Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart Read Free Book Online Page B

Bertie hadn’t even told her when she and Neetie would arrive on the island. Up until the last minute, Bertie hadn’t even been sure she was coming, anyway. Her mother, Rosie, wanted her to get a job in Pittsburgh. And she tried. But just before she took the job at Nelson’s Children’s Store, Neetie convinced Rosie she needed Bertie’s company. Bertie could get a job in New Jersey and stay with Neetie while she mulled over her divorce.
    So there they were, still wearing their wrinkled clothes from the nine-hour drive from Pittsburgh. She’d talked Neetie into coming for a drive with her from the house in Ship Bottom, where they’d stopped just long enough to leave their luggage, to find the theater where Cee Cee was working. People were lining up to go in, and just on a whim Bertie decided to walk up to the box office and try to get seats. There was a cancellation-two seats in the third row. Neetie wanted a drink, to change clothes at least, but there was no time.
    “Please, Aunt Neet,” Bertie had begged. And now she was glad that Neetie had given in and was smiling as she watched the show.
    Bertie wished she could do something that somebody would refer to as talent. But she didn’t know what it could be. Talent. It obviously meant dancing or singing or playing a musical instrument, or even yodeling, and she couldn’t do any of those. When she talked about it with her mother, her mother would say, “Oh, Bertie, being beautiful and smart are talents, too.” Even though Bertie knew they
    weren’t. “And you can sew,” Rosie usually threw in when she saw Bertie’s pretty face fall. And Bertie would imagine herself on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour with Ted Mack spinning the wheel of fortune as he said, “And now, let’s give a big welcome to little Roberta White from Pittsburgh, who will show us how to hem a pleated skirt, by hand.”
    Talent. Cee Cee Bloom had talent. She was a great singer. And Bertie’s pen pal. Boy, would she be happy to see Bertie.
    Walk on through the wind
    Walk on through the rain
    Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown….
    Some of the people in the audience were crying. This song gets everybody, Perry thought. He watched one of the young apprentices quietly sweeping the lobby with a pushbroom in preparation for the show’s end. Any minute, the audience would emerge. Thrilled, filled with superlatives, they would crowd around Perry, calling this year’s cast the best assembled, and then, in the traditional way, he would invite them all to Dukes Hotel for the party. The entire audience. Three hundred people at the opening night party. It was unheard of, but it was the kind of thing that brought them clamoring back every year.
    Cee Cee was depressed. She sat in front of the mirror in the tiny cramped dressing room after the show in her bra and pants and looked at herself. Body make-up on her arms stopped at the place where her sleeves had started. On her chest, it went down to the place where the round neckline began on that crummy yellow dress, and the rest of her was white. Ugh, that looked bad. And she was getting fat from all the starchy crap Godshell was feeding them. Macaroni and puddings, and other cheap, filling, goyishe food Leona would have laughed at.
    The others were already almost dressed when the tap on the wall and John Perry’s voice interrupted Cee Cee’s thoughts.
    “Someone to see you, Cee Cee,” Perry said.
    Who the hell . . .
    The curtains that separated the dressing room from the backstage area parted and a dark-haired girl walked in, her eyes scanning the others before they stopped at Cee Cee, who quickly wrapped a towel around herself.
    “Gee?” the girl said tentatively.
    Oh, now, wait a minute. This could not, no way, nohow, be Bertie White, the ponytailed little girl from Pittsburgh, standing here looking like maybe she was Audrey Hepburn, or I’ll throw up from being jealous, Cee Cee thought.
    “Bertie?”
    The girl nodded and squealed and hugged the