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monitoring the ups and downs. Worried because there had been quite a few little explosions between them. Like the one last week when Nina had given her
     
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    IRIS RAINER DART
     
    some of that haughty more-elegant-than-thou shit at which she was an expert and which could always start some sparks flying. There was no getting away from the fact that this kid had been so well trained by Bcrtie, she could go to lunch with the Queen of England and know what to do, and just like her mother, she didn’t hesitate to make a point of telling Cee Cee what she was doing wrong.
    “Did you send a thank-you note for those flowers?” she asked Cee Ccc the other day. That was what started it.
     
    wPlat.
    “The world doesn’t owe you a living, Cee Cee. Your agent didn’t
    have to send those roses just to welcome you back.”
    “I)o you have any idea how much money I made for that agency
    last year? Believe me, my agent had to send the roses. He ought to
    send me a thank-you note for the privilege of sending them.”
    “I don’t agree. My mother taught me that when someone takes the
    time and effort to send you something —”
    “He had his secretary send them,” Cee Cee had said, her voice rising, astonished at how much the kid’s getting on her case like that
    really bugged her.
    “But the thought was his,” Nina replied in a tone calm enough to
    make Cee Cee’S flaring temper feel stupid.
    “I already had a mother,” Cee Cee said, steaming.
    “Well, she must have forgotten to mention thank-you notes.” Hah! That time Cec Cee had burst out laughing, because the idea of Leona mentioning thank-you notes was pretty funny. “The only person Leona ever thanked was the doctor who told her after I was born hat she probably wouldn’t have any more babies.” Of course the truth was Nina was right about a lot of things. Especially the goddamned thank-you note. It took exactly three minutes for Cee Cee to dash off this really full-of-it thank-you note, and the other day when she stopped by Larry Gold’s office, she nearly fainted. The little twirp had framed the goddamned thing and it was hanging on his office wall.
    Then there was the constant battle about clothes. Cee Cee remembered how the saleslady at Saks had just about bust a gut overhearing
    that conversation.
    “Why?” Cee Cce asked looking at Nina’s choices for school clothes,
     
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    “does an eight-year-old kid want to dress like a forty-year-old
    woman ?”
    “And vice versa?” Nina had asked looking Cee Cee right in the eye, and when she did, Cee Cee glanced over her head at herself in the three-way mirror and realized she was wearing an off:the-shoulder sweatshirt, hicycle pants, lace tights, and high-topped basketball shoes.
    “Good point,” she said, and the subject was closed.
    And naturally, since Nina was Bertie’s daughter there had to be the whole discussion about language, just like the ones Cce Cee used to have with Bertie all the time. In fact sometimes when Nina opened that mouth of hers, it was so spookily like talking to Bcrtie, Ccc Cee had to look around to make sure it was the kid.
    “I’d like to ask you if you’d kindly stop saying F-U-C-K in front of me,” Nina said one night at the dinner table, pronouncing the letters
    of the word as carefully as if she were a finalist in a spelling bee. “I didn’t realize I ever did say it in front of you.” “That’s because it’s a bad habit.” “Huh?”
    “You say it automatically at least ten times a day.” “Me? Get the fuck outta here.” “Just like that.”
    “Ten times a day is impossible.”
    “Well, if you think it’s impossible, what if I fine you for every time
    you say it, and I get to keep the money?” “How much?” “A dollar.” “A nickel.” “A quarter.” “You’re on.”
    Okay, so by the end of the first week she owed Nina six bucks. But last week it was only a buck seventy-five, which was a big improvement. And now they