I'll Be There (9 page)

“I’m ready to go back to work. In fact I need to work. To do something that’ll keep me busier than hell,” and while she was talking, hearing her own voice ring through the room, she could tell that though they might be listening they weren’t really hearing her. She was looking now at Michelle and Tim, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Peter Flaherty push the edge of his cuff up surreptitiously to take a peek at his watch, and she wondered how much time he had allotted in his day for this meeting. How did somebody figure those things out? Amount of time it takes for out-of-line former big star to beg forgiveness. Two minutes? Five? Ten?

She was losing them. In fact they all looked so uncomfortable they probably couldn’t wait for her to get out of there. This was a lot worse than the flop sweat she felt onstage when her jokes weren’t working, because at least in those cases she knew she could rewrite the jokes and try them again the next night. But if these network people wouldn’t put her on the air because she’d been trouble, they would tell everybody in the industry the reason why — that Cee Cee Bloom was a flake, difficult, unpredictable — and then she wouldn’t be able to get work anywhere.

“Well, you’re great to come in, Cee Cee,” Peter Flaherty said. “You’re great,” Michelle Kleier echoed.

“Great.” The word made Cee Cee cringe. It always reminded her

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of that character Warren Beatty played in Shampoo, the hairdresser who went from woman to woman telling each one of them, “You’re great, baby. Great.”

“Thank you,” Cee Cec said. She had to keep talking. Had to get Flaherty to say he would give her another chance.

“Please, take a shot with me,” she said, trying to catch his eye, because it always seemed as if he was looking just a little bit past her,

as if that was a way he had off balance, and she was off ing. “You know if you put

learned to look at people to throw them balance all right, but still in there pitchthis show on, I’m gonna bring in a big

audience share. This is the first time I’ve done television in years. People will be tuning in left and right to see me. You’ll make your money back. I’ll even do the show for free.” That sounded like a valiant thing to say, and she meant it, but she heard an intake of air from Larry Gold as he moved forward in his chair, and she suspected if she looked at him he would make some gesture for her to shut up.

“It would be nice if we could resurrect something, Cee Cee,” Peter Flaherty said, his brow furrowed, “because you know we’ve always believed in your talent, but frankly I’d have a hard time recommending it. Even with your promise, how could I ever be sure some other whim might not just take you off the set again, and that for some other reason which felt urgent to you at the moment you might not do the same thing again?”

Cee Cee sat back in her chair with an acidy ache in her stomach. A whim. Peter Fucking Flaherty didn’t give a shit about what she’d lived through. Wouldn’t give a shit if the story she had just told him had been about his own mother, and that made an anger rise in her like hot lava, so that she had to hold on to the arm of the chair to keep from getting up and walking out.

Okay, he was right she’d been irresponsible to leave the show the way she had, but to characterize it as a whim was cold and wrong. She thought about what Hal always said to her when they were on the road if she got upset by a bad audience or a rotten review, “It’s just a show. It ain’t life and death.” Well, spending those months with Bertie bad been life and death, not just another television show people forgot the day after it aired.

Flaherty’s eyebrows were raised, and his lips were pursed together as if he was expecting an answer from her. “I mean how would I

know?” he repeated the question, like a teacher waiting for a student to respon.

Cee Cee’s blood boiled, her face was hot, and she knew with kind of drunken headiness that she was about to lose it and say what was on her mind. Later she would replay this scene in her mind and wonder how she’d let that rage take her over so completely at that moment

to make her mouth shoot off at the president of the network. .i “Maybe,” she answered, “you could ask your psychic.” l;laherty went pale. There was a split second when he seemed to be thinking about how to react, when it could have gone either way, maybe he would even take it as a joke, but then Cee Cee saw in his eyes the decision that there was no way-he was going to accept this kind of abuse from some former superstar prima donna who should be sucking up to him and begging for her show back. Who in the hell did she think she was? Now he stood, signaling that the meeting was over.

“Thanks for stopping by,” he said, his jaw clenched, his eyes completely drained of expression. Then he walked to the door and opened it. His lieutenants stood too. Cee Cee couldn’t look at Larry Gold, because she knew he was probably on the verge of a full-out stroke, that he would go apeshit over this, tell her what he always did, what Bertie always used to, that you didn’t always have to say the first smart-ass thing that comes into your head … but she didn’t care. These unfeeling schmucks would never know, never understand why she did what she did, and if that meant she was drummed out of the business, that would have to be the way it was. When she got to the doorway where Flaherty stood, she lookedup at him, and said to his indifferent face, “It’s a good thing you’ve got crystal balls, honey, ‘cause you sure don’t have the other kind.” And she stormed out, with Larry Gold rushing down the hall of the network building after her.

All the way back out to her house in Malibu, neither of them said a word, and Cee Cee feared with a sick feeling that probably she had made a big mistake taking Nina out of that boarding school so fast. Up until now there had been a shred of hope that things could fall into some state of normalcy, but for certain now her life would be a rat’s nest. She’d be traveling around, doing concerts, hoping for a good script with a breakout part to come along in a movie that could shoot God knows where.

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She shuddered when she thought back to what the concert tours had always been like, and some of the animals she had had to deal with. Not to mention the scrungy hotels and horrible hours. That was a lifestyle she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. Finally, when Larry Gold pulled up outside her house, he stopped the car and turned his small body in the seat so he could face her.

“You were wrong, Ccc Cee. You should have been humble. What’d you get out of it? One second of making Flaherty uncomfortable versus getting your show back on the air.”

“They knew they weren’t gonna do another show with me before we walked in there, Larry, believe me,” she said, getting out of the car. But the truth was he was right, and she knew it.

“What do you want me to do?” he called after her. She turned around and looked at his helpless expression. She had behaved like a dumb headstrong jackass who didn’t know better, and if there had ever been a prayer to get the show back, she had blown it.

“Get me a job,” she answered, then turned and put her key in the front door, realizing how glad she was to be able to come home to Nina.

Hal’s high-pitched singing voice was the first sound she heard as she pushed the door open. He was belting out some old silly song he had written about a frog prince, and Nina was singing along, laughing at all of the funny lyrics.

“Well, what’d they say?” Hal asked, stopping the music as Cee Cee walked in.

“Wait. I’ve gotta clean the rug burns off my knees from where I

was down on them begging their forgiveness.”

“And?”

“And after that I succeeded in big-mouthing nay way right out of the business.”

“How’d you do that?”

“Never mind how. I’m ruined, I’m cold potatoes, dead meat. They don’t care why 1 left the show, and they’ll probably see that I’ll never work again. I’ll be back playing the High Sign Caf in North Hollywood. Remember that place, Harold? With the mice? And I can promise you they were not the ones from the cast of Cinderella. They didn’t make me one dress. In fact, you may recall I stood on a chair most nights when I sang just to avoid coming face to face with the

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little rodents.” She turned to head for the kitchen. “I’d better go call

the real estate broker and put the house on the market.” “Hey, Cee,” Hal said. “Yeah?” She turned back.

“If I were you, I’d get off the cross. You’ll probably need the wood • for fuel.”

Cee Cee couldn’t help but laugh. And when she did, Nina did too.

“Flaherty is one network. There are two others. There’s cable there’s theater, there’re other studios who would kill for you. You’lli have a gig in no time,” Hal said.

“You think so?” Cee Cee’s eyes tested his for the possibility of a lie.

“I do,” Hal said. “And I don’t say ‘I do’ to just any girl.”

But no one was calling for her, the phone in the Malibu house was stubbornly quiet when they were at home, and the answering machine light didn’t blink with waiting messages when she and Nina came home from their visits to the various schools. For weeks they’d tried to find just the right one, but they were getting more and more discouraged.

“Today we saw ‘the free to be me school,’ where they wore Spandex pants, streaks of green hair, and everything visible that was piercible contained a cubic zirconia.”

“They let the kids walk around looking like that?” Hal asked her. “I haven’t gotten to describing the kids yet. Those were the teachers. And did I mention the hoity-toity one where they asked if I’d like to build a gymnasium in memory of Nina’s mother? Or the very regimented one where the headmaster asked if I believed corporal punishment was ever warranted, and when my answer was ‘Only during foreplay,’ he had me removed from l.is office. It’s getting exhausting, Harold.”

The next school they looked at was Elmhurst. On the way, Nina asked again, “Why can’t I go to our neighborhood public school? My friend Kevin goes there and he —”

“Neen, listen carefully. Those other kids, the ones you’re meeting on our road. Their homes aren’t listed on ‘Maps to the Stars’ Homes’ that any kidnapper can buy on the corner of Sunset and Doheny for five bucks.”

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“What does that have to do with school?”

“Your needs are special now, kiddo. Because as Cher once said to ‘,onny, ‘You’ve got me, babe.’”

“That was way before my time,” Nina said. “But I think what she ally said was, Tve got you, babe.’”

“Yeah? Well, what she meant was stuck is stuck.”

The physical plant of Elmhurst was shoddy, a group of ramshackle ,uildings sitting on a lot in Topanga Canyon that could hardly be ailed a campus, but the cheery mural of a playground painted by the hildren, which covered the side of one of the buildings, brightened p the look of the place. This morning Sandy Lowe, the director of e school, a tall heavy woman with long straight gray hair that she Core pushed back from her face with a plastic pink headband showed ee Cee and Nina around the tiny campus, and she talked to both of lem in the tone and cadence of somebody who spent most of her me with young children.

“Those are our little buddies, the mice and snakes and hamsters nd rabbits, and Fred and Wilma over there are our baby rats. They’re ery tame and the children get to take them out of the cages to feed em and hold them,” she said as they stood in the makeshift science b where Nina wandered over to the animal cages.

“No!” Cee Cee said, surprised. “I spent years tryin’ to get out of y old neighborhood so I wouldn’t have to get anywhere near a rat. ow I’ve got to pay ten grand so my kid can hold one? You gotta be idding.”

The director smiled, a very slight smile. Nina walked over by the tr wall where there was a display of the children’s work.

“The school is a family corporation. Many of our activities are mpletely parent run. The parents care for the school building, as ‘ell as sit on the board that governs the corporation. And the parents ‘ork regularly with their children on the various projects. For examle, what Nina is looking at right now is a parent-student science voject about weather. Precipitation. Why it snows. How to make it tin.”

“I know the answer to that!” Cee Cee said in a loud voice. “I just and get my car washed.” No reaction.

Dumb joke, Cee Cee thought. Dumb friggin’ joke, just like when

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I was a kid. Make a joke to cover how stupid I really am. I was afraid the directo was gonna ask me to tell her how rain actually does get made, and Nina would see how dumb I am because I don’t know.

“Calm down, Cee Cee,” Nina said softly to her when they were a distance away from the director, following her back to the office. “It’s me who’s trying to get into the school. Not you. This is the best one so far, so don’t mess it up.”

“Why doesn’t Nina stay with me for a little while so we can talk some more?” Sandy Lowe said, coming over and patting Cee Cee on the arm. “And you can go over to the development office and talk with Barbara Gilbert. She’s the head of the parent organization and she’ll be able to tell you better than I can about what, if Nina is accepted at Elmhurst, they’ll expect from you.”

“Great,” Cee Cee said. Nina walked away with Sandy Lowe, looking particularly tiny next to the tall wide woman, and Cee Cee thought before she turned away that the little girl had had a look on her face that said she was relieved to get away from her. She liked this place. So did Cee Cee. Settled. This was it. The school for her. Cee Cee’s step felt lighter now.

The development office had two desks, both of which were piled high with papers. A small brown-haired woman with a blunt-cut bob that accentuated her large nose sat behind one of the desks, talking on the phone. She was holding a Diet Coke in her free hand, and when Cee Cee stood in the doorway, the woman tucked the phone under her chin and waved Cee Cee in with her now free hand.