Beaches

by Iris R. Dart

  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.
r />   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—”