Dear Cary

by Dyan Cannon

  “I’ll walk out with you,” Elsie declared.

  Elsie and I walked side by side through the hallway, with Cary following. The corridor was narrow, and a portly doctor was coming from the opposite direction. I gently tugged on Elsie’s arm to pull her to my side of the hall. But to my surprise, she seized my arm and with what seemed like the physical strength of a lumberjack pulled me over to her side of the hall. I guess she had to be strong, physically and mentally, to have endured what she’d been through.

  “So how did it really go?” Cary asked when we got to the car.

  “Not great. I don’t think she likes me.”

  “Oh, she likes you,” he said. “She has never once asked to spend any time alone with any woman I’ve ever brought to meet her.”

  If I were the only one of Cary’s women Elsie had liked enough to be alone with, I hated to imagine what she’d have done with the others.

  I’ve never thought of it before, but since that time I’ve never liked the sight of red nail polish.

  “You could have told me you’d arranged this,” I told Cary.

  “It’s like leaping off the high dive, Dyan,” he said. “If you take too much time to think about it, you’ll back out.”

  I let out a long sigh. I’d been ambushed, and I didn’t like it. It was our second day back in London from Bristol, and now I sat in the living room with Cary and his acid guru, Dr. Mortimer Hartman, the man who’d launched Cary’s previous wife, Betsy Drake, into cosmic exploration, who then in turn got Cary involved. I was next in line.

  “Cary, can I have a moment with you? Excuse us, Dr. Hartman.”

  Cary and I stepped into the hall. “This isn’t fair, Cary. This really upsets me. It’s an obvious setup. I told you how I felt about this drug a long time ago. You know how sensitive I am. I can’t even take an aspirin without feeling weird.” That was true. I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee since I was in Portugal. One sip and I was like a Mexican jumping bean.

  “Dyan, do you trust me the way I trust you?” he asked.

  Bull’s-eye.

  “Do you think I would have asked Dr. Hartman to fly all the way to London if I didn’t think this was important?”

  “You shouldn’t have asked him before you asked me. That’s the point.”

  “Dyan, if it weren’t for LSD, you wouldn’t be in my life,” he said. “Bottom line, I wouldn’t have found the courage to open my heart to you and let you in.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Cary.”

  “Why?”

  “You did LSD with Betsy for years and the two of you split. That’s not a very good recruitment ad.”

  “Betsy and I both evolved from the experience,” Cary said. “Unfortunately, it was in different directions.”

  “Why would this be any different?”

  “Because the first time I laid eyes on you, I felt a connection I have never felt before at any time in my life. Please trust me on this, Dyan. Please.”

  I stopped. I looked at him. I said, “You don’t play fair, Cary.”

  I turned on my heel and went back to the living room. Cary followed. I looked at Dr. Hartman. With a silver fringe of hair circling his shiny pate, and horn-rimmed glasses, he was anything but a poster child for the counterculture.

  “I’m not eager to do this, Dr. Hartman.”

  “Talk to her, my wise mahatma.”

  My wise mahatma. I’d heard Cary refer to Dr. Hartman that way before. In Cary’s eyes, the doctor was some sort of shaman.

  “Cary has been a true pioneer in the uncharted territories of the psyche,” he said. He spoke softly, thoughtfully, and reassuringly. Soothingly. “I’ve learned much more from him than he’s learned from me. He knows the particularities of the experience, Miss Cannon, and he believes you can reap huge rewards from it. That can’t be said about everyone. I trust his judgment completely.”

  I looked at Cary. Cary was looking at me . . . and beaming. Beaming with love, I thought. He leaned forward and took my hand. “Dear girl, if you had found the key to ultimate peace of mind, wouldn’t you do anything to share it with me? I know you would. I know you want to get closer to God. This will do that.”

  Dr. Hartman continued. “The drug has a dismantling effect. It can tear down our inner walls and help us look at the world, and ourselves, through new eyes. And everything you sense and see is a hundred times more vivid than usual.”

  “But what is it about me you want to change?” I asked Cary.

  “It’s not about change. It’s about growth, and living a fully realized life,” he answered.

  “But I don’t believe you have to take a drug to do that.”

  He paused and said, “I’m thinking about our future. This is important to me.”

  I only just hesitated and then turned to the mahatma. “Okay, Doctor, what’s next?”

  And so I did it. I gave in. Even though everything inside me told me to run for my life. I put myself in Cary’s—and Dr. Hartman’s—hands. Dr. Hartman held out a small dish with a tiny blue pill and told me to dissolve it under my tongue. I took it and hoped for the best.

  And then I waited.

  Nothing.

  Dr. Hartman sat across from me with a notepad next to him.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re feeling?” he said.

  “I’m feeling like I just swallowed a blue pill and that I’m sitting in a room with two men.”

  “Are you feeling anything at all?” Cary asked a few minutes later.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I’ll get you something,” Cary said, and he jumped to his feet like an attentive husband.

  “No,” I said. “I’d like to move around a little. I’ll get it myself.”

  “Miss Cannon, it’s better if you stay still,” Dr. Hartman said, but I was already out of there.

  I went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. There was a pound cake, and in the freezer was vanilla ice cream. I got myself a slice of cake and two scoops of ice cream. I took a few bites. Sweetness. Coldness. Then I noticed that I didn’t taste sweetness and I didn’t experience coldness. I was sweetness and coldness.

  That was some pretty special ice cream and cake, I thought, as a giant red tulip bloomed from the palm of my hand. I took another spoonful of ice cream and the tulip went away. Then it came back. I heard footsteps. They were looking for me. I tiptoed out of the kitchen and squatted under the nook beneath the stairs. I didn’t want them seeing me with the tulip shooting out of my hand. They might ask where I’d gotten it and I wouldn’t be able to tell them. They might think I stole it.

  Sometime later, it could have been seconds or it could have been hours, I contemplated just how fragile and beautiful a glass of milk is—now that I was one.

  I wanted to get up, but I didn’t want to spill myself over the glass rim of myself. Then I heard footsteps. No, no, no. Keep away. I don’t want to be spilled . . .

  Then I was back in the living room with Cary and Dr. Hartman.

  “What are you feeling, Dyan?” Dr. Hartman asked.

  I cocked my head and looked at him.

  “What is it, Dyan?”

  “Every time you speak, all these letters tumble out of your mouth.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “It’s rude. They’re getting on my blouse.” Then I must have scrunched up my eyes at him. “You’d better take your shirt off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your muscles are growing so fast they’re going to rip it.”

  I looked at Cary. I suddenly saw him as a boy of ten, twelve, fourteen . . . It was as if the years had first rewound, and now they were fast-forwarding. Cary was turning into an old man in front of my eyes. His skin sagged, his eyelids drooped, his neck hung like tangled bedsheets . . .

  “I don’t think I like this,” I said. “Make it stop.”

  Cary laid his hand softly on my shoulder, but it melted into yellow goo. “Dyan, this is your opportunity to ask the univer
se anything you want. Now, try to calm down.”

  “Everyone, please remain calm,” I said. Ask the universe something . . . “Okay, universe. I want to ask you, what is God?”

  Suddenly, I saw Cary’s face had expanded to the size of a close-up on a gigantic movie screen. He opened his mouth to speak and his mouth turned into a tunnel and I was traveling fast through it, into the cavern of his throat, and sliding on down through space . . .

  Dr. Hartman said something to me, but the words echoed as if he’d shouted from within a cave. The walls had turned crimson and were breathing, in-out-in-out, and a sonic roar, like a jet, screamed inside my head. Then came the dancing bears, at first jolly and smiling, then scowling and singing nursery rhymes in German . . . as the walls became increasingly more swollen until they were about to close in on us all, and I screamed, “Make it stop!”

  “Take this.” Dr. Hartman gave me a pill. My mouth was as dry as dust, but I swallowed it. Cary had wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I was kicking, trying to make the bears stop singing in German. But the bears were closing in on me, so I zapped them with a yellow bolt of light, straight from my forehead. That showed them. They stopped for a moment but then resumed, this time in Italian.

  Damn singing bears.

  “Feeling better?” Cary asked. He was lying next to me, on top of the covers, reading.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “You weren’t reacting well, so Dr. Hartman gave you a dose of Seconal to knock you out.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost two. You’ve been asleep for eighteen hours.”

  Eighteen hours! “I still feel knocked out,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I will never, ever, do that again.”

  “Sweetheart, you’ve got to fall off the bike a few times before you learn to ride. Remember, we’re in this together. If we keep going, there’s no stopping us.”

  “Cary, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  “How in the hell can giant bears singing in German bring you closer to God?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Big Sting

  The turquoise waters lapped gently against the white sands of the beach, and the palm branches shivered when the breeze kicked up. From a distance of about ten yards, I watched Cary as he prepared himself for the next scene. He was doing location work in Jamaica on Father Goose and had invited me down for a couple of weeks of the filming. In this picture, Cary had uncharacteristically donned the aspect of a ragged, whiskey-soaked sailor. He was as unkempt as his costar, Leslie Caron, was groomed (even though the story had them stranded on a Pacific island during World War II). Cary was having a ball playing a disheveled rogue.

  Jamaica was wonderful. I slept late in Cary’s rented beachfront villa, took long walks on the shore, and every day went to the set to join him for lunch. Then I’d stay for the rest of the day to watch filming. I really loved seeing Cary frolic with the child actors. They followed him around like ducklings, laughing and giggling at his monkey faces and pratfalls. He was like a big, happy kid. This man was meant to have children, I thought, and I said as much to him: “You are great with those children! A real natural!”

  He gave me a knowing smile. He was onto me.

  Now I sat in Cary’s chair and watched. Leslie was a natural if unconventional beauty, with a high-domed forehead, bedroom eyes, and bee-stung lips. She was about my age, and it hadn’t occurred to me until now that Cary hadn’t made a peep this time about starring opposite a much younger woman. Hmmmph. It made me wonder . . .

  In the scene, Cary and Leslie were knee-deep in the water. Cary was supposed to be teaching her how to catch fish—with her bare hands. That required him to stand behind her with his arms encircling her, a position intended to generate some romantic heat between the two characters. Up until now, they’d been at loggerheads through the whole story.

  Ralph Nelson, the director, called, “Action!”

  The scene culminated with Leslie turning to Cary, looking deep into his eyes, lips a-quivering. And then . . .

  I freaked.

  I knew about movie kisses, but weren’t they both putting a little too much feeling into this one? I could feel that kiss down to my toenails, and I was standing thirty feet away.

  “Cut! Print! Okay, let’s go again!”

  Go again? Another kiss like that and neither one of them would have any lips left.

  “One more . . . action!”

  I turned away. It was too much. Stop this, Dyan! I told myself. But it really rattled me. I thought of Cary and his affair with Sophia Loren. Was this going to be another Houseboat? I was leaving in a couple of days. What on earth would happen after I left?

  “Let’s try a couple without the kiss,” Bob Arthur, the producer, told them. “This time, Cary, you chicken out. I think maybe there’s even more heat if you save it for later . . . action!” That was more like it.

  Hmmmph.

  “Is something bothering you?” Cary asked that evening.

  “No . . . Yes . . . No . . . a little.”

  A lot.

  I don’t quite know what came over me, but it was the first time I’d felt any real pang of jealousy—and along with it, insecurity, of course—over Cary. It was spring 1964, and we’d launched into the third year of our courtship lighthearted and in love, and taking advantage of Cary’s downtime to travel and have fun. We’d go to England for Wimbledon and soccer and to New York for shows and shopping, which, since he was friendly with many top designers, was quite an experience. Cary loved to gamble for fun but was never serious about it, so on Saturdays we’d go to the Santa Anita racetrack and place our $2 bets, and to Las Vegas for shows and low-stakes blackjack. We’d go to Dodgers games, sit in the box seats, and gorge ourselves on kosher hot dogs. At my insistence, we’d take long walks around town and on the beach, something he really came to enjoy; it turned out that since the last person anyone expected to see just walking around was Cary Grant, he was rarely recognized. And of course, Cary loved to eat as much as anyone I ever knew, so we went to a lot of restaurants.

  We were more comfortable with each other than ever, and although we enjoyed going places and doing things together, we enjoyed each other’s company so much that we could have been happy stranded on a desert island, even if it meant just playing word games into perpetuity, which we loved to do. We didn’t need anyone or anything; each other’s presence was enough.

  Maybe that was my problem at the moment. I’d gotten attached and I didn’t want to see him kissing another woman, let alone a beautiful woman, and it didn’t make a sliver of difference to me if it was all for the camera.

  “You look very nice tonight,” he said.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Okay . . . what is the subject?”

  “That kiss.”

  “What kiss?”

  “The one that curled my toenails.”

  “I hope there’s been more than just one of those.”

  “Snap out of it. I’m talking about the kiss you gave Leslie in the water. This very afternoon!”

  “Silly child, that’s what they pay me for! Come here. I want to show you something.”

  With my arms folded, I took a cautious step forward. Cary curled his arm around my waist, took my face in his hand, tilted my head to the side ever so slightly.

  “Now, this one,” he said, “is on my own dime.”

  Suffice it to say that Cary’s kissing power had not been used up by the movie. Literally feeling dizzy, I took a step back and said, “How do I know you’re not acting?”

  Cary laughed. “You know I’m not acting.”

  If he was, it was an Oscar-worthy performance.

  We spent several more days swimming, dining, and taking long walks on the beach. Before I knew it, two weeks had gone by and it was time to go. Cary had an early call the morning I was leaving and we kissed each other good-bye after breakfast. Bob Arthur
, who had also produced That Touch of Mink with Cary, was waiting to take me to the airport.

  “Dyan, Cary has just been glowing the whole time you’ve been here,” Bob said as we drove the narrow highway beside the water.

  “But Cary is always glowing,” I said.

  “Not like that. Why don’t you stay awhile longer?”

  “Nobody asked me.”

  “The fact is, Dyan, I was deputized to use my power of persuasion on you by Mr. Grant himself.”

  “Really? Why didn’t he just ask me himself?”

  “I don’t know. But why don’t you stay and ask him that yourself. ”

  “Bob, I really need to get home. There’s so much I have to get done.” Then a half a breath later, I said, “Okay, I’m persuaded.” I was overjoyed that Cary wanted me to stay longer. But how odd, I thought, that he didn’t just simply ask me himself. Was it possible that he didn’t know how much I really cared for him?

  A couple of days later, Cary had the afternoon off and we went to the beach. “You know, I haven’t had my monthly exercise in a couple of months,” he said. “I think I’ll take a swim.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “You’ve gained at least a half ounce. I can see it in your face.” He waded into the water and splashed around.

  A few minutes later, Cary screamed like he was on a torture rack. I started to run into the water after him but he yelled, “Don’t get in! Don’t get in!” He paddled to shallow water and staggered onto the sand, still screaming in pain.

  “What happened?” I cried.

  “Sea urchin!” His leg was aflame with the spines of the creature. Cary writhed in pain as we walked the several yards up to the house.

  Next to my father, Cary was probably the most stoic man I’d ever known. He did not show pain, and here he was screaming his head off. I couldn’t imagine how much that sting must have hurt. Then the maid came running. She approached me and spoke softly, almost in a whisper.

  “Only one cure for dat, mum,” she said. She looked a little shy about telling me, though.

  “What is it?”

  “You got to make water on the sting.”