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

hang meat.” The woman stiffly informed Cee Cee that the school would have to keep the nonrefundable five-thousand-dollar deposit they had received from the child’s trust fund, since Nina had occupied a place which deprived another child from entering this semester, and Cee Cee smiled a big Cee Cee smile and said, “I’m sure you can find somewhere to put the five grand, toots.” Then she gave the woman a little wink and hustled Nina out of the office and the administration building and into the Chevy, where Nina’s already repacked suitcases had been piled into the trunk and the backseat, and as she did she said out loud to herself, “Maybe I should have phrased that another way.”
    “I left one of my Cee Cee Bloom albums with my roommate,
    Heidi,” Nina said as she slid into the 0assenger seat.
    “You had one of my albums with you?”
    “I had all of them. They were with my things Aunt Neetie sent from Florida.”
    “And that girl Heidi wanted it?” Cee Cee asked with surprise, starting the car.
    Nina turned to look at her and nodded. “After I told her who you were.”
    “So you gave her yours?”
    “I traded it to her. I figured I could always get another one, and she gave me a black turtleneck sweater.”
     
    I’LL BE THERE

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    “Well, who do you think got the better deal?” Cee Cee asked, pulling out of the parking lot, so positive now that taking Nina home with her was the right thing to do, her heart seemed to lift in her chest as they sailed along Highway 1.
    “Oh she did. Because the album was autographed.”
    “What did I write on it?”
    “You didn’t write anything. 1 autographed it for you,” Nina told her. There was a long silence, then Cee Cee reached over and touched Nina on the top of the head.
    “Thanks, kid,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”
    “You’re welcome, Cee,” Nina said, grinning as the car headed toward home.
     
    Seven hours later when they arrived in Los Angeles, it was dark, but the outside lights at Cee Cee’s house were on and Hal waited for them at the front door. When he hugged Cee Cee to welcome her, she wondered if he could smell the heavy odor of death she knew had to be in her hair and her clothes. He didn’t mention it. All he said was “Welcome home.”
    “This is Nina,” she told him as Nina followed behind her. Hal waved a little wave at Nina, who nodded shyly in return, and within minutes the tired-eyed little girl was bored with their conversation about telephone messages and mail and took off on her own to explore the house.
    “I would have had a room ready for her,” Hal said apologetically, “but I thought you were dropping her off at boarding school.” He was carrying some of the suitcases upstairs, with Cee Cee behind him carrying the rest.
    “Boarding school did not work out,” she said as Hal dropped some of the suitcases containing Bertie’s things and Cee Cee’s small overnight bag in her room, and she looked around at the familiarity of it, thinking how long it had been since the last time she slept in that bed, and about all that had happened to her since then. “It was an idea whose time had not yet arrived, and may I say it fostered hostility
    and fear and scads of ugly resentment.”
    “No kidding?” Hal said.
    “No kidding. But I’m all right now.” The two friends smiled. “Nina was great about it, a trooper in fact, but I knew leaving her there
     
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    IRIS RAINER DART
     
    would mean cheating her out of what I promised Bert I would do, and also promised myself I would do, so I figured what the hell. I keep thinking about that ‘Peanuts’ cartoon I have pinned to the wall in the kitchen where Charlie Brown is sitting against a rock saying ‘I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time!’ Well, for the first few years, that’ll be me, and then maybe I’ll mellow out.”
    Hal squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re both okav.”
    They stood at the top of the stairs and shared a