Beaches

by Iris R. Dart

  Bertie had needed a few months to get over her sadness, even though she knew she’d never been in love with John Perry. Could John have already been in love with Cee Cee and planning to ask her to marry him when he went to bed with Bertie? Was Cee Cee already in love with John when Bertie told her that she and John had been lovers?

  A long time went by before Bertie answered any of Cee Cee’s many letters. Cee Cee never, in any of them, mentioned Bertie’s brief moment with John. Maybe when people got married they liked to act as though all the previous sex partners either of them ever had were somehow magically canceled out. Bertie had been sure that the man she would marry would be a man of so much sensitivity that she would easily be able to tell him everything about herself, including the story of that summer in Beach Haven when she lost her virginity.

  After a few months passed, Bertie started feeling better about everything. She was glad Cee Cee was still writing to her, and she wrote back. Long, newsy letters. Sometimes she used her letters to Cee Cee as a kind of diary, jotting down random thoughts, leaving one letter on her night table for a few weeks and adding to it late at night when she couldn’t sleep. In fact, it was better than a diary because Cee Cee always answered her.

  The summer after her freshman year in college, Bertie met Michael. Michael Barron was first in his class at Pitt Law School. He was very refined. That’s what Bertie loved about him. He was nothing like most of the grubby, beer-swilling college boys she had been meeting. He was very well groomed, almost elegant. Set in his ways, in a grown-up, reasonable, fatherly way. He gave advice to the other law students, advice to Bertie’s friends who had problems, in a calm, even tone of voice that made Bertie feel as though nothing could go wrong that Michael couldn’t fix. She loved that.

  She also loved that when they were together they called themselves Mickey and Minnie Mouse. And that he sent her flowers and didn’t make awkward sexual advances like every other boy did. In fact, he made no advances at all most of the time, and that was because he respected her enormously. She decided never to tell him about her meaningless time with John Perry. Not that he wouldn’t understand, but she didn’t want to make him feel in any way that he wasn’t the most important man who’d ever been in her life. She felt good about her decision. It wasn’t a lie. It was simply a discreet choice she’d made, and she’d never thought much more about it until two days after she’d sent off a letter telling Cee Cee how excited she was to be finally getting away to Hawaii alone with Michael, and the phone rang.

  “Bert?” It was Cee Cee. The voice was unmistakable.

  “Cee?”

  “We’re coming to Hawaii. With you. I mean, at the same time. Could you drop dead? We need a vacation so bad, so when I got your letter, I begged John and swore I’d do filthy things to his body if he’d take me there, and you know how he can’t resist that.”

  Bertie was silent. Did Cee Cee mean literally that she knew or…no. That was a joke.

  “Great,” Bertie said, a little unnerved. Michael knew she wasn’t a virgin when they met, but he didn’t know…“At the Kahala?”

  “Yep. We can’t get there on Sunday, though. It’s my last day of the show. I’m so exhausted I could cry.”

  Cee Cee was always promising to visit Bertie. Usually, the promise came in the form of a dashed-off postcard from some town where she was playing a club she hated, and the visit was her idea of a way to hide from show business, but this time she was serious.

  Bertie wanted to be able to say Cee Cee, not now. Go to the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands, they’re closer to New York. I need to have Michael’s undivided attention. I need to be alone with my thoughts, so I can figure out why when a crippled little girl goes home to her parents, I take it personally.

  “Well, Cee Cee,” she began. “Isn’t it awfully far for you, just for a few—”

  “Hey, I don’t care where it is,” Cee Cee said. “I’m comin’ to see you.”

  “That’s very sweet,” Bertie answered.

  Michael took the news in his usual stoic fashion.

  “Yeah. Okay,” he said. “Does her husband play tennis?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He seemed bored by the stories of Bertie’s and Cee Cee’s childhood meeting and of their reunion in Beach Haven, but listened politely the same way he always listened when Bertie described the stoneware she’d just seen in Kaufman’s, or the store she’d discovered on Murray Avenue called Ratner’s where they had every single houseware item in the world.

  BERTIE SNUGGLED UP TO Michael as they approached the Kahala district. Something sultry and sensual in the tropical climate made even Michael feel sexy.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like sex. When he did it, he seemed to be enjoying it. He just didn’t want to do it that often. But now that they were on vacation he would relax. Bertie knew that what seemed to be coldness was simply his having so much on his mind.

  The taxi stopped outside the hotel and Bertie sighed happily. Bright pink bougainvillea hung from the balcony of each room. Michael helped her out as the driver gave their bags to the bell captain. Michael walked to the reservations desk, and Bertie continued walking through the lobby. She loved looking in the window of Pex, the jewelry store near the front desk, at the jade and the emerald pins and rings and earrings. She never went into the store, just looked in the window.

  Bertie remembered that when they were here on their honeymoon, she had looked in the window and seen a little turtle pin made of gold, with a shell covered with tiny pearls. Every day after breakfast, she would walk through the lobby so that she could see if that turtle pin was still there. On the fifth day, it was gone and she was disappointed and mad at herself. She knew if she’d just mentioned it to Michael he would have bought it for her. That night at the buffet she stood in line next to a very feeble old woman who shook so much that her daughter had to carry her plate for her. The old woman was wearing the turtle pin. As Bertie and Michael ate their dinner, Bertie saw the waitress bring the old woman a piece of cake with a candle on it. The old woman’s daughter didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” to her, but she had bought her Bertie’s turtle pin. Bertie was glad then she hadn’t asked Michael for it.

  Michael tipped the bellhop and closed the door to their room. God, his rear was cute.

  “I love you, Mickey Mouse,” Bertie said.

  “You too, Min,” he said, kissing her lightly. Then he walked to the louvered shutters to look outside.

  Bertie felt sexy. She wanted him. Maybe if she started getting into her bikini, her naked body would…

  “Let’s unpack,” Michael said, lifting his suitcase onto the bed. He was so organized. Sometimes they laughed about it. Repeated that joke about the man who was so compulsive that after he took off his clothes, he had to put shoe trees in his shoes before he could make love to a woman.

  Bertie felt like being held, kissed, lusted after.

  “After we unpack, we can run on the beach,” he said, carrying a pile of T-shirts to a drawer.

  “Michael,” Bertie said. “Michael.” She walked over to him and put her arms around his neck. “Let’s make love, honey.”

  Michael sighed. “I’m tired, Bert. You know. Jet lag.”

  “But you just said you wanted to run on the beach.”

  He looked caught. “Yeah…well, that’s different.”

  Bertie’s arms felt awkward around his neck, heavy. As if this man were a stranger, and her arms shouldn’t be there. She walked over to her suitcase.

  “Bert,” Michael said. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Set up situations like that where you know you’ll be rejected. Why do you always decide you want to make love at weird times?”

  “Why is being alone with my husband in an ocean-front hotel room in Hawaii a weird time to make love?” Bertie asked, not looking at him so he couldn’t see the hurt in her eyes.

  “It’s broad daylight. We just got here. I’ve been breaking my ass in town to be
able to get away. I want to unwind and relax.”

  “Some people think that sex is very relaxing.”

  “Then why don’t you give those people a call,” he said, walking to the door.

  Bertie knew she should stop him. She knew if she just said, Michael, wait, I’m sorry, he’d come back into the room, and they’d hug and kiss sweetly, and maybe if they kissed for a long enough time, the kisses would get passionate, and then he would touch her and get hot and finally close the shutters and get into bed with her. But she didn’t say anything and he left the room with the angry sound of a door slam. Michael would take a walk and be back within an hour. It was familiar.

  Bertie looked inside her purse for a cigarette. At least with Michael out of the room she could have a cigarette. Then she’d open the doors and air the room out and wash her hands and face with soap and hot water and use a little mouthwash and he’d never know.

  Where were the cigarettes? Damn, she’d left them in her winter purse at home. She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and opened it, trying not to think about what had just happened with Michael. It wasn’t rejection. He just didn’t feel like it.

  She took her pink cotton robe from the top of the suitcase, hung it on the hook in the bathroom and walked back to the suitcase. Her nightgowns were folded neatly side by side. Maybe she’d buy some new ones. Most of these were from her trousseau. The white one was looking a little gray. The white one Rosie bought her for her first night, begging her not to get one with little yellow flowers on it because a bride should wear pure white. What a joke. She and Michael had been to bed maybe a dozen times before…. Michael in bed.

  There it was again. She remembered their first night. When they got to the hotel. Bertie was a giggling bride. Of course, she was not a virgin, but this was different. It would be her first time as a married woman. That was new, exciting, dramatic. At least she wanted it to be. She had gone into the bathroom and put on the white nightgown. Then she brushed her hair and thought about everything that happened at her wedding. Michael was so adorable. He was beaming all day, holding her closely as they danced, and everyone applauded, and Dr. Barron’s friends kept coming over to them as if they were cutting in on the dance and handing Michael envelopes that he would slip into the pockets of his tux. She’d come out of the bathroom that night in the white nightgown, certain that Michael would be under the covers waiting for her. But he wasn’t. He was sitting at the tiny desk across from the bed, still dressed in his tux, with a pen in his hand, and all of the open envelopes were in a neat pile.

  “Jeez, Bert,” he said. “We got six thousand dollars.”

  “Michael.”

  “Aren’t you glad you didn’t register for a lot of china and stuff? I mean, I think it’s six. Maybe it’s more. Let’s see. The Kleins gave us five hundred. Old Doc Klein. Isn’t he a hell of a—”

  “Michael.”

  Then he looked up. “Pretty nightgown.”

  “Thanks.”

  Oh, yes, later that night he’d held her, called her Mrs. Barron, his own wife, and made love to her. But it wasn’t the same. She decided then that it was okay. That loving someone in a grown-up way didn’t include panting and pawing the way it did when you felt sexy about someone in college. But every now and then she wished that Michael would want to leave someone’s dinner party early because he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her, or decide to be late for work because he had to have her in the morning.

  The key rattled in the door. Bertie grinned to herself. It was Michael. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’d come back to make love.

  “Maid service,” a woman’s voice said. “Need any towels?”

  Bertie sighed. “No, thank you.”

  When she finished unpacking, Bertie opened the doors and walked out onto the balcony. It was windy and it looked like it might rain. Down below at the lagoon next to the pool where the dolphins lived, a Hawaiian man in shorts was feeding fish to the dolphins. Some little children were helping him. The dolphins came up for the fish and the children threw them a ball. The dolphins batted the ball with their noses, and the children squealed with delight.

  Bertie looked out at the ocean. The water was choppy and there were no swimmers. On the big wood raft several yards out where the sunbathers usually gathered, she could see a young couple who were oblivious to the gray clouds. The woman was lying on her stomach, the top of her bikini undone. The man was on his side, pressed closely against her, stroking her bare back. Bertie felt a rush through her whole body and she closed her eyes. She’d go inside and take her clothes off. Get between the sheets and make herself come. Make this aching disappear. She opened her eyes and looked at the couple again. Now the woman was facing the man. Her breasts pressed against him, her whole body close to his.

  Bertie opened the glass door and walked into the chill of the air-conditioned room.

  “Hi.” Michael looked at her almost shyly. “Want to go downstairs and have dinner?”

  “Sure,” Bertie said. “I’ll change.”

  THE MUSIC FROM THE hotel’s nightly luau on the beach kept Bertie awake long after Michael’s first snores told her he was asleep for the night. She thought about looking for something to read, even considered putting some clothes on and going downstairs to join the party. Michael thought luaus were stupid. When Cee Cee and John arrived, Bertie hoped that they would want to go to one, and then maybe Michael would be too embarrassed to say no and he’d try it.

  This was a real nice clambake

  And we all had a real good time.

  The funny little Sunshine Theater in Beach Haven. She’d loved her days there so much. John had sold the theater last year. He wanted to spend all of his time with Cee Cee. That’s what Cee Cee wrote to Bertie in one letter. Was that romantic, or was it business? Cee Cee’s star was beginning to rise, she wrote. “I’m closing in Bring It Home, that off-Broadway show that’s been running for several months.” She didn’t have the lead, but all the reviews she mailed copies of to Bertie singled her out. “Exciting.” “Memorable.” John was her manager. It must be nice to have a husband whose life revolved around you, whose income and success depended on how you looked, felt, performed. He would have to pay a lot of attention to you.

  Bertie remembered reading an article once about Ann-Margret and Roger Smith. She was sure Roger Smith looked at Ann-Margret before they went out for dinner and said. “Why don’t you change, baby? You look much better in the black dress.” Bertie sometimes asked Michael how she looked because he never told her on his own, and every time she asked him, he said the same thing.

  “Ah, Bertie. You always look great. Why do you have to ask?”

  Bertie sat up and looked at Michael. He was lying on his back, snoring loudly. She lay back down, put a pillow over her head and fell asleep.

  THE PHONE RANG FIVE times before Bertie realized where she was. The water in the shower was running.

  “Hello?”

  “How ’bout some macadamia nut pancakes, honey?” It was Cee Cee.

  Bertie laughed. “Where are you?”

  “Downstairs in the open-air dining room. My dear, the fucking birds fly right in here and land on your pancakes. I think one just shit in my coffee. I will try to fend them off till you get here.”

  “What time is it?” Bertie asked.

  “It’s six hours earlier than it is in New York,” Cee Cee said. “And I’m punchy, so put on your muumuu and get your ass down here. Oh, and bring the husband with you. We want to have a look at him. ’By.”

  Bertie hung up the phone and rolled over. Michael was out of the shower.

  “Hi,” she called in.

  “Hi.”

  “Cee Cee and John are here. They’re having breakfast downstairs.”

  “Great,” he said. “I’m starved.”

  Bertie’s eyes scanned the Lanai Room for Cee Cee and John. Oh, God, she thought, as Cee Cee stood up and waved. Her hair was flaming red now and long and frizzed out in every direction. Her str
apless sundress was red too, but it was a shade that clashed with her hair. And her long nails were bright pink. John would have to have a talk with Roger Smith. Bertie craned her neck to see John. From that distance it looked as if he was wearing white pants and a tight T-shirt. Just like in Beach Haven. Bertie glanced at Michael to check his reaction. His brow was a little wrinkled when Cee Cee came bounding toward them. Probably he was thinking “freak city,” which is what he said sometimes when they drove past unusual-looking people on the streets of Pittsburgh.

  “Well, fancy meeting you here,” Cee Cee said, throwing her arms around Bertie. “Four schmucks from the East come all the way to Aloha-land to see each other.” She smelled like Jungle Gardenia.

  Bertie hugged her warmly. Michael shifted uncomfortably. Several people having breakfast in the Lanai Room were watching the two women embrace.

  “I’ll get to you in a minute, toots,” Cee Cee said to Michael, and then planted a big kiss on Bertie’s cheek.

  Cee Cee extended her hand to Michael. “Hiya, Mike. I’m Cee Cee.”

  “It’s Michael,” Bertie said.

  Cee Cee ignored that. She already had each of them by the hand and was dragging them to her table, talking nonstop.

  “Well, our trip was just the worst from beginning to end. They lost the goddamned bags in L.A., and we thought we’d have to stay in that ratty airport hotel, and…”

  Bertie was face to face with John Perry. She hadn’t seen him since the morning she left Beach Haven, two days after she’d given him her virginity. How often she’d replayed that day in her mind, wondering what would have happened if she had handled it differently, behaved some other way. Would it have changed her life? Bertie remembered being startled that morning when she saw John’s big black Lincoln pull up outside Aunt Neetie’s rented beach house. She’d been awake for hours, packing her things while Neetie slept, making some coffee for Neetie in preparation for the long drive back to Pittsburgh. She hated the thought of leaving, and she hated her mother for insisting she come home. Maybe if she stayed, she and John could have a real love affair. Maybe she would move into the house on Marion Avenue. And suddenly she looked outside and there he was. Bertie had the fleeting hope that he was here to say, “Bertie, oh, God, Bertie, I…for two days I haven’t thought of anything but you. Loving you, holding you, having you.”