For the next 20 years, the two friends will come together in repeated explosions of emotion, as if only in their contacts with each other does either find sympathy for what she believes to be her true self. The friendship proceeds-credibly if one has been an adolescent girl-long distance and for nine years before the two meet a second time, at a second summer resort, where Cee Cee is in summer stock, Bertie on vacation. In Cee Cee, Bertie knows she has found the vitality that is absent from the careful life her widowed mother has arranged for her in Bertie, Cee Cee knows she has found reality, and love. When the two meet beneath the boardwalk in Atlantic City one summer afternoon-Bertie wailing for the mother and aunt she has somehow misplaced, Cee Cee trying to sleep off the effects of the midnight act at Jerry Grey's Kiddie Show-it is as if each believes herself rescued. Bertie White is a wan seven-year-old from Pittsburgh, in whom caution and longing combine to insure a lifetime of disappointment.

Cee Cee Bloom is a brassy 10-year-old from the Bronx, in whom the voice of Streisand, the mouth of Fran Leibowitz, the hair of Harpo Marx, and a wardrobe of sequined leotards combine to presage a star. That she does not quite succeed has a lot to do with her failure to develop the two friends equally-and given the power of her stronger character, it's an almost understandable failure. Iris Rainer Dart (The Boys in the Mail Room, 1979) comes very close in Beaches to writing a serious book about improbable, enduring friendship.

Beaches II by Iris Rainer Dart