Beaches (11 page)

Just before she fell asleep one night, Bertie remembered a doll that Rosie had given her when she was Carla’s age. It was called a Toni doll, and it had hair that could be washed and curled and combed. Bertie remembered playing “beauty parlor” every day for weeks with the doll. Little girls like pretty hair.

The next morning, Bertie telephoned every toy store that was listed in the Yellow Pages, looking for a doll with hair that could be washed, combed, and set. Not one of the stores had anything like that. Chatty Cathy, Betsy Wetsy, Tiny Tears, “but nothin’ with no hair, lady.”

Bertie got into her car and drove to Rosie’s house.

“Hi, darling.”

“Hi,” Bertie answered distractedly. “Looking for something.” She raced past her mother and down into the cold, damp cellar that smelled of detergent and ammonia.

She pulled boxes from shelves and out of storage bins. Clothes, dishes, photo albums, holiday items, all carefully labeled in Rosie’s neat hand. Ah! A large cardboard box with the word Clorox printed on all four sides, and underneath the word Clorox, also on all four sides, and on the top and bottom just to be sure, Rosie had labeled the box BW’s
TOYS
.

Bertie ripped off the packing tape and opened the box. One look at the contents filled her with memories of her childhood.

Blackie, the furry little stuffed scotty, a baby toy that had sat on her night table even when she was in high school. Lula, oh, sweet Lula, the faded Kewpie doll her father had won for her at Kennywood Park right after her third birthday. Just before he died. Jake or Joco or Jojo, a teddy bear with no face; she couldn’t remember what she’d called him. Mr. Muggs, a stuffed monkey wearing tennis shoes. Four storybook dolls in their native costumes of Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Spain. And Lisa, the beautiful Toni doll. Bertie had given the doll the name she’d wished her mother had given her. Instead of Roberta. Ick. A girl version of Robert.

Lisa. The doll was smaller than Bertie remembered. She was dressed in the red and white ruffled dress Rosie had made in order to teach Bertie how to use the Singer sewing machine that later replaced all of the toys in Bertie’s affection. Lisa had peach skin and yellow blond hair and green eyes. Bertie used to wish she looked like Lisa.

On Monday morning, Bertie took Lisa from the top shelf of her closet where she’d put her; she had waited until Michael left for work so she wouldn’t have to discuss this with him. Then she gently wrapped Lisa in tissue paper and put her in a large cardboard box. She wrapped the box in more tissue paper and sat it on the passenger seat of her car as she drove to the Home.

Carla was gone. Her parents had picked her up to take her on a weekend outing, and on Sunday when things were going well they decided that they didn’t want their little girl to live at the Home for Crippled Children anymore. That maybe they were capable of caring for her after all.

“Isn’t that great for Carla!” Bertie said to the nurse who gave her the news.

But she felt cheated, as if something had been stolen from her. She felt like crying. It was a feeling she had a lot lately. Wanting to cry from frustration.

“I’d like to have Carla Berns’s address,” she said to the receptionist at the front office. She was trying to sound calm. “I have something I’d like to send to her.”

Dr. Esther Shaw, the child psychologist at the Home, was in the office when Bertie asked for the address. Dr. Shaw was tall and thin and had blue-black hair with square-cut bangs. She was always very serious. Bertie told Dr. Shaw how Carla liked brushing her hair and how she’d gone and looked for the doll and . . . She wasn’t sure why, but suddenly she felt herself talking very fast. Maybe it was because of the look on Dr. Shaw’s face.

“I’m very sorry, Roberta,” the doctor said when Bertie finished, “I’m afraid we can’t give you the girl’s address. Sending Carla the doll now would be entirely too intrusive.”

“Pardon?”

“Intrusive. You see, Carla’s parents couldn’t afford to buy her the kind of toy you’re thinking of sending. If she gets a toy like that in the mail from someone who works here, those parents could think we’re trying to seduce Carla into being happier here than she is at home, and the truth is, Carla’s already ambivalent about living in the care of her parents because they’ve been known to be extremely negligent. So, even though I’m delighted that you became so attached to one of our children, I feel that at this time-Roberta?”

Bertie was crying. Hard. Intrusive? She wanted to

help Carla. Make a little girl smile. Not be intrusive. For God’s sake. What was the problem? “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed at her own outburst. “I’m so sorry.”

“Is it possible, Roberta,” Dr. Shaw said gently, “that maybe you’re not able to detach yourself enough emotionally from these children to be doing this kind of work? What do you think?”

Bertie didn’t answer. She tried, but she couldn’t answer. Not without crying. She turned and walked out of the building, still carrying the box with Lisa inside. Then she got into her car and drove home.

Later that week, she wrote a note to the Home thanking them for the time during which she had worked there, apologizing for her error in judgment and telling them that she wouldn’t be back. When she put the note into the mailbox at the corner she felt awful.

Why had she behaved like that? Maybe it was because she hadn’t felt really useful to anyone since her summer at the Sunshine Theater. The Sunshine. She still wasn’t sure what she felt about her summer there. After she’d left Beach Haven, there was no doubt in her mind that she and Cee Cee were going to be lifelong friends, even if they did live far apart. But then she got the news of Cee Cee and John’s marriage. No, she thought. This has to be a joke. Out of nowhere. John and Cee Cee. Impossible. She felt left out and deserted. By both of them. She stayed alone in her room for days. Rosie begged her to talk about it. Finally, when Bertie wouldn’t acknowledge her mother’s presence in the room, Rosie announced in a hurt voice, “I know this has something to do with sex, Roberta, and I certainly hope you’re not in trouble.”

Bertie had needed a few months to get over her sadness, even though she knew she’d never been in love with John Perry. Could John have already been in love with Cee Cee and planning to ask her to marry him when he went to bed with Bertie? Was Cee Cee already in love

with John when Bertie told her that she and John had been lovers?

A long time went by before Bertie answered any of Cee Cee’s many letters. Cee Cee never, in any of them, mentioned Bertie’s brief moment with John. Maybe when people got married they liked to act as though all the previous sex partners either of them ever had were somehow magically canceled out. Bertie had been sure that the man she would marry would be a man of so much sensitivity that she would easily be able to tell him everything about herself, including the story of that summer in Beach Haven when she lost her virginity.

After a few months passed, Bertie started feeling better about everything. She was glad Cee Cee was still writing to her, and she wrote back. Long, newsy letters. Sometimes she used her letters to Cee Cee as a kind of diary, jotting down random thoughts, leaving one letter on her night table for a few weeks and adding to it late at night when she couldn’t sleep. In fact, it was better than a diary because Cee Cee always answered her.

The summer after her freshman year in college, Bertie met Michael. Michael Barron was first in his class at Pitt Law School. He was very refined. That’s what Bertie loved about him. He was nothing like most of the grubby, beer-swilling college boys she had been meeting. He was very well groomed, almost elegant. Set in his ways, in a grown-up, reasonable, fatherly way. He gave advice to the other law students, advice to Bertie’s friends who had problems, in a calm, even tone of voice that made Bertie feel as though nothing could go wrong that Michael couldn’t fix. She loved that.

She also loved that when they were together they called themselves Mickey and Minnie Mouse. And that he sent her flowers and didn’t make awkward sexual advances like every other boy did. In fact, he made no advances at all most of the time, and that was because he respected her enormously. She decided never to tell him about her

meaningless time with John Perry. Not that he wouldn’t understand, but she didn’t want to make him feel in any way that he wasn’t the most important man who’d ever been in her life. She felt good about her decision. It wasn’t a lie. It was simply a discreet choice she’d made, and she’d never thought much more about it until two days after she’d sent off a letter telling Cee Cee how excited she was to be finally getting away to Hawaii alone with Michael, and the phone rang.

“Bert?” It was Cee Cee. The voice was unmistakable.

“Gee?”

“We’re coming to Hawaii. With you. I mean, at the same time. Could you drop dead? We need a vacation so bad, so when I got your letter, I begged John and swore I’d do filthy things to his body if he’d take me there, and you know how he can’t resist that.”

Bertie was silent. Did Cee Cee mean literally that she knew or … no. That was a joke.

“Great,” Bertie said, a little unnerved. Michael knew she wasn’t a virgin when they met, but he didn’t know . . . “At the Kahala?”

“Yep. We can’t get there on Sunday, though. It’s my last day of the show. I’m so exhausted I could cry.”

Cee Cee was always promising to visit Bertie. Usually, the promise came in the form of a dashed-off postcard from some town where she was playing a club she hated, and the visit was her idea of a way to hide from show business, but this time she was serious.

Bertie wanted to be able to say Cee Cee, not now. Go to the Bahamas or the Virgin Islands, they’re closer to New York. I need to have Michael’s undivided attention. I need to be alone with my thoughts, so I can figure out why when a crippled little girl goes home to her parents, I take it personally.

“Well, Cee Cee,” she began. “Isn’t it awfully far for you, just for a few-”

“Hey, I don’t care where it is,” Gee Cee said. “I’m comin’ to see you.”

“That’s very sweet,” Bertie answered.

Michael took the news in his usual stoic fashion.

“Yeah. Okay,” he said. “Does her husband play tennis?”

“Don’t know.”

He seemed bored by the stories of Bertie’s and Cee Gee’s childhood meeting and of their reunion in Beach Haven, but listened politely the same way he always listened when Bertie described the stoneware she’d just seen in Kaufman’s, or the store she’d discovered on Murray Avenue called Ratner’s where they had every single houseware item in the world.

Bertie snuggled up to Michael as they approached the Kahala district, Something sultry and sensual in the tropical climate made even Michael feel sexy.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like sex. When he did it, he seemed to be enjoying it. He just didn’t want to do it that often. But now that they were on vacation he would relax. Bertie knew that what seemed to be coldness was simply his having so much on his mind.

The taxi stopped outside the hotel and Bertie sighed happily. Bright pink bougainvillea hung from the balcony of each room. Michael helped her out as the driver gave their bags to the bell captain. Michael walked to the reservations desk, and Bertie continued walking through the lobby. She loved looking in the window of Pex, the jewelry store near the front desk, at the jade and the emerald pins and rings and earrings. She never went into the store, just looked in the window.

Bertie remembered that when they were here on their honeymoon, she had looked in the window and seen a little turtle pin made of gold, with a shell covered with tiny pearls. Every day after breakfast, she would walk through the lobby so that she could see if that turtle pin was still there. On the fifth day, it was gone and she was

disappointed and mad at herself. She knew if she’d just mentioned it to Michael he would have bought it for her. That night at the buffet she stood in line next to a very feeble old woman who shook so much that her daughter had to carry her plate for her. The old woman was wearing the turtle pin. As Bertie and Michael ate their dinner, Bertie saw the waitress bring the old woman a piece of cake with a candle on it. The old woman’s daughter didn’t sing “Happy Birthday” to her, but she had bought her Bertie’s turtle pin. Bertie was glad then she hadn’t asked Michael for it.

Michael tipped the bellhop and closed the door to their room. God, his rear was cute.

“I love you, Mickey Mouse,” Bertie said.

“You too, Min,” he said, kissing her lightly. Then he walked to the louvered shutters to look outside.

Bertie felt sexy. She wanted him. Maybe if she started getting into her bikini, her naked body would . . .

“Let’s unpack,” Michael said, lifting his suitcase onto the bed. He was so organized. Sometimes they laughed about it. Repeated that joke about the man who was so compulsive that after he took off his clothes, he had to put shoe trees in his shoes before he could make love to a woman.

Bertie felt like being held, kissed, lusted after.

“After we unpack, we can run on the beach,” he said, carrying a pile of T-shirts to a drawer.

“Michael,” Bertie said. “Michael.” She walked over to him and put her arms around his neck. “Let’s make love, honey.”

Michael sighed. “I’m tired, Bert. You know. Jet lag.”

“But you just said you wanted to run on the beach.”

He looked caught. “Yeah . . . well, that’s different.”

Bertie’s arms felt awkward around his neck, heavy. As if this man were a stranger, and her arms shouldn’t be there. She walked over to her suitcase.

“Bert,” Michael said. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Set up situations like that where you know you’ll be rejected. Why do you always decide you want to make love at weird times?”

“Why is being alone with my husband in an ocean-front hotel room in Hawaii a weird time to make love?” Bertie asked, not looking at him so he couldn’t see the hurt in her eyes.

“It’s broad daylight. We just got here. I’ve been breaking my ass in town to be able to get away. I want to unwind and relax.”