Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [51]
Maybe it was just in my nature to take it in stride, but fortunately I didn’t take the play’s failure as a personal defeat. I dusted myself off (I kept hearing Darlene shout, the day I fell off the horse, “Get back up! Now!”) and went out the very next day to audition for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. They called me that evening to tell me I got the part. The show was already a Broadway hit, and now the producers were mounting a road company. I was cast in the female lead as Rosemary, the lovelorn secretary at the World Wide Wicket Company.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Long-Distance Love
I gave Cary the good news when he called from Paris the next morning. He was happy for me until I told him we’d be on the road for a year.
“A year? That’s a long time, Dyan.”
“I know. But you know how it is. I’ve got to earn a living.”
“I know you do. It’s just that I’ll miss you.”
“Maybe you’ll visit me on the road.”
“Maybe I will. But in the meantime, maybe you’ll visit me in Paris for the holidays.”
“Maybe I will!”
But first there were four weeks of rehearsal with musical numbers and choreography, then a break for Christmas before we hit the road. I was working with two Broadway giants, the writer-director Abe Burrows and the choreographer Bob Fosse, and after long days onstage we’d go out for dinner and stay up late talking. The atmosphere was creatively charged, and it brought me back to my days in Rome, sans Eduardo. I was having the time of my life.
“He’s wild about you, Dyan! Anyone who’s around you both can tell.”
Audrey Hepburn smiled, took a tiny sip of champagne, and toasted me. It was New Year’s Eve. I had joined Cary in Paris before Christmas, our first together. Audrey and I had clicked immediately and spent a lot of time together roaming the city, shopping, and chatting over coffee and croque-monsieurs. I adored her. I thought of her as the big sister I always wanted but never had. She was bighearted, warm, and maternal in every way. Now we were at the spacious house the studio had rented for Audrey and her husband, the actor Mel Ferrer, who had starred opposite her in War and Peace. They put on a spread worthy of a Russian czar. We started with shots of chilled vodka, then moved along to champagne. For dinner, there was a tin of beluga caviar the size of an oil drum, and the tiny, glistening beads were served on crisp potato skins as sheer as gossamer and dabbed with sour cream. The caviar was probably worth the gross national product of Portugal, but I could take it or leave it—the potato skins and sour cream were the pièce de résistance to my taste.
After a midnight toast, I followed Audrey upstairs to the nursery, where we watched her son, Sean, while he slept.
“Having a child is the most wonderful thing in the world,” Audrey said. “Do you want children, Dyan?”
“A roomful,” I said.
“Cary?”
“I’ve been trying to smoke him out on the subject.”
“How’s it going?”
“So far, there’s no verdict.”
“He’ll come around. Now that I’ve seen him with you, there’s not a doubt in my mind. The man’s in love.”
I hoped she was right.
The next day, New Year’s Day, Cary and I lolled around in the big bed, watching TV and snacking until the housekeeper served us the traditional English holiday feast of roasted goose. We were relaxed, sipping wine and enjoying the crackling logs in the dining room fireplace, when Cary suddenly put down his fork and knife, looked at me, and said, “Dyan, you have made me an extraordinarily happy man. I know this is going to be the best year ever. Thank you.”
I was overcome. Making Cary happy was what I wanted more than anything. Making Cary happy made me happy.
He gazed at me for a few moments and said, “Are you sure you really want to go on the road?”
“What’s the alternative?” I asked.
He sighed and went back to his dinner. I wanted to shake him.
January 4, the day before I went back to New York, was my birthday, but Cary was so busy that I didn’t want to drop anything else on his plate, so I didn’t say anything. It would’ve been the first birthday