by Iris R. Dart
It was a busy day. Several cars, three of them new Cadillacs, stood in line waiting to drop people off. Bertie caught sight of her reflection in the glass front door of the hotel. God. She looked like Rosie’s favorite expression, “the wreck of the Hesperus.” For years, she’d meant to look that up in the encyclopedia or somewhere, but hadn’t done it yet, and now here she was again, still not sure what the wreck of the Hesperus was, but certain she looked like it.
The lobby of the Carillon was bustling with people. Laughing people. People who didn’t care that Rosie was in a coma or that Bertie’s hair was dirty, or that she was standing there now, shivering, wondering if it was because the air conditioning was too high, or in fear of running into Cee Cee.
What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she gone back to the hospital with Mr. Heft? It must be her turn to sit by the bed again. Suppose Rosie woke up? Came out of the coma, even for a moment, and she wasn’t there? “Sorry,” Neetie would have to tell Rosie, “she told me she was going out for a breath of fresh air and to help the old man carry the corned beef, but he came back with the sandwiches and said she went off somewhere, probably to have a good time.” And Rosie, disappointed in her again, would go back into the coma.
To have a good time. That was not why Bertie was here, now, in the lobby of the hotel. In fact, it was as if she couldn’t help coming here. But why? To be in the vicinity of Cee Cee? Why would she want to do that? Curiosity? Maybe. Rage? Was she coming here to unleash all the years of her pent-up anger?
The dark-haired girl at the desk directed Bertie to the ladies’ room. It was pink and gold and what Rosie would have called “fancy.” When Bertie came out of the cubicle to wash her hands, she tried not to look at herself in the mirror, but as she turned on the spigot, the hush it made at the moment before the water came, sounded as if it said, “Hesperus.”
Bertie walked back into the lobby. She would leave now. Stop playing this dumb game with herself. Go back to the hospital, and the safety of…The blond woman with the frizzy hair who was just walking in the door was back-lit, so Bertie couldn’t make out her face, but she had two poodles on leashes, so it couldn’t be Cee Cee. Cee Cee had once told Bertie she thought dogs were revolting little creatures who panted all over you and breathed their disgusting breath in your face. Like most of the men I’ve dated, she added, and then she’d laughed.
“Sure, outside you wouldn’t do nothin’,” said the loud familiar voice to the dogs. “And now you’ll probably take a big crap right here in the lobby and make me look bad.”
She was heading for the desk now. Bertie watched her. That walk. That great slinky walk.
“Any messages for five-thirty-one?” Bertie heard Cee Cee ask in a voice so loud that everyone in the State of Florida could have heard her say it. The woman at the desk looked in a pigeonhole and pulled out what must be a big stack of messages and handed them to Cee Cee. Cee Cee didn’t look at her messages, just stuffed them in the multicolored basket that hung on her arm and started walking. Even though the poodles were each trying to pull her in different directions, she was definitely heading for the elevators.
Bertie’s heart was pounding. She didn’t move. Cee Cee was in front of the bank of elevators now. Some people who were waiting for the elevator had recognized her and they were asking her some questions, and all of them were laughing. Cee Cee picked up one of the poodles and held it as if it were a baby. An elderly woman patted the little dog on the head.
The elevator doors opened, and a few people got off. When the elevator was empty, the elderly woman, still laughing and chatting with Cee Cee, got on. Cee Cee took a step toward the elevator.
That was when Bertie screamed as loud as she could.
“Cee Cee! Wait. Cee Cee,” and ran toward the elevator with such a burst that the poodle Cee Cee was holding leapt out of her arms, and both dogs barked furiously.
Cee Cee looked worried for a second, as if she thought this crazy person running toward her was some overwrought fan, but when she realized who it was, the look in her eyes changed. Bertie couldn’t tell to what. Was it surprise? Maybe concern? Or pain?
Bertie didn’t wait to figure it out. Her arms went around Cee Cee’s neck.
“Oh, God, Cee Cee, this is crazy. I feel crazy for saying this, and crazier for coming here—but I’m so glad to see you, and I feel awful for sending your letters back all those times. Never opening them, but I was so hurt, so threatened.
“And now…and then…I mean, I was surprised to see you were here because I’m here. I mean I’m here because my mother is in the hospital, at St. Joseph’s in I.C.U., and I’ve been sitting there for days with all these people I don’t know…and sleeping on the sofa…afraid she’s going to die—and…eating sandwiches and…”
As she clung to Cee Cee, she could tell by the stiffness in Cee Cee’s body that Cee Cee didn’t care what she had to say, or how long she’d been sitting anywhere, or how badly she felt. Bertie moved away from Cee Cee and looked into her face. “Cee Cee, I couldn’t forgive you. I had to blame you for what happened. Not Michael. Because I needed Michael so much that if I…Cee Cee, maybe if we talked about it, worked it out, I could forgive you now.”
Cee Cee smiled. Thank God. There it was. Her knockout smile. Bertie sighed, and then she smiled, too. Thank God. Thank God. It was going to be okay. Bertie was relieved. So glad she’d made the effort to come here. To say all those things. Of course, the two of them would probably never be best friends again, but at least—
“Fuck you,” Cee Cee said, with the same smile that Bertie realized now was forced, because Cee Cee’s eyes were filled with anger. “Now go back to the hospital,” she said, and she turned and walked back toward the elevators, but after she’d gone halfway across the lobby she turned back, and now without the smile, she shouted, red-faced and furious, at Bertie, who stood still and numb. Shouted from her guts across the distance that separated them. “Fuck you, because every time I opened one of your goddamned letters I was smiling and happy before I even read it. Just to get it. It made me glad. Made me feel alive. Made me feel important. I would close the door wherever I was so I could be alone and read it a couple of times. And then I’d put it away, and then I’d take it out and read it again later and then another time that night. I needed those letters. I got used to seeing them in my mailbox, tearing them open and devouring every line like dessert, like whipped cream. Every fucking exclamation point. All the way back to your stories about which asshole was tryin’ to feel you up in high school, or about how sad you were when they passed you over for senior queen. And all your theories about getting married, being married, staying married. And about what you were gonna do. Remember that, Bert?”
She was still shouting. So loud that two women who were walking by looked over and clucked to one another in disapproval. When Cee Cee noticed they were two women she had talked to at the pool, she seemed to get control of herself for a moment, then strode toward where Bertie stood frozen, unblinking. But the fury still burned feverishly in Cee Cee’s eyes. Only now the angry words were forced out in a hoarse whisper.
“Well, what about me? What about what I was gonna do? For the last couple of years, when my marriage was falling apart? Who was I supposed to talk to about that? When I was dying inside, and needed to know you were out there? Needed you to tell me it will be okay, Cee, you’re great, Cee, you’re the best, there’s no one better, you wouldn’t even open my fuckin’ letters because you had some craziness in your mind about me.
“Well, maybe you coulda helped me, Bertie. Maybe if I would have had you out there, I would have been able to figure out how to make it easier for John that it was me who was living out the big show business dream instead of him. Not just working in some goddamned airplane hangar with a bunch of amateurs. Me who was up there with the big-time showbiz guys, where John never was or never will be.
“Maybe you coulda told me how to act girlish through it all, or how I should have made him feel more important at h
ome so it didn’t hurt him too bad. And then maybe—” Cee Cee stopped talking for a minute, and it looked to Bertie as if she was biting the inside of her lower lip, and when she stopped she said, “Then, maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”
Bertie wanted to touch her. Just touch Cee Cee’s arm, but she didn’t dare.
“Bertie,” Cee Cee said, “don’t you get it? You took yourself away from me without askin’ if you were right to do it or not. And you weren’t. I didn’t do anything with your husband. Ever. Never touched him. Maybe I said some suggestive things, which I do, and sometimes at the wrong times, but that’s all. That’s what it said in all the letters I sent you that you were too tight-assed to open. And you know why I didn’t do anything? Because I didn’t want to. Because I knew something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. That it was more important to me than some guy’s dick and where he wanted to put it. That it was more important than anything, because I trusted it, I believed in it. But you didn’t, and your husband didn’t. So you can take your dirty little suspicious mind and find yourself a friend who doesn’t care that you don’t know how to trust her, or about your smarmy husband’s idea of how to be a man.”
Cee Cee’s fists were clenched as if she wanted to pummel Bertie, who stood speechlessly by.
“So thanks a lot for forgiving me, thanks a whole fuckin’ lot, but I don’t forgive you, and I never will.”
And Cee Cee turned to go again, but after a few steps she turned back and said, in a very soft voice, “I’m real sorry about your mother.”
The elevator door opened as Cee Cee got to it, and she was gone. Bertie stood still for a long time, oblivious to the stares of the people in the lobby, finally forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the door of the hotel.
The bright sun made Bertie squint. Her eyes were already sore from crying. Slowly she made her way back toward the hospital, her head pounding. John had walked out on Cee Cee. Something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. Nothing happened. That’s what Michael had said. But she heard him out there in the other room that night. Making love to Cee Cee. Imagined them to be writhing, hot, wild for one another. Imagined.
The piercing siren of an ambulance on its way to the hospital emergency entrance startled her for a moment, and she was relieved to enter the hospital, as if she needed the security of the medicinal and bodily smells.
Neetie was still in with Rosie when Bertie arrived. Metcalfe had been by, Neetie said, had looked at Rosie, marked something on a chart and said nothing. Bertie wished she could think of something positive she could say to Neetie. Something about Patricia Neal. She’ll come back. Like Patricia Neal. But they both looked at Rosie with her finger still pointing and they both knew.
Even though there were no windows in the intensive care waiting room, it was easy for Bertie to feel when the night fell. The new shift of nurses came on, the evening shift of nuns came in and straightened things, and that dinnertime hunger gnawed at her. She thought, as she washed her face and changed her blouse, how perfect it would be to sit down at a table somewhere, anywhere, and eat a hot meal. Not even anything fancy. Just something on a plate instead of a sandwich again. Selfish, terrible thought. But all evening, while the others chatted, she ached to say to Neetie, Let’s go out. Let’s go sit with napkins on our laps and knives and forks in our hands. But when somebody brought sandwiches she ate part of one, turkey this time. She played gin rummy with Mr. Heft, read some of Mrs. Koven’s magazines. Peter Gaché stopped by on his visit to his father and left cupcakes this time. Bertie tried dozing for a while. Every time she drifted off to sleep, she could see Cee Cee’s angry face—“Maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”
Finally, at midnight she went to a phone booth in the corridor and called Michael. She hadn’t called him in two days. He’d be eager to hear how everything was going, even though it was late and she’d probably be waking him. She heard the phone ringing twice.
“’Lo?”
“Michael?”
“Bert. Hey. How’s it going?” He asked as if she was calling from a football game, and he was asking her the score.
“No change,” Bertie said.
“Sorry, babe,” Michael said. “Probably be the best thing for her to just check out, I guess, huh?”
People always said things like that about someone who was in a condition like Rosie’s, and Bertie could never understand it.
“Probably,” she said, wishing she could shriek at him, “If it was someone you loved as much as I love my mother, you’d want them to do everything. You’d pray every second. You’d talk to her and—” She couldn’t say that.
“Michael, Cee Cee’s here,” she said, wishing she could see his expression. “She’s working here in the club at the Carillon Hotel.”
Michael said nothing. Bertie was tired. So tired. And she ached from all the nights of sleeping on the I.C.U. sofa.
“I saw her,” she said.
“You went to a club?”
“I went to the hotel. To use the ladies’ room. It’s nearby and she—we bumped into one another.”
Michael was silent.
“She hates me, Michael. I tried to work things out with her, but she wouldn’t.”
Silence.
“Michael, when I get home, you and I have a lot to discuss.”
“About what?” Michael asked, with almost a smirk in his voice.
Terrible weeping in the corridor. Wracking sobs.
“Michael, I don’t know if I—” The sobs were long and loud and filled with terrible anguish, and Bertie leaned out of the phone booth to see where they were coming from.
Old Mr. Heft and Mrs. Devlin were locked in each other’s arms, heads on each other’s shoulders, weeping, keening, moaning. It was so terribly sad that one of the nurses who was standing by sobbed, too. The nurse held a small tray with a tiny plastic cup on it. The cup was filled with blue liquid.
“Please, take this,” she said, but no one was listening to her. “It’ll relax you, dear,” she said.
Bertie wondered what had happened. Was it Mrs. Devlin’s husband? Mr. Heft’s wife?
“Bertie, are you there? You don’t know if you what?”
Michael sounded angry, but Bertie didn’t care what he was saying, or how he felt.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Bertie, the best thing that ever happened was when you gave up that friendship,” Michael said hastily.
Bertie heard something in his voice she’d never heard there before. It sounded like fear.
“She’s a scumbag,” Michael said.
Bertie hated that expression. Michael only used it to refer to prophylactics and women.
“Don’t start getting impressed by her big star act. I pegged her the first day. You remember I did. I said…Bert?”
Bertie didn’t even hang the phone in its cradle. She was down the hall trying to help Mrs. Devlin and the nurse get old Mr. Heft off the floor, where he lay sobbing. A male orderly and one of the nuns came up the hall.
“Can’t live without her,” Mr. Heft said. His face was red and swollen with tears. “Can’t live without her.”
“His daughter’s down in the lobby to take him home,” someone said, and an orderly helped Mr. Heft gently while the nurse placed the little plastic cup to his lips and he closed his eyes and drank the liquid. Then one of the nuns brought a wheelchair and Mr. Heft sat in it. The elevator doors at the end of the hall opened, and a pretty, dark-haired woman got off. Bertie remembered the woman being there a few times with Mr. Heft. When the woman saw Mr. Heft, she ran to him and bent over him in the wheelchair. They were both sobbing. They patted one another and cried more, and then with the help of one of the nuns the woman wheeled Mr. Heft down the hall toward the elevator, and everyone else dispersed. Except for Bertie. She continued to stand there, watching as the dark-haired woman and the nun carefully lifted the front wheels of the wheelchair onto the elevator. That
was it. The end of Mrs. Heft. And good-bye, Mr. Heft. Only Mr. Heft hadn’t even said good-bye to Bertie or Mrs. Devlin or Mrs. Koven. He was simply wheeled away in his anguish.
Bertie continued to look down the corridor long after Mr. Heft was gone. Mrs. Heft had just checked out. Probably the best thing. Michael. Oh, God. She’d left him hanging on the phone. He must be furious. She walked to the phone booth, picked up the dangling receiver and put it to her ear. Dial tone. As she was hanging up the phone, two nurses who had just emerged from the elevator walked by, and Bertie heard part of their conversation.
“She was on The Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks ago, and now there she was coming in the door downstairs. I couldn’t believe it.” The two nurses stopped right near the phone booth. One was taking something out of her purse.
“She went over to the patient information desk,” the other nurse said. “So I figure she must be coming to see a friend or something….”
But now the nurse stopped talking, because she could see what Bertie could see. Cee Cee, still wearing what must be the dress that wowed them all in the eight o’clock show, had emerged from the elevator and was walking down the hall carrying a huge cardboard box that had aluminum-foil-wrapped containers piled inside it. Her high heels scuffed noisily along the linoleum floor. The sequined low-cut dress looked out of place and silly in the hospital. Almost disrespectful. But Cee Cee didn’t care. She was as jaunty as if she was on her way to the circus. When Cee Cee saw Bertie, she spoke as if everything had always been okay between them.
“They only serve chicken and prime rib at the dinner show, so I had ’em pack a few of ’em up for you.”
“Cee Cee,” Bertie began, but couldn’t finish because Cee Cee was surrounded. Every nurse on the floor was in the corridor gathered around her, a few interns, Mrs. Koven and her daughter, two orderlies, Mrs. Devlin, and some nuns.
“Sign this.” “Saw you on TV.” “I have your albums at home.” The whole group moved into the I.C.U. waiting room, which was now filled with smiling excited faces, all wanting Cee Cee’s attention. Cee Cee put the box of food on the plastic sofa. Bertie sat next to it and picked at the aluminum foil. The food smelled great. But she wasn’t hungry. Cee Cee was there. Forgiving her for forgiving her. Making everyone laugh. Using one of the nun’s backs to lean on while she signed an autograph for the other nun. And everyone adoring her.