadillac opened and out stepped Cee Cee?

A white-haired woman of about sixty got out of the Cadillac, and Bertie sighed and realized she’d stopped breathing, waiting to see who would emerge.

“Maybe you should try the chopped liver, too,” Mr. Heft said to Bertie. “With a red Bermuda onion. I’m tellin’ you, there’s nothin’ like it.”

Bertie smiled. “No thanks.” She had to go to the bathroom. Why hadn’t she gone before they left the hospital? “Always make a stop to be safe,” Rosie had taught her. “Even if you think you don’t have to.” Now Bertie would have to use Pumpernicks’ ladies’ room, which was where Rosie had…no. She’d wait until she got back to the hospital. She watched the man in the white apron behind the counter gingerly slice the corned beef. He was singing a song along with the movement of the slicing machine. It sounded like “What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.” She looked around the restaurant, trying not to think about what it must have been like a few days ago when they found Rosie, and the ambulance came and…

Mr. Heft took the paper bag filled with sandwiches to the cashier and paid for them. Bertie looked out the window again, and across the street at the marquee of the Carillon Hotel. FEB. 14–28. When she looked back at Mr. Heft, he was motioning to her to come along with him. Yes, back to the hospital. To eat a sandwich and sit with Rosie and eat another sandwich and sit some more. Mr. Heft opened the door of Pumpernicks, and the two of them were outside again in the hot, salty-smelling Miami Beach day.

As they turned the corner and began walking toward the hospital, Bertie stopped. “Mr. Heft,” she said, “would you mind going on ahead? Tell my aunt I had something to do. Tell her I’ll be back in a few minutes. Could you do that for me, please?”

Mr. Heft patted Bertie on the arm and turned to go. Bertie stopped and watched him, and as he walked toward the hospital, he took his chopped liver sandwich out of the bag, unwrapped it with the hand that wasn’t holding the bag, and took a bite out of it as he walked along. It must have tasted good because he shook his head the way people do when they can’t believe something is as good as they’d hoped.

Bertie walked back to the corner, waited for the light to turn green, and crossed the street toward the Carillon Hotel. She kept telling herself that she was just going to find the ladies’ room in the lobby, use it, and leave.

It was a busy day. Several cars, three of them new Cadillacs, stood in line waiting to drop people off. Bertie caught sight of her reflection in the glass front door of the hotel. God. She looked like Rosie’s favorite expression, “the wreck of the Hesperus.” For years, she’d meant to look that up in the encyclopedia or somewhere, but hadn’t done it yet, and now here she was again, still not sure what the wreck of the Hesperus was, but certain she looked like it.

The lobby of the Carillon was bustling with people. Laughing people. People who didn’t care that Rosie was in a coma or that Bertie’s hair was dirty, or that she was standing there now, shivering, wondering if it was because the air conditioning was too high, or in fear of running into Cee Cee.

What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she gone back to the hospital with Mr. Heft? It must be her turn to sit by the bed again. Suppose Rosie woke up? Came out of the coma, even for a moment, and she wasn’t there? “Sorry,” Neetie would have to tell Rosie, “she told me she was going out for a breath of fresh air and to help the old man carry the corned beef, but he came back with the sandwiches and said she went off somewhere, probably to have a good time.” And Rosie, disappointed in her again, would go back into the coma.

To have a good time. That was not why Bertie was here, now, in the lobby of the hotel. In fact, it was as if she couldn’t help coming here. But why? To be in the vicinity of Cee Cee? Why would she want to do that? Curiosity? Maybe. Rage? Was she coming here to unleash all the years of her pent-up anger?

The dark-haired girl at the desk directed Bertie to the ladies’ room. It was pink and gold and what Rosie would have called “fancy.” When Bertie came out of the cubicle to wash her hands, she tried not to look at herself in the mirror, but as she turned on the spigot, the hush it made at the moment before the water came, sounded as if it said, “Hesperus.”

Bertie walked back into the lobby. She would leave now. Stop playing this dumb game with herself. Go back to the hospital, and the safety of…The blond woman with the frizzy hair who was just walking in the door was back-lit, so Bertie couldn’t make out her face, but she had two poodles on leashes, so it couldn’t be Cee Cee. Cee Cee had once told Bertie she thought dogs were revolting little creatures who panted all over you and breathed their disgusting breath in your face. Like most of the men I’ve dated, she added, and then she’d laughed.

“Sure, outside you wouldn’t do nothin’,” said the loud familiar voice to the dogs. “And now you’ll probably take a big crap right here in the lobby and make me look bad.”

She was heading for the desk now. Bertie watched her. That walk. That great slinky walk.

“Any messages for five-thirty-one?” Bertie heard Cee Cee ask in a voice so loud that everyone in the State of Florida could have heard her say it. The woman at the desk looked in a pigeonhole and pulled out what must be a big stack of messages and handed them to Cee Cee. Cee Cee didn’t look at her messages, just stuffed them in the multicolored basket that hung on her arm and started walking. Even though the poodles were each trying to pull her in different directions, she was definitely heading for the elevators.

Bertie’s heart was pounding. She didn’t move. Cee Cee was in front of the bank of elevators now. Some people who were waiting for the elevator had recognized her and they were asking her some questions, and all of them were laughing. Cee Cee picked up one of the poodles and held it as if it were a baby. An elderly woman patted the little dog on the head.

The elevator doors opened, and a few people got off. When the elevator was empty, the elderly woman, still laughing and chatting with Cee Cee, got on. Cee Cee took a step toward the elevator.

That was when Bertie screamed as loud as she could.

“Cee Cee! Wait. Cee Cee,” and ran toward the elevator with such a burst that the poodle Cee Cee was holding leapt out of her arms, and both dogs barked furiously.

Cee Cee looked worried for a second, as if she thought this crazy person running toward her was some overwrought fan, but when she realized who it was, the look in her eyes changed. Bertie couldn’t tell to what. Was it surprise? Maybe concern? Or pain?

Bertie didn’t wait to figure it out. Her arms went around Cee Cee’s neck.

“Oh, God, Cee Cee, this is crazy. I feel crazy for saying this, and crazier for coming here—but I’m so glad to see you, and I feel awful for sending your letters back all those times. Never opening them, but I was so hurt, so threatened.

“And now…and then…I mean, I was surprised to see you were here because I’m here. I mean I’m here because my mother is in the hospital, at St. Joseph’s in I.C.U., and I’ve been sitting there for days with all these people I don’t know…and sleeping on the sofa…afraid she’s going to die—and…eating sandwiches and…”

As she clung to Cee Cee, she could tell by the stiffness in Cee Cee’s body that Cee Cee didn’t care what she had to say, or how long she’d been sitting anywhere, or how badly she felt. Bertie moved away from Cee Cee and looked into her face. “Cee Cee, I couldn’t forgive you. I had to blame you for what happened. Not Michael. Because I needed Michael so much that if I…Cee Cee, maybe if we talked about it, worked it out, I could forgive you now.”

Cee Cee smiled. Thank God. There it was. Her knockout smile. Bertie sighed, and then she smiled, too. Thank God. Thank God. It was going to be okay. Bertie was relieved. So glad she’d made the effort to come here. To say all those things. Of course, the two of them would probably never be best friends again, but at least—

“Fuck you,” Cee Cee said, with the same smile that Bertie realized now was forced, because Cee Cee’s eyes were filled with anger. “Now go back to the hospital,” she said, and she turned and walked back toward the elevators, but after she’d gone halfway across the lobby she turned back, and now without the smile, she shouted, red-faced and furious, at Bertie, who stood still and numb. Shouted from her guts across the distance that separated them. “Fuck you, because every time I opened one of your goddamned letters I was smiling and happy before I even read it. Just to get it. It made me glad. Made me feel alive. Made me feel important. I would close the door wherever I was so I could be alone and read it a couple of times. And then I’d put it away, and then I’d take it out and read it again later and then another time that night. I needed those letters. I got used to seeing them in my mailbox, tearing them open and devouring every line like dessert, like whipped cream. Every fucking exclamation point. All the way back to your stories about which asshole was tryin’ to feel you up in high school, or about how sad you were when they passed you over for senior queen. And all your theories about getting married, being married, staying married. And about what you were gonna do. Remember that, Bert?”

She was still shouting. So loud that two women who were walking by looked over and clucked to one another in disapproval. When Cee Cee noticed they were two women she had talked to at the pool, she seemed to get control of herself for a moment, then strode toward where Bertie stood frozen, unblinking. But the fury still burned feverishly in Cee Cee’s eyes. Only now the angry words were forced out in a hoarse whisper.

“Well, what about me? What about what I was gonna do? For the last couple of years, when my marriage was falling apart? Who was I supposed to talk to about that? When I was dying inside, and needed to know you were out there? Needed you to tell me it will be okay, Cee, you’re great, Cee, you’re the best, there’s no one better, you wouldn’t even open my fuckin’ letters because you had some craziness in your mind about me.

“Well, maybe you coulda helped me, Bertie. Maybe if I would have had you out there, I would have been able to figure out how to make it easier for John that it was me who was living out the big show business dream instead of him. Not just working in some goddamned airplane hangar with a bunch of amateurs. Me who was up there with the big-time showbiz guys, where John never was or never will be.

“Maybe you coulda told me how to act girlish through it all, or how I should have made him feel more important at home so it didn’t hurt him too bad. And then maybe—” Cee Cee stopped talking for a minute, and it looked to Bertie as if she was biting the inside of her lower lip, and when she stopped she said, “Then, maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”

Bertie wanted to touch her. Just touch Cee Cee’s arm, but she didn’t dare.

“Bertie,” Cee Cee said, “don’t you get it? You took yourself away from me without askin’ if you were right to do it or not. And you weren’t. I didn’t do anything with your husband. Ever. Never touched him. Maybe I said some suggestive things, which I do, and sometimes at the wrong times, but that’s all. That’s what it said in all the letters I sent you that you were too tight-assed to open. And you know why I didn’t do anything? Because I didn’t want to. Because I knew something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. That it was more important to me than some guy’s dick and where he wanted to put it. That it was more important than anything, because I trusted it, I believed in it. But you didn’t, and your husband didn’t. So you can take your dirty little suspicious mind and find yourself a friend who doesn’t care that you don’t know how to trust her, or about your smarmy husband’s idea of how to be a man.”

Cee Cee’s fists were clenched as if she wanted to pummel Bertie, who stood speechlessly by.

“So thanks a lot for forgiving me, thanks a whole fuckin’ lot, but I don’t forgive you, and I never will.”

And Cee Cee turned to go again, but after a few steps she turned back and said, in a very soft voice, “I’m real sorry about your mother.”

The elevator door opened as Cee Cee got to it, and she was gone. Bertie stood still for a long time, oblivious to the stares of the people in the lobby, finally forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the door of the hotel.

The bright sun made Bertie squint. Her eyes were already sore from crying. Slowly she made her way back toward the hospital, her head pounding. John had walked out on Cee Cee. Something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. Nothing happened. That’s what Michael had said. But she heard him out there in the other room that night. Making love to Cee Cee. Imagined them to be writhing, hot, wild for one another. Imagined.

The piercing siren of an ambulance on its way to the hospital emergency entrance startled her for a moment, and she was relieved to enter the hospital, as if she needed the security of the medicinal and bodily smells.

Neetie was still in with Rosie when Bertie arrived. Metcalfe had been by, Neetie said, had looked at Rosie, marked something on a chart and said nothing. Bertie wished she could think of something positive she could say to Neetie. Something about Patricia Neal. She’ll come back. Like Patricia Neal. But they both looked at Rosie with her finger still pointing and they both knew.

Even though there were no windows in the intensive care waiting room, it was easy for Bertie to feel when the night fell. The new shift of nurses came on, the evening shift of nuns came in and straightened things, and that dinnertime hunger gnawed at her. She thought, as she washed her face and changed her blouse, how perfect it would be to sit down at a table somewhere, anywhere, and eat a hot meal. Not even anything fancy. Just something on a plate instead of a sandwich again. Selfish, terrible thought. But all evening, while the others chatted, she ached to say to Neetie, Let’s go out. Let’s go sit with napkins on our laps and knives and forks in our hands. But when somebody brought sandwiches she ate part of one, turkey this time. She played gin rummy with Mr. Heft, read some of Mrs. Koven’s magazines. Peter Gaché stopped by on his visit to his father and left cupcakes this time. Bertie tried dozing for a while. Every time she drifted off to sleep, she could see Cee Cee’s angry face—“Maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”

Finally, at midnight she went to a phone booth in the corridor and called Michael. She hadn’t called him in two days. He’d be eager to hear how everything was going, even though it was late and she’d probably be waking him. She heard the phone ringing twice.

“’Lo?”

“Michael?”

“Bert. Hey. How’s it going?” He asked as if she was calling from a football game, and he was asking her the score.

“No change,” Bertie said.

“Sorry, babe,” Michael said. “Probably be the best thing for her to just check out, I guess, huh?”

People always said things like that about someone who was in a condition like Rosie’s, and Bertie could never understand it.

“Probably,” she said, wishing she could shriek at him, “If it was someone you loved as much as I love my mother, you’d want them to do everything. You’d pray every second. You’d talk to her and—” She couldn’t say that.

“Michael, Cee Cee’s here,” she said, wishing she could see his expression. “She’s working here in the club at the Carillon Hotel.”

Michael said nothing. Bertie was tired. So tired. And she ached from all the nights of sleeping on the I.C.U. sofa.

“I saw her,” she said.

“You went to a club?”

“I went to the hotel. To use the ladies’ room. It’s nearby and she—we bumped into one another.”

Michael was silent.

“She hates me, Michael. I tried to work things out with her, but she wouldn’t.”

Silence.

“Michael, when I get home, you and I have a lot to discuss.”

“About what?” Michael asked, with almost a smirk in his voice.

Terrible weeping in the corridor. Wracking sobs.

“Michael, I don’t know if I—” The sobs were long and loud and filled with terrible anguish, and Bertie leaned out of the phone booth to see where they were coming from.

Old Mr. Heft and Mrs. Devlin were locked in each other’s arms, heads on each other’s shoulders, weeping, keening, moaning. It was so terribly sad that one of the nurses who was standing by sobbed, too. The nurse held a small tray with a tiny plastic cup on it. The cup was filled with blue liquid.

“Please, take this,” she said, but no one was listening to her. “It’ll relax you, dear,” she said.

Bertie wondered what had happened. Was it Mrs. Devlin’s husband? Mr. Heft’s wife?

“Bertie, are you there? You don’t know if you what?”

Michael sounded angry, but Bertie didn’t care what he was saying, or how he felt.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Bertie, the best thing that ever happened was when you gave up that friendship,” Michael said hastily.

Bertie heard something in his voice she’d never heard there before. It sounded like fear.

“She’s a scumbag,” Michael said.

Bertie hated that expression. Michael only used it to refer to prophylactics and women.

“Don’t start getting impressed by her big star act. I pegged her the first day. You remember I did. I said…Bert?”

Bertie didn’t even hang the phone in its cradle. She was down the hall trying to help Mrs. Devlin and the nurse get old Mr. Heft off the floor, where he lay sobbing. A male orderly and one of the nuns came up the hall.

“Can’t live without her,” Mr. Heft said. His face was red and swollen with tears. “Can’t live without her.”

“His daughter’s down in the lobby to take him home,” someone said, and an orderly helped Mr. Heft gently while the nurse placed the little plastic cup to his lips and he closed his eyes and drank the liquid. Then one of the nuns brought a wheelchair and Mr. Heft sat in it. The elevator doors at the end of the hall opened, and a pretty, dark-haired woman got off. Bertie remembered the woman being there a few times with Mr. Heft. When the woman saw Mr. Heft, she ran to him and bent over him in the wheelchair. They were both sobbing. They patted one another and cried more, and then with the help of one of the nuns the woman wheeled Mr. Heft down the hall toward the elevator, and everyone else dispersed. Except for Bertie. She continued to stand there, watching as the dark-haired woman and the nun carefully lifted the front wheels of the wheelchair onto the elevator. That was it. The end of Mrs. Heft. And good-bye, Mr. Heft. Only Mr. Heft hadn’t even said good-bye to Bertie or Mrs. Devlin or Mrs. Koven. He was simply wheeled away in his anguish.

Bertie continued to look down the corridor long after Mr. Heft was gone. Mrs. Heft had just checked out. Probably the best thing. Michael. Oh, God. She’d left him hanging on the phone. He must be furious. She walked to the phone booth, picked up the dangling receiver and put it to her ear. Dial tone. As she was hanging up the phone, two nurses who had just emerged from the elevator walked by, and Bertie heard part of their conversation.

“She was on The Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks ago, and now there she was coming in the door downstairs. I couldn’t believe it.” The two nurses stopped right near the phone booth. One was taking something out of her purse.

“She went over to the patient information desk,” the other nurse said. “So I figure she must be coming to see a friend or something….”

But now the nurse stopped talking, because she could see what Bertie could see. Cee Cee, still wearing what must be the dress that wowed them all in the eight o’clock show, had emerged from the elevator and was walking down the hall carrying a huge cardboard box that had aluminum-foil-wrapped containers piled inside it. Her high heels scuffed noisily along the linoleum floor. The sequined low-cut dress looked out of place and silly in the hospital. Almost disrespectful. But Cee Cee didn’t care. She was as jaunty as if she was on her way to the circus. When Cee Cee saw Bertie, she spoke as if everything had always been okay between them.

“They only serve chicken and prime rib at the dinner show, so I had ’em pack a few of ’em up for you.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie began, but couldn’t finish because Cee Cee was surrounded. Every nurse on the floor was in the corridor gathered around her, a few interns, Mrs. Koven and her daughter, two orderlies, Mrs. Devlin, and some nuns.

“Sign this.” “Saw you on TV.” “I have your albums at home.” The whole group moved into the I.C.U. waiting room, which was now filled with smiling excited faces, all wanting Cee Cee’s attention. Cee Cee put the box of food on the plastic sofa. Bertie sat next to it and picked at the aluminum foil. The food smelled great. But she wasn’t hungry. Cee Cee was there. Forgiving her for forgiving her. Making everyone laugh. Using one of the nun’s backs to lean on while she signed an autograph for the other nun. And everyone adoring her.

“I coulda become a nun,” she said, as if she was doing a stand-up comedy routine. “But there is one thing, just one little thing that a girl like me cannot live without that is a no-no for nuns.”

“And what is that, Cee?” Mrs. Devlin asked, as if she were the straight man for the comic.

“Sequins,” Cee Cee answered, and everyone laughed.

When Bertie walked her into the waiting room, Neetie smiled a little smile through her tears and said, “We watched you together on Ed Sullivan, and I remembered when you were in those shows in Beach Haven, and I was tellin’ Rosie how you sang so good, even then, and how you used to come over just like any other friend of Bertie’s, only Bertie always was saying how you were the best of all. I told that to my sister, and now look….”

Cee Cee put her arms around Neetie and Neetie cried some more, and then Bertie said, “There’s some food here, Aunt Neet. Cee Cee brought food.”

“No, thank you,” Neetie said almost shyly, as if she was afraid to offend Cee Cee. “I gotta go back and sit with my sister. Somebody should be there.”

“I’ll go, dear,” one of the nuns said. “You stay a while and have a little visit.”

Neetie sat with relief on the plastic sofa.

“Hey, have the chicken,” Mrs. Devlin said to Neetie as she poked around among the remaining foil-covered plates.

Cee Cee seemed to be surveying the scene now as if to determine that everything was all right, then she took a deep breath and looked at Bertie. “Hey, listen, I gotta run,” she said. “Got another show to do tonight. So I’ll be toddling off,” and she stood.

There was so much Bertie wanted to say, but everyone was sitting there. Maybe she should walk Cee Cee to the elevator and on the way ask her what this visit meant. Were they friends again? Or was this just a burst of charity? (That’s the way Cee Cee used to describe it in her letters when she sang at fund raisers.) Was there anything Bertie could do or say to make up for not being there for her for so long? Bertie wondered if maybe she should ask Cee Cee if she wanted to see Rosie. Then she remembered Cee Cee’s letters about how after Leona died, Nathan, her father, got sick, and how being near him when he was in the hospital gave her “the creeps.” Bertie remembered now what she said in that letter. “The sick and the dying are not my territory, kiddo.” She would never want to go into cubicle seven and see the corpselike Rosie. The I.C.U. was no place for Cee Cee.

“I’ll walk you to the elevator,” Bertie said.

“Nah,” Cee Cee insisted, gave Bertie a little tap on the arm, and then a smile, and without even a good-by to anyone, she was gone out the door of the waiting room.

“The chicken is very juicy,” Neetie said, with a mouthful of chicken, and Mrs. Devlin agreed. Mrs. Koven and her daughter were having the prime rib. The daughter was trying to cut it with a plastic knife the hotel had sent.

“My sister Rose loves chicken,” Neetie said.

“I’m going in, Aunt Neet,” Bertie said.

Neetie waved a chicken leg in approval.

As soon as Bertie pushed open the big black doors of the I.C.U. and saw the nuns standing, their heads bowed, their hands held as if in prayer, outside of cubicle seven, the tears rushed to her eyes. Gone. Rosie was gone. That was for certain. Had to be. And they were praying for the safe journey of her soul to heaven. Bertie moved closer, pushed the nuns apart, and forced herself to look into the room.

Standing a few feet from the bed, her face filled with emotion, was Cee Cee. She was singing to Rosie, the monitors clicking away in an eerie accompaniment, as the nuns and Bertie listened:

The moments pass into hours

The hours pass into years

And as she smiles through her tears

She murmurs low….

The song Rosie had sung to Bertie as a lullaby all through her childhood. She must have told that to Cee Cee once. Maybe more than once. The young nun who was standing near Bertie put her arm around Bertie’s waist, and Bertie was grateful for the strength in the woman’s arm.

The moon and I

Know that he’ll be faithful

I’m sure he’ll come to me by and by…

The I.C.U. nurses were gathering now; Bertie felt other people breathing near her, behind her, all around her in the doorway, but she couldn’t take her eyes from Cee Cee.

But if he don’t come back

Then I’ll never sigh or cry….

Cee Cee’s voice cracked with tears, but she grabbed a breath and went on.

I just must die

Poor butterfly.

The last notes were in full voice. That beautiful voice that sent a chill through Bertie and everyone in the doorway. They all stood quietly. Too moved to utter a sound. Cee Cee continued to look at Rosie, but finally she sighed, moved toward the door, walked over to Bertie and hugged her. A warm, holding-very-tight hug. Then they walked together toward the black doors of the I.C.U.

“I thought you didn’t do the sick and the dying,” Bertie said.

“It was okay,” Cee Cee said. “I didn’t look at her.”

Bertie shook her head, looked at Cee Cee, and they both smiled.

“Anyway, I got a late show and then I’m hittin’ the road right afterwards. I’m already packed. So I should be gettin’ a letter from you at my New York address any day now. Right?”

Bertie smiled. “Right,” she said, and the two friends hugged again, and Cee Cee was off, down the hall, sequins flashing, moving in that unmistakable gait that said, here I am, so if you’re lookin’ anyplace else, you’re wastin’ your time. Waving good-bye to this one and that, and when she reached the elevator, she turned back to look at Bertie, who she was certain had been watching her the entire time, and blew her that special Cee Cee kiss.

Rosie died that night. Bertie called Michael, who showed up right away. It was clear that he wasn’t happy about having to miss the time away from work. He dealt with the hospital and shipping the body to Pittsburgh and funeral directors, and Bertie didn’t have to do a thing but wash her hair and sit in the bathtub for hours crying, and to sleep, at last, at home in Pittsburgh, in her own bed.

Within a few days, life seemed nearly back to normal. In another week, Bertie would go back to work at the Home. Tonight she and Michael sat silently at the dinner table.

“Cee Cee and John have split up,” Bertie said. She knew she shouldn’t have said that. She knew she should leave it alone. What was she doing? Why did she have to open that up? Maybe just to get him to react to her. Michael cut into his veal, speared a piece with his fork, put it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Then he picked up his glass of white wine, took a sip, looked long into the glass, and then put it down on the table.

“Guess he finally found out about her,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Bertie asked. She should have never started this. It was provocative. And she didn’t want to know what Michael meant by that.

“What that means is that she’s garbage, Bert, believe me. You don’t even know how bad she is. You don’t want to get me going on what I think of her, because it’s just going to stir up a lot of stuff. Okay?”

“Michael, she’s not garbage. She’s just different. And not the kind of person you understand.”

Now she should ask him what happened. To stir up what stuff? About what really happened that night? She wanted to. But what if…

Michael was smiling a smile that she’d seen on his face before. It was the smile of a wise father to an innocent child who he hoped would someday see the light. And along with the smile went a pat on her hand, and a little burst of air from his nose that signified his amusement.

“You’re such a good person that you sometimes just don’t even see what’s real. If you’re truly smart you’ll keep doing the same thing you’ve been doing all along with her letters—send them back. Don’t write to her. Don’t call her and don’t see her. She’s the lowest, Bert, and she’ll drag you down. Change your address. Honestly, your fatal attraction to her is the one thing about you I’ve never been able to see. Or respect, for that matter.”

“Michael.”

“Besides, I’ve got a great way for you to change your address for at least six months out of every year,” he said, as he continued to pat her hand.

“Michael, let’s finish this.”

“I think we have,” he told her. “Let’s just say you think one thing about it and I think another. I’m not going to change my opinion, but I hope you’ll change yours. Okay? Now let me tell you about the deal I’m making in Sarasota, Florida. We can get a winter place down there for practically nothing. And maybe even live there half the year.”

 

THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER Michael left for work, Bertie did the breakfast dishes, prepared herself a second cup of coffee, and reached for the telephone. But then a wave of sadness stopped her. She had been about to call Rosie. In Miami Beach. Some early mornings in the past when she felt like having company for morning coffee she had done that. And they would chat and have “girl talk” about this or that, and when things weren’t going so well they would tell one another, “Hang in there, old chum.” Never again. She would go to the market this morning, make a shopping list to fill the empty refrigerator. And then this evening maybe she’d make a big dinner for Michael. Something special. She took her paper and pen and her coffee tray into the dining room.

She sighed and sat alone for a long time at the dining-room table. The only sound in the silent house was the clink of her spoon in the coffee cup as she stirred it and watched the whirlpool she made in the cup.

Groceries in the house. Dinner for Michael. That’s what she had to get to. She put down her spoon, picked up her pen, and began to make the list. Rice, lettuce, tomatoes, chicken breasts…. Her mind wandered from the list, and after a while she stopped, tore that page from the tablet, and wrote on the next page instead.

Dear Cee Cee, she wrote, and then she smiled to herself and continued writing. It was her first letter to Cee Cee in a long time.

Dear Cee Cee,

Just the act of sitting down to write to you always makes my day brighter. I guess because I feel less lonely—knowing you’re there. I honestly miss my mother terribly. Even though she could sometimes be too demanding and even though she had values that I’m certain fouled me up in many ways, she was a dear lady and a close friend. Someone I could really count on.

I wish so much that I could have given her the grandchild she wanted so badly. I am still trying. I mean, we are—but to no avail, I’m afraid, and our lack of success is difficult for us both. Michael is pretty nice about it, sympathetic when I get my period, etc., but I think he’d just as soon keep our life the way it is.

The winter home we bought in Florida is gorgeous, but it seems to be a kind of consolation prize for me, so that while I’m busy decorating it, maybe I’ll forget about pregnancy. Instead, of course, I think about it more, as I fill a big empty house with furniture. And I miss my work at the Home, too. I send one letter to all my friends there, and get back fourteen letters from the children. Instead of cheering me up it makes me wish I was in snowy slushy Pittsburgh and I fall apart.

Help! I re-read this and realized I sound like I’m complaining!!! I don’t mean to. Guess when I sit down to write to you I make a beeline for my most important feelings and put those down first. I am aching to know how this play you are rehearsing is going. After you told me you’d be playing Sarah Bernhardt, I got a book out of the library on her life. I think that’s the perfect part for you. When does it open? I’ll ask Michael if we can come. Or maybe if he doesn’t mind, I can come alone. I know you’ll be a big hit.

Write or call.

Love, Bertie

Dear Cee,

Break a leg tonight. I wish I was there. You’ll be a better Sarah Bernhardt than Sarah herself.

All my love, Bertie

THE NEW YORK POST—SARAH!

Bloom Blooms on Broadway. One spectacular talent playing another is a sure-fire formula for success. And Cee Cee Bloom as the fiery Sarah Bernhardt is an utter joy. With spontaneity, a big bold voice, and a presence that makes everyone else onstage disappear into Arthur Rachman’s impressively lavish sets, La Bloom makes it clear to anyone who doesn’t already know why La Bernhardt was so loved by so many.

THE HERALD TRIBUNE—SARAH!

When you have the extraordinary good fortune to see “Sarah!,” and I urge you to run there, and not walk, you will not only get to see the glorious Cee Cee Bloom play the spectacular Sarah Bernhardt, you will also get to see Bloom playing Bernhardt playing Hamlet. And Bloom playing Bernhardt playing Marguerite Gautier. Each performance within a performance is so unique, so special, they could have easily charged me for three tickets. The show is dazzling and magnificent. And so is Cee Cee Bloom.

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Visiting Tinseltown for biopic “Sarah!” actress-songstress Cee Cee Bloom skedded to recreate role she played on Broadway. Cameras will roll in January at Columbia.

Dear Bert,

Well, here I am in hooray for Hollywood and if you want to know what I think of the place I’d have to tell you the truth and say it eats it. Everyone is sooo full of shit their eyes are brown. (I used to say that in grade school, did you? Of course not, Cee Cee you a—h—. See how polite I’m getting?)

I’m supposed to be grateful that they’re letting me play Sarah, the part I won a Tony for, instead of them giving it to Julie Andrews or somebody like that. The movie is going to be real different from the play. They’re cutting a lot of the songs, and they’re adding some other songs which I don’t like very much. But maybe it’ll turn out okay.

I haven’t met one decent man here yet. But I want to. Just so I don’t have to go home every night to this house I rented that you wouldn’t believe in the Hollywood Hills. And be alone.

The second night after I got here I was invited to this party, and I didn’t want to go. I felt real out of it, because I figured I wouldn’t know anybody, right? Then I thought of that pep talk you gave me about how I’ll be a big hit here because I’m so funny—the funniest person I know, you said. So I look at myself in the mirror and I say, Hey, Cee, you’re funny. People at the party are going to like you ’cause you’re funny. So I get to the party and I’m pretty early and there’s very few people there yet. And I’m saying over and over to myself, Cee, you’ll be the funniest person at the party, and the doorbell rings and the next three guests who come in are Neil Simon, Billy Wilder, and Mel Brooks. I didn’t say one word all night.

Anyhow, Sarah as a movie is what my life’s about now. I’m trying to be on a diet because if the camera adds ten pounds to me like they say it does, I’ll be playing Kate Smith instead. Maybe you could sneak away and visit me here sometime, Bert. We would really have laughs if you did. I’ll try and call you next week.

Love C.

Big Barn Theatre
Steubenville, Ohio

Dear Cee Cee,

Thought of you today as this year’s cast rehearsed Damn Yankees. No Lola will ever equal yours. I got married in June to a gal who teaches fourth grade here. She’s a sweetheart. You would like her, Cee. She sure as hell is tired of hearing about you, though.

Best,
J.P.