Beaches (23 page)

Janice Carries smiled, a bigger smile this time, and said, “I’m sure she’ll be grateful.”

Cee Cee was annoyed. “If she’s so friggin’ grateful, then where is she?”

“What do you mean?” Janice Carnes, whoever the fuck she was, asked.

“Maybe she thought I wasn’t gonna get here this fast, but she tells me it’s important, so I kill myself for her. I walk out on my own show. I try to bum some movie producer’s airplane and …”

But Janice Carnes wasn’t listening. She had already moved quickly past Cee Cee and was taking the stairs two at a time. Cee Cee followed behind her for a few steps, still talking, but stopped when she saw her push open the door to the bedroom where the television was and then close it behind her.

There was no sound at all for a couple of minutes and then Gee Cee heard a muffled conversation between Janice Carnes and someone else. For a second Cee Cee even thought it might be Bertie. Jeez, it sounded like her.

And then, when the thought that the person she’d seen in that bed in the room, the strangely gaunt person whose face she had looked at by the light of the television, might be Bertie, when that thought first hit her, Cee Cee was filled with an eerie feeling that started in her ears, and moved into the back of her neck, and then spread through her body, until finally she couldn’t move. Not that person in the room. That person had a pain-filled face, and was breathing with effort, and the hair . . . the hair wasn’t Bertie’s. Couldn’t have been. Nothing about that person was like Bertie. It had to be someone else. Please, Cee Cee thought, please, God.

Sarasota, Florida, 1975

Bertie sat on the deck looking out at the water. The ocean was brown closest to the shore, then yellow-green, then darker, almost emerald green near the skyline. A catamaran with a rainbow sail moved slowly along what looked like the edge of the world.

If only it was, Bertie thought. I could swim out there and fall off. A unique suicide. That’s what I need. If I’m going to do it, I might as well do it in an original way. Ways to die. Cee Cee had made that a category when they played Facts in Five in Hawaii. The day it rained. They came inside and Cee Cee suggested they play it. Each of them wrote a mutually-agreed-on five-letter word across the top of a piece of paper. This time the word was
C-A-N-D-Y
. They had to come up with ways to die that began with the five letters of the word candy.

“C, carcinoma,” Michael said.

“Cancer,” Bertie said.

“That’s what I had for C,” John said. “What do you have, Gee?”

“Cunt falls off from overuse.”

Everyone, even Michael, had screamed with laughter.

“That is not a way to die,” Bertie said, remembering now that she couldn’t believe how much Michael laughed at that.

“Oh, no? Well, it’s how I’m planning to go, baby. I get fifteen points!” Cee Cee, who was keeping score, wrote a bold number fifteen under her own name.

Last week on the phone Cee Cee had said, “That asshole left you? Thank God. Now you can start to live a little, kid. He was a low-life, a putz, a schmuck, a no-good dog, and a louse. Other than that, a great guy.”

Bertie could hear the tour guide’s voice coming over the megaphone of Le Barge, as the sightseeing tour boat approached. Every day at one-thirty it came by. Today the guide was a woman with a very nasal voice. “This is the Long Boat Key,” the nasal voice said. “High-priced residential area.”

Bertie pulled her towel around her shoulders and looked down at her lap, hoping none of the people in the boat could see her sitting there. Certain that they all could, and were craning their necks to try and find out who could afford such a house. What kind of person lived there, and was she really happy?

“No,” Bertie said aloud. Not loud enough for the people in the boat to hear, but loud enough to be considered talking to herself, which she did a lot of the time, and which Michael had told her was a crackpot symptom. Michael-she missed him, actually missed him. Insane, how insane. Just because he’d walked out on her, left her. That must be why. Otherwise, there was no earthly reason. He hadn’t been loving to her, or even nice for nearly a year. They had only made love once in the last six months, a few weeks before he walked out, and then it was grudgingly.

A pelican dove for and missed a fish that swam just beneath the surface of the water.

Bertie had made a dinner on that particular night that she knew Michael loved-liked-used to love-said he did, anyway. She had been so eager to try to stop the coldness between them that she had spent the whole morning shopping for the dinner ingredients, spent two hours in the afternoon at the hairdresser’s, and then ages setting the table and dressing, trying to look casual and unstudied, but sensual. She felt like one of those women in an article from Cosmopolitan, “How to Make Your Man Sizzle with Lust.”

But when she had greeted him at the door and he looked at her, and then past her at the elaborately set table, she saw in his eyes that it hadn’t worked. He didn’t care what she did anymore. It was over. They sat silently at dinner, Bertie drinking three glasses of wine instead of her usual one, not even tasting the chicken she’d nurtured so carefully to just the right state of tenderness, Michael looking out the window rather than at her.

Finally, mercifully, it was bedtime, and Bertie was under the covers, as far on her side of the bed as she could go, beginning to sink into the safety of sleep, when she felt the bed move and Michael edging slowly toward her. Soundlessly, he moved his arm under her back and pulled her to him . . . and for a moment she felt a rush of hope that this was an apology for the coldness, the months of disregard, and that the words would spill from him into her ear-“Love you. Sorry. Need you. Never again.”

It wasn’t. His thighs covered hers and instantly he was inside her, pushing, insisting. This was getting off, not an apology. Nothing would be different afterwards.

Four weeks. Four weeks after that, maybe to the day (she would have to count backwards to be sure), she watched him pack, wondered if she shouldn’t have some lines to say, like: “Are you sure you want to do this?” or “Can’t we just try again?” All of a sudden, in her mind, she could hear Neil Sedaka singing “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” and that made her smile, so she had to leave the

room because, after all, when your husband was leaving, you probably weren’t supposed to smile. He would move to a hotel or apartment and she could have the house, or she could go to Sarasota to the winter house there, until she felt ready to make a decision about where she wanted to live.

Sarasota. It was warm there and innocent, and Bertie loved the house. It was filled with wicker and canvas furniture she’d thought was beach-housy and bought much too much of, so that it was what Rosie would have called “too match-matchy.”

If Bertie went there instead of staying in Pittsburgh, she would miss her work at the Home. But she could be far away from Michael and the prying questions of their mutual friends. It was cold and snowing in Pittsburgh, and the Sarasota house opened onto the beautiful, sifted-flour sandy beach. She could walk up and down the warm beach for hours, if she wanted to, and never have to think about Michael. So she went to Sarasota right away, and walked up and down the beach. And all she thought about was Michael.

How could he leave her? Where would he go? Find somebody else? Love somebody else? He didn’t even give her a reason. Well, okay, he did give her a reason, but that couldn’t really be the reason. Nothing there anymore. There was just nothing there anymore and out the door. He was right, of course, there was nothing. No fun. No joy. Nothing even to talk about. The empty words repeated themselves month after month. Pat questions with pat answers.

How was your day? Fine. Yours? Great. Dinner ready? Yes, hungry? Mmmmm, busy today? Yep, you? Not much. Like a drink? Sure. Wine okay? Mmm. For you? Sure.

Didn’t that happen to everyone after a while? Or did some marriages, the ones that lasted fifty years, have surprises in them every night? What did it matter how other people worked? The point was she and Michael

didn’t anymore. And he’d left her. And people were calling and tsk-ing and saying terrible things about Michael that started with, “You know, I never wanted to tell you this when you two were together, but …” And at least five people had said, “Look at it this way. It could have been worse. What if you’d had children?”

Worse? Imagine. How could anyone think that would be worse? Little loving darlings around to climb on her lap and whisper, “Don’t worry, Mommy, I still love you.” Isn’t that what they would certainly do? But as hard as Bertie and Michael had tried, and no matter how many doctors they’d consulted, there were no children. Mrs. Barron is barren. The words rang through Bertie’s mind every time she went to see another doctor, certain that one of them would say that. But each one gave her hope and a chart with which to use her basal thermometer and determine her time of ovulation, and Michael would obligingly try to be romantic on cue.

After a while, it had become a joke. They would lower the lights and play old Frank Sinatra albums each time, and month after month, her period would come and Bertie would tell Michael, and he would tell her Ol” Blue Eyes was slipping because it certainly couldn’t be them.

Bertie heard the neighbor’s German shepherd barking loudly. At two in the afternoon, there was probably a delivery truck out front. Maybe it was at her door and not the neighbor’s. Maybe she should go and see.

The air conditioning in the house chilled her, and the tile felt icy on her feet when she came inside and walked through the silent house. The doorbell rang a few impatient times. It was for her. It was probably the parcel man with the blouse she ordered from Burdine’s.

When she pulled open the door, the person who stood there looked so bizarre, Bertie almost closed the door again in shock. Pudgy. Dark glasses. Strange hat.

“So yer gettin’ a divorce,” the weird person said. “Big

fuckin’ deal. You’ll be fine. I got one and look at me, for chrissake.”

“Well, I hope I don’t turn out looking like that!” Bertie said as the two women embraced, a huge grasping hug, that made the beads on Cee Cee’s dress catch on Bertie’s pink terry-cloth robe.

“Didn’t expect to see me here, did you, bitch?” Cee Cee asked, as the two friends moved apart to get a look at one another. And the beads pulled threads of the pink terry-cloth robe with them.

“Gee,” Bertie said, walking her into the living room, “what are you doing here? Is everything okay? I mean, you look weird.” Cee Cee’s earrings hung down to her shoulders. She wore a flowing beaded top over a black leather miniskirt, and knee-high snakeskin boots.

“That’s because it’s two o’clock in Sarasota. At midnight in Hollywood I looked perfect. Now, where’s my room? I’ll get the taxi driver to bring my bags in.”

A rush of joy swept over Bertie.

“You’re staying? Really?”

“No, you dipshit. I always make it a habit to pass through Sarasota no matter where I’m goin’. I’m here, thank your lucky stars, to get you outta the doldrums. Hey, what the hell is a fuckin’ doldrum anyway? And why are you in it? You’re tall and thin and gorgeous.”

Cee Cee. There was nobody like her. It was like turning on your favorite television show when she walked in the door. You knew before the story even started that you’d be laughing any minute. She was out the door to the taxi and then she was back, being followed by the driver, a black man who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying two Vuitton suitcases and a hanging bag.

“Percy, this is Bertie,” Cee Cee said to the man. Bertie nodded at the man who flashed her a smile filled with huge white teeth. As Bertie led Percy toward the guest bedroom, Cee Cee, who was trailing behind, kept on talking.

“Bertie’s single now, Percy, so she’s open to all offers.”

Percy laughed, then spoke with a Jamaican accent.

“My wife won’t let me make no offers to nobody, Miss Gee Cee,” he said. The suitcases were placed on the bright yellow carpet next to the yellow chintz-covered chair that matched the yellow chintz ruffled bedspread and the yellow chintz ruffled curtains.

“Your loss, Perc,” Cee Cee said, handing him five dollars. “But it could be worse. You could have to stay in a room that looked like Big Bird exploded all over it.”

“Thank you, Miss Cee Cee,” Percy said, and he nodded to Bertie. “I’ll go see your next movie soon as you make one.” A little nod of the head and Percy was gone.

“A fan,” Cee Cee said. “Recognized me at the airport.”

Probably because not too many people wear snake-skin and sequins around here, Bertie thought.

Cee Cee pulled a cigarette out of her purse and lit it. “Ya know, I used to have this shrink,” she said as exhaled smoke came pouring out of her mouth. “Lou Tabachnick was his name-in Manhattan. He was a little old Jewish daddy, and I’d walk in and sit in a chair a few feet away from him and he’d always start off my sessions the same way by saying: ‘So? How are you?’ And then I would say, ‘Well, Lou, since I last saw you, this happened and that happened and I went here and I was there,’ and I’d blab for about twenty minutes, and finally when I ran out of things to blab about, I’d stop and be quiet and then Lou would say, ‘All right, now that we got that out of the way, how are you really?’ ”

Bertie smiled. “What I’m sayin’ is, let’s skip the opening bullshit,” Cee Cee said, “and get right to it. So how are you really?”

Bertie smiled. “I’m great,” she said. And then her eyes filled with tears.

“That’s what I did when Lou asked me,” Cee Cee said.

“I’m okay. I’m fine,” Bertie said. “I mean I should be

fine because Michael and I weren’t even happy together,” and she smiled a forced smile.

“A detail,” Cee Cee said. “You break up, it’s tough, no matter what.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie said, “I have to find a career, or at least a job. Isn’t it a good thing that I don’t have a child to worry about?” Her jaw was tightly clenched. She closed her eyes to stop any more tears and pulled herself together. “I’m sorry,” she said.

A moment later she took a deep breath and tried to talk again. “I sit here alone every day. The only time I leave the house is to go to the market, which I do once a -week. Sometimes I wait ten days or two weeks, and …” Cee Cee took a Kleenex from the yellow box on the bedside table and handed it to Bertie. Bertie wiped her eyes. “Thank you. Anyway, I know it’s psychosomatic, but I can’t stop sleeping. I’m always sleeping. And sometimes I’m kind of queasy. But I’m embarrassed to call the doctor because I know it’s nothing physical. It’s just my terror of being alone. Aren’t you sorry you asked?” she said. And the two women smiled at one another.