Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [42]
“Very gracious, sir,” Cary said. Cary was always polite with well-meaning fans, and he was always fairly ruthless about protecting his privacy. But I think he was relieved by the interruption. He chatted for a couple of minutes, and after ascertaining that the man’s third cousin once removed had indeed attended grade school with him, shook hands with the man and steered me out of the pub. Just as we were at the doorway, Cary turned and stepped back to the bar. He pressed a bill into the barkeep’s hand and I heard him say, “Buy the house a couple of rounds on me.”
Walking back to the hotel, I had a feeling that had been all I would hear for the night.
We stood in the hotel hallway, each with our keys in hand, looking at each other.
My heart was heavy. My heart was full. Cary had opened up to me . . . the two of us were melding into one.
I felt it happening.
I didn’t say a word.
He didn’t say a word.
We just looked very deeply into each other’s eyes.
I took his hand, the one that held the door key. I took the key, unlocked his door, and walked through ahead of him. He hesitated in the hallway a moment, then followed me in.
The clock on the nightstand read quarter past three. I was snuggled up against Cary, my arm draped across his chest. I felt him exhale and could tell he wasn’t sleeping either. “You awake?” I whispered.
“Yes. Awake but happy.”
“Me too.”
“I’m glad, dear girl.”
“Cary?”
“Yes?”
“How did you find out Elsie was alive?”
He sighed and curled his arm around my back.
“I was thirty years old. I was in Los Angeles, and I got a call from my father. He’d managed to track me down through the studio. We thought it was probably a crank call, but for some reason I followed up on it.”
“And it was him?”
“Yes. I knew his voice immediately, even though I hadn’t heard it in many years. Anyway, he said he needed to talk to me about something vitally important, and that he couldn’t tell me on a transatlantic call . . .” He paused. “Dyan, do you really want to hear all this? Wouldn’t you rather just enjoy the rest of the night?”
“It’s up to you,” I said. Cary stretched and swung his feet on the floor, then got up. He got himself a glass of water and took a sip.
“I couldn’t imagine what could be so important, but he persuaded me to fly to England. He actually asked me to meet him in a pub in Bristol. I almost didn’t recognize him. He’d pretty well ruined himself with drinking. Jowls hanging, bloodshot eyes. He just looked like an old, broken-down alcoholic. Nothing like what I’d remembered.
“So we shook hands and exchanged some vague pleasantries. He rubbed the material of my jacket between his hands and said, ‘Learned a thing or two from the old man, didn’t you?’ The fact that this wreck of a human being had been the Elias Leach I remembered as my father—it was unimaginable.”
Cary paused. I could hear the clock ticking and a car rumble through the street below. Then there was a long silence. He was sitting sidesaddle in a chair across from the bed, facing the window. I thought for a moment he’d drifted off.
He finally continued. “I asked what he wanted to see me about. He looked down into his drink and said, ‘It’s about your mother. She’s not dead.’
“It didn’t register for a solid minute. I was sure I hadn’t heard him right. I thought maybe by now he’d gotten wet brain from drinking so much. So I asked him what in the hell that was supposed to mean.
“He said it again: ‘She’s not dead.’ He wouldn’t look at me. Just kept staring into his pint like God was talking to him from the bottom of the glass. His mouth tightened and his shoulders were all tense and bunched up. He was acting like this was something he had to get off his chest but resented me bitterly for being the one he had to tell.
“So then he said, ‘I was trying to protect you! I had to put her in a mental institution.’ I still couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about. A mental institution? I wanted to pick him up and throw him through the plate glass window, but I needed to understand what he was saying. I finally