by Iris R. Dart
“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.