Beaches (21 page)

who was living out the big show business dream instead of him. Not just working in some goddamned airplane hangar with a bunch of amateurs. Me who was up there with the big-time showbiz guys, where John never was or never will be.

“Maybe you coulda told me how to act girlish through it all, or how I should have made him feel more important at home so it didn’t hurt him too bad. And then maybe-” Cee Cee stopped talking for a minute, and it looked to Bertie as if she was biting the inside of her lower lip, and when she stopped she said, “Then, maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”

Bertie wanted to touch her. Just touch Cee Cee’s arm, but she didn’t dare.

“Bertie,” Cee Cee said, “don’t you get it? You took yourself away from me without askin’ if you were right to do it or not. And you weren’t. I didn’t do anything with your husband. Ever. Never touched him. Maybe I said some suggestive things, which I do, and sometimes at the wrong times, but that’s all. That’s what it said in all the letters I sent you that you were too tight-assed to open. And you know why I didn’t do anything? Because I didn’t want to. Because I knew something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. That it was more important to me than some guy’s dick and where he wanted to put it. That it was more important than anything, because I trusted it, I believed in it. But you didn’t, and your husband didn’t. So you can take your dirty little suspicious mind and find yourself a friend who doesn’t care that you don’t know how to trust her, or about your smarmy husband’s idea of how to be a man.”

Cee Cee’s fists were clenched as if she wanted to pommel Bertie, who stood speechlessly by.

“So thanks a lot for forgiving me, thanks a whole fuckin’ lot, but I don’t forgive you, and I never will.”

And Cee Cee turned to go again, but after a few steps

she turned back and said, in a very soft voice, “I’m real sorry about your mother.”

The elevator door opened as Cee Gee got to it, and she was gone. Bertie stood still for a long time, oblivious to the stares of the people in the lobby, finally forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the door of the hotel.

The bright sun made Bertie squint. Her eyes were already sore from crying. Slowly she made her way back toward the hospital, her head pounding. John had walked out on Cee Cee. Something about my friendship with you that you didn’t know. Nothing happened. That’s what Michael had said. But she heard him out there in the other room that night. Making love to Cee Cee. Imagined them to be writhing, hot, wild for one another. Imagined.

The piercing siren of an ambulance on its way to the hospital emergency entrance startled her for a moment, and she was relieved to enter the hospital, as if she needed the security of the medicinal and bodily smells.

Neetie was still in with Rosie when Bertie arrived. Metcalfe had been by, Neetie said, had looked at Rosie, marked something on a chart and said nothing. Bertie wished she could think of something positive she could say to Neetie. Something about Patricia Neal, She’ll come back. Like Patricia Neal. But they both looked at Rosie with her finger still pointing and they both knew.

Even though there were no windows in the intensive care waiting room, it was easy for Bertie to feel when the night fell. The new shift of nurses came on, the evening shift of nuns came in and straightened things, and that dinnertime hunger gnawed at her. She thought, as she washed her face and changed her blouse, how perfect it would be to sit down at a table somewhere, anywhere, and eat a hot meal. Not even anything fancy. Just something on a plate instead of a sandwich again. Selfish, terrible thought. But all evening, while the others chatted, she ached to say to Neetie, Let’s go out. Let’s go sit

with napkins on our laps and knives and forks in our hands. But when somebody brought sandwiches she ate part of one, turkey this time. She played gin rummy with Mr. Heft, read some of Mrs. Koven’s magazines. Peter Cache stopped by on his visit to his father and left cupcakes this time. Bertie tried dozing for a while. Every time she drifted off to sleep, she could see Cee Cee’s angry face-“Maybe he wouldn’t have walked out on me.”

Finally, at midnight she went to a phone booth in the corridor and called Michael. She hadn’t called him in two days. He’d be eager to hear how everything was going, even though it was late and she’d probably be waking him. She heard the phone ringing twice.

” ‘Lo?”

“Michael?”

“Bert. Hey. How’s it going?” He asked as if she was calling from a football game, and he was asking her the score.

“No change,” Bertie said.

“Sorry, babe,” Michael said. “Probably be the best thing for her to just check out, I guess, huh?”

People always said things like that about someone who was in a condition like Rosie’s, and Bertie could never understand it.

“Probably,” she said, wishing she could shriek at him, “If it was someone you loved as much as I love my mother, you’d want them to do everything. You’d pray every second. You’d talk to her and-” She couldn’t say that.

“Michael, Cee Cee’s here,” she said, wishing she could see his expression. “She’s working here in the club at the Carillon Hotel.”

Michael said nothing. Bertie was tired. So tired. And she ached from all the nights of sleeping on the I.C.U. sofa.

“I saw her,” she said.

“You went to a club?”

“I went to the hotel. To use the ladies’ room. It’s nearby and she-we bumped into one another.”

Michael was silent.

“She hates me, Michael. I tried to work things out with her, but she wouldn’t.”

Silence.

“Michael, when I get home, you and I have a lot to discuss.”

“About what?” Michael asked, with almost a smirk in his voice.

Terrible weeping in the corridor. Wracking sobs.

“Michael, I don’t know if I-” The sobs were long and loud and filled with terrible anguish, and Bertie leaned out of the phone booth to see where they were coming from.

Old Mr. Heft and Mrs. Devlin were locked in each other’s arms, heads on each other’s shoulders, weeping, keening, moaning. It was so terribly sad that one of the nurses who was standing by sobbed, too. The nurse held a small tray with a tiny plastic cup on it. The cup was filled with blue liquid.

“Please, take this,” she said, but no one was listening to her. “It’ll relax you, dear,” she said.

Bertie wondered what had happened. Was it Mrs. Devlin’s husband? Mr. Heft’s wife?

“Bertie, are you there? You don’t know if you what?”

Michael sounded angry, but Bertie didn’t care what he was saying, or how he felt.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Bertie, the best thing that ever happened was when you gave up that friendship,” Michael said hastily.

Bertie heard something in his voice she’d never heard there before. It sounded like fear.

“She’s a scumbag,” Michael said.

Bertie hated that expression. Michael only used it to refer to prophylactics and women.

“Don’t start getting impressed by her big star act. I

pegged her the first day. You remember I did. I said . . . Bert?”

Bertie didn’t even hang the phone in its cradle. She was down the hall trying to help Mrs. Devlin and the nurse get old Mr. Heft off the floor, where he lay sobbing. A male orderly and one of the nuns came up the hall.

“Can’t live without her,” Mr. Heft said. His face was red and swollen with tears. “Can’t live without her.”

“His daughter’s down in the lobby to take him home,” someone said, and an orderly helped Mr. Heft gently while the nurse placed the little plastic cup to his lips and he closed his eyes and drank the liquid. Then one of the nuns brought a wheelchair and Mr. Heft sat in it. The elevator doors at the end of the hall opened, and a pretty, dark-haired woman got off. Bertie remembered the woman being there a few times with Mr. Heft. When the woman saw Mr. Heft, she ran to him and bent over him in the wheelchair. They were both sobbing. They patted one another and cried more, and then with the help of one of the nuns the woman wheeled Mr. Heft down the hall toward the elevator, and everyone else dispersed. Except for Bertie. She continued to stand there, watching as the dark-haired woman and the nun carefully lifted the front wheels of the wheelchair onto the elevator. That was it. The end of Mrs. Heft. And good-by, Mr. Heft. Only Mr. Heft hadn’t even said good-by to Bertie or Mrs. Devlin or Mrs. Koven. He was simply wheeled away in his anguish.

Bertie continued to look down the corridor long after Mr. Heft was gone. Mrs. Heft had just checked out. Probably the best thing. Michael. Oh, God. She’d left him hanging on the phone. He must be furious. She walked to the phone booth, picked up the dangling receiver and put it to her ear. Dial tone. As she was hanging up the phone, two nurses who had just emerged from the elevator walked by, and Bertie heard part of their conversation.

“She was on The Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks ago, and now there she was coming in the door downstairs. I

couldn’t believe it.” The two nurses stopped right near the phone booth. One was taking something out of her purse.

“She went over to the patient information desk,” the other nurse said. “So I figure she must be coming to see a friend or something. ...”

But now the nurse stopped talking, because she could see what Bertie could see. Cee Cee, still wearing what must be the dress that wowed them all in the eight o’clock show, had emerged from the elevator and was walking down the hall carrying a huge cardboard box that had aluminum-foil-wrapped containers piled inside it. Her high heels scuffed noisily along the linoleum floor. The se-quined low-cut dress looked out of place and silly in the hospital. Almost disrespectful. But Cee Cee didn’t care. She was as jaunty as if she was on her way to the circus. When Cee Cee saw Bertie, she spoke as if everything had always been okay between them.

“They only serve chicken and prime rib at the dinner show, so I had ‘em pack a few of ‘em up for you.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie began, but couldn’t finish because Cee Cee was surrounded. Every nurse on the floor was in the corridor gathered around her, a few interns, Mrs. Koven and her daughter, two orderlies, Mrs. Devlin, and some nuns.

“Sign this.” “Saw you on TV.” “I have your albums at home.” The whole group moved into the I.C.U. waiting room, which was now filled with smiling excited faces, all wanting Cee Gee’s attention. Cee Cee put the box of food on the plastic sofa. Bertie sat next to it and picked at the aluminum foil. The food smelled great. But she wasn’t hungry. Cee Cee was there. Forgiving her for forgiving her. Making everyone laugh. Using one of the nun’s backs to lean on while she signed an autograph for the other nun. And everyone adoring her.

“I coulda become a nun,” she said, as if she was doing a stand-up comedy routine. “But there is one thing, just

one little thing that a girl like me cannot live without that is a no-no for nuns.”

“And what is that, Gee?” Mrs. Devlin asked, as if she were the straight man for the comic.

“Sequins,” Cee Cee answered, and everyone laughed.

When Bertie walked her into the waiting room. Neetie smiled a little smile through her tears and said, “We watched you together on Ed Sullivan, and I remembered when you were in those shows in Beach Haven, and I was tellin’ Rosie how you sang so good, even then, and how you used to come over just like any other friend of Bertie’s, only Bertie always was saying how you were the best of all. I told that to my sister, and now look. ...”

Cee Cee put her arms around Neetie and Neetie cried some more, and then Bertie said, “There’s some food here, Aunt Neet. Cee Cee brought food.”

“No, thank you,” Neetie said almost shyly, as if she was afraid to offend Cee Cee. “I gotta go back and sit with my sister. Somebody should be there.”

“I’ll go, dear,” one of the nuns said. “You stay a while and have a little visit.”

Neetie sat with relief on the plastic sofa.

“Hey, have the chicken,” Mrs. Devlin said to Neetie as she poked around among the remaining foil-covered plates.

Cee Cee seemed to be surveying the scene now as if to determine that everything was all right, then she took a deep breath and looked at Bertie. “Hey, listen, I gotta run,” she said. “Got another show to do tonight. So I’ll be toddling off,” and she stood.

There was so much Bertie wanted to say, but everyone was sitting there. Maybe she should walk Cee Cee to the elevator and on the way ask her what this visit meant. Were they friends again? Or was this just a burst of charity? (That’s the way Cee Cee used to describe it in her letters when she sang at fund raisers.) Was there anything Bertie could do or say to make up for not being there for

her for so long? Bertie wondered if maybe she should ask Gee Cee if she wanted to see Rosie. Then she remembered Cee Cee’s letters about how after Leona died, Nathan, her father, got sick, and how being near him when he was in the hospital gave her “the creeps,” Bertie remembered now what she said in that letter. “The sick and the dying are not my territory, kiddo.” She would never want to go into cubicle seven and see the corpselike Rosie. The I.C.U. was no place for Cee Cee.

“I’ll walk you to the elevator,” Bertie said.

“Nah,” Cee Cee insisted, gave Bertie a little tap on the arm, and then a smile, and without even a good-by to anyone, she was gone out the door of the waiting room.

“The chicken is very juicy,” Neetie said, with a mouthful of chicken, and Mrs. Devlin agreed. Mrs. Koven and her daughter were having the prime rib. The daughter was trying to cut it with a plastic knife the hotel had sent.

“My sister Rose loves chicken,” Neetie said.

“I’m going in, Aunt Neet,” Bertie said.

Neetie waved a chicken leg in approval.

As soon as Bertie pushed open the big black doors of the I.C.U. and saw the nuns standing, their heads bowed, their hands held as if in prayer, outside of cubicle seven, the tears rushed to her eyes. Gone. Rosie was gone. That was for certain. Had to be. And they were praying for the safe journey of her soul to heaven. Bertie moved closer, pushed the nuns apart, and forced herself to look into the room.

Standing a few feet from the bed, her face filled with emotion, was Cee Cee. She was singing to Rosie, the monitors clicking away in an eerie accompaniment, as the nuns and Bertie listened: