Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [43]
“He seemed almost to be crying, but they were angry tears: ‘I was trying to protect you!’ He kept on bellowing that, like it would save him. It was as if, in his mind, he was on trial before a judge.
“He told me she was in Fishponds,” Cary said. “And that horrified me more than anything.”
“Fishponds?” I repeated.
“It’s a state-run lunatic asylum outside of Bristol. Terrible place. So the bastard had put her in Fishponds.”
“Why would he do that? Did she have some kind of a breakdown?”
“Elsie never had a breakdown. She was probably depressed, but who could blame her, being married to him? No, he wanted to get her out of the way so he could do whatever he wanted and go on with his life without having to support her . . . or me.
“That was all I needed to hear from Elias. I stood up and walked out of the pub. It was pathetic, the way he hollered after me. ‘You should thank me! I did it for you!’ But this was something he’d kept bottled up for twenty years now, and it turned out he was dying and probably knew it. He died within a year after that.”
I couldn’t speak. I wanted to say something, but I could not find my voice.
Cary climbed out of his chair, paced a bit, and then sat on the edge of the bed. I sat up and moved over next to him. After a long minute or two, he went on.
“The next day, I rented a car and drove to Fishponds. I went through the iron gates and pulled up in front of this dark, grim stone building. It reminded me of some awful debtors’ prison from a Dickens novel. I was very nervous. And you know, the strange thing was—maybe because I was still in shock over the whole thing—in my mind, I was still seeing her as she was when I was a child. So I looked for a woman with thick black hair and sharp brown eyes . . . smooth olive skin . . .
“When the nurse led me to her room, I went numb. I couldn’t imagine the white-haired old woman with that sunken face and dead, hollowed-out eyes was my mother. I almost asked her if she knew where Elsie Leach was. But she was having the same kind of reaction. She squinted at me like she thought she’d seen me before, and she said, ‘Who are you?’
“I said, ‘I’m your son.’ I could barely speak. She stared for the longest time, saying nothing, and then at last she said, ‘Archie. It’s been a long time.’ I told her I was sorry, that I had no idea she was here. She just kept staring.
“ ‘So how’re you getting on, Archie?’ she asked. I said, ‘I’m not Archie anymore. I’m an actor. People know me as Cary Grant.’ I’m not sure that meant anything to her. In fact, all of a sudden, I wasn’t sure it meant anything to me. It was surreal. Here was my mother packed away in a mental home all these years, while I went off and had a complete change of identity. I’d become wealthy and famous, living this very grand life, and all along, my poor mother had been rotting away in this hellhole . . . I’ll never forgive myself.”
“But you had nothing to do with it, Cary.”
“That’s not the way it feels.”
My heart was breaking, not just for Cary, but for Elsie too. There had to be a way to heal this, I thought. I would find a way.
The next day, Cary took me over to the Hippodrome, the theater in Bristol where he had gotten his start. His friend Noël Coward was there with the actress Elaine Stritch, rehearsing a production of Sail Away, and I was happy to see Cary’s mood lighten upon encountering Noël. Cary had spoken fondly of him, saying he had been one of his early mentors in dress and comportment, and though Noël was only about five years older than Cary, the rapport between them reminded me of a particularly close uncle and nephew. They had a lot in common. Each had pulled himself up from a hardscrabble background by sheer force of personality and talent; each had acquired the sheen of refinement and wit. Noël, of course, was openly gay, and that effeteness was a huge part of his persona. He had never finished high school but had proved his creative mettle across many mediums—plays, songs, acting, screenplays,