I'll Be There (23 page)

“But, baby, it’s cold outside,” Nathan sang, and his voice by contrast was nothing short of great. Right on key, belting out the song as if all the world could hear him.

This is hysterical, Cee Cee thought, and she had to bite her lip to

keep from laughing out loud.

“I’ve got to go ‘way.”

“But, baby, it’s cold outside.” Nathan was rocking back and forth

snapping his fingers as if he was Stubby Kaye in Guys and Dolls.

“This evening has been so very nice…”

Her father. She had always assumed that her talent had come from Leona, only because she had spent her whole life having no idea who this man was. And he had tried to tell her so long ago that he was the one who carried the musical genes, but Leona had always shut him up.

“My mother will start to worry.”

“Been hoping that you’d drop in…”

. Her father and Nina each had a faraway look in their eyes, as if

they weren’t a short fat man and an eleven-year-old girl standing in a living room, but two stars, playing to an audience of thousands, except that Nina was holding her fingers in her ears as promised, in order to block out Nathan’s big voice.

“Ahh, but it’s coooold outside!!! I” When they were finished they

took hands and bowed a deep bow they had obviously rehearsed, and Cee Cee stood to give them a big ovation. Then the two of them hurried over to the sofa where she stood and all three of them hugged.

I’LL BE THERE

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A family hug. Because that’s what we are, she thought. A silly little family of three lost souls. And it was cold outside.

Nathan’s last night in Los Angeles was a night on which Cee Cee had a taping of her show. Nathan and Nina were coming to sit in the front row of the bleachers to watch. The house in Malibu was filled with the scent of Old Spce as Nathan dressed carefully in gray trousers, a light blue shirt, and a madras blazer, and then plastered down the wisps of remaining hair on the top of his head. Later at the studio, after the page led them to their taped-off seats, he lifted the back flaps of the jacket to sit as if he was wearing tails.

After Cee Cee sang her opening number and the audience applauded, while she waited for the next take to be set up, she came down to the bleachers to talk to the studio audience. It was what she did every week, usually asking for questions. Tonight after she sat on the edge of the runway she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, a very special man is sitting out there with you. If it wasn’t for this man, I wouldn’t be here tonight. He fed me, he clothed me, and I got my singing voice from him. Please welcome someone who has known me for more years than I’ll ever admit, my wonderful daddy, Nathan Bloom.”

The audience cheered, applauded, whistled, stomped, and craned heir necks to see Nathan, who stood to greet their welcome with such aplomb it was as if he’d been rehearsing for this moment all his life. He bowed a little bow, nodding his bald head this way and that, and :hen waved an open-handed wave after which he blew a kiss. And cohen he did, both Cee Cee and Nina recognized the gesture. It was :he one Cee Cee always made when the show was over and she took aer last bow to say goodbye for now to her fans.

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IRIS RAINER DART

I’LL BE THERE

Michael,

Just a note to ask if you ever received any of my earlier notes mentioning how I believe it would mean a lot to Nina to know you, even if it was just for a short visit.

Will you let me know?

Cee Cee

PEOPLE MAGAZINE

December 1986

Old-fashioned variety shows disappeared for good reason. They were dumb. With skits that wouldn’t cut it in the high-school play, awkward cross talk, Muzak-like music, and too many costume changes. The production values of one musical number on MTV have made the smokefilled special effects, or the Vaseline-covered screen which suddenly appears when a singer performs a love song on network television, look downright silly. The current proliferation of talk shows, and the intimate glimpses they offer into the personal lives of stars, make the banal chitchat on variety TV seem archaic.

Somehow, Cee Cee Bloom has kept her own variety show going and in the top ten, in spite of an abundance of the elements mentioned above. Cee Cee is a dinosaur in that she’s one of the few existing comediennes who can really belt out a song as well as dance her feet off, but soon, despite her extraordinary gifts and Herculean effort to keep it all afloat, even the invincible Bloom won’t be able to keep the dying form from expiring. Like its predecessor and most traceable influence, vaudeville, the variety show is soon to bid us a fond adieu, and in the future our glimpses of it will pass by us only as a part of those “Remember When” collections of the good old days.

Not to worry for Cee Cee Bloom, however. A talent like hers will always find greener and more up-to-date pastures.

LOS ANGELES,, CALIFORNIA

August 1990

HAL LOOKED BETTER than Cee Cee had ever seen him as he emerged from the baggage claim area. When he spotted her driver Jake he waved a friendly wave, and when Jake, who had been chatting with an airport security guard, saw Hal walking toward the car, he hurried to relieve him of his luggage.

“Careful,” Hal warned, “there are lots of goodies in those bags.” When he opened the back door of the car to get in, he was surprised to see Cee Cee waiting for him. “Hey!!!” he shouted, sliding in close to her in the backseat and giving her a big bear hug. “You didn’t have to make this trip,” he said, but Cee Cee could tell how completely delighted he was that she had.

“Yes I did,” she said, “because you’re not the only one I’m picking up here.” She looked at her watch and then back at Hal. “Zero minus two hours,” she said.

“You’re not going to fall apart on me are you?” he asked.

“Why would I do that? It’s only the biggest, most important day of my life.”

The front door of the car opened and Jake stuck his head in. “Think I ought to go up to the gate and see what’s happening?” he asked Cee Cee. “According to the monitor, the flight’s in.”

“Maybe you should,” Cee Cee said, and after a word with the airport security guard about not ticketing the VIP car, Jake was gone through the doors into the terminal.

“Do you think it’s too late?” Cee Cee asked Hal. “Do you think it still means something?”

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IRIS RAINER DART

“I think it means thee world,” Hal said as she put her aead against his shoulde, “more than anything you’ve ever done.”

The airport doors olqpened again and a stream of peolle emerged, and at the end of the sl;tream was Jake, and when Cee (ee saw who he had in tow she sat fo1,rward, opened the car door, and ‘ith a happy welcoming smile got ount of the car, knowing that her appearance wa; causing its usual excitement, but she didn’t care. “Have I got a hug for you,” she said, movi-ng forward with tears in her eyes.“Thank you for being here.”

Nathan Bloom and NdVlrs. Nathan Bloom, the former Iarriet Gold stein, stood arms-arounJd-one-another as smiling and puy as Twee. dle-Dee and Tweedle-U2)um. “Please,” the little sweet-faced lady said “are you kidding? For o, our children we’ll go anywhere..A(ter all, no you’re my daughter too,.,, right?”

“You bet,” Cee Ce said, wondering what Leona would haw thought of this woman, o Cee Cee’s stepmother. The idea if Nathan ir love was too delicious t-.o believe. And he was. She could tell by th glow on his cheeks.

“Listen, for us it’s another honeymoon. From here wego on to Sa Diego,” Nathan said, arad Cee Cee recognized that sexy little twinkle in his eyes she had seemn there only fleetingly years ago.Jake loaded their bags into the trunl.k of the limo and Cee Cee made e introductions to Hal.

“Not bad for two old-lzl kokkers, right?” Harriet asked Iql as she slid onto one of the rumble seats across from Nathan. “I hate say it, but the only time I was in . a limousine before this was to y late husband’s, may he rest in peace, funeral. Pooh, pooh, pooh. io life is full of surprises.”

“It sure is,” Hal said-f], sitting close to Cee Cee and ptting her on the leg.

Jake got into the driiiiver’s seat, pulled the rearview ricror down,

and looked at all of the in the backseat.

“All in?” he asked.

“Only one more StOlO, Jakie,” Cee Cee said.

“You got it,” Jake tolld her, and they were on their wa.

CABO SAN LUCAS

1987

THE INCIDENT in Cabo San Lucas came right on the heels of Nina’s dancing school recital, which was probably what made Cee Cee handle it the way she did. Still, it was inexcusable and it wasn’t until she looked back on it that she realized the way she behaved was a page torn from the worst part of her life with Leona. Only this time instead of Leona, it was Cee Cee standing out there during Nina’s rehearsal in the auditorium at the Elks Club, mouthing the words of the song and poking her fingers into the corners of her own lips, pushing them up to make a smile so that when Nina glanced out there she would see her and be reminded to smile at the audience. Now that was life with Leona to a frigging “T.”

As if it was yesterday Cee Cee remembered the way her fat, unhappy mother used to sit in a chair by the wall during all of Cee Cee’s sweaty tap and ballet and jazz classes. And while the other mothers went outside to have a cigarette and gossip, Leona would listen to every word the dance teacher said to the kids, and write the names of the steps in the dance routine into a little spiral notebook that she would pull out later at home, so she could drill Cee Cee relentlessly. In fact, all these years later when Cee Cee was rehearsing a tap number for her show, in the back of her head she could still hear Leona’s voice calling the steps out to her. Step shuffle ball change, step shuffle ball change, step brush hop, step brush hop.

Today she had canceled some meetings after Nina asked her to please come to a rehearsal of the recital because, she confided to Cee Cee, she was afraid at the performance she would be so nervous she

IRIS RA INER DA R T

might “mess up,” and she wanted Cee Cee to see her dance while she was relatively calm. All year long the dance classes had been closed, so Cee Cee had never been able to come and watch, and now when the girls came running out on the stage to the blasting music, what Cee Cee had imagined would be an amateurish exercise looked surprisingly professional. But the most extraordinary surprise of all was the way Nina, ordinarily so low-key in the presentation of herself, now pushed back her shoulders and held her chin high and danced with a confident presence Cee Cee had never seen in her.

The girls were performing to a recording of Irene Cara singing “Fame,” and their little voices belted out the lyrics along with the record as they moved across the stage at the Elks Club, as Cee Cee found herself covered with goose bumps while she watched, wondering if it was seeing Nina so transformed or the message of the song that was getting to her.

I’m gonna live forever

I’m gonna learn to fly high I feel it comin’ together People will see me and die.

When Nina looked out into the semidarkness at Cee Cee, it was with an expression hungry for approval. Cee Cee knew it instantly and lifted a hand with thumb and forefinger circled as a high sign, the same one Leona had given her at every recital, and when Nina saw the gesture, her pretty little chin rose and her eyes flashed.

I’m gonna make it to heaven Light up the sky like a flame I’m gonna live forever

Baby, remember my name.

The sentiment in those lyrics! How that feeling had burned in Cee Cee every day of her life, stronger than any other need, until it compelled her to spend all of her energy moving toward the single-minded goal of success in her career. The success she now had. Once, years ago, during the long hungry times when she was getting nowhere as a performer, she had walked onto the location of a film on a New York street where they were casting extras.

I’LL BE THERE

“Please,” she begged the second assistant director, “just let me walk by in a crowd.”

“We’re not casting uglies today, honey,” the guy had said, and turned away to talk to someone else, and the rejection had burned into Cee Cee’s chest, but still she pressed him, going after him and tugging on his arm.

“Hey, listen, I’ll wear a hat with a veil. Nobody will see what I look like. Please let me get a movie credit on my r6sum6.”

“Get lost,” the son-of-a-bitch, rude with his own little piece of power, said without even looking at her.

Stung and hot-faced with rage, Cee Cee stood on that New York street, ringing with unyielding resolve, and just as the director was about to shoot a scene, in fact they were already on a bell and rolling, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “One of these days you assholes are gonna be beggin’ me for a job.” A few people on the set had laughed, and the irate director had yelled, “Cut,” and had to get everybody settled down again while two burly guys on a signal from the A.D. picked Cee Cee up by the elbows and walked her a block away.

She had long ago forgotten who that director was and what the picture was they were making on the New York street, but just a few weeks ago a woman who was an extra on Cee Cee’s show in the French Caffi sketch told her she had been in New York working on that shoot and had never forgotten that determined little girl. “I guess,” the woman, who was a professional extra, said, “that’s the kind of belief you have to have in yourself in order to survive in this fucking business.”

And the woman was right. The day after Nina’s recital Cee Cee and Nina would fly down to Cabo San Lucas, where Cee Cee was starring in a new picture. It was her first feature film in years. It had taken all those seasons of slaving away on television to become so hot again that the movie studios finally believed in her renewed potential to sell tickets. She was looking forward to it. Martin Kane, the director, was good at getting strong emotional work out of actors, and she knew he would lean on her to get her best. And she’d managed to wangle the job of unit still photographer for her latest flame, Scott Becker, the young, adorable guy she’d met at Goldie Hawn’s party.