I'll Be There (4 page)

That little face. Those big-girl words coming out of that little sweet face, that look in her eyes which, now that Nina had removed the sunglasses, Cee Cee could see looked too old for someone so young.

“You’re amazing,” Cee Cee said. “So amazing you make me feel like a complete jackass. And it must be in your blood, because your mother had a way of doing that to me too. On a regular basis.” She walked to Nina and hugged her and gave her a little kiss on the top of the head, and as she did she inhaled the sweet clean smell of the

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little girl’s hair. Then she held her at arm’s length and said, “I promise I’ll call you every day,” then, trying not to make a big deal out of it, she turned and walked out of the room. When she was about halfway down the hall, she thought she heard Nina say, in a voice that sounded like it was pushing to come off as cavalier, “Once a week will probably do it.” But she kept walking and when she got outside the building and moved toward her car, she could feel in the back of her neck that Nina was watching her from the window.

For a while she sat behind the wheel, looking back at the school buildings, so torn apart she couldn’t even start the car. Finally she did and she drove slowly away, back to Highway 1 and south, this time toward the Monterey Peninsula Airport, with the memory of Nina’s little face lodged in the front of her brain and a burr of sadness stuck in her heart.

According to the clock on the dashboard of the Chevy she was early, so she pulled into the parking lot of Del Monte Aviation, where she sat for a while looking out at all of the airplanes, then with a resigned deep breath she made herself get out of the car and walk around to the trunk, which she opened so she could take out the box wrapped in white paper.

“Dying and flying,” she said, “my two biggest phobias, and you, the woman who called herself my best friend, have managed to make sure I had to deal with both of them at the same time. Well, don’t worry, Bert. I fully intend to get back at you for this, as soon as I find out how to reach you from Shirley MacLaine.” Then she got back into the car, put the box on the passenger seat, and sat looking out at the rows of private airplanes parked just beyond the fence, and finally too aware of its presence to ignore it, she .looked at the box again, leaned over, and tore at the wrapping paper to uncover the package inside. Then, filled with a mixture of horror and curiosity, she pulled up on the lid, and unwound the top of the plastic bag inside the box.

The color. The first thing that struck her was the color. Not black or gray the way she pictured it would look. Not at all like cigarette ashes. But a light color. Like chopped coral, or seashells. Coarse and uneven pieces of what looked like.., oh God. Bones. She closed her eyes.

“Bert,” she said, “I always told you I loved you to pieces, but I

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didn’t mean as small as these.” Hearing herself say that made he laugh, a horrified laugh at her own black humor. The kirid Berti, loved. And she knew Bertie would have laughed her ass off at that What would ever be funny again? Hysterical, the way things used t be when she was with Bertie. Even things that didn’t seem funm when she was alone, somehow, when they were together, could makq them both laugh like idiots. Like that dopey running gag they had fo years where Cee Cee would say, “If one of us dies, I’m moving t Miami Beach.” It had been Nathan and Leona’s joke that Cee Cee usec to overhear all the time when she was a kid. And after she told it t Bertie, the two of them had adopted it as their own.

One night when she wasn’t kidding,, but long before she ever go sick, Bertie said, “Cee, you know I was thinking recently, | hope I di before you do.” It must have been one of those times Cee Cee wa, visiting her in Sarasota. Yeah. It was one of those conversations they had until four in the morning. Bertie was real maudlin that night, probably because she was pregnant and her hormones were on the fritz. And after talking the night away they had decided to make some popcorn because it was a low-calorie snack. Of course they’d smothered it in butter and Cee Cee had washed hers down with a little Sara Lee chocolate cake she’d found in the freezer and defrosted in the oven. “Because if you ever died first and I was still on this earth without you, I’d be miserable.”

“I’ll tell you what, kiddo,” Cee Cee had offered, polishing off the last bite of the cake, “just to make sure that doesn’t happen, if I ever get real sick.., we’ll have you killed.” Bertie had laughed a lot at that one. So look what happened. She got her wish. She died first and it was Cee Cee who was left to go on without her. And now they wouldn’t get old together the way they always swore they would, from the time they had noticed two little old ladies together, walking arm and arm down a street, maybe it was in Hawaii.

One of the ladies walked with the help of a cane, and the other one was very rounded forward at the shoulders, so it wasn’t exactly clear which of the two was holding the other up, and Bertie had elbowed Cee Cee, making her stop and look at the ladies, and whispered, “That’s us in fifty years.” Now there wouldn’t be any Bertie in fifty years to hold her up and walk slowly with her when nobody else wanted to. No Bertie who would remind her to suck in her stomach

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when she forgot, or to tell her when she had lipstick on her teeth, or food on her chin, or to point out that one of her shoulder pads had slipped back so far she looked like Quasimodo, or that she was acting too desperate with some man, or spending too much money on dumb things. No Bertie who believed in her, and always had from the day they met. She used to sign her letters YOUR FAN CLUB, B.W.B. And it wasn’t just because she believed in Cee Cee’s future as a star the way Leona did. Bertie believed in Cee Cee as a person. Bertie had pressured her to stop snorting cocaine. Shrieked at her in an unBertie-like way to stop destroying herself because she had too much to offer the world, and Cee Cee had stopped.

Well, maybe she’d slid back to it after that once or twice, but it was always Bertie’s letters to her begging PLEASE, CEE, YOUR TALENT IS SO BIG, DON’T DO SOMETHING THAT WILL EAT AWAY AT IT! that had helped her to feel strong, knowing in order to accomplish what she wanted to do, she had to force herself to be more disciplined. It had changed her life having Bertie out there to remind her, pound into her head the reasons she needed to stay away from cocaine, avoid pig-outs on food, and be sure to keep the list of passionate strangers short, though that one was the easiest to control, since the number of volunteers was so small.

“Do what I do,” Bertie said, advising her about men.

“I do do what you do, honey, and it’s lonelier than hell.”

“Find other outlets. For example two nights a week, I’m taking a course on how to repair my car.”

“The only way they’ll get me under a car is with the mechanic,”

Cee Cee said. “Look for our feet locked together in love.”

Bertie laughed. “You are such a slut.”

“Talk is cheap,” Cee Cee said, “and so, dear girl, am I.” But teasing aside, finally Bertie had proven without a doubt how much she believed in Cee Cee by changing her will and declaring Cee Cee Nina’s guardian, instead of the aunt and uncle in Miami Beach. So what if, in a way, Cee Cee had pushed her into making that decision? There was no doubt in the world it was the right one for the kid, and Cee Cee would prove it to anyone who didn’t think so.

“Bert,” she said to the box of ashes, “I swear you did the right thing by giving me Nina. I promise I won’t smother her the way Leona did me. I’ll be understanding, but I won’t spoil her, I’ll be tough, but I

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won’t lean on her too much. In fact I’ve been reading a lot about wha to do with kids because I know somewhere up there you’re worriec that I won’t be able to pull this off. But you’re wrong, Bert, becaus I’m here to tell you that I’ll be such a good influence you’ll think I’r Mary Fucking Popp,‘ns. Hah!” That made her laugh. That and th fact that she was talking animatedly to a box. Dear God, this wa., bizarre. Now she patted the box warmly.

“Ahh, Bert, if this wasn’t so sad it would be truly hilarious. If you were here with me, I mean really here, we’d be killing ourselve., laughing the way we always did about this kind of stuff. You alway., loved those sick jokes I made when you were on the way out of thi., life, like when I said we should date two ambulance drivers just i case, or that maybe I should do it with a mortician so we could get a discount.” That brought a laugh which caught in her throat and turned into a cry she tried to hold inside. Dear God, this was toc weird, too fucking over-the-top weird. This was not exactly your runof-the-mill way to pass the time, sitting in a car talking to a box full of your dead best friend. Finally she wiped away the crying tears and the laughing tears with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, looked at her watch, and saw it was time to go into the charter office.

“I figure if you’re graying at the temples, you must have been doing this for a long time,” she said to the pilot, noticing how high-pitched and nervous her voice sounded as the two of them walked out through he glass doors to the tarmac. He was a husky man in his fifties who hadn’t said a word but “Howdy” when they were introduced, and it he knew or cared who Cee Cee was she couldn’t see it in his eyes. Now, as they made the long walk across the airfield, she jabbered unthinkingly in her terror, trying to elicit some assurance from him, but there wasn’t a shot this guy was gonna make it easy for her.

“I’m a real white-knuckler,” she tried. “I worry about every noise. Once on a flight to New York, I heard this snap and then a hiss and I grabbed my piano player’s hand and said, ‘Oh my God. What was that sound?’ and he said, really calmly, ‘It was the sound of the stewardess opening a cola can!’ Hah! Of course there probably won’t be any stewardesses on this flight though, so I guess I don’t have to worry.”

They were moving in the direction of a herd of small planes

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grouped together like a bunch of seagulls on the beach. Their whiteness flashed the sun’s glare in Cee Cee’s eyes, and when she could make them out clearly she said eeny meeny miney mo, trying to figure out which one of those metal pieces of crap was about to fly her out over the ocean.

“The plane’s a Cessna one seventy-two,” the pilot said, stopping at a funny-looking little job with the wings high up on the top. The silly

little son-of-a-bitch airplane was almost as tiny as a toy. Not exactly

the streamlined craft in which she thought she’d be sitting slouched tragically in the co-pilot’s seat when she’d pictured herself doing this, and it occurred to her there was still time to back out of it. To hand the pilot the box of ashes and a big wad of dough, say, “Good luck to you,” then drive down the coast to Big Sur and watch as he flew over.

“We’ll fly out down the coast, somewhere over Big Sur, and that’s probably the best place to do what you want to do,” he said, unlocking the door on his side first.

“What are those things?” Cee Cee asked pointing to two small

wheels that extended on either side of the plane.

“That’s the landing gear.”

“Thank God,” Cee Cee said. “I thought they were training wheels.” She laughed. The pilot didn’t.

“We’re taking this particular airplane up,” he said, “because the passenger window opens, and in my instructions it says you wanted to disperse the ashes yourself rather than have me or one of my assistants do it. So when it’s time for the dispersal, I’ll slow down the speed of the plane so you can open the window safely, and I’ll teach you now how to hold the box below the window level to get the ashes to blow out to sea.”

The pilot climbed into his seat, then leaned over and unlocked the passenger door, and Cee Cee stood for a moment, afraid to get in, wondering why she couldn’t just go back to L.A., stand on the Santa Monica Pier and open the box lid.

“I can assure you,” the pilot told her, seeing her expression, “I’ve been flying these planes for a long time, and they’re perfectly safe. Safer than your being on the freeway.”

“You’ve obviously heard about my driving,” Cee Cee said. Again he didn’t crack a smile, and looked as if he wasn’t planning to. Maybe ever. “Let’s go for it,” Cee Cee told him and climbed into the plane

through the open passenger door, placing the box of ashes between her feet.

“Let me show you how you’ll open the window once we get over the ocean and I give you the signal,” the pilot said. “You see the window’s hinged on the top, and you’re going to press that small metal lever and then push very hard on the window itself. It will open far enough for you to reach out with the box in your arms, and then you’re going to make sure you hold the box low, on a level under the

window, because of the wind and the prop wash. Got that?”

“Got it,” Cee Cee said.

“Let’s practice,” the pilot said, and closed her door. Cee Cee pulled on the metal clip, put both hands on the window and pushed. It opened. A cinch. Then she picked the box up from the floor in front of her and leaned out of the open window, moving the unopened box to a level below the window.

“Good job,” the pilot said.

Cee Cee nodded an oh-it-was-nothing nod, pulled the box back in, closed the window again, and buckled her seat belt. Not bad.

“Ready to go up?” the pilot asked, closing his door, which sounded to Cee Cee like the lightweight door of an economy car.

Ready to throw up is more like it, she thought, as she nodded. She and the pilot were sitting shoulder to shoulder, as close to one another as if they were in a tiny sports car. And in a second, he had put on his headset and the engine was running and the loud noise blasted in her ears as the Cessna began to taxi slowly toward the runway. The pilot was talking into the microphone on his headset, and Cee Cee wondered if he had a sense of humor in case she got sick all over him, which felt like a distinct possibility, and then the plane began to start down the runway slowly, picked up speed and then more speed, and as Cee Cee took a few shallow nervous breaths, the tiny airplane lifted into the clear blue Monterey sky.