Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [53]
Because of the time difference, it was hard for us to talk regularly while Cary was in France, but when he got back to L.A. to do post-production work, we talked nightly. During the week, the cast would usually stay out late after the show, but I frequently found myself heading back to the hotel for Cary’s calls. I really looked forward to our talks—they’d run two or three hours, and his long-distance bill must’ve been staggering—but sometimes I felt a little hemmed in. I did find myself having to reassure him that I wasn’t about to have a fling with anyone. How could he possibly imagine that I would have an affair when he was my all in all? But then, I had flashes of insecurity about what he was up to without me around. But not for long.
On top of the calls, he continued to write. In one letter: “Thank you for going home each night—for the reassurance and confidence it gives me—far beyond these words that cannot fully express my gratitude . . .”
“I haven’t an interesting or amusing thought in my head at the moment,” he wrote in another letter. “[T]he only thing I can think of saying is what is foremost in my mind: I miss you.”
When Cary finished post-production on the film, he’d fly out on Friday afternoons to be with me wherever I was—Rochester, Cleveland, or Cincinnati—and we’d spend the weekend snuggled up in the hotel room, relaxing and ordering room service.
After a couple of months, the show hit the West Coast. Cary came to San Francisco for the weekend, where we were settling in for a two-month run. My mother and grandmother—we called her “Bobbie,” which was our version of “bubbe,” the Yiddish word for “grandmother”—had flown down for the show, too. The second I stepped onto the stage, Bobbie stood up from her fifth-row seat and yelled, “Hello, dahlink! How are you? You look bee-yoo-ti-full!”
The audience roared with laughter, and the performance ground to a halt. One thing I’d learned in theater is that when the unexpected happens, just go with it. “Hello, Bobbie!” I called out. “Do you and Mom like your seats?”
“The best seats in the house!” she hollered. “And the play, very nice—so far.”
The audience roared again. My mother tugged at Bobbie’s elbow and gently pulled her back into her seat. Fred Lerner, the conductor, cued the orchestra and got the show rolling again.
Afterward, Cary and I took Bobbie and my mother out to a late dinner and showed them some of the sights. It was the first time either of them had met Cary, and they were charmed but maintained a stance of quiet observation. Cary raised a toast: “To the three most beautiful women in the world!”
Mother and I clinked glasses, but not Bobbie. She looked Cary straight in the eye. “So you like my granddaughter,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
“More than words can say,” Cary replied, amused.
“Nuthink wrong with words,” said Bobbie. She pointed a finger at Cary. “How much you like my granddaughter?” Then she pointed to my mother. “My daughter wants to know.”
Cary smiled at Bobbie and then looked directly at my mother. “I love your daughter,” he said, and leaning toward Bobbie, took her hand and kissed her on the cheek.
They were both happily exhausted by the time we returned to the hotel. I walked them to their room. As I was saying good night, Bobbie took my hand and squeezed it. “Be careful with your heart, dahlink,” she said.
“I love you with all of it, Bobbie.”
That was the last time I saw her alive.
Bobbie and my mother left San Francisco Monday, but Cary stayed on for a couple more days. The show was dark on Mondays, and that particular day, I joined the cast for a photo shoot for the San Francisco Chronicle. When I got back to Cary’s suite I found him having lunch with none other than Dr. Timothy Leary, who was already well-known and controversial for his evangelizing about the incredible benefits of LSD. Cary was pointedly casual in the way he introduced us, as if major countercultural figures