Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [111]
Fortunately, she was right on all counts. I remembered that day in the desert when my horse threw me and Darlene yelling, “Get back on! Now!” So I went to the next class, fully expecting to turn so stiff I’d have to be lifted off the stage by a crane. But when my turn came to read a scene, it started to come back, slowly if not surely. I stuck with the class and gradually got my stage legs back. That was a significant victory. Except for Jennifer’s love, theater was the only activity that allowed me to get out of the harness and walk away from the heavy sled of despair I pulled behind myself constantly.
Otherwise, I hovered over my life like a cloud, looking at it from high above like it was happening to someone else. I got to that high place with marijuana and margaritas . . . and a virtual trove of pills to prop me up when I was down, and lay me down when I was too far up. Most people thought I seemed happier than I had in a long time. I’d found a place inside my head where I could hide. It was safe there because I could feel nothing— absolutely nothing. And the best thing about it was that no one could see in. I could smile without really feeling it and I got away with it. No one knew how I really felt. No one. Not even me.
That doesn’t sound like love.
Lily’s words stayed with me, and somewhere in the pea-soup fog that enclosed my mind, her statement twittered like a bird outside the bedroom window. If what Cary and I felt for each other wasn’t love, then what was it? The question troubled me deeply. I could still halfway talk myself into thinking things with Cary could get better, and my memory grabbed on to the good times. I thought of the licorice ice cream kiss in Palm Springs, the seaside dinner in Jamaica, New Year’s in Paris. Even though it was often difficult for us to even be together, I still could see myself as Mrs. Cary Grant.
On other days, though, the idea seemed impossibly remote. If anything was clear, it was that my indecision was tearing me apart. I had to decide what to do.
Over the next few months, Cary and I occasionally met for dinner or lunch, spent evenings together, even took weekend trips, some with Jennifer, some without. Those occasions had been polite at best and strained at worst, and my hope for wholehearted reconciliation had waned. But what if his offer that we do the movie together was a real change of heart? I’d struggled with the sensation that he might just be dangling a carrot in front of me, ultimately to keep things in the status quo, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I really wanted to believe that he was determined to treat me as an equal partner, in life, marriage, and business. That was a thrilling thing to contemplate. On top of that, there were moments when he seemed more engaged and more enthusiastic about our being together.
One night—it was several months after I’d moved out—it almost seemed like old times. The best of old times, that is. He picked me up for dinner in the Rolls. I dressed with that English conservative chic because I knew he’d approve, and somehow it felt good.
At a stop sign on the way down the hill, I suddenly felt playful. I started to reach for the car keys, but I stopped myself. The impulse had come and gone quickly.
Cary smiled. “Dyan, you weren’t going to throw those keys out the window, were you?”
“I thought about it. But you’ll always remember the time I did, won’t you?”
He laughed. “I was so angry with you.” Then he smiled.
It was going on six years since we’d first met. Cary was now sixty-three, and looking at him, he still seemed ageless—and if anything, only better looking with the extra years. We went to dinner at Hoi Ping, just like old times. We stuffed ourselves, just like old times. Hoi Ping didn’t have margaritas, but Cary suggested we order a big gaudy rum drink called a Suffering Bastard. Half of one did the job for me. Cary finished mine and ordered one more.
I looked at Cary and almost believed it was old times. We’d both been hoping that the old magic would find us again, like