1975
Bertie sat on the deck looking out at the water. The ocean was brown closest to the shore, then yellow-green, then darker, almost emerald green near the skyline. A catamaran with a rainbow sail moved slowly along what looked like the edge of the world.
If only it was, Bertie thought. I could swim out there and fall off. A unique suicide. That’s what I need. If I’m going to do it, I might as well do it in an original way. Ways to die. Cee Cee had made that a category when they played Facts in Five in Hawaii. The day it rained. They came inside and Cee Cee suggested they play it. Each of them wrote a mutually-agreed-on five-letter word across the top of a piece of paper. This time the word was C-A-N-D-Y. They had to come up with ways to die that began with the five letters of the word candy.
“C, carcinoma,” Michael said.
“Cancer,” Bertie said.
“That’s what I had for C,” John said. “What do you have, Cee?”
“Cunt falls off from overuse.”
Everyone, even Michael, had screamed with laughter.
“That is not a way to die,” Bertie said, remembering now that she couldn’t believe how much Michael laughed at that.
“Oh, no? Well, it’s how I’m planning to go, baby. I get fifteen points!” Cee Cee, who was keeping score, wrote a bold number fifteen under her own name.
Last week on the phone Cee Cee had said, “That asshole left you? Thank God. Now you can start to live a little, kid. He was a low-life, a putz, a schmuck, a no-good dog, and a louse. Other than that, a great guy.”
Bertie could hear the tour guide’s voice coming over the megaphone of Le Barge, as the sightseeing tour boat approached. Every day at one-thirty it came by. Today the guide was a woman with a very nasal voice. “This is the Long Boat Key,” the nasal voice said. “High-priced residential area.”
Bertie pulled her towel around her shoulders and looked down at her lap, hoping none of the people in the boat could see her sitting there. Certain that they all could, and were craning their necks to try and find out who could afford such a house. What kind of person lived there, and was she really happy?
“No,” Bertie said aloud. Not loud enough for the people in the boat to hear, but loud enough to be considered talking to herself, which she did a lot of the time, and which Michael had told her was a crackpot symptom. Michael—she missed him, actually missed him. Insane, how insane. Just because he’d walked out on her, left her. That must be why. Otherwise, there was no earthly reason. He hadn’t been loving to her, or even nice for nearly a year. They had only made love once in the last six months, a few weeks before he walked out, and then it was grudgingly.
A pelican dove for and missed a fish that swam just beneath the surface of the water.
Bertie had made a dinner on that particular night that she knew Michael loved—liked—used to love—said he did, anyway. She had been so eager to try to stop the coldness between them that she had spent the whole morning shopping for the dinner ingredients, spent two hours in the afternoon at the hairdresser’s, and then ages setting the table and dressing, trying to look casual and unstudied, but sensual. She felt like one of those women in an article from Cosmopolitan, “How to Make Your Man Sizzle with Lust.”
But when she had greeted him at the door and he looked at her, and then past her at the elaborately set table, she saw in his eyes that it hadn’t worked. He didn’t care what she did anymore. It was over. They sat silently at dinner, Bertie drinking three glasses of wine instead of her usual one, not even tasting the chicken she’d nurtured so carefully to just the right state of tenderness, Michael looking out the window rather than at her.
Finally, mercifully, it was bedtime, and Bertie was under the covers, as far on her side of the bed as she could go, beginning to sink into the safety of sleep, when she felt the bed move and Michael edging slowly toward her. Soundlessly, he moved his arm under her back and pulled her to him…and for a moment she felt a rush of hope that this was an apology for the coldness, the months of disregard, and that the words would spill from him into her ear—“Love you. Sorry. Need you. Never again.”
It wasn’t. His thighs covered hers and instantly he was inside her, pushing, insisting. This was getting off, not an apology. Nothing would be different afterwards.
Four weeks. Four weeks after that, maybe to the day (she would have to count backwards to be sure), she watched him pack, wondered if she shouldn’t have some lines to say, like: “Are you sure you want to do this?” or “Can’t we just try again?” All of a sudden, in her mind, she could hear Neil Sedaka singing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” and that made her smile, so she had to leave the room because, after all, when your husband was leaving, you probably weren’t supposed to smile. He would move to a hotel or apartment and she could have the house, or she could go to Sarasota to the winter house there, until she felt ready to make a decision about where she wanted to live.
Sarasota. It was warm there and innocent, and Bertie loved the house. It was filled with wicker and canvas furniture she’d thought was beach-housy and bought much too much of, so that it was what Rosie would have called “too match-matchy.”
If Bertie went there instead of staying in Pittsburgh, she would miss her work at the Home. But she could be far away from Michael and the prying questions of their mutual friends. It was cold and snowing in Pittsburgh, and the Sarasota house opened onto the beautiful, sifted-flour sandy beach. She could walk up and down the warm beach for hours, if she wanted to, and never have to think about Michael. So she went to Sarasota right away, and walked up and down the beach. And all she thought about was Michael.
How could he leave her? Where would he go? Find somebody else? Love somebody else? He didn’t even give her a reason. Well, okay, he did give her a reason, but that couldn’t really be the reason. Nothing there anymore. There was just nothing there anymore and out the door. He was right, of course, there was nothing. No fun. No joy. Nothing even to talk about. The empty words repeated themselves month after month. Pat questions with pat answers.
How was your day? Fine. Yours? Great. Dinner ready? Yes, hungry? Mmmmm, busy today? Yep, you? Not much. Like a drink? Sure. Wine okay? Mmm. For you? Sure.
Didn’t that happen to everyone after a while? Or did some marriages, the ones that lasted fifty years, have surprises in them every night? What did it matter how other people worked? The point was she and Michael didn’t anymore. And he’d left her. And people were calling and tsk-ing and saying terrible things about Michael that started with, “You know, I never wanted to tell you this when you two were together, but…” And at least five people had said, “Look at it this way. It could have been worse. What if you’d had children?”
Worse? Imagine. How could anyone think that would be worse? Little loving darlings around to climb on her lap and whisper, “Don’t worry, Mommy, I still love you.” Isn’t that what they would certainly do? But as hard as Bertie and Michael had tried, and no matter how many doctors they’d consulted, there were no children. Mrs. Barron is barren. The words rang through Bertie’s mind every time she went to see another doctor, certain that one of them would say that. But each one gave her hope and a chart with which to use her basal thermometer and determine her time of ovulation, and Michael would obligingly try to be romantic on cue.
After a while, it had become a joke. They would lower the lights and play old Frank Sinatra albums each time, and month after month, her period would come and Bertie would tell Michael, and he would tell her Ol’ Blue Eyes was slipping because it certainly couldn’t be them.
Bertie heard the neighbor’s German shepherd barking loudly. At two in the afternoon, there was probably a delivery truck out front. Maybe it was at her door and not the neighbor’s. Maybe she should go and see.
The air conditioning in the house chilled her, and the tile felt icy on her feet when she came inside and walked through the silent house. The doorbell rang a few impatient times. It was for her. It was probably the parcel man with the blouse she ordered from Burdine’s.
When she pulled open the door, the person who stood there looked so bizarre, Bertie almost closed the door again in shock. Pudgy. Dark glasses. Strange hat.
“So yer gettin’ a divorce,” the weird person said. “Big fuckin’ deal. You’ll be fine. I got one and look at me, for chrissake.”
“Well, I hope I don’t turn out looking like that!” Bertie said as the two women embraced, a huge grasping hug, that made the beads on Cee Cee’s dress catch on Bertie’s pink terry-cloth robe.
“Didn’t expect to see me here, did you, bitch?” Cee Cee asked, as the two friends moved apart to get a look at one another. And the beads pulled threads of the pink terry-cloth robe with them.
“Cee,” Bertie said, walking her into the living room, “what are you doing here? Is everything okay? I mean, you look weird.” Cee Cee’s earrings hung down to her shoulders. She wore a flowing beaded top over a black leather miniskirt, and knee-high snakeskin boots.
“That’s because it’s two o’clock in Sarasota. At midnight in Hollywood I looked perfect. Now, where’s my room? I’ll get the taxi driver to bring my bags in.”
A rush of joy swept over Bertie.
“You’re staying? Really?”
“No, you dipshit. I always make it a habit to pass through Sarasota no matter where I’m goin’. I’m here, thank your lucky stars, to get you outta the doldrums. Hey, what the hell is a fuckin’ doldrum anyway? And why are you in it? You’re tall and thin and gorgeous.”
Cee Cee. There was nobody like her. It was like turning on your favorite television show when she walked in the door. You knew before the story even started that you’d be laughing any minute. She was out the door to the taxi and then she was back, being followed by the driver, a black man who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying two Vuitton suitcases and a hanging bag.
“Percy, this is Bertie,” Cee Cee said to the man. Bertie nodded at the man who flashed her a smile filled with huge white teeth. As Bertie led Percy toward the guest bedroom, Cee Cee, who was trailing behind, kept on talking.
“Bertie’s single now, Percy, so she’s open to all offers.”
Percy laughed, then spoke with a Jamaican accent.
“My wife won’t let me make no offers to nobody, Miss Cee Cee,” he said. The suitcases were placed on the bright yellow carpet next to the yellow chintz-covered chair that matched the yellow chintz ruffled bedspread and the yellow chintz ruffled curtains.
“Your loss, Perc,” Cee Cee said, handing him five dollars. “But it could be worse. You could have to stay in a room that looked like Big Bird exploded all over it.”
“Thank you, Miss Cee Cee,” Percy said, and he nodded to Bertie. “I’ll go see your next movie soon as you make one.” A little nod of the head and Percy was gone.
“A fan,” Cee Cee said. “Recognized me at the airport.”
Probably because not too many people wear snakeskin and sequins around here, Bertie thought.
Cee Cee pulled a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. “Ya know, I used to have this shrink,” she said as exhaled smoke came pouring out of her mouth. “Lou Tabachnick was his name—in Manhattan. He was a little old Jewish daddy, and I’d walk in and sit in a chair a few feet away from him and he’d always start off my sessions the same way by saying: ‘So? How are you?’ And then I would say, ‘Well, Lou, since I last saw you, this happened and that happened and I went here and I was there,’ and I’d blab for about twenty minutes, and finally when I ran out of things to blab about, I’d stop and be quiet and then Lou would say, ‘All right, now that we got that out of the way, how are you really?’”
Bertie smiled. “What I’m sayin’ is, let’s skip the opening bullshit,” Cee Cee said, “and get right to it. So how are you really?”
Bertie smiled. “I’m great,” she said. And then her eyes filled with tears.
“That’s what I did when Lou asked me,” Cee Cee said.
“I’m okay. I’m fine,” Bertie said. “I mean I should be fine because Michael and I weren’t even happy together,” and she smiled a forced smile.
“A detail,” Cee Cee said. “You break up, it’s tough, no matter what.”
“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “I have to find a career, or at least a job. Isn’t it a good thing that I don’t have a child to worry about?” Her jaw was tightly clenched. She closed her eyes to stop any more tears and pulled herself together. “I’m sorry,” she said.
A moment later she took a deep breath and tried to talk again. “I sit here alone every day. The only time I leave the house is to go to the market, which I do once a week. Sometimes I wait ten days or two weeks, and…” Cee Cee took a Kleenex from the yellow box on the bedside table and handed it to Bertie. Bertie wiped her eyes. “Thank you. Anyway, I know it’s psychosomatic, but I can’t stop sleeping. I’m always sleeping. And sometimes I’m kind of queasy. But I’m embarrassed to call the doctor because I know it’s nothing physical. It’s just my terror of being alone. Aren’t you sorry you asked?” she said. And the two women smiled at one another.
“Well, now I’m here,” Cee Cee said, and blew a smoke ring, “so you’ll be better.”
But she wasn’t. The nausea awakened her every day. Cee Cee would hear her in the bathroom and put the pillow over her head to close out the ugly sound. At noon, when Cee Cee woke up and emerged from the yellow bedroom, she’d find Bertie sitting pale at the kitchen table trying to eat “just one little piece of toast,” which is what Rosie used to say to her when she wasn’t hungry.
And by the third day, Cee Cee was getting on Bertie’s nerves. She would stand in the kitchen in her flimsy little robe, half open, her now-chunky body sticking out here and there, and she’d make herself a huge breakfast with food she bought the day she’d arrived (she had taken Bertie’s car and come back three hours later with what she announced was “a shitload of food”). So there was always sausage and bacon cooking, or cheddar-cheese omelettes and onions, and every whiff of the food made Bertie worse.
But the food was the least of it. Cee Cee dropped her clothes everywhere. Bathing suit in the lanai, shoes in the living room, jacket on the floor. The floor! Near the front door! If Rosie were alive, she’d die just hearing that, Bertie thought, picking up the jacket and putting it in the closet. And picking up the shoes on the morning of the third, or was it the fourth day, when she took the shoes to Cee Cee’s room? And after a quick tap on the door, which she was sure would suffice, since it was late in the afternoon, Bertie pushed the door open and a startled Cee Cee, who had her finger on one side of her nose, and was leaning over the mirror and the white line of powder, said, “Shit…I guess I shoulda locked the fuckin’ door.”
“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “why are you doing that?” She was shocked and she didn’t hide it. She’d never seen anyone do anything like that.
“To kill my appetite,” Cee Cee said without looking up. She inhaled the cocaine. “I do it every day.”
Cocaine. Bertie had read enough articles to know what it looked like. Cee Cee using cocaine. In her house.
“Well, it doesn’t work,” Bertie blurted out. “You’ve been eating like a pig.” She was sorry she said it, but Cee Cee wasn’t fazed.
“I know,” Cee Cee said, “and with the calories in the booze…shit, I’m gonna be the fuckin’ Goodyear blimp by next week.” She opened a little case she’d been holding in her hand and scooped out some more of the cocaine and lined it up on the mirror.
“Cee Cee,” Bertie said quietly, “why are you doing that?”
Cee Cee inhaled the line through a rolled-up piece of paper, and when she had, she scrunched up her face for a minute and looked long at Bertie, who stood there, appalled.
“I’m doing it,” she said, her voice sounding unlike Bertie had ever heard it before, “because I’m a very lonely semisuperstar who has everything there is except the one thing that I want, which is a man who will place his naked body on top of my naked body and say to me and mean it, ‘Cee Cee, you are the only woman in the world I ever care to touch, hold, kiss, caress, and love, and I will never leave you. So, have my babies, won’t you please, and if you never want to sing another note, that’s okay, too, ’cause I’ll take care of you forever.’”
“And you think sniffing white stuff is going to get you that?”
“You sniff glue, you snort cocaine,” Cee Cee, obviously annoyed by the intrusion, said in that same shrill, panicky, weird voice. “And no, it may not get me that, but it does dull the pain of knowing I’m probably not ever going to get it. At least I think it dulls it. A little. Sometimes.” Cee Cee chewed on her lower lip while she thought about it. “No, it doesn’t,” she said after a moment. “Anyway, don’t judge me, you skinny bitch. You could have any man you wanted. Anytime. You’ll get over Michael in a week or two, and you’ll be beating them away from your door. All of ’em wanting to jump all over your gorgeous bod. Not one of ’em wanting this little porker,” Cee Cee said.
Cee Cee’s eyes were very sad and angry as she threw her robe open so Bertie could see her nakedness. A mass of bulges and flab. A wave of nausea passed over Bertie, but the anger she was feeling was more powerful than the sickness, and as Cee Cee closed her robe and was about to sit down on the bed, Bertie grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Cee Cee,” she said, “why are you doing this? Do you want to be Judy Garland? And die some dramatic show business death? Be a legend? Have stories about your neuroses passed around Hollywood for years after you die? Or make yourself fat and pitiful and hooked on drugs till you take too much?”
“Bertie, this isn’t heroin. I know what I’m doing.” Cee Cee looked annoyed now. Pestered. The way Bertie had seen her look at Leona when she tried to boss her.
“Then tell me why you’re doing this.” Bertie’s eyes were flashing. She took her hands from Cee Cee’s shoulders. And put her arms around herself. Hugging herself, trying to stop herself from shaking with anger.
Cee Cee sat on the unmade bed, which Bertie realized hadn’t been made in the four days since Cee Cee’s arrival. In fact, the whole room was a mess, clothes everywhere, full ashtrays. It was as if the room had taken on Cee Cee’s frazzled, uncombed personality. Bertie remembered how the room had looked when Rosie had visited. Meticulous Mommy, Michael had called her. “I hope your mother doesn’t get out of bed to go to the bathroom at night—knowing her, she’ll make the bed each time she goes.”
Cee Cee didn’t look at Bertie. She looked out the window at the ocean softly playing on the white sand. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t do it here,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Coke. I guess you should know now that I didn’t come here for you. I came because I’ve been going with a guy for six months and just found out he fucks twelve-year-old boys, and last month a studio gave me this great new part in a movie, only when I got there for my first meeting they said I was too fat and they took it away from me. So I figured I’d come here and clean up my act. I figured being with you would make you rub off on me—only I’m not doing so great, am I?”
Bertie looked into the oval mirror over the chest of drawers at the picture she saw. The two of them. They looked to her like two gray-faced harridans with furrowed brows. One too fat, the other too thin, in the slovenly bedroom, and no one outside the bedroom caring about either of them. Certainly not Michael, who hadn’t called Bertie once since he left, and Cee Cee’s bisexual boyfriend wasn’t exactly beating the door down, either. Cee Cee’s father was the only remaining parent either of them had, and he was in a convalescent home somewhere. The loneliness of it all filled her with an aching sadness.
“Cee, let’s help each other,” Bertie said softly. “We can. You’ll stop the drugs, and I won’t let you eat and you make me eat. We’ll take long walks any time you want to have cocaine. I’ll go to the health-food store and we’ll get some good food and we’ll take care of one another and…” Bertie couldn’t finish the sentence. The color drained from her face and she quietly left the guest room so she could throw up in her own bathroom.
THE CROWD OF WOMEN that had been sitting in the doctor’s waiting room when Bertie and Cee Cee arrived was nearly all gone. It would be Bertie’s turn any minute.
“You want me to come in with you?” Cee Cee asked. “I only want to ’cause I got an idea this doctor keeps the good magazines in there. Like Vogue and stuff. I mean this Highlights For Children is fuckin’ boring bullshit.”
An elegant blond woman in her late thirties who was sitting in a far corner of the waiting room looked up huffily from her copy of Parents magazine. Cee Cee nodded. “See,” she said to Bertie, “she agrees with me.” Bertie closed her eyes. Cee Cee! Why did she even talk to her? The woman started to read the magazine again, then changed her mind, decided to speak her piece, and looked right at Cee Cee.
“You know, a woman like you who’s in the public eye ought to have a responsibility and watch her filthy mouth. Otherwise, you should go back to Hollywood, because this is the wrong place for trash like you.”
“Well, this is certainly the right place for you,” Cee Cee said to the woman, then turned to Bertie for affirmation. “I mean, isn’t this the office of the cunt doctor?”
The door from the doctor’s office opened and a nurse emerged. “Mrs. Barron?”
Bertie stood and took Cee Cee by the arm. “You’d better come in with me,” she said, and despite a raised eyebrow she was getting from the nurse, she pulled Cee Cee into the examining room with her.
“I FEEL LIKE A VOYEUR,” Cee Cee said as Dr. Wechsler moved the speculum inside of Bertie. “Contrary to Hollywood rumor, I’ve never seen one of these from this angle.”
Bertie and Arthur Wechsler both laughed.
“But I’ll bet yours is cuter than most, Bert,” she said. “What do you think, Doc?”
Cee Cee wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe the young doctor blushed.
When he first walked into the room to examine Bertie, he’d looked at Cee Cee, then away, then quickly back again and said, “My God, you are you. Oh, my God. Am I dreaming?” Arthur Wechsler, Bertie’s cute bachelor gynecologist, was behaving like a child meeting Santa Claus.
“I’ve seen every movie you’ve made,” he said to Cee Cee while he checked Bertie’s breast for lumps.
“Ouch,” Bertie said. “Tender. They’re very tender, Arthur.”
“I saw you on Broadway in Sarah! At the Alvin Theatre, and I cried real tears…. Breathe.” He was tapping Bertie’s abdomen. “I was so in love with you.” Cee Cee grinned. He was cute. She wished she wasn’t looking so fat, but Arthur Wechsler didn’t seem to notice. He was obviously thrilled to meet the Cee Cee Bloom. He had blue eyes and black hair, what there was of it. He was bald on top and he had a black beard with flecks of gray in it. Sweet looking. Very sweet, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
“Get dressed and come into my office,” he said to Bertie. “You did a urine specimen, right?”
Bertie nodded.
When the doctor closed the door, Cee Cee grinned. “Cute,” she said. “Real cute. I’d never let anyone that cute check my parts. Unless he was doing it unofficially.”
Both friends laughed.
There were no pictures of wives or kids on Dr. Wechsler’s desk or his wall. Cee Cee noticed that right off.
“You’re pregnant,” he said to Bertie.
Bertie thought she’d heard him wrong. “Pregnant—that’s crazy,” she said. “I can’t be pregnant. I mean, I never was before,” and then she realized what a silly thing that was to say.
Arthur Wechsler shrugged. “You are now.”
“Sweet heaven,” Bertie said. “One time. Do you know we had sex one time in six months?”
“That’s all it takes,” Cee Cee said, and chuckled.
“Not happy with the father?”
“Getting a divorce,” Bertie said. “We tried for ten years to make me pregnant.”
Cee Cee fidgeted in her chair. “I think the son of a bitch did this on purpose.”
Bertie sighed. “Well, look, let’s not go on about it. Let’s just set up a time when I can check into the hospital and get—”
“No.” Cee Cee jumped to her feet. “You’re not getting anything. We’re having it. We are gonna have this baby.”
“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, wishing Cee Cee would just mind her own business, “I can’t have a baby alone.”
“Hey, who said alone? I’ll stick around for a while. Or come back and forth. And Artie here is gonna be there—not to mention little Cecilia, my godchild. So whaddya mean, alone?”
“No,” Bertie said.
Cee Cee looked very serious, but she had to be joking.
“Then have her and give her to me.” Cee Cee was pacing.
Arthur Wechsler was smiling. Bertie could tell he couldn’t wait to call somebody, his girlfriend, somebody, and tell them he’d just met Cee Cee Bloom in his office.
“Bert,” Cee Cee said, “you’ve wanted a baby all your life. You can’t not do it ’cause Michael’s gone. Don’t you get it? That’s the good news. Now at least the kid won’t have to grow up being influenced by Michael’s schmucky personality.”
Arthur Wechsler laughed, one of those laughs where the person who’s laughing can’t help himself.
“Oh, you know Michael?” Cee Cee asked Wechsler, who laughed again.
Bertie looked at the doctor, wishing that he’d stop laughing and say, “Cee Cee’s right. Have the baby.” Or even that he’d say, “Your friend may be great in the movies, but she’s wrong about babies. You shouldn’t have one unless the father’s in residence.” But Dr. Wechsler wasn’t even looking at Bertie. He was looking at Cee Cee, smiling a smile that looked like the smile of a sixth-grade boy as he asked her, “You married?”
“No more,” Cee Cee said. “You?”
“Never.”
Now Cee Cee was smiling.
Bertie couldn’t believe this. A courtship was taking place in front of her, between her little bald gynecologist and her overweight movie-star friend in the middle of the worst crisis of her life, and neither one of them cared about her.
“I want to know how come no one grabbed you yet, Doc,” Cee Cee said. “I thought a Jewish doctor was every girl’s dream.”
“I am definitely every girl’s dream,” answered Wechsler with an expression on his face Bertie could only describe as cute. “That’s why—I’m so picky.”
Bertie was really feeling sick now. She swallowed hard, hoping the nausea would go away. The banter between the doctor and Cee Cee was moving along at a clip. Bertie focused her eyes on and tried to read every word on every framed diploma on the doctor’s wall, hoping to shut out the conversation, wanting to tell them both to shut up, when finally the intercom buzz from Wechsler’s desk jarred him back to reality.
The doctor grabbed the receiver. “Yes? Uh…okay. Tell her I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone and turned to Bertie, serious again.
“You don’t have to decide now,” he said, “as long as you decide within a few weeks.”
“Nah,” Cee Cee said, taking Bertie’s arm and standing her up. “She’s decided already. We’re having it.”
Arthur Wechsler took Cee Cee’s hand and shook it heartily. His eyes never left hers, even when he patted Bertie on the arm and said, “Let me know.”
In the parking lot, Cee Cee did a little dance of celebration and insisted they go and have a champagne lunch at the Colony Tennis Club, and after a few sips of champagne, Bertie was starting to think that maybe having a cuddly little person to take care of would be healing, strengthening, give her a reason not to want to swim out to the edge of the world and fall off. Then Cee Cee dragged her into Baby Makes Three, a baby-clothing store, and they looked at lacy dresses and tiny patent leather Maryjanes and baby blue jeans and fringed vests in a size zero, and little stuffed lambs, and then they stopped at Pompano Pete’s overlooking the water and had a few Bloody Marys and laughed about the idea of Cee Cee’s never going back to Hollywood.
“I’ll be the kid’s father,” Cee Cee said. “I mean, shit, I’ll be here with you when it comes out, so it’ll think I’m the father.” And when they got back to the house, laughing like loons, Bertie was nearly convinced that having the baby was the thing to do, and she was about to call Arthur Wechsler when the phone rang, and he was calling her.
“How do you feel?” he asked. How about this service? Bertie thought. He’s worried about me. Never knew a doctor to do anything like that until Wechsler said, “Listen, how long is Cee Cee Bloom staying in town? Because I’d like to take her out.”
Bertie sobered. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll put her on…. Cee, it’s Arthur Wechsler.”
Cee Cee looked surprised, but only for a second. Once she got the phone in her hand she was the confident Cee Cee, playing one of her roles.
“Hey, Doc, whaddya say?”
Bertie watched Cee Cee. Charming Cee Cee. Maybe Arthur Wechsler would be the naked man. That’s what Cee Cee said: A naked man to place his body on top of her body. Naked bodies. Michael’s baby. Imagine. Maybe she should call Michael tonight. Yes. She’d call him and tell him. Michael, guess what. I’m calling to tell you that the best and strangest and most wonderful thing has happened. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have our baby, darling. After all these years of waiting. And Michael would say, Sweetheart, don’t budge. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right there. And he would come to Sarasota, and he and Bertie would embrace and kiss and drive Cee Cee to the airport because Michael was moving back in, and he would tell Bertie, in front of Cee Cee at the airport, that he would be a changed man now. Now that he was going to be a father he’d be loving and passionate and adoring to his wife and child, his family—I have a family now, he’d say, and Cee Cee would hug them both, and wave good-bye as she walked up the steps to the plane.
Cee Cee was sitting on the tile floor talking to Arthur Wechsler, giggling like a teenaged girl talking to a boyfriend.
“Seven-thirty,” she said, and looked at her watch. Bertie looked at her own watch. It was six-thirty.
“You got it,” Cee Cee said. “See you then.” She hung up the phone and leapt to her feet.
“Bert, he’s crazy about me. And I’ve never looked worse. This guy has seen every snatch in Sarasota, and he wants me…to take me to dinner. He’s obviously into great personalities. I’ve gotta look through my clothes. We’re going out in an hour. Jesus.”
Cee Cee ran to her room. Bertie stood alone. She’d be alone for dinner. On the night she found out, after waiting her whole life, that she finally was pregnant, she’d be alone. Never mind—it would be a relief.
At seven-thirty, the neighbor’s German shepherd barked and then the doorbell rang. Cee Cee screamed, “Oh, shit, fuck, shit…I’m not ready for this asshole. Who ever comes exactly on time, anyway? He’s already proving to me before we even have dinner that he’s a class-A putz.”
Bertie, who had fallen asleep on the living room couch, could still taste the celery salt from the afternoon’s Bloody Marys in her mouth as she walked to the door and opened it.
Arthur Wechsler looked adorable. In a navy blazer and blue shirt and tie. His face looked scrubbed, the little bald spot on the front of his head was shiny, and he smelled delicious. Wearing some divine cologne. Michael had never worn cologne, and Bertie had always wanted him to. Arthur Wechsler, her gynecologist—Bertie had only seen him in his white coat in the office where he never wore cologne, and now here he was in her doorway, smelling delicious and looking cute, waiting to take out Cee Cee, fat Cee Cee, which Bertie was certain he wouldn’t want to do if he’d seen her messy room. The clothes all over the—Bertie stopped the thought and chastised herself for being jealous. She loved Cee Cee. She didn’t care about the messy room. She only cared that maybe Arthur Wechsler would be Cee Cee’s naked man, even for a few nights.
“Hiya,” the doctor said, smiling. He was carrying something in his hand. Bertie squinted to see what it was. She was so surprised when she realized that she said it aloud.
“A corsage?” Bertie said, and then she laughed. But she felt a pang. A corsage. No one had given her a corsage in years. Michael, for some college party, a million years ago.
“Come on in, Arthur,” Bertie said, and for a minute had the strangest feeling that Cee Cee was her teenaged daughter. The feeling nearly made her laugh because she realized that she was afraid Cee Cee would emerge from the bedroom now, wearing something outrageous, and the boy with the corsage wouldn’t like her, and would be ashamed to introduce her to his friends.
Cee Cee didn’t disappoint her.
She wore jeans that she was bursting out of, with red sequins up the side of each leg, red boots, a red sequined long-sleeved low-cut top and long red dangling earrings, all of which not only looked bizarre and ridiculous, but also clashed with her curly orange hair. After Bertie took a glimpse of her, she turned quickly to see Arthur Wechsler’s reaction.
But the doctor’s eyes were wide with admiration. “Gee,” Wechsler said to Cee Cee, “you look great. Didn’t you wear that in The Long Walk?” he asked. “In the bar scene?”
Cee Cee lit up. “Yeah,” she said. “Shit, I didn’t even remember that.” She looked at Bertie. “Go figure, he’d know that. I kept all the clothes from the picture.”
Bertie looked at the two of them. They would make a strange-looking couple tonight in some restaurant. As she watched the gynecologist (was it timidly?) hand the corsage to the movie star, who grabbed it and ripped the lid off the box, Bertie realized that Arthur Wechsler, her gynecologist who had graduated from Harvard, traveled all over the world, and was a sought-after bachelor, didn’t notice that the orange hair clashed with the red sequins, or that the lavender orchid looked absurd on the outfit where it was now being clumsily pinned by Cee Cee. He only saw Sarah Bernhardt and Polly from The Long Walk and all the other sexy, witty characters Cee Cee had played, and he was smitten.
Cee Cee took Arthur’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “This is a real date, honey,” she said. “Just like high school. Except for one thing. In high school nobody wanted to date me.”
Oh, God, Bertie thought, not those I-was-so-unpopular stories. Arthur Wechsler turned to Cee Cee and said, “Really? Me neither. I was too short, and I started going bald when I was a teenager.”
“Well, I was pudgy and my hair was frizzy, and…”
A match made in heaven, Bertie thought, and the two of them waved a little good-bye to her and were out the door. The sound of Arthur Wechsler’s Porsche starting in the driveway made the neighbor’s German shepherd bark. Bertie sat down on the living room sofa.
The house was very quiet. No more quiet than before Cee Cee had appeared, but it seemed quieter because of the racket Cee Cee was usually making about something. And now Cee Cee was on a date. Bertie felt lonelier than ever. She looked at her watch. It was seven forty-five. Michael probably had plans. A date? No. He wouldn’t. She should call him. She really owed it to him, after all, to tell him about the baby, especially since she was planning to—probably would—no, not probably, damn it. She was going to have this baby, and maybe he’d say…she was dialing, maybe he’d say, baby, I’ll be there. One ring. Two. Three. Her heart was pounding.
“Hello.”
“Michael,” Bertie said, and burst into tears.
“Hello?” Michael said on the other end.
“It’s me,” Bertie managed to get out.
“Bert?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, hi.”
Oh, hi. Maybe that was a good sign. He wasn’t hanging up on her. Or saying, “What do you want?” Oh, hi, was pretty good. She sniffled. She couldn’t ask him to hold on while she looked for a Kleenex. “Listen, Michael,” she said, “I went to see Arthur Wechsler today with—” No, she’d better not tell him Cee Cee was there. “I went to see Arthur Wechsler,” she said again. Her voice sounded tiny and thin, and she wished that it didn’t. “And he—”
“Who?” Michael said gruffly.
“Arthur Wechsler, remember? The gynecologist in Sarasota who—”
“Yeah, what about him, Bert? You sick or something?”
“No.” She laughed a funny little forced laugh. “Not sick, Michael. Pregnant. I’m pregnant.”
There was a long silence. Then, finally, Michael spoke. “So, what do you want, Bert? Money? I told you when I left you’ll get all the money you’ll ever need.”
Money. How could he think it was money she was calling for? The lump in her throat was so thick she couldn’t talk. She had to talk, to say to him, Michael, maybe we can work this out. Maybe a baby would help us. They’d always thought children would bring them—what? Closer. They hadn’t ever been close. This was a cold man on the other end of this call. Why had she imagined he’d say anything to make her feel better?
“You’re not thinking about having it?” Michael said. “Please don’t tell me that.”
“I—”
“Bert, you’re a crackpot. A lunatic. I don’t want a goddamned baby. Not with you. We’re finished, and if you really are pregnant, you’d better dispose of it, pronto. I’m not going to support some accidental child for the rest of my life.”
“Michael,” Bertie said. But Michael had hung up.
Bertie put the phone down and walked into the kitchen. Through the window she could see a moonlight cruise boat going slowly by, and just make out strains of the music the band was playing—“I Could Have Danced All Night.” She opened the refrigerator and looked at the contents. It hadn’t ever been this full when she lived with Michael. Michael. Cold. An accidental baby. He was right about that.
One night in six months. After ten years of trying. Bertie closed the refrigerator. Maybe she’d just—oh, God, she was hungry and tired and pregnant and queasy and deserted by Michael and even Cee Cee was off somewhere and she…Bertie sat down in a heap on her kitchen floor. She was glad to be alone so she could just sit for a while and sob.
IT WAS MORNING AND some part of Bertie knew it, but she couldn’t seem to awaken from a dream about two tiny babies, twins. They were her babies, and one looked exactly like Cee Cee and one looked exactly like Michael and, even though they were infant-sized babies, they were talking to one another in the crib they shared while Bertie stood near enough to hear, but not for them to see her. They were arguing.
“She should dispose of it, pronto,” said the Michael baby, “because I don’t want it.”
“Go shit in your hat, you putz,” said the Cee Cee baby. “We’re havin’ the fuckin’ baby ’cause I do want it.”
“No money.”
“Aunt Cee Cee.”
“No father.”
“You asshole.”
Bertie opened her eyes when she heard a key in the front door. Who had a key? Michael. Maybe he’d…
A moment later, Bertie’s bedroom door opened, and Cee Cee stood smiling, still in her red sequins, her makeup askew. The orchid was gone from where it had been pinned to her chest, but the pin was still there.
“Did I make curfew?” she asked, grinning.
“Did you just come in?” Bertie asked.
“This is a man,” Cee Cee said, the grin never leaving her face, “who knows his way around a pussy.” And then she laughed, stopped in the middle of the laugh to cough a cigarette cough, and then laughed some more.
“I’m kidding,” she said, “I mean I’m sure he does, ’cause that’s all he sees all day, but I wouldn’t let him lay a glove on me. Bert, this guy is normal, straight, smart. He went to Harvard, Bert, graduated from Harvard, and he’s Jewish…and…cute. I mean, he ain’t Cary Grant, but cute. Don’t you think so? I mean, I like the fact that he’s balding. I think it’s…sexy. I really like him, a lot. I mean, go figure. A doctor in Sarasota, Florida. It seems crazy, but we laughed a lot and he, well, he said he hopes I stay around for a while. And I could, Bert, I mean you notice the phone hasn’t been ringing for me? That’s ’cause I told everyone in L.A. that I was serious about getting away from it all. So, ya see, I could help you with the pregnancy and stuff at least for a few weeks, and then keep goin’ out with Arthur. So, can I for a while, Bert?”
Bertie was quiet. Cee Cee in the house every day. For how long? Weeks? Months? But maybe it would be a blessing. It took so much energy to be with her, but worth it. She was cheerful. Up. Made Bertie laugh.
“Look, I’m going to sleep for a while,” Cee Cee said. “We stayed up talking all night, anyway….Think about me staying for a while, will ya?”
Bertie nodded.
IT TOOK ARTHUR WECHSLER three days after his first date with Cee Cee to call her again. Cee Cee, who decided after the first day passed without a word not to call him no matter what, decided on the second day that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she called him. But Bertie said no, it was wrong, and managed to keep her away from the phone. On the third day, Cee Cee decided the guy was a putz, a low-life, and a no-good dog like all men, but when the phone rang while both of them were sitting outside on the deck, Cee Cee ran inside to get it so fast she twisted her ankle.
He said he’d been busy with his parents, and deliveries of babies, and had wanted to call sooner.
Cee Cee had barely eaten for the entire three days. Not because she wasn’t hungry, but because she had vowed that the next time she went out with him she would look perfect. Yet, she’d been preparing food for Bertie, keeping up her end of the deal, making Bertie eat as she had promised. Making appetizing healthy sandwiches for her and then sitting across the table sipping an iced tea and yakking while Bertie, who was beginning to feel better, devoured them. Bertie didn’t ask her if she was still using cocaine to curb her appetite, but there was something about the way Cee Cee was behaving that made her think not. Now and then Cee Cee would telephone some agent or producer in Los Angeles, but she didn’t scream and yell and carry on at them the way she usually did. She seemed calm, calmer than Bertie had ever seen her.
And when Arthur Wechsler not only asked her out for dinner that night, but lined up a few other dates with her—one of which was to meet his mother—she was filled with some strange new hope. The hope was unverbalized for a while, but finally, after she’d gone on three or four more dates with him, she asked Bertie to take her shopping and “dress me like a real person.”
“What?” Bertie asked.
“I mean a straight person,” Cee Cee said. “A person Arthur’s mother would like. Bert, I almost choked on those words. I don’t believe they came out of my mouth.” And they both laughed.
“Cee Cee, you’re not—”
“Wondering if I could become an ordinary person? You bet I am. Wondering if I could be Mrs. Arthur Wechsler? Bertie, last night we did it for the first time. It was fantastic, and Arthur said…he loves me, Bertie. Even though I’m fat and divorced, and I used to snort a lot of coke, which I told him, and had lots of men, and some of ’em were major dopers, and we both know I won’t exactly fit in with his friends who I haven’t met yet, but he told me they’ve all seen my movies…. He loves me.”
Bertie wasn’t sure, but it looked like Cee Cee was going to cry. “He should love you, Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “because you’re great.”
The two friends hugged, and while they were hugging, they each said the same words at the same time:
“Let’s go shopping.”
BERTIE KNEW EVERY SHOP in town, and it was fun to go into them with Cee Cee and Cee Cee’s unlimited budget. Bertie had never really thought much about how recognizable Cee Cee was, even after Arthur Wechsler’s starstruck reaction, until they were walking through the shopping area and people stopped to stare and nudge their friends and point at Cee Cee, who with the weight loss was starting to look more like she did in her movies.
“I’m fainting because it’s you,” the saleswoman in John Baldwin said as Cee Cee modeled a white wool suit.
Cee Cee smiled at the saleswoman, then looked at herself in the three-way mirror. “This one makes me look like a nurse in a very fancy hospital,” she said.
“I think it’s perfect for mother-meeting,” Bertie told her.
Cee Cee bought the white suit, the same suit in navy and in black, and silk shirts in brown and white and black, a black crew-neck sweater and a white lace blouse, and cashmere sweaters in burgundy and red. Black loafers and plain black pumps, plain gray pumps, and burgundy pumps with a bow.
Except for the orange hair, she was almost unrecognizable in the clothes. Each time she emerged from the dressing room to model an outfit for Bertie, she looked to Bertie like Cee Cee playing some strange role. As she paid for the clothes with her charge card, she said to Bertie, “If his mother hates me on the first meeting, I’ll bring everything back.” Bertie laughed. The salesgirl looked nervous and said to Cee Cee, “What was that, dear?” Before they left the store Cee Cee gave her autograph to one of the saleswomen, who had asked by saying, “It’s for my granddaughter who idolizes you. Could you please write, ‘To Stacey Bruckner.’” Cee Cee did, smiling and all the while trying to discuss with Bertie if the white was better for Arthur’s mother or the black.
“I’m scared, Bert,” Cee Cee said as they put the packages in the trunk of Bertie’s Cadillac. “Isn’t it nuts? I’ve sung in front of trillions of people all over the world, sometimes I had the flu, once even pneumonia, when I had to go on and my heart pounded and I felt clammy and afraid, but I did it, and wowed em! And now on Wednesday I’m meeting a little sixty-year-old Jewish lady, and I’m a basket case from thinkin’ about how to act like a real person with her. You know? That’s what it is. Acting. Like if I had some part where I had to play a real together person? That’s what I’m doin’, Bert. I’m doin’ it with Artie, too. Acting. I don’t say fuck or shit or cunt in front of him. Never. Or even call him an asshole. I mean he’s not one. But that’s not why I don’t do it, I mean even as a joke like I sometimes do, because he’s a gentleman and he makes me want to not be some flashy show-business type, some star, because you know why?”
The two women got into the car, and Bertie pulled out and headed down toward the shore.
“Because I don’t trust what I have. What I am in the world. This famous-person shit. Because it fucks you over. It gives you fake highs and makes you think you’re so hot no one can get anywhere near you. And for a few minutes you’re sure no one is prettier than you, no one is smarter, no one is sexier, and no one sings better, and you carry that with you like it’s some possession, some precious stone in your pocket. Then, as the days go by, you know what happens? You start feelin’ for it. Checking your pocket to see if it’s still there or if you let it fall out through a hole, or maybe it got stolen, or you left it somewhere, and lots of times you’re panicked because it makes you think you can’t live without the high, and if you lose it you’ll be nobody. Nowhere. A bag lady. Sometimes I see those ladies, the ones who live in between buildings, and I think, if I don’t make a good movie soon—no, a great movie, where people in the audience go home crying about how heroic I was, or how funny I was—I’m gonna end up living in between buildings, too.”
Cee Cee rolled her window down, and took a deep breath of the salty air. The breeze blew her red curls away from her face, and as Bertie glanced at her, she looked cherubic and happy suddenly as she spoke.
“I know what counts is being married to someone solid, Bert. Someone who loves you every day. Because that’s worth somethin’. That doesn’t fuck you over.”
“Cee Cee, you’re crazy. John loved you every day. I don’t want to put a damper on this fantasy you’re having, but I’m afraid you’re thinking that marriage is going to save you, and it doesn’t. And I don’t know why you think it will, because you thought that last time, and it didn’t. Cee, I know you’re unhappy in Hollywood now, and you’re looking for some fast solution to feel better, so you think it should be Arthur Wechsler, and maybe it is. But you need to take your time.”
“Bert, John loved me, but he couldn’t take my success in show business. Arthur doesn’t care if I’m Cee Cee Bloom or the cleaning lady.”
Bertie had stopped the car for a red light just then, and when she looked into Cee Cee’s eyes, they both knew what Cee Cee had just said was a lie. The cleaning lady would not be invited to meet Arthur Wechsler’s mother.
THE MOTHER-MEETING WENT wonderfully well. Cee Cee bought a bouquet of flowers and took them with her to present to Ethel Wechsler, who had spent the entire day over a brisket: “Even though my son offered to take me to the Colony Tennis Club for a nice piece of fish, I said, listen, a girl like that probably would like a nice Jewish meal sometimes…. So aren’t you glad?” Cee Cee said she was very glad, and then she looked at Arthur’s baby pictures, and also his teenaged pictures.
It wasn’t a lie that he was balding when he was a teen, but he was also gorgeous and smart, Ethel Wechsler said, several times. A Harvard graduate. And when the phone rang, and Ethel Wechsler answered it and had spoken to the party on the other end of the line for a while, she came out of the kitchen where she had taken the call and asked Cee Cee if she’d mind saying hello to her sister, Arthur’s favorite aunt, who loved her in Sarah!, which she’d seen six times. Cee Cee said, of course, she’d say hello. So Ethel dragged the telephone out of the kitchen and brought it to her.
Arthur was all smiles. He held Cee Cee’s hand and looked lovingly into her eyes. Then the aunt, whose name was Fanny, said, “Don’t try and kid me, I know it’s not Cee Cee Bloom on the phone because if you are, you’ll sing something from Sarah!”
Cee Cee laughed. Arthur put his head next to hers and she held out the earpiece of the receiver so Arthur could listen to Aunt Fanny with her cute little Yiddish accent say, “So nu. So sing.”
Cee Cee was uncomfortable. She looked at Arthur and he nodded as if she should go ahead. This was his favorite aunt. Cee Cee took a breath and sang in full voice:
Needing so much love,
I stand before you.
Needing so much love,
How I adore you.
Aunt Fanny screamed, “Oy, my God, Cee Cee Bloom. Oy, my God.”
And as the proud Ethel Wechsler took the phone out of Cee Cee’s hand and walked a few feet and said into the receiver, “Would I lie to you?…She’s crazy about my Arthur,” her Arthur was kissing Cee Cee a thank-you kiss for pleasing his mother and also Aunt Fanny. A very grateful kiss.
“He was even more grateful later,” Cee Cee told Bertie happily. “Mmmmm, I’m crazy about him. And the mother, Ethel—she likes me. When we went back to his place, she called there. She calls him every night. Of course, she doesn’t know I’m there, but she called and said I’m much more attractive in person and that so long as he was happy she was happy, too. And, Bert, early this morning, when the sun was coming up, he told me she has a ring that his father, who’s dead now, gave to her when they got engaged, and when he finally gets married it’s going to go to the woman he marries. Isn’t that sweet, Bert? They’re sweet people.”
“Sweet,” Bertie said, still convinced the bubble was a bubble.
Bertie’s nausea was gone, and she was beginning to feel stronger, healthy and hungry and eager to start showing so she could believe in her pregnancy. So far the only thing that was different was the size of her breasts, and the fact that she was no longer menstruating. But she was frequently sad and depressed and lonely.
Cee Cee was completely involved in her romance. It was all she talked about when she wasn’t having lunch with the wife of one of his friends, who told her over an avocado stuffed with crabmeat: “I never thought you’d be so real like this and talk to people who are just Sarasota people,” or going to open houses of the most expensive waterfront homes. “Just taking a peek,” she said to Bertie when she brought home the fact sheets on all the houses. It was a long time before she took a good look at Bertie one afternoon and saw the sadness that filled her eyes.
“Bert,” she said one day, “I’d be the last one to say this to you, but maybe you ought to call Michael. Tell him you’re—”
“Did that already. He told me to get rid of it,” Bertie said.
“Oh.” And that was all. No more discussion. Cee Cee didn’t want to discuss Bertie’s problems. She was flying. She didn’t need Bertie. She didn’t need anyone.
Until after the phone call that night. When Bertie answered it, she heard the hushed sound of the long-distance line and when the man asked for Cee Cee, Bertie asked his name, and when Bertie told Cee Cee it was “someone named Allan,” Cee Cee, who had been putting on her make-up because Arthur was picking her up in one hour, turned pale under all the blusher.
She took the phone in the kitchen and closed the door.
“Hello,” Bertie heard her say, but then went quickly back into her bedroom because even though she would have loved to know who could make Cee Cee look that afraid, it wasn’t right to listen to someone else’s calls.
After about fifteen minutes, Bertie heard Cee Cee in the living room, and then back in the guest room; she wanted to go in and ask her who that was and if she was okay, but…this was dumb. Allan was probably her agent. It was probably about a job, and Cee Cee was afraid to get offered a job, because if she did, she’d have to choose between taking the job and going away, or turning it down and staying here with Arthur. Of course that was it. A job.
But when Cee Cee opened the door and Bertie looked at her eyes, she knew the call hadn’t been about a job. She also knew Cee Cee had probably just used cocaine.
“Where’re my suitcases?” she asked.
“Your what?”
“Suitcases,” Cee Cee said. “I’m leaving.”
“For—”
“Home,” Cee Cee said.
“Cee, you can’t. Arthur’s due here in—”
“Bert,” Cee Cee said, “there’s a real big difference between wanting someone and wanting to want someone. Arthur Wechsler is the right man for me, so I want to want him. But the honest-to-God truth is I love Allan Jackson. He’s an unemployed guitar player who fucks boys when he’s not fucking me. He says he’ll lay off the boys for a while and give me a shot—and I’m leavin’, Bert. I have to be with him. Have to. I heard his voice on the phone and I said to myself, he owns you. You asshole. Face up to it. For whatever reason, he owns you. More than John did. Light-years more than this nice Jewish boy I wanted to love so I could go straight. Sometimes one person taps into another in some real deep place where no one else has been or can get to—and once you’ve been touched there, no other kind of love works for you. I had that with Allan, and I don’t want to live without it.”
She didn’t even try to call Arthur Wechsler, just called a taxi, dressed quickly, packed without a word. All the new clothes looked odd next to the sequined clothes, as though the bag was being packed for two different people.
“Cee, are you sure you—”
“Positive,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky and shrill again, and Bertie noticed the small mirror was sitting on the dresser again.
When she looked away from the mirror and back at Cee Cee, their eyes met and Cee Cee’s were filled with pain.
“I tried,” she said, “and I almost…” She shook her head. “It was a lie,” she said.
The taxi horn honked. She hugged Bertie a fast hug, then picked up one of her suitcases and the hanging bag. Bertie picked up the other suitcase, and they walked toward the door. When Bertie opened it, Percy the black cabdriver in the Hawaiian shirt stood smiling in the doorway.
“Miss Cee Cee going home?” he said.
“Yes,” Bertie answered, and she burst into tears.
Percy took the bags, and Cee Cee and Bertie hugged again.
“I love you and I already love the baby,” Cee Cee said, “and I’ll come back soon. I promise I will—for her, because she needs me.” And then she was out the door.
Bertie closed the front door. Numb. She leaned against the door and thought about it all, from the phone call when Bertie first told Cee Cee about Michael’s leaving, through her arrival—and the days filled with stories and fantasies of how Cee Cee could change and be more “Bertie-ish,” as she said.
Bertie must have been very deep in thought because when the doorbell rang it made her jump. She turned quickly to open the door and Arthur Wechsler stood, one foot on the step, the other on the path. He was carrying a small bouquet and looked more dapper than ever; it even seemed as if he had more hair.
“Hello, Arthur,” Bertie said.
“Hi there,” he said, and the smell of his wonderful cologne came wafting into the room. “Where’s my girl?”
“She’s…gone,” Bertie said, and her face must have given it all away. Because Arthur Wechsler knew she didn’t mean that Cee Cee had driven to the drugstore for a pack of cigarettes.
He paled. “To L.A.?” he asked. Bertie nodded. “To be with the guitar player?” he asked, and Bertie nodded. “When did he call?” the doctor asked quietly.
“Tonight,” Bertie said, looking down at her feet because she couldn’t stand to look at his hurt face. There was silence for a long time, and when Bertie did look up at last, she saw tears streaming down the nice gynecologist’s face. Many tears before he finally took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. Bertie realized they were still standing in the open doorway.
“Arthur,” she said, “forgive me for being so rude. Won’t you come in? Sit down. I’ll make a drink and we’ll talk and—”
“No,” he said, handing her the flowers he’d bought for Cee Cee. Then, for a moment he stood, closing and opening the palms of his hands as if he were exercising his fingers. “No, thanks, Bertie, I think I’ll go.”
He turned, Bertie closed the door and, in a minute, the neighbor’s German shepherd barked as the doctor started his Porsche and drove away.
THE NEXT DAY, BERTIE became a member of the Selby Botanical Gardens and volunteered to work in their bookstore three days a week, and after a few months, she met a woman at the Arts and Cultural Center who noticed she was pregnant and invited her to join a prenatal exercise class. At the exercise class, she met two or three women who lunched together once a week after class. At the first lunch, each of the women told her story to Bertie, and when Bertie told them she was having the baby alone, they all oohed and aahed in admiration and offered to help, and took turns calling her and inviting her to their homes for dinner, and when she went, even though their houses were small, and they were hard-working, and their husbands weren’t attractive or interesting to Bertie, she ached with envy of them.
The only time she saw Arthur Wechsler was when she went for her monthly checkups, and from the first time he acted as though nothing had ever happened. Nothing. He checked her, asked her all the routine questions, and dismissed her. The only note of warmth was on the first visit when he put his hand on her arm, promising if she needed him, he would pick her up and take her to the hospital. My God. She hadn’t even thought about that. Never even considered that while she was in labor she wouldn’t be able to drive herself to the hospital. Some women must do that. Or call taxis.
“Thank you, Arthur,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to take you up on that.”
Cee Cee called once every few weeks. She sounded weary when she did, even though she seemed to have lots of exciting things happening in her life. A movie, a great one, Bert, in preproduction, with a really hot new director—she mentioned some name Bertie never heard. He’s great. We really see this thing the same way. How ya feelin’?
“Great,” Bertie told her, and it wasn’t a lie. She was proud of her independence, and although she was a little frightened about the baby, she was excited, too. She’d hired a nurse to stay for the first month, and she’d bought lots of nursery furniture and baby things. Wechsler had told her to do that to cheer herself and it worked. The baby seemed real to her now.
Cee Cee never breathed one word about Arthur Wechsler. Had never, in any of her phone calls, asked how he took the news. Nothing. Occasionally, she’d mention Allan Jackson, but only in passing, as in Allan and I went here or there together, but that was all. Not how the romance was going, and Bertie was too polite to ask. Too polite. That’s exactly what she was. Maybe, she thought, she was even having this baby out of politeness. To whom? Cee Cee, because she’d insisted? Her mother’s memory? Rosie would have loved to have seen this baby. Just one time. To see Bertie pregnant would have thrilled her. Not like this, of course, with no husband around.
That was the last thing Rosie would want for Bertie. For Bertie to have to raise a child the way she had been raised by Rosie. With no father. No sense of family. Always an outcast little twosome. Arriving on Parents’ Night at school with one parent. When they had the Father-Daughter dinner at Girl Scouts, Bertie just stayed home, but once Rosie convinced her to go and to take her Uncle Herbie with her. Herbie left the dinner table six times to make phone calls. He was booking numbers from the Girl Scout dinner.
“Well it could be worse,” Rosie said to her on the rare times that Bertie mentioned how she wished she had a father. “At least he’s dead. We could have been divorced.”
Yes, Bertie remembered thinking divorce would be worse. Death was just pitiful. Divorce would be scandalous. It was good Rosie wasn’t seeing any of this.
By the time the divorce papers arrived in the mail, Bertie hadn’t even found herself a lawyer yet. Michael was more than generous in his support of her. And there, just to prove he believed she wasn’t making it up, were the words “child support,” and again a generous amount.
The lawyer in Sarasota Bertie was using for the divorce had been referred to her by one of the women in the Botanical Garden bookstore. He was young, aggressive, and wanted to fuss over every point in the papers, but Bertie said no, please, let’s dispose of this marriage pronto, in a tone of voice that sounded unlike her own, but oddly familiar.
The baby was due on November ninth. On Halloween, Bertie passed out trick-or-treat candy to the neighbors’ children, wondering what her little baby would wear someday to dress up for Halloween. Little Nina. Or would it be a boy? She hadn’t even picked out a name for a boy. After she had passed out chocolate bars to three pirates, one witch, a ballerina, two skeletons, a Spiderman, and a robot, and the doorbell was silent for a while, she went into the baby’s room and stood next to the crib for a long time without turning on the musical duck lamp, stood and talked to the yet unborn child.
“I love you, little person I’ve waited for all my life. And I’m sorry that your grandma won’t be here to see you, or your father, but I promise to supply you with enough love to make up for all the grandmas and daddies in the world, so you won’t even notice. And we’ll have a wonderful life. I swear we will, baby, because—”
The doorbell rang. “Excuse me,” Bertie said as she left the dark room and headed for the front door. She picked up a few Snickers bars and opened the door. Four trick-or-treaters held out their bags. They were so cute Bertie wanted to grab them and hug them all for lighting up her evening.
“Ooh, Snickers is my favorite,” said the little hobo. “How did you know?”
“’Cause they’re my favorite, too,” Bertie said, smiling, and dropped one in the hobo’s bag. The hobo moved out of the way to leave room for the robot.
“Are you pretending to be a pregnant lady for Halloween?” the robot asked, showing a mouthful of braces under the silver painted cardboard box, “or are you really a pregnant lady?”
“I really am,” Bertie said, grinning, and tossed another Snickers.
The green thing with a top hat grabbed the Snickers out of her hand and ran, and the tallest one with the bushy fur coat and the Frankenstein mask didn’t have a trick-or-treat bag. It just stood there.
“Do you want a Snickers?” Bertie asked.
“Shit, no,” said Frankenstein. “But I wouldn’t mind a fuckin’ Scotch on the rocks.”
Cee Cee. She pulled off the Frankenstein mask. “Just like Barbara Bain and Martin Landau,” she said. “I take off one weird face and here’s another one underneath.”
Bertie couldn’t believe it. “Where did you get that costume?” she asked.
“What costume? All I got was the mask. This is my regular everyday coat. The real question is where’d you get that belly? I gotta hug you sideways,” she said, hugging Bertie sideways. With the coat Cee Cee was bulkier than her pregnant friend. “Meanwhile, believe it or not, I only brought one small suitcase,” she said, and ran out to the curb where she’d left it. “I had my mask with me and I couldn’t resist being one of the kids. Maybe I ought to put the mask back on and see how I do down the block.”
Bertie laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” Cee Cee hollered. “Some people give cash,” and she was in the living room. Not a word about the fact that she was just popping in unannounced. Just Cee Cee unpacking again, back in the yellow bedroom. Dropping her things here and there. Smoking cigarette after cigarette; opening the refrigerator, looking disgusted, and yelling out the word “Goornisht,” which she explained was the Yiddish word for nothing, meaning how could Bertie, a woman who was carrying a child inside her, have a refrigerator so empty of food?
They sat on the bed for hours, Bertie telling Cee Cee about the people she’d met over the last months, and how she was enjoying Sarasota even though she felt it was retirement- rather than youth-oriented—and Cee Cee telling Bertie about three months of working in a one-woman show, and how rehearsals every day forced her to take off weight, and Bertie told her she looked great even though she was wearing those multicolored striped stockings, and the diaper-wrapped skirt and the purple suede blouse and the gold dangling earrings and her hair in that pompadour, and they laughed, and no one mentioned Arthur Wechsler. Finally, in exhaustion, maybe even because the sun was coming up, Bertie said good night and went to her room.
The first pain woke her at six-fifteen. The second one was at six-nineteen.
“Cee,” she said, knocking at Cee Cee’s door. “I think it’s—” Another pain. “Cee Cee, I think we should hurry.”
Cee Cee was panicked.
“Where?” she said, blinking, looking around to figure out where she was. “Time for…oh, my God, oh, my God, I don’t know what to do. What do I wear? Do I drive or do you? You’re not going to bleed or anything, are you? I mean…do I have time for a shower? We never even made a plan about this.”
Bertie was in the middle of a labor pain. “No shower, wear anything, keys to the Cadillac are on the coffee table. Oooh, Cee, let’s hurry up. I’ll call Wechsler.”
A look of panic passed across Cee Cee’s face that looked like she was thinking, Wechsler, my God, I forgot about him, but what she said was, “Even a fast shower?”
Bertie shook her head. She was dialing the phone and looking at her watch. The pains were only three minutes apart now.
“Dr. Wechsler’s service? This is Mrs. Barron. I think I’m in hard labor. My pains are close to—” This one felt like a truck was running over her abdomen. “Going to Memorial Hospital. You’ll contact him? Thank you. Cee? Cee Cee?”
Cee Cee emerged from the guest room. By some miracle she was fully made up and dressed in a darling powder blue pants outfit, much more Sarasota-style than Hollywood.
“Ready?” she asked, grabbing the keys from the coffee table.
Bertie wanted to lie down in the back seat of the Cadillac but she couldn’t, because she had to direct Cee Cee to the hospital. Cee Cee blabbed endlessly, said she felt like Butterfly McQueen in Gone With The Wind because she didn’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies, and laughed, and said that maybe someday she’d have a baby herself, so she wanted to observe very carefully how all this maternity ward shit looked, and then she started to cry and told Bertie that Allan Jackson had left her again but it didn’t matter—that she was dating some very nice new men, and one of them was a successful movie producer and they had a lot in common.
As they drove up to the hospital’s emergency entrance, Bertie saw Arthur Wechsler’s black Porsche pull into a space marked Doctors Only, and when he got out of the car and saw it was Cee Cee helping Bertie out of the Cadillac, Bertie noticed that he opened and closed his hands in that nervous way of his, and took a deep breath before he walked over to help.
After that, everything was a blur to Bertie. The two hours in the labor room were hazy, Cee Cee’s face, Wechsler’s face, a pink-cheeked nurse, a young black nurse, all of them checking her, talking to her, hovering. Even in her foggy state, though, she noticed that Cee Cee and Wechsler behaved like strangers to one another. It was so odd. Bertie couldn’t help but picture in her mind the nights they’d come home from dates like two teenagers, smooching in her kitchen, giggling lovingly on the phone, and now, a few little months later, they were strangers.
Then it was time to go into the delivery room, and everyone was wearing scrub clothes, even Cee Cee, with the orange hair sticking out, and Bertie had never felt so helpless and hurting. And while she was being wheeled into the delivery room she caught a whiff of Wechsler’s cologne, and Cee Cee, who was beside her must have, too, because she looked after him with misty eyes.
“Push,” Wechsler said to Bertie, and Bertie could see him in the mirror over her head, and the pain was so awful that she was gagging and straining and, “Push,” Bertie looked up at Cee Cee, whose brow and upper lip were covered with sweat.
“Doin’ great, Bert,” Bertie heard her say. And she pushed with all her might. A baby. She was (oh, my God, the pain) having a baby.
“Push harder now, Bertie,” Arthur Wechsler said. Why was he wearing cologne? He never wore cologne to work. Did he know that Cee Cee was coming last night? Did he figure she’d be here for the birth of the baby, which was two weeks early, as if to oblige Auntie Cee Cee’s busy schedule? Push. Aah. Again. Oh, God.
Bertie looked at Cee Cee again, who was white as a sheet, and who reached out her arm for anything. Anyone!
One of the nurses saw Cee Cee start to go and grabbed for her just before she hit the floor.
“Is she okay?” Bertie said, and then she realized that her baby was in the doctor’s hands. A girl. It’s a girl. And then they placed the tiny creature on her belly and forgot all about Cee Cee.
“Nina Rose Barron,” Bertie said.
Later in recovery, Bertie slept, and when she opened her eyes Cee Cee was there.
“Sorry I checked out,” Cee Cee said. “But I told you I didn’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies. She’s gorgeous, Bert. Looks like you from head to toe. I talked to her through the window of the nursery. Promised if she came to Hollywood to visit me I’d introduce her to Robert Redford.”
“How come you never promised me that?” Bertie asked, smiling. She couldn’t feel her body. She must have had some anesthetic or pain reliever, but she couldn’t remember.
Cee Cee smiled—a smile Bertie recognized as a forced one she sometimes gave when strangers were trying to her, or when she was about to say something that was difficult for her.
“Arthur’s getting married,” she said. “Right after the delivery, he came out to see if I was okay, and of course, once I got out of there away from all the gooey blood and placenta and stuff I was great, and—we told each other how wonderful we looked and all. I mean, Bert, I lost thirty pounds since I saw him, and he had, you’re not going to believe this”—and then Cee Cee looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening, looked back at Bertie and confided—“he had a hair transplant. More hair, Bert. I know he thinks that’s why I left. Because he was bald or short or whatever he’s unsure about, but that wasn’t why.”
Cee Cee was too much to take at a time like this. Bertie wanted to go back to sleep or go up to her room to see Nina. Little Nina Rose Barron.
“And Allan Jackson wasn’t why either, Bert. It was because I…you don’t want to hear this, do you?”
“Go on, Cee,” Bertie said. Poor Cee Cee.
“It was because it was possible, Bert, too possible, you know? Too much of a chance at realness. And I don’t do realness. When you get down to the blood and placenta, I’m gone. Only I didn’t tell him that. I just said congratulations. His mother really likes her, Bert. The girl he’s marrying. His mother likes her a lot. That’s what he said. Only I guarantee you that Aunt Fanny wishes it was me. Remember how crazy she was about me, Bert?”
Bertie was asleep.
CEE CEE STAYED FOR a few more days. She slept a lot and came to Bertie’s room and sat at the bottom of the bed and watched Bertie nurse the baby. She helped Bertie compose a note to Michael about Nina’s birth.
Bertie thought Nina looked just like her grandmother Rosie. This made Bertie cry, and she said it was awful that her mother would never hold the baby in her arms. And that the baby would never have a grandmother to love her as only a grandmother can.
When the baby was one week old, Bertie and Cee Cee took a walk on the beach “to show Nina the water,” Cee Cee said. They moved slowly, Cee Cee carrying the baby and Bertie holding on to Cee Cee as they walked.
The beach was empty. Cee Cee stopped at a spot where three big jagged rocks stood on the sand near the shoreline. Then she straightened the little bonnet Bertie had put on Nina’s tiny head to protect her from the sun and sat. Bertie sat, too. Two sea gulls shrieked and flew in circles just a few yards out to sea. Cee Cee pulled the baby close to her chest, and then she sang:
Poor Butterfly,
’Neath the blossoms waiting,
Poor Butterfly,
For she loved him so
The moments pass into hours…
The hours pass into years
And as she smiles through her tears
She murmurs low…
Then she stopped singing and smiled and said, “Hey, Bert, I think maybe I just became a grandmother.”
Bertie held more tightly on to Cee Cee’s arm and then, smiling, she tilted her face up so the warm sun could shine on it.
Dear Cee,
It’s two A.M. and I just got Nina back down to sleep. She must have had a terrible nightmare, because she awakened with such a shriek that I was terrified. I ran into her room and she was trembling!! Poor baby.
Cee, sometimes when I sit alone (which is almost always), I think about some of the terrible choices I made for myself, and I worry about the wrong choices I could make for Nina, and that scares me.
How did I ever fall for the lie that mothers pass on to their daughters about marriage? The fantasy that makes us believe that somehow it will save us. That one man will be able to be ever-constant, ever-loving, ever-sexual (I would have been grateful for once a month).
One person can’t save another. We can only save ourselves. I made the mistake of expecting Michael to tend to me and to make me feel important, and when he didn’t, couldn’t, was having enough trouble with his own life, I resented him for trying to make me be “only a wife” for all those years. But he didn’t make me, Cee.
I could have insisted on being something else. It was just easier not to try, just to shut up and be Mrs. Barron.
Sorry about all the self-pity. I’ve been reading a lot of feminist literature lately and feeling as if the world wronged me, when the truth is I wronged myself.
Boy, do I envy you your fabulous career. Nina and I will come to visit you and stay in the pad you described in Hollywood as soon as she is more easily carted from place to place. (You can’t believe the paraphernalia required just to take a baby out for the day.)
Ooh, I knew I had gossip. Ran into Artie Wechsler and his new wife in the drugstore when I went to get Pampers a day or so ago.
She is ordinary. A kind of washed-out-looking blonde. I think she must have known the story because when Artie said to her, “You remember, Marsha” or Marcy or whatever her name is, “I told you about Bertie,” a look of realization crossed her face, and after that she was very cold to me while we waited in line (they were behind me getting charcoal and paper plates!!), so I guess I shouldn’t count on the new Mrs. Wechsler inviting me for dinner in the near future. Should I? Oh, Cee, the tribulations of being your friend!!!
I miss you. Call or write to me soon, old girl.
I took new pictures of Nina to the drugstore to be developed the same day I saw Wechsler there. As soon as I get them back I’ll send some.
And so to sleep.
Bert
Dear Bert,
Whatever you do, cross your heart you won’t go to see Jilted. It comes out tomorrow and honest to God it is trashola from the first shot. I look like a tank, and I act like one, too, but I swear it wasn’t my fault. (That’s what they all say, right?) To begin with I wasn’t even fat when we shot it, I was at my low weight, and they dressed me in those tents so I look huge.
The director was a maniac, and after the first day of shooting when he tried to jump on me in my dressing room one night and I called him the usual (putz, schmuck, low-life and no-good dog), I was not, to say the least, his favorite persona.
Last week when you called you sounded so happy with little Nina-poo. I’m glad to hear she’s “almost talking,” whatever the fuck that means. No wait. I know what it means. It’s what I did in Jilted. Don’t see it, Bert.
Love,
C. B.
THE NEW YORK TIMES JILTED
One hopes that Cee Cee Bloom, so brilliant in every past endeavor, will forgive director Jack Arquette for allowing her to be so badly dressed, abysmally lit, and insensitively photographed in Jilted. In the first moments of the film, it seemed as if some semblance of a performance by Bloom seemed to be struggling to emerge, but alas, never made it.
VARIETY JILTED
Based on a recent news story about a man who married thirty-two women in fifteen years, Jilted optimistically bills itself as a comedy, but is completely devoid of same. Mostly due to the shrill, unpalatable, charmless performance of Cee Cee Bloom as the wife who catches on to the film-flam and brings the cad (Mel Blanchard) to justice.