Beaches (29 page)

“Mrs. Barren?” she said. “One of the fathers who brings his little boy here asked for your number.”

“Really?” Bertie said, surprised, having completely forgotten Jason, his terrible cough, and his nondescript father.

“So since I said I wouldn’t give it to him, he asked if I’d give you his.”

“No. Thanks anyway, Patty,” Bertie said, and put the phone down.

“He thinks you’re stunning,” Patty told her the next day, when she called again. “He says, please. Just talk to him. Just have a cup of coffee. I told him you said no. He was in here again today. Doctor had to put the little boy Jason in the hospital,” Patty said sadly. “He’s got pneumonia.”

“Poor Jason,” Bertie said, feeling a protective rush for the same little boy who only two days ago she could have cheerfully strangled.

“Do you want Don Solow’s number or not?”

“Well . . .“A hesitation. After all, the poor man’s son was in the hospital. Was that really why she was weakening, she wondered, or was it those nights, those aching nights when she’d made herself come and wept afterwards with loneliness? What did those nights have to do with some drippy man in the pediatrician’s office, anyway? He wasn’t going to fill her nights or her longings or her . . . girl parts-what would Cee Cee call them? “Snatch, cunt, box, pussy, hole, wazoo, slit.” And Bertie would laugh and say, “Cee Cee. Enough.” And Cee Cee would say, “Bert, you dumb S.C.B.P.H.W.S., why don’t you get it through your thick head that the fucking word isn’t the fucking thing? Words don’t mean shit, you asshole.”

“Why, you know,” Bertie would say, “I do believe you’re right, Countess,” and the two of them would shriek with laughter. After all, how bad could it be to let the

nurse give Donald Solow her number? After he called and they talked, if she didn’t like the way he sounded, she could say no.

“Have him call.”

She didn’t like the way he sounded. He sounded arrogant and kind of childish, and he complained and whined and asked questions that Bertie felt were too personal. And he certainly didn’t sound like a free spirit, which is what Bertie remembered he’d said about himself. He told Bertie on the phone that as soon as Jason was out of the hospital, he would take her out for a nice steak dinner. Ick. She didn’t like him. And she never ate steak.

A week later they had dinner. By the time cocktails were over, he had told her she was not his type, and that he’d already decided that the woman he would make his second wife couldn’t have a child of her own, because he’d want her to focus completely on Jason. He also said that if he and Bertie ever decided to move in together he’d never live in that house, where he’d picked her up, because he had a really great house that was on the bay not the ocean, but much larger than hers.

Bertie laughed a polite laugh and, as she’d been taught to do by Rosie so many years ago, instead of yawning in Donald Solow’s face or even behind her hand, she yawned, as Rosie had described it “through her ears,” with her mouth completely closed; the only tell-tale sign was her flared nostrils, which Donald happily didn’t notice. And when she yawned through her ears for the third time, she vowed to herself that she would not only never go out with him again, but she never wanted to hear the sound of his name or look at his creepy green-eyed face again. And that was that.

On their fifth date, after the baby sitter left and she was certain Nina was asleep, Bertie locked the bedroom door and went to bed with Donald Solow. And when he crept out at six in the morning to go home to be with

Jason, she sat in the kitchen, drank a glass of milk, chewed on a baby’s teething biscuit, and sobbed.

She couldn’t stand him, or herself for doing it, but she was lonely. Very lonely. No, that wasn’t a good enough reason. The next time he called, she would tell him she didn’t want to see him again. Say it nicely. Sweetly. Want to be friends, Think highly of you. You’re a sweet man, but it just isn’t . . . doesn’t . . . can’t work. That’s what she wanted to say. To end it. But he never called her again. One good, strong, healthy, sexy man. No, it wasn’t Donald Solow.

And it wasn’t the real-estate magnate she met at a party, who, after one quiet dinner of fun conversation, went back to New York and sent her a bracelet from Tiffany’s with a note saying that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And in the weeks that followed sent dozens of flowers and then called and said he’d send the company plane to fly her to him in Bermuda, and when she asked for a telephone number so she could call him back after she’d decided about Bermuda, he said he couldn’t give her his home phone number because his wife wouldn’t understand.

And it wasn’t Frederick the handsome psychiatrist friend of a woman she’d met at an art opening. A practicing successful Jungian shrink who lived his own life by astrology. Rosie would have loved that irony.

“When’s your birthday?” Frederick asked Bertie over drinks.

“September twenty-second,” Bertie answered. Maybe he was going to make a note of it so he could send her flowers.

“Oh, God,” he said, genuinely perplexed, “you’re opposing my Venus.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, so much for that. It’ll never work with us.”

Frederick didn’t even walk her to her door.

And it wasn’t Martin, her married hairdresser, who

told her about every other time he’d fooled around on his wife. Or Minos, the Greek restaurateur, who hovered over her cafe table, and when the place cleared out, and Bertie still sat reading a paperback while Nina napped in her stroller, came by and said, “Excuse me, but can I take you home?”

Bertie looked up, confused.

“No, thanks. I have my car.”

“I meant to my home,” he said with a straight face.

Bertie tried to laugh it off.

“Oh. That’s funny. A joke, eh?”

“No joke,” Minos said, moving closer. “One of my bus boys, he’ll watch the sleeping baby for an hour.”

Bertie stood.

“Check, please,” she said.

“No!” Cee Cee had screamed. “You said, ‘Check, please’?” And then laughed endlessly on the phone when Bertie told her about the incident.

“Oh, Bert,” she said through her giggles, “that’s where we’re different. I woulda given him a little cooz-oh for the ouzo.”

“Cee Cee,” Bertie said. The story had been a serious one for her about the terrible behavior of men to single women.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Cee Cee had laughed. “Check, please. You kill me. Gimme a break. So what happened?”

“He wouldn’t give me the check. He refused. Finally, I just wheeled the stroller out and left.”

“Well, Bert, if I were you, you know what? I wouldn’t go back there again. At least not by yourself. You have to wait until Cee Cee comes back to town.”

No, it wouldn’t be Minos.

Nina looked darling in her white shorts and blue and white striped top, and everyone at the tennis club oohed and aahed as Bertie walked and Nina held on to her hand around court four, which was where the girl at the desk had told her she could find Libby Collins.

Court two, court three. Bertie spotted .Libby on court four.

“Must have a hole in my damn racket,” she heard Libby say. A pistol. She was playing with three men. When she spotted Bertie and Nina, she stopped.

“Bertie Barron,” she said, “and that little doll daughter.” One of the men must be Wally Collins, Libby’s husband. Collins Contracting. And another man, “Bart Higgins. Nice to know you.” And the young guy with the red hair. Freckles. Lots of freckles. Flushed from too much sun. Probably the pro.

“David Malcolm, Bertie Barron,” Libby said. “And what’s the little doll’s name?”

Before Bertie could answer, Nina piped up. “I’m Nina,” she said. Everyone laughed.

“Why don’t we have lunch?” Libby asked Bertie.

Bertie was relieved. She hadn’t played tennis since camp, and she was sure if she tried in front of all these strangers she’d be terrible at it.

“Have to go to the bathroom,” Nina whispered, tugging at Bertie’s tennis skirt.

“Take her right over there to the ladies’, hon, and I’ll see you over at the dining room.”

“Nice meeting you all,” Bertie said, giving a general nod. The three men nodded back.

When Bertie and Libby and Nina were seated near the window in the dining room, Nina perched in her booster chair spooning an orange freeze into her mouth, Libby gave Bertie a tap on the arm and a little smile and said, “Well. He likes you.”

“Who?” Bertie asked, even though she knew as sure as she was sitting there Libby was going to tell her that Wally’s friend, that Higgins guy, wanted to ask her out. Men that age always sparked to her.

“He’s here from California making a deal. Malcolm. Wanted to know all about you. Malcolm Industries. Father’s Rand Malcolm.” Rand Malcolm, industrialist. In-

volved in politics. Bertie tried to remember the face of David Malcolm. Handsome. That’s all she remembered. Red hair.

“Wants to call you,” Libby said as if it was the best news she had ever delivered to anyone.

“No, Lib,” Bertie said. Some good-looking guy from California. Here for a day or two. Needs company for dinner. Exactly what she didn’t want.

“He’s rich,” Libby said, downing her own glass of water in a gulp, then Bertie’s.

“I have all the money I need,” Bertie said. No. No. No more fix-ups.

Libby must have known by the look on Bertie’s face that she wasn’t being coy so Libby would convince her.

“I’m hungry!” Nina announced. Libby gestured for a waiter.

“You sure?” Libby asked Bertie, making one more try.

“You bet,” Bertie said.

David Malcolm called her that night. Goddamn it, she thought.

“Bertie,” he said, “please forgive Libby Collins for giving me your number. I assure you it was under the duress of my telling her that if she didn’t, when I renovate my buildings in Sarasota I won’t use Collins Contracting on the job.” Bertie wasn’t amused.

Fuck off, Cee Gee would say to somebody who didn’t interest her. Just plain fuck off. “Oh,” Bertie said. Somehow David Malcolm braved her cold response. In fact, as the conversation went on, he seemed to have a pleasant personality.

“The kiss of death,” Cee Cee would say about that. “That’s when you should have known to run for the hills, Bert,” Cee Cee would tell her. “That’s the first tip-off that they’re no good-if they sound good on the phone.” Now he was telling Bertie about how he’d never married, but that he was crazy about children.

“They’ll lie,” Cee Cee would say. “They’ll lie through their fuckin’ teeth to get in your goddamn Christian Dior panties. They’ll do any goddamned thing they can. And afterwards, kid, forget it. I mean, forget it. After that they do what they want.”

“... for a drink,” he was saying. Something about coming over or meeting for a drink.

“I don’t drink,” Bertie said. God, she sounded snotty. Nasty, maybe. She didn’t want to sound nasty or mean. But really, another evening with a guy in what business? She didn’t know anything about industry. Real estate. Whatever it was. She was certain that if he’d never married, he didn’t know a thing about children. They had nothing in common. Handsome. He was very attractive. She remembered that. Red hair and freckles. Lots of freckles.

“When?” she asked, sure she shouldn’t ask.

“Tomorrow night,” he said. “My last night here.”

God, Bertie thought. Exactly what she didn’t want. Why bother?

“Just for a quick drink or coffee or something,” he said. “I’ve got a dinner meeting later that I can’t break. So why don’t we get together for an iced tea?” he asked. “Before my dinner meeting and before your dinner plans.”

How polite, she thought, not volunteering that she hadn’t had a dinner plan in months, and now-“Why not just say hello?” he asked.

Why? Bertie thought. It’s absurd. He’s leaving. I’m not going to do this to myself.

“Fine,” she said.

David Malcolm was handsomer than Bertie remembered, but his handsomeness was an unimportant feature compared to the rest of him. He was sweet and gracious and bright and worldly and funny, and Bertie hated how much she hoped he’d excuse himself and go find a phone and come back to say he’d canceled his dinner meeting and wanted to take her to dinner. Just to be prepared,

she’d warned the babysitter to be flexible, that she could be home in one hour or several.

“I’ll get back to Florida again,” he told her, “in a few weeks,” and then he took her hand. All right, Bertie thought. Here comes the seduction. Make me think there’s a future.

“Great,” she said. Any minute he’d make a move. Now he was looking at her fingers thoughtfully, the way she used to look at Michael’s. First he turned her hand palm up, then palm down. His hands were pale and freckled, and at his wrist below the cuff of his light blue shirt, she could see silky golden red hair like the hair on his head. When she imagined what the rest of the golden red hair on his body must look like, she was embarrassed by the thought.

“We’d better go,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d planned this a little better.”

When they got to Bertie’s house, he walked her to the door, squeezed her hand, said, “Call you,” and left.

Sure.

Cee Cee called that night and Bertie didn’t even mention her date with David Malcolm. It was as if there was something fragile about it, and if she did talk about it, maybe it would go away, and he wouldn’t call or wouldn’t come back to Sarasota. As if something bad would happen if she mentioned his name, especially to the irreverent Cee Cee.

But Cee Cee didn’t want to know anything about Bertie that night, anyway. She was rambling on about a house she wanted to buy, and an actor named Zack she was dating who had been discovered in some show off-Broadway and “some studio people saw him, Bert, and he’s gonna be huge-o-major, maybe even as big as me.” She laughed. But Bertie knew she was serious when she asked, “Whaddya think, Bert, two humungous egos in one house? Me and Zack. We’d kill each other inside a year, isn’t that right?”

“Maybe not,” Bertie said distractedly.

“Hey, maybe you’re right,” Cee Gee said, grasping for straws. “Maybe not. I mean, two people if they really want to can-Christ, Bert, wouldya listen to me? Why do I always think it’s gonna work? I oughtta know better. I oughtta be like you and just say there’s no way some magical guy is gonna drop in outta the sky and save me, and the sooner I quit expecting that one of ‘em will, the better off I’ll be. That’s old Bertie’s philosophy, right?”