Beaches (12 page)

“Some people think that sex is very relaxing.”

“Then why don’t you give those people a call,” he said, walking to the door.

Bertie knew she should stop him. She knew if she just said, Michael, wait, I’m sorry, he’d come back into the room, and they’d hug and kiss sweetly, and maybe if they kissed for a long enough time, the kisses would get passionate, and then he would touch her and get hot and finally close the shutters and get into bed with her. But she didn’t say anything and he left the room with the angry sound of a door slam. Michael would take a walk and be back within an hour. It was familiar.

Bertie looked inside her purse for a cigarette. At least with Michael out of the room she could have a cigarette. Then she’d open the doors and air the room out and wash her hands and face with soap and hot water and use a little mouthwash and he’d never know.

Where were the cigarettes? Damn, she’d left them in her winter purse at home. She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and opened it, trying not to think about what had just happened with Michael. It wasn’t rejection. He just didn’t feel like it.

She took her pink cotton robe from the top of the suitcase, hung it on the hook in the bathroom and walked back to the suitcase. Her nightgowns were folded neatly side by side. Maybe she’d buy some new ones. Most of

these were from her trousseau. The white one was looking a little gray. The white one Rosie bought her for her first night, begging her not to get one with little yellow flowers on it because a bride should wear pure white. What a joke. She and Michael had been to bed maybe a dozen times before. . . . Michael in bed.

There it was again. She remembered their first night. When they got to the hotel. Bertie was a giggling bride. Of course, she was not a virgin, but this was different. It would be her first time as a married woman. That was new, exciting, dramatic. At least she wanted it to be. She had gone into the bathroom and put on the white nightgown. Then she brushed her hair and thought about everything that happened at her wedding. Michael was so adorable. He was beaming all day, holding her closely as they danced, and everyone applauded, and Dr. Barren’s friends kept coming over to them as if they were cutting in on the dance and handing Michael envelopes that he would slip into the pockets of his tux. She’d come out of the bathroom that night in the white nightgown, certain that Michael would be under the covers waiting for her. But he wasn’t. He was sitting at the tiny desk across from the bed, still dressed in his tux, with a pen in his hand, and all of the open envelopes were in a neat pile.

“Jeez, Bert,” he said. “We got six thousand dollars.”

“Michael.”

“Aren’t you glad you didn’t register for a lot of china and stuff? I mean, I think it’s six. Maybe it’s more. Let’s see. The Kleins gave us five hundred. Old Doc Klein. Isn’t he a hell of a-”

“Michael.”

Then he looked up. “Pretty nightgown.”

“Thanks.”

Oh, yes, later that night he’d held her, called her Mrs. Barron, his own wife, and made love to her. But it wasn’t the same. She decided then that it was okay. That loving someone in a grown-up way didn’t include panting

and pawing the way it did when you felt sexy about someone in college. But every now and then she wished that Michael would want to leave someone’s dinner party early because he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her, or decide to be late for work because he had to have her in the morning.

The key rattled in the door. Bertie grinned to herself. It was Michael. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’d come back to make love.

“Maid service,” a woman’s voice said. “Need any towels?”

Bertie sighed. “No, thank you.”

When she finished unpacking, Bertie opened the doors and walked out onto the balcony. It was windy and it looked like it might rain. Down below at the lagoon next to the pool where the dolphins lived, a Hawaiian man in shorts was feeding fish to the dolphins. Some little children were helping him. The dolphins came up for the fish and the children threw them a ball. The dolphins batted the ball with their noses, and the children squealed with delight.

Bertie looked out at the ocean. The water was choppy and there were no swimmers. On the big wood raft several yards out where the sunbathers usually gathered, she could see a young couple who were oblivious to the gray clouds. The woman was lying on her stomach, the top of her bikini undone. The man was on his side, pressed closely against her, stroking her bare back. Bertie felt a rush through her whole body and she closed her eyes. She’d go inside and take her clothes off. Get between the sheets and make herself come. Make this aching disappear. She opened her eyes and looked at the couple again. Now the woman was facing the man. Her breasts pressed against him, her whole body close to his.

Bertie opened the glass door and walked into the chill of the air-conditioned room.

“Hi.” Michael looked at her almost shyly. “Want to go downstairs and have dinner?”

“Sure,” Bertie said. “I’ll change.”

The music from the hotel’s nightly luau on the beach kept Bertie awake long after Michael’s first snores told her he was asleep for the night. She thought about looking for something to read, even considered putting some clothes on and going downstairs to join the party. Michael thought luaus were stupid. When Cee Cee and John arrived, Bertie hoped that they would want to go to one, and then maybe Michael would be too embarrassed to say no and he’d try it.

This was a real nice clambake And we all had a real good time.

The funny little Sunshine Theater in Beach Haven. She’d loved her days there so much. John had sold the theater last year. He wanted to spend all of his time with Cee Cee. That’s what Cee Cee wrote to Bertie in one letter. Was that romantic, or was it business? Cee Cee’s star was beginning to rise, she wrote. “I’m closing in Bring It Home, that off-Broadway show that’s been running for several months.” She didn’t have the lead, but all the reviews she mailed copies of to Bertie singled her out. “Exciting.” “Memorable.” John was her manager. It must be nice to have a husband whose life revolved around you, whose income and success depended on how you looked, felt, performed. He would have to pay a lot of attention to you.

Bertie remembered reading an article once about Ann-Margret and Roger Smith. She was sure Roger Smith looked at Ann-Margret before they went out for dinner and said, “Why don’t you change, baby? You look much better in the black dress.” Bertie sometimes asked Michael how she looked because he never told her on his

own, and every time she asked him, he said the same thing.

“Ah, Bertie. You always look great. Why do you have to ask?”

Bertie sat up and looked at Michael. He was lying on his back, snoring loudly. She lay back down, put a pillow over her head and fell asleep.

The phone rang five times before Bertie realized where she was. The water in the shower was running.

“Hello?”

“How ‘bout some macadamia nut pancakes, honey?” It was Cee Cee.

Bertie laughed. “Where are you?”

“Downstairs in the open-air dining room. My dear, the fucking birds fly right in here and land on your pancakes. I think one just shit in my coffee. I will try to fend them off till you get here.”

“What time is it?” Bertie asked.

“It’s six hours earlier than it is in New York,” Cee Cee said. “And I’m punchy, so put on your muumuu and get your ass down here. Oh, and bring the husband with you. We want to have a look at him. “By.”

Bertie hung up the phone and rolled over. Michael was out of the shower.

“Hi,” she called in.

“Hi.”

“Cee Cee and John are here. They’re having breakfast downstairs.”

“Great,” he said. “I’m starved.”

Bertie’s eyes scanned the Lanai Room for Cee Cee and John. Oh, God, she thought, as Cee Cee stood up and waved. Her hair was flaming red now and long and frizzed out in every direction. Her strapless sundress was red too, but it was a shade that clashed with her hair. And her long nails were bright pink. John would have to have a talk with Roger Smith. Bertie craned her neck to see John.

From that distance it looked as if he was wearing white pants and a tight T-shirt. Just like in Beach Haven. Bertie glanced at Michael to check his reaction. His brow was a little wrinkled when Cee Cee came bounding toward them. Probably he was thinking “freak city,” which is what he said sometimes when they drove past unusual-looking people on the streets of Pittsburgh.

“Well, fancy meeting you here,” Cee Cee said, throwing her arms around Bertie. “Four schmucks from the East come all the way to Aloha-land to see each other.” She smelled like Jungle Gardenia.

Bertie hugged her warmly. Michael shifted uncomfortably. Several people having breakfast in the Lanai Room were watching the two women embrace.

“I’ll get to you in a minute, toots,” Cee Cee said to Michael, and then planted a big kiss on Bertie’s cheek.

Cee Cee extended her hand to Michael. “Hiya, Mike. I’m Cee Cee.”

“It’s Michael,” Bertie said.

Cee Cee ignored that. She already had each of them by the hand and was dragging them to her table, talking nonstop.

“Well, our trip was just the worst from beginning to end. They lost the goddamned bags in L.A., and we thought we’d have to stay in that ratty airport hotel, and . . .”

Bertie was face to face with John Perry. She hadn’t seen him since the morning she left Beach Haven, two days after she’d given him her virginity. How often she’d replayed that day in her mind, wondering what would have happened if she had handled it differently, behaved some other way. Would it have changed her life? Bertie remembered being startled that morning when she saw John’s big black Lincoln pull up outside Aunt Neetie’s rented beach house. She’d been awake for hours, packing her things while Neetie slept, making some coffee for Neetie in preparation for the long drive back to Pittsburgh. She hated the thought of leaving, and she hated her mother for insisting she come home. Maybe if she stayed, she and John could have a real love affair. Maybe she would move into the house on Marion Avenue. And suddenly she looked outside and there he was. Bertie had the fleeting hope that he was here to say, “Bertie, oh, God, Bertie, I … for two days I haven’t thought of anything but you. Loving you, holding you, having you.”

Instead, he tapped quietly on the door, and when Bertie opened it, hoping she looked grown-up and pretty and just the way he wanted a woman to look, he said, “Boy, I’m glad you’re up. I just got a really bad phone call. Cee Cee’s mother died.” He was all business, and as soon as he was sure she could handle Cee Cee, he drove off with a little wave and, “Oh, have a nice trip home.”

That was the last time she saw him.

“Hello, John,” Bertie said. “This is my husband, Michael Barron. John Perry.”

“You little fucker, get out of here!” Cee Cee screamed. They all turned. A tiny bird had landed on the back of her chair.

Bertie looked at Michael. He was steel-jawed. “Buzz off, cocksucker,” Cee Cee said to the bird. Bertie lowered her eyes. There was a long silence. “Shoo,” Cee Cee said. The bird flew away.

“How do you like that?” Cee Cee asked. “I wasted all that filthy talk on him, and he wouldn’t leave till I said shoo!”

Bertie held her breath and was surprised when Michael started to laugh. Then Cee Cee, John, and Bertie laughed, too.

One day when it rained, the four of them sat in a corner of the lobby together and played word games. Cee Cee shrieked with open-mouthed laughter when she won a round, which she usually did by changing the rules or cheating. Once, when Michael won, she actually jumped up on the pretty pastel sofa in her bare feet, digging her

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red painted toenails into the pillow, and shouted, “I hate him, Bert. Divorce the bastard. He’s too fuckin’ smart.”

John laughed. Bertie smiled nervously. Michael acted as if he didn’t notice.

But at least Bertie didn’t have to be alone when Michael went over to the Kahala Country Club to take a tennis lesson. She sat on the beach with Cee Cee and listened to stories about New York. Cee Cee and John had a tiny apartment in the East Sixties. They were living on the profits he’d made from selling the theater. Off-Broadway paid “shit money,” but that was just a stepping-stone.

Sometimes John would join them on the beach. Bertie watched him carefully oil himself. His legs, his chest, those arms. She wanted to ask him if he worked out in a gym to get his arms to look like that, but she didn’t. She was afraid he’d think she meant something by it. Sometimes she wondered if he ever thought about that night. Maybe he didn’t even remember. She knew she looked good in her black bikini. She saw it in the eyes of some of the men on the beach as she walked by their blankets. Better than Cee Cee, although Cee Cee looked marvel-ous. She wasn’t the least bit chunky anymore.

“Water diet,” she told Bertie. “No food. You drink and piss and drink and piss for two weeks and presto- you’re skinny.”

“God, she’s crass,” Michael said to Bertie later when they were alone. “She talks like a man.”

Bertie wondered to herself why certain language was considered the property of men, but she didn’t say anything, especially when Michael added, “You’re such a lady, honey. It seems crazy to me that you two are friends.”

A lady. That was a good thing to be. It made her feel better than Cee Cee. But Cee Cee was such an exciting person. She was so funny and interesting and had so many stories to tell that Bertie felt unimportant when the four of them were together. All of Bertie’s stories were about Michael. As if Michael’s life was their mutual life, and her

own life had some meaning only as it related to his success, his future.

“He’s adorable,” Cee Cee told her.

“Huh?” Bertie turned over. Too much sun was bad for her skin. She’d better put a hat on.

“Your hubby,” Cee Cee said. “He’s got a great ass. And he’s so classy, Bert. Does he wear a tie when he goes down on you?”

Bertie didn’t answer. She looked out at the waves. A group of children were riding on brightly colored motorized surfboards near the shore.

“Do you love him to pieces?” Cee Cee asked.