I'll Be There by Iris Rainer Dart Read Free Book Online Page A

shampoo.
    “Well, Bert,” Cee Cee said, trying not to laugh anymore, which only made her laugh harder as she pulled the empty cardboard box to her chest, smashing the cardboard when she did. “I guess | should probably take that as a no!”
    Back at Del Monte Aviation she had to pay an extra cleaning fee for the damage she had caused the interior of the airplane, and after that she spent a long time in the ladies bathroom in the Monterey Peninsula Airport terminal, brushing, washing, and trembling with
     
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    the courage of her convictions, and soon she got into the Chevy and drove in a fever back to Highway 1 and up to Santa Cruz.
     
    At first it looked to her as if everyone on the playing field had long brown curly hair, but when the girl she had been certain was Nina separated herself from the others to run down the field, Cce Cee realized she’d been mistaken. For a long time she watched the beautiful little girls playing. Each one was prettier than the next, their pink faces flushed with the excitement of the game. Sometimes they would whisper to one another as they huddled together on the bench or braided one another’s ponytails while they watched the game, and each time a goal was scored, they all shrieked and leaped and hugged.
    This is a mistake, she thought for a panicky moment. I should leave. Not even let Nina know I’m here. This is the way that child’s life is supposed to be. Playing soccer at a ritzy school and having friends and wearing a proper little uniform. This was just where Her tie would have put her, not in Hollywood where the cuckoos are. It’s exactly what Bertie would have wanted for her, and the ashes flying back at me was just an accident caused by my stupidity. Not a signal from Bertie. I should leave, and I’m going to.
    “Cee?” When she turned, there was little Nina. Not in a soccer uniform at all, but in the plaid day uniform of the school. And the relief Cee Cee felt when she saw her renewed the certainty that had fired her as she had raced here from the airport.
    “Did you forget something?” Nina asked, looking up at her. “Neen, | came back to see you and I want to talk’to you and the people at the school, because I have this really powerful feeling that maybe you shouldn’t.., maybe it would be better for you, since I’m your parent now.., if we… if you didn’t…”
    “Didn’t go to boarding school?” Nina finished the sentence herself, then looked into Cee Cee’s face hopeful that the end of the sentence she had chosen was correct.
    “Didn’t go to boarding school,” Cee Cee repeated, nodding.
    Nina brightened for a second, but then doubt filled her eyes. “But what about the lawyers?” she asked.
    “Honey,” Cee Cee said, “we’re just gonna do to the lawyers what lawyers have been doing to everybody else for years. And you’re coming home with me. To be with me and stay with me wherever I go.”
     
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    “I am? Oh boy!” Nina said, hugging Cee Cee hard around the waist, her eyes closed and the side of her face pushed against Cee Cee’s chest.
    “Neen,” Cee Cee said to the top of her head, “this isn’t gonna be like anything you imagine. Especially if I don’t get my television show back on the track, because maybe I’ll have to go on the road, or maybe I’ll have to go on location, or worst of all I could have to go off to Reno or Tahoe with an act, and that can truly be the lowest.”
    “I think I can handle it,” Nina said, her eyes lit from the inside, as she held her head back so she could look up into Cee Cee’s face. “You know, a couple of times I heard my mom saying you were too much of a pushover. Is this the kind of thing she meant?”
    “Sort of,” Cee Cee said, and her eyes were dancing with light too. Miss McCullough, the headmistress who had given them the tour, responded to the news of Nina’s departure in a way that Cee Cee later described as “so cold you could