Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [108]
“I want you back here,” he said.
“Cary, I don’t think you know what you want.”
“Dyan, I love you. I want my family back together.”
“I know you love Jennifer, Cary, but that’s really the only thing I am sure of.”
After we talked a few more times that day, I told Cary he was welcome to come and see Jennifer but that I would be walking on the beach. “I really need some space to collect myself,” I told him. We set a time for him to come, and I made sure I was out on the beach during his visit. We did that several times that week.
“Dyan, if you need to talk, I’m here,” Mary told me more than once. After a day or so, I’d recuperated enough to open up.
“My head is just a big traffic jam of negative thoughts,” I told her. “I’m not good enough . . . I’m not pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough . . . I need help. It’s like I need a traffic cop to direct all these . . . thoughts. Because they’re all just honking like a bunch of cars backed up for miles.”
I told her how I worried about one thing or another, minute by minute, hour by hour. Fear throbbed within my whole being like a toothache. “And the damnedest thing, Mary, is that I still love him.”
Walking on the beach, listening to the waves crunch softly along the waterline, hearing the gulls and watching them catch the wind . . . the serene atmosphere of Malibu was a balm for my tormented mind and I began to be able to think a little more clearly. Being true to Cary, in every possible way, had been my mantra. But in the end, I had to be true to myself, even if it meant losing Cary. The problem was, I didn’t know where or who myself was anymore.
“You know, Dyan, every relationship has its stuff,” Mary said one evening when we were watching the sun slide into the ocean. “Every relationship has the things that make it work and the things that make it go south.” I was quiet. Mary squeezed my arm. “Come on, Dyan. Talk to me. It’s important to let it out.”
“I know that, Mary,” I said, “but some of the things that made it go south I can’t talk about. Not now. Maybe not ever. I just can’t. All I can tell you is that they’ve driven me to a place where I can’t feel anymore, and that scares me. I’m faking it all the time. And I’m so worn out with wearing this ‘everything’s just fine’ mask.” I hesitated . . . “I’m just so afraid of losing him.”
Mary was quiet. Finally she said, “I don’t remember where I heard it, or who said it, but I’ll never forget it . . . ‘Oh learn to know you can lose nothing that is real. If it’s real you can’t lose it. And if it’s not real you don’t want it.’ ”
That’s all well and good, I thought. But how do you know what’s real?
I stayed with Mary for a week before I could muster the fortitude to go to the house. But I needed clothes, and Jennifer needed to see Cary, and vice versa, and I thought it was time to face him—or at least peek at him.
When I got there, he was conciliatory and even contrite. His affection for Jennifer was something to behold. When he was with Jennifer, Cary became his kindest, most loving self, and I watched as he sat on the floor while she crawled around him like a little panda bear. Then he got to his feet, scooped her up, and came over to me.
“Can we start over, Dyan?”
“I’m so confused, Cary, I really don’t know.”
And I didn’t know. What I did know, though, after watching him and Jennifer together, was that I had to leave the door open to reconciliation. On the other hand, for my sanity, I knew I had to get out. It was like being in quicksand. I sank if I stood still and I sank if I moved. I wished someone would throw me a line, but who? One way or another, I had to get back on solid ground.
An hour