I'll Be There

by Iris Rainer Dart

  There was an expression of hatred on Neetie’s face that made Cee Cee’s heart race. She could feel her blood moving angrily through her

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  body and she knew she would gladly miss her flight to Los Angeles and the next week’s worth of flights if that’s what it would take to get the ring back for Nina.

  “Very dramatic, Cee Cee,” Neetie said, now trying the soft-voice technique herself. “Is that little speech from one of your movies?”

  Good shot, you nasty cunt, Cee Cee thought, but what she said a

  little louder this time was, “You want to see my movies? Tell you what. If you don’t give me the ring, I’ll get in and drive the limo through the plate-glass window of the building the way I did in the bar scene in Jilted.” Out of the corner of her eye Cee Cee looked at Nina, who had a tight-lipped look on her face which after their years together Cee Cee knew very well was holding in a smile. “Or I’ll stand in the street with a bullhorn the way I did in The Long Walk when I played the prison guard. Remember that one, Neetie? Only instead of barking orders I’ll tell your nice neighbors that you steal from kids.”

  Neetie’s tan faded and her horrified face was a pasty color of beige now. “You Hollywood trash,” she said, “I could have gone to court a hundred times and taken this child away from you and maybe I still will if you don’t mind your own business and get your trampy little self out of my —” But before she could finish her sentence, out of the building in a burst of gold lamfi and rhinestones came Mrs. Altschuler and Mrs. Haber, the ladies from the pool.

  “It’s Cee Cee,” they both squealed, and they were each carrying writing pads and pens, which they proffered in a request for autographs, and Nina watched as Neetie tried to regain her composure and Cee Cee instantly turned into the charming gracious star she always was for her fans. Fussing over the women as much as they fussed over her.

  “Hi, girls,” she said. “Is it hot enough for you? Oh, honey, I love your necklace.”

  “Anita keeps us posted on everything you do,” Mrs. Haber said. “We think it’s so nice that you and Nina make such an effort to be close to her.”

  Cee Cee looked into Neetie’s black, angry, frustrated-by-theintrusion eyes, and saw a flash of embarrassment.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Cee Cee said, “Neetie is Nina’s family, which naturally makes her my family. In fact, just as you came out the door,

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  she was about to give Nina a ring that belonged to her sister Rose. Nina’s grandmother. Isn’t that generous of her?”

  “Ooh, let’s see. Gorgeous! You’re giving that to her, Anita?”

  As the women waited, Neetie slowly and reluctantly pulled the

  ring from her finger and placed it into Nina’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, Aunt Neet,” Nina said, giving her a little hug. “Ahhh,” Mrs. Altschuler said. “That’s adorable.”

  “Listen,” Mrs. Haber said, “my mother, rest her soul, always told me, ‘If you don’t have your family, who do you have?’”

  Cee Cee and Nina rode for a long time in the airconditioned hiss of the limousine, each of them thinking over the last few days, before Nina, who had been looking out the window at the causeway, said quietly, “I thought you told me we should be nice and loving to our families, but you were pretty mean to Neetie.”

  “You know what?” Cee Cee said. “In her case I’ll make an exception.”

  They were almost at the airport when Cee Cee looked down at the seat and noticed Nina’s hand there, realizing for the first time it was actually big enough to wear the emerald ring. Not quite big enough for it to fit on her ring finger, so she had put it on her index finger. Cee Cee placed her hand over Nina’s and patted it gently.

  For the next few weeks she spoke with Nathan several times a day. He grumbled and railed about everything from the medication and the nurses to the bad reception on his hospital television. One day when she called him the doctor was in the room, and Nathan put him on the phone. “Cee Cee,” Doctor Feiffer said, as if he was greeting an old friend, “he’s doing so well, I recommended he take a trip out West. Think you can handle that?”

  Cee Cee heard Nathan in the background saying something like, “Hey! You’re the doctor, for chrissake. Don’t ask her, tell her.” Two weeks later when he arrived in Los Angeles he made it clear, even on the ride from the airport, that he was only staying for a short time because a Harriet Goldstein “from Philly” was already counting the days until his return to Miami Beach because when he did they were probably going to “shack up.”

  On the first night as he sat at dinner Cee Cee watched him talking

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  with his mouth full and getting so much spaghetti sauce on his face and then his napkin, that when Nina asked to be excused to go to the kitchen to get herself more milk, she gentled the napkin away from him and took it to the kitchen with her to replace it.

  “She likes me,” Nathan said, looking at the still-swinging door to

  the kitchen. “And it’s a good thing too.”

  “Why is that?” Cee Cee asked, knowing she was taking the bait.

  “Because at this stage of the game, she’s my only real chance at being a grandpa.”

  Cee Cee smiled, then felt a wistful pang. “Yeah, I guess I am getting a little past the time when I can give you a grandchild.”

  “Hey, listen,” Nathan said, “on the wall of the occupational therapy room at the convalescent home, they had a sign with a quote from Satchell Paige. A colored baseball player, before your time, a great man. It said ‘How old would you be, if you didn’t know how old you was?’”

  Cee Cee laughed. “So what’s the answer for you?” she asked.

  “Two months ago, eighty-five. Today, twenty-five. How ‘bout you?”

  “Some mornings twenty-six, other mornings a hundred and twenty-six.”

  “So on one of the mornings when you’re twenty-six, grab some guy and make a baby,” he said, laughing a funny snorting laugh Cee Cee knew she sometimes used herself. “I’m a modern guy. A free thinker,” he said.

  Nina came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk and a fresh white cloth napkin, which she slid onto Nathan’s lap with what looked like the expertise of a headwaiter. Nathan smiled a thank-you, then looked at Cee Cee. “See? What’d I tell you?” he asked.

  On the weekend he took Nina to Disneyland. It was the first visit

  for each of them and when they came home at ten at night, sunburned, exhausted, each wearing mouse ears with their names embroidered on the front, and both of them farther off the ground than the half a dozen Mylar helium balloons they were carrying, Cee Cee, who opened the front door to let them in, wasn’t sure which of them she envied more.

  Every night Nathan would call his girlfriend in Miami Beach and when she answered, Cee Cee could overhear him open the conversa

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  tion by saying, “Hiya, hot stuff.” He had the twinkle of the sheik of Araby every day now, and she felt tied to him, close to him, saw Nina blossom by having his attention, and she felt sad thinking about how overbearing her mother must have been with him to have kept this kind of spirit down.

  One night when she got home, Nina and Nathan were throwing a Frisbee back and forth on the beach. It was already dark, so they were playing by the floodlights from the deck of the house. Nathan was showing off and catching the Frisbee behind his back, and Nina was shrieking loudly and diving for the Frisbee onto the sand. Cee Cee just stood on the deck and watched them for a long time before she called out to announce that she was home.

  After a few days, Nina was able to tell Cee Cee lots of things she’d discovered about Nathan that Cee Cee had never known or imagined. Things that, when Nina told them to her, made Cee Cee laugh out loud. That Nathan liked his corned beef lean and his women fat. That he did a very funny imitation of a charact
er named Rochester, who he told her used to be on the Jack Benny radio show, and that he loved to sing. Sing! Cee Cee couldn’t believe it. The only song she’d ever heard him sing was “The Sheik of Araby.”

  That night while she brushed Nina’s hair, a before-bed custom that had started in Carmel, Nina excitedly told her that she and Nathan

  had a surprise for her. “Great,” Cee Cee said, tugging at a tangle. “Ouch.” “Sorry.”

  “And after I get my nightgown on we want you to sit in the living room so we can show it to you. It’s a duet, like when I sang ‘Ballin’ the Jack’ with you when I was little, except that this one has a little harmony to it, so sometimes I have to hold my ears so I don’t get mixed up and sing his part instead of mine.”

  “What’s the song?” If it’s “The Sheik of Araby,” I’ll kill him, Cee Cee thought.

  “You’ll see,” Nina said, sliding her nightgown on over her head and running down the hall to the guest room to get Nathan.

  As Cee Cee sat on the living-room sofa getting ready to be the audience, Nathan came bounding into the living room as excited as a child, followed by Nina who whispered some conspiratorial words into his ear, then hid behind the drapes as Nathan stepped up onto

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  the brick hearth, held his hand up to his face as if he had a microphone, aid said, “And now, direct from the Sands Hotel in Las

  Vegas, Nevada, that famous singing team of Nathan and Ninotchka.”

  /

  Ninotchka was his pet name for Nina.

  “No, Nina Barron,” came Nina’s whispered voice from behind th

  drapes. Her bare feet were sticking out.

  “Excuse me, Nathan Bloom and Nina Barron.”

  Nina emerged, blushing and all smiles, the braces on her teeth gleaming as they caught the light from a living-room table lamp, her bangs hanging in her eyes, and she looked nervously at Nathan, who gave her a nod, then she began to sing in some barely recognizable minor key, “I really can’t stay.”

  “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.

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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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  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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  “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.