I'll Be There

by Iris Rainer Dart

  Now there was a little smile on Nina’s fae as if she was remembering those aspects of Bertie too.

  “I hope it’s not too late for me to say I want to try harder to be that way for you. Not scared to point out what I think is wrong for fear you’ll hate me if I do, and thoughtful enough to pat you on the back as often as I can. I have lots of fears that have plagued me and run me for too long, and one of those is what’s kept me from admitting to you what I’m about to tell you now, which is not what I planned to say here tonight, but I have to.

  “For a big part of my life I was a user too. A heavy user. It was one of the reasons your mother was planning at first to give you to

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  your Aunt Neetie instead of to me. I smoked grass and sometimes hash to go to sleep and for the longest time I tooted up to go to work, and then used some more to get me through the work day.., and to get me through the fact that I felt fat, or unattractive, or different than everybody else. Your mothcr once screamed her head off at me, trying to get me to stop. And the reason I ncver told you or anybody that about me is because I was afraid if it came out, it would somehow be what separated us, that you would think I was garbage for having that in my past. It’s also part of the reason I never tried to adopt you, though I’ve thought about it every day for the last eight years too, and wanted to but was always afraid if I started the process and social workers came and checked on me, they would find out I once did drugs and say what I feared. That I didn’t deserve to be your mother.

  “Having you in my life has made me a human being, given me a reason to wake up on mornings when I was too depressed to move. I couldn’t believe it when you said that you did drugs so you could be like me. Because I’ve spent a lifetime wishing I could be like you. Beautiful and dignified, smart and classy. Knowing just how to behave, and being in enough control to pull it off. I admire you so much, and if I never told you I loved you all these years, I realize now that the reason was probably that I was afraid to, since I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved.”

  Nina nodded knowingly, then spoke softly. “Me too.”

  “And you know what else?” Cee Cee said. “Not that this makes it okay, but you’ve never said you love me either.”

  Again there was silence, interrupted only by the cracking of one of the kid’s chewing gum and what sounded to Cee Cee like a floor

  polisher somewhere off in the distance in the hospital corridor. “Nina,” Doctor Pappas asked, “do you love Cee Cee?”

  Nina didn’t answer, and the silence was killing to Cee Cee, who figured it could go either way now and the kid could say no, and that would be the worst thing she could ever hear, but then Nina’s lower lip trembled and her face collapsed, and she cried, that kind of cry where no sound comes out and the crier seems to be inhaling all of the tears and can’t say a word. Then she nodded, a very slow nod, and took in a huge breath, and Doctor Pappas asked softly, “Well, why don’t you tell her?”

  Nina took a few breaths and tried to gain control, as Cee Cee sat

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  forward in her chair expectantly. “I love you, Cee Cee,” Nina said, punctuated by intakes of breath. “I really do love you a lot.”

  Thank you, God, oh thank youfor that, thank you, Cee Cee thought. “I love the way you always stick up for yourself and for me. And I think it’s so cool the way you try to be so nice to your fans even when they bug you, and the way you try to act real tough but inside you’re really full of mush.” That caused a light giggle to ripple through the group, and brought a smile that started inside Cee Cee’s chest and moved to her face, and her smile seemed to buoy Nina to continue.

  “You’re what some of the kids in this group call ‘truly awesome.’ But, see, one of the things I’ve been finding out about me is that I can’t always handle awesome too well? BeCause what I really need is real? And I don’t know if you and I will ever get there. To being real. Because you’re still always going to be you, Cee Cee Bloom, and I’m still going to be me, wishing for a real life with real parents. And that’s the kind of stuff that all the meetings and groups in the world can’t change.”

  Doctor Pappas handed Nina a wad of Kleenex, and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose and went on. “What I’m saying is, I think I’m scared that talking about not using won’t make me not want to get out of here and use again. But yes … I love you, and I’ve been superafraid to tell you that before tonight. Before I knew that you love me… and that I wasn’t someone you got stuck with because your friend died.” She bit her lip and looked straight and hard at Cee Cee, waiting to see what would happen next, and Cee Cee moved to the middle of the circle, took Nina’s hands, lifted her to her feet, and pulled her into her arms where they wept, and Doctor Pappas passed a box of Kleenex around to many of the other people in the group who needed it too.

  The moon lit the narrow beach street as Cee Cee and Nina walked toward Cee Cee’s car, arms around one another’s waists. Some of the tiny, funky, one-story houses they passed had wind chimes, which hung quietly in the still night. A few of the houses just beyond the row of Seaside Sobriety houses were lit only by the flickering lights of televisions.

  “Doctor Pappas said he thinks you’ll be able to come home in a few weeks,” Cee Cee said as they reached the car, which was parked

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  just opposite the open sliding glass door of a house inside of which Cee Cee spotted an older couple, watching the Academy Awards.

  I’ll come back on Wednesday for the next family meeting,” she said, taking Nina’s hand, “and for every meeting after that. I promise. I’m going to do everything | can to get us through this.” Nina squeezed her hand gratefully, then looked past her at the television in the little house, and when Cee Cee followed her gaze back to the small set she saw Billy Crystal introducing Gregory Peck, who strode handsome and elegant up to the podium, and when the applause ended he said something about five gifted women. And then he named them, and as he did a piece of each of their films rolled by. Isabelle Adjani, Camille Claudel. Jessica Lange, Music Box. Cee Cee Bloom, Lives of Sophie West. Cee Cee, who never liked the way she looked on film, was relieved that the clips were so short.

  When Gregory Peck had announced all the nominations, he opened the envelope and announced, “And the Oscar goes to Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy.” In an instant the audience rose to their feet and Cee Cee took a long deep breath as Nina put a supporting arm around her shoulder and held on tight, and they both watched as Jessica Tandy took the stage. The old couple in the house were applauding along with the television audience.

  “I never expected in a million years that I’d be in this position, and I thank my lucky stars…‘Jessica Tandy said, “and Richard and Lily Zanuck, and that forgotten man Bruce Beresford. I’m on cloud nine.”

  Cee Cee turned away from the television and looked at Nina. She could hear the old woman in the house they were standing next to saying, “Well, it’s about time she won one of those things.”

  “Do you feel awful that you’re not the winner?” Nina asked her.

  “Oh, kiddo,” Cee Cee said. “That’s where you’re wrong. I have you. And that makes me the biggest and luckiest winner I know.”

  They hugged again, and Cee Cee got into the car and Nina waved goodbye as the car pulled away, and then she walked slowly back to the small house where some of the group were waiting for her.

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  August 1990

  IT WAS seven years exactly from the day of Bertie’s death, one of those eerie coincidences Cee Cee remembered thinking when she entered today’s event into her appointment calendar. Now it crossed her mind again while she sat in the back of the limousine, which snaked with funereal slowness through the relentless freeway traffic. Her father, Harriet, and Hal sat with her, staring out of the darkened windows, lost in their respective thoughts, and as the oddly mixed archit
ecture of the downtown skyline came into view signaling their

  imminent arrival, Hal reached over and took Cee Cee’s hand. “How’re you holding up, old girl?”

  She answered with a fervent squeeze of his hand.

  Within minutes the limo slowed and Cee Cee leaned forward to look out the window in amazement at the size of the group waiting for them at the curb. So many of Nina’s friends were there, all of them wearing what were for them somber clothes, and every one of them was serious-faced. Particularly Kevin, who stood in the front of the group and nodded a nod of encouragement to Cee Cee as she opened the door for herself and emerged from the car.

  And then Jake, looking very official today in a uniform, including the rarely worn chauffeur’s cap, opened his own door and walked around to the front door on the passenger side, opened that one with a flourish, and out stepped Nina. A cheer rose from the group, as all of the friends ran to greet her, to encircle her, hugging and congratulating her noisily, and finally they nearly lifted her off her feet to usher her along the sidewalk and up the steps to the courthouse.

  Cee Cee took a deep breath and stopped at the bottom of the steps

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  just to watch, filled with a grateful, joyous ache at seeing Nina getting the demonstration of love she needed so much now. Then, needing some support herself, she put an arm around her father and one around Hal, and with Harriet hanging onto Nathan’s arm, the four of them bounced excitedly up the steps like the t|uartet from The Wizard

  of Oz.

  Jim Andrews, Cee Cee’s bespectacled, handsome, tweedy-looking lawyer, who was waiting in the marble hallway, smiled when he saw the size of the group. “I don’t know if the judge’s chambers are big enough to seat this many people,” he said.

  “So we’ll stand,” Nathan Bloom told him.

  The last months had been a grueling series of painful sessions for Nina and Cee Cee. Sometimes Cee Cee would have stomachaches before going to a group meeting or an hour of therapy with Nina in anticipation of what she would hear next. Once, sitting on the far end of Doctor Pappas’s sofa, as far as she could get from Cee Cee who sat on the other end, Nina confessed, “For a long time I blamed you for killing my mother. I thought if you had taken better care of her, if you hadn’t sent away the nurse, she would have lived. So I hated you.” Then she turned and put her face against the back of the sofa and cried silently. There was no way Cee Cee could respond to that. Another time, in a rage, Nina cried out, “It’s not fair that someone as wonderful as my mother died and someone as horrible as you is still alive.”

  Then, immediately regretting it, she stood and went to Cee Cee

  and held her, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  And there were lighter times.

  “Cee Cee, how did you learn to parent?” Doctor Pappas asked. “Are you kidding? From my lunatic mother. I vowed I was never gonna be like that. She was loud and crass and when she showed up at school to take me to an audition I used to die of embarrassment. Everywhere I went, before I got into the room there was Leona, talking too much and talking too loud and saying all the wrong things..It made me nuts so I …” She stopped because the doctor and Nina were both grinning at her. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s where I learned.”

  They celebrated on the day Cee Cee filed for adoption, and on the day when the phone call came from the lawyer telling them Michael

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  Barron had signed the release of abandonment, so the only possible impediment o setting the court date would be an investigation by a social worker.

  “Both Doctor Pappas and Doctor Kagan say that despite all that’s happened, you’ve worked hard to be a good mother to Nina,” the social worker said. “Do you think that’s right?” He was a young man of about thirty dressed in a suit and tie, unawed by Cee Cee’s stardom, and that was the last question he asked her during a long and exhaustive interview.

  “I can only tell you I’ve had moments I could kick myself for, but I’ve also had some moments I think I’ve been more mother than Harriet Nelson and Donna Reed rolled into one. Of course, the bottom line about being somebody’s parent is what you learn. And for me, raising another human being has been the most important, most creative, most humbling experience I’ve ever had, and that’s why it would mean so much to me and to Nina if we could …” That was when she had lost it for a second, but she stopped until she was able to talk again and said, “If we could, if I could.., make it legal.”

  Now Hal and Nathan sat on a marble bench talking about the stock market, and Richie Charles entered, greeted by a very surprised squeal and a hug from Nina, and Florrie Kagan bustled in at the last second moving quietly to Cee Cee to give her a warm and approving embrace just as the door from the courtroom opened and a guard in a khaki uniform poked his head out and gestured to Jim Andrews, who said, “Okay, people, here we go.” Then the guard opened the door to the tiny courtroom wider and ushered them through, walking single file to a large dark wood door at the back, upon which he knocked, and after a moment he gestured for all of them to follow him into the judge’s chambers.

  The judge was a pretty, page-boyed woman in her fifties, and she smiled a big smile and stood as she watched the gang of people troop in and find places to sit, or stand, to watch what was going to happen next.

  “Looks to me like a party,” she said.

  “That’s what it is,” Harriet said.

  The emotion in the room was palpable, the joy and the hope and

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  the wonder, and the relief brought a giddiness to each person there, as Cee Cee’s lawyer spoke. “Good morning, Your Honor, James R. Andrews appearing on behalf of petitioner Cee Cee Bloom and the extended family.”

  A court reporter took everything down as the judge said, “This is the matter of Cee Cee Bloom. The petitioner is present as well as the minor and their attorney, Mr. Andrews. The report from the County Bureau of Adoptions is admitted into evidence by reference. Please raise your right hand.”

  Cee Cee did. “Do you solemnly swear before this court that the information you have given is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing

  but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do,” Cee Cee said.

  “I assume you are here because you want to go ahead with the adoption?”

  “That’s right,” Cee Cee said, and, continuing to look at the judge, she reached out her hand in Nina’s direction and felt Nina take it.

  The judge looked at Nina now and spoke gently. “Nina, when a child your age is being adopted, it is required of the state to ask that child if she can wholeheartedly say she consents to the adoption of her own free will. Do you want Cee Cee Bloom to adopt you, to be your legal parent forever?”

  All eyes were on Nina now. She knew it, and she was flushed and bright-eyed. “Yes I do,” she said, and it was forthcoming and clear.

  “And, Cee Cee? Do you promise you will treat her in all respects as your lawful child? To make the child your own, to care for her and treat her as your rightful heir forever?”

  “I sure do,” Cee Cee said emphatically.

  “I have a consent form I would like you to read, and if you approve, sign it.”

  Cee Cee bent over and shuffled around in her purse to find a pair of reading glasses. “This is what happens when you have an older mother, dear,” she joked to Nina, and everyone laughed as she put the glasses on to read the form the judge had given her. When she’d read it, she nodded to Jim Andrews, who said, “Let the record reflect that the petitioner has read the consent in the open court.”

  “Since you have read it, if you approve, please sign your full name

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  in black ink. According to the court the report is approved and filed.” There was a lot of stamping of papers, and Cee Cee relaxed against the back of her chair for the first time
.

  The judge now looked at Cee Cee and Nina standing together, and smiled a very warm unjudgelike smile. “The court finds that it’s in the best interest of the minor that the petition be granted. The petition is theretre granted, and hereafter you have the relationship of mother and daughter. All the responsibilities of that relationship and the duties thereof. I’m signing the decree.” And she did. “Congratulations,” she said.

  Cee Cee would always remember that nobody moved for what seemed like a long time, then Nina came to her and looked at her and put her arms around her neck, and Nathan said, “Somebody take a picture,” and a few flashbulbs went off. “Take one with the judge,” somebody else said, and Cee Cee and Nina stood with the judge, and more flashbulbs went off. One of the kids had a camera, and Hal pulled one out of his pocket too. Everyone was carrying on and laughing now, and Nathan called out, “I want another picture. Let’s have another picture,” and Nina called out, “Come on, Hal, give your camera to someone else to take a picture of us. I want you to be in the picture with me and my mother.”

  Cee Cee beamed when she heard those words, and as Hal handed the lawyer his camera to take their picture, he put a loving arm around both Cee Cee and Nina.

  “Smile, ladies,” Nathan said, and each of them was glad to oblige. After they moved out of the courtroom and back into the corridor, it seemed as if nobody from their group wanted to leave. The kids’ voices and laughter echoed down the high-ceilinged hall, and the high spirits of the morning made everyone feel friendly and talkative. Richie and Hal were reliving old times, and Florrie was getting to know Nathan and his wife. Cee Cee looked over at Nina, who was at the edge of the group talking animatedly with Kevin, and watched as she touched his arm, said, “Excuse me,” and slipped away from the group down the corridor toward the ladies room.