Beaches (19 page)

Like last week when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, John decided to try and get the hotel to give them a bigger suite. Cee Cee told him that was silly because she was perfectly happy in the suite they had now, but he had some kinda bug up his ass.

“Hey,” he said, “business in this place is better than ever, and it’s because you’re bringing the audience in. So why should you be staying in anything less than a penthouse suite?”

And he was so serious and redfaced when he said it that she shrugged and told him, “Fine. Let’s ask.” But when he called the management to ask, they told him they were sorry, but there wasn’t a penthouse suite available.

Well, that made him really pissed, in a way Cee Cee hadn’t seen before. And he wouldn’t give up, either. He told the guy on the phone that the hotel ought to pay to move him and Cee Cee to another hotel where there was a penthouse suite available. The guy on the phone thought about it for a minute and then said he’d get back to John. But he never did.

After that John was more edgy than ever. He’d go down to the pool for a quick swim in the mornings, then he’d come back up to the hotel room and sit in the bathtub for hours. He’d start drinking wine around four o’clock. Then at eight o’clock he’d come down and sit at a table by the entrance to the showroom, and while Cee Cee was singing she could make him out back there, throwing down a few more drinks. And even though he told her every day that he loved her, she was scared.

Tonight he seemed better, she thought, pulling the heavy dress up to take it off. She was relieved when he’d begged off to stay in the suite and watch some old movie on TV. He said they could call room- service after the show when she got upstairs, and he seemed more relaxed. Five more friggin’ days of Miami Beach. Then they’d go back to New York. They needed that. To be in the city in their own dumpy little apartment where they were comfortable.

Cee Cee hung the sequined dress on the rack, slipped a muumuu over her head, put some sandals on her feet, turned off the light in the dressing room, closed the door, and walked down the hall toward the service elevator.

She was hungry. Always after a show she got those hunger pangs like she could eat a friggin’ horse, and now she couldn’t think of one goddamned thing on the room service menu that appealed to her. Club sandwich. Blah. Salade Fruits de Mer. Yech. Meat. She needed a sandwich. Double decker. Maybe triple. What Nathan, her father, used to call a Dagwood sandwich. He’d pile the cheese on there, and then the cole slaw, and three different kinds of meat, with mustard and mayonnaise and then

call out, “Hey, Cecilia, c’mere and take a bite out of this,” and Cee Cee would come into the kitchen and they’d both start laughing at how funny the sandwich was, until Leona came in, and said something shitty like, “Even Cee Cee’s mouth ain’t big enough for that thing,” or, “Nate, you pig. Eat like a person. Not an animal, fa chrissake,” and ruin their laugh.

That deli across the street was open all night. Maybe they had something good. Maybe she’d walk in there and pick up a couple of sandwiches and take them back to the room and have a little picnic with John. That would cheer him up. She took her dark glasses out of her purse and put them on, just as the doors of the service elevator opened.

The lobby was dead. Old people go to bed early. The man at the front desk was reading a magazine and didn’t look up as Cee Cee walked by. She knew she must look a little weird with her stage make-up still on, dressed in her muumuu and wearing sunglasses at two in the morning. Maybe not. Maybe in Miami Beach that was the right way to look.

The warm night felt soothing, and even on a busy street like Collins Avenue, with bus fumes and odors wafting from the restaurants, Cee Cee could still smell the salty ocean air mixed with the perfume of the tropical growth that was planted in stucco planters around the outside of the hotel.

There were only four full tables in Pumpernicks, and nobody at any of them seemed to notice Cee Cee.

“Help you, hon?” a short waitress with blond hair and black roots asked. Cee Cee improvised the ingredients of two different sandwiches, and the waitress made them while she waited.

A couple who had to be at least in their eighties came through the door. They both walked very slowly. The man carried a cane. The woman had her arm through his, and they walked toward a booth not far from where Cee Cee was standing. Just as the woman was about to sit down on

one side of the booth, the man lifted her wrinkled old hand to his lips and kissed it. The woman smiled a girlish smile at him and then she sat as he went to the other side of the booth and sat, too.

Cee Cee grinned. She wondered if the couple was on a date. No. These two had been married for at least fifty, maybe even sixty years. Christ. Would she have that kind of marriage with John? It had only been ten years, and the bickering was so bitter, sometimes she didn’t think she could stand it.

“Anything else, hon?” the waitress asked, handing Cee Cee the bag with the sandwiches. “I threw in a couple of pickles for you.”

“Thanks a lot,” Cee Cee said.

“And you pay the cashier up front.”

Cee Cee twisted the key hard to the right and then pressed against the door to the suite with her shoulder, but the door didn’t budge. The dogs inside began yapping when they heard her out there. Shit. Maybe the key was supposed to go to the left. She’d better put the bag with the sandwiches down till she figured this out. Besides, her muumuu was starting to smell of the garlic that was seeping through the bag with the pickles. Eveiy goddamned hotel door was different, to the right, to the left, pull first then push. Ah, the left and a little nudge from the hip did the trick. The suite was completely dark. The two poodles ran around her feet sniffing out the corned beef. John must have fallen asleep. Well, maybe she wouldn’t wake him, Cee Cee thought as she bent to pick up the bag of sandwiches. Maybe he needed this rest and she’d just nibble her sandwich, down a beer from the refrigerator, and then crawl in beside him.

Nah. He’d love it if she woke him. She’d bring in a couple of beers, rip open the deli bag and tell him how great the show had gone, and which songs worked the best and . . .

“Cee?”

It was John’s sleepy voice calling from the bedroom. Great. He was awake. He was gonna loove these sandwiches.

“Baby, guess what I brought,” she said. The only light in the bedroom came from the orange end of the cigarette John was smoking. He had quit smoking years before, and just started again a few weeks ago. Right about the time Cee Cee was on The Ed Sullivan Show.

“Ayy,” she said. “I got something that’s gonna knock your socks off, Perry, so I hope you’re hungry.”

“Great,” he said. “But sit down first, okay?”

“Yeah, I will,” she said. “Soon as I unwrap these, and get us a couple of beers and feed the dogs and-”

“Sit down now, Cee,” John said. He sounded really serious. So serious she wished it wasn’t dark so she could see his face. Then maybe she could tell by his expression that he was kidding.

“Cee Cee,” he said. Her eyes were getting used to the dark, and she could see he was putting out what had become a cigarette butt. And then he reached for another cigarette.

“We both know that you’re a big talent,” he said. “The biggest. And I told you from the beginning that when you finally made it, no one was going to be bigger. Didn’t I say that?”

Cee Cee heard her heart in her ears. She tore a tiny piece of paper from the bag she was still holding and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. Both dogs jumped in her lap.

“Yeah, you said that. And the reason I’m so good is on account of you. You made me this good. I mean, because you’re always pushing me to do better and stuff.”

Now Cee Cee blessed the dark because she was biting her lip knowing that she had stretched the truth more than a little. Not that John didn’t push her. Because he did, but . . . For a long time neither of them said a word.

Now and then John’s cigarette would glow as he puffed it. Cee Cee was more scared than before. It felt like something bad was going to happen any second, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She wanted to drop the sandwich bag and jump on him and say, Please, don’t leave me, J.P., you’re the only man who ever even liked me a lot, let alone loved me-so please don’t leave me. Only she didn’t. She just sat there in the dark room praying to God that he wouldn’t. That that wasn’t what this was all about. Just sat there listening to the lousy air conditioner drip. And then John said, in a really quiet voice, “Cee Cee, I think what I need is a woman who will bask in my glory.”

She knew it. He was saying what she had always been afraid he’d say eventually. That he couldn’t live like this anymore. That he’d given away his balls when he sold the Sunshine Theater. That he’d spent thirty-some years being hot shit, and now his big job in life was to carry her fuckin’ hair dryer. She was afraid he’d say that one day, and now there he was, saying it. But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t make him do that. It was all his idea. Anyway, it didn’t matter whose fault it was. Or whose idea it was. What mattered was she had to make him change his mind. Now.

“Well, what’re you gonna do about it?” she asked him, her voice filled with fear.

And after a moment he said, “I’m going to try and find another little theater. There’s one in Ohio I heard about.”

Then there was no sound but the air conditioner for a long time, and finally John said, “And I’m going to let you go ahead without me.”

“No,” Cee Cee said. “No. You’re not. Now just stop it,” she said, and she dropped the bag that she’d been hugging to herself, and lay on the bed next to him. She was crying. “You know if you’re going to Ohio, I’m going to go with you. I mean, I don’t want any success if you’re not there.” She could feel him crying, too. Felt his tears on her face.

After a minute he sat up and reached over to the night table and turned on the light. Then he looked at her face, and she was sure she must look horrible with tears smeared all over her goopy stage makeup.

“Now, baby,” John said. “We both know that isn’t true.”

“It is, it is,” she said, kissing his face. “J.P., take it back. Say you won’t go, honey. Say it.” She loved him. She was sure she loved him more than anyone had ever loved anyone in the world. Without another word, John made love to her. And then they slept tangled in one another’s arms and legs, and the next morning when she opened her eyes, barely awake yet, she saw him standing, showered and dressed, at the foot of the bed. He was holding his packed suitcase. He was so beautiful. No, she thought. Please. Don’t, John.

“I love you, Gee,” he said. “A whole lot.”

And he was gone.

For four days Bertie’s life was a cycle of sitting first on the plastic couch in the waiting room, sometimes awake, often asleep, while Neetie sat right next to Rosie’s bed; then Bertie would go to the plastic chair next to Rosie’s bed while Neetie moved out into the waiting room and had a cigarette, and finally Bertie would be in the stark white neon-lit ladies’ room, even if she didn’t have any need to use the bathroom. She thought that maybe she was going in there (and this made her laugh as it passed through her mind) for a change of scene.

The neurosurgeon was Dr. Metcalfe. He was slim and tall, with very short salt-and-pepper hair, and they had chosen him after Bertie called Michael. Michael called his father, Dr. Barron telephoned a Dr. Fishmann, with whom he’d gone to the University of Pittsburgh and who now practiced in Miami, and Fishmann called Metcalfe, who was on the staff of St. Joseph’s. Bertie had been terrified she would make the wrong choice. Certain that because

Michael’s father was a doctor, he could come up with the name of some miracle worker to save Rosie.

Metcalfe was not a miracle worker.

They took Rosie’s inert body down for an angiogram one night while Bertie slept. The damage was too great for any surgery.

“Then what do we …” Neetie said, unable to ask the question.

“We wait,” Metcalfe said, answering the unfinished question.

At each mealtime one of the “cast members,” which was the way Bertie had come to think about the other people who were sitting similar vigils for their own parents or husbands or wives, would walk over to Pumpernicks and get sandwiches for the rest, so that it seemed to Bertie she now had eaten at least seventeen corned beef sandwiches with cole slaw and Russian dressing-one of the sandwiches at every meal. Bertie and Neetie hadn’t been asked to take a turn going for the food yet. Maybe it was because Neetie said very loudly one day in front of everyone that she’d die first “before I’d ever go back to that lousy Pumpernicks whose food probably did this to my sister,”

On the fifth day, when Mr. Heft offered to go over and pick up some deli for “a little nibble for everyone,” Bertie volunteered to go along to help carry. Mr. Heft’s wife was in Intensive Care after an operation. She was not doing well, it seemed, because on several occasions Bertie saw Mr. Heft sitting with a dark-haired woman who must be his daughter, and they were both crying. Mr. Heft had decided to leave just as Bertie emerged from Rosie’s cubicle, and it was Neetie’s turn to sit by the bed. Bertie said, “Back in a few minutes, Neet,” but when Neetie heard that Bertie was going to leave the hospital building, Bertie saw panic in her aunt’s eyes.

“It’s okay,” Bertie promised. “I just need a breath of air.”

As Bertie and Mr. Heft silently walked the few blocks from the hospital to Pumpernicks, Bertie realized how full her lungs had been, not just her lungs, but her clothes, her unwashed hair, her mouth, with the smell and the taste of the hospital. No, she couldn’t let Rosie die. Not even in her mind. She mustn’t put that negative energy out in the atmosphere. When Mr. Heft took Bertie’s elbow gently as they crossed the street, she realized she hadn’t even looked at him since they left I.C.U., her eyes had been so busy taking in the parts of the hospital she hadn’t seen or noticed on her way in.

Old people. Mostly old people in every room. Maybe because in this neighborhood there were mostly old people. Bertie remembered Uncle Herbie saying one time that Miami Beach was “God’s waiting room.”