Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [61]
He paused and said, “I’m thinking about our future. This is important to me.”
I only just hesitated and then turned to the mahatma. “Okay, Doctor, what’s next?”
And so I did it. I gave in. Even though everything inside me told me to run for my life. I put myself in Cary’s—and Dr. Hartman’s—hands. Dr. Hartman held out a small dish with a tiny blue pill and told me to dissolve it under my tongue. I took it and hoped for the best.
And then I waited.
Nothing.
Dr. Hartman sat across from me with a notepad next to him.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re feeling?” he said.
“I’m feeling like I just swallowed a blue pill and that I’m sitting in a room with two men.”
“Are you feeling anything at all?” Cary asked a few minutes later.
“I’m hungry.”
“I’ll get you something,” Cary said, and he jumped to his feet like an attentive husband.
“No,” I said. “I’d like to move around a little. I’ll get it myself.”
“Miss Cannon, it’s better if you stay still,” Dr. Hartman said, but I was already out of there.
I went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. There was a pound cake, and in the freezer was vanilla ice cream. I got myself a slice of cake and two scoops of ice cream. I took a few bites. Sweetness. Coldness. Then I noticed that I didn’t taste sweetness and I didn’t experience coldness. I was sweetness and coldness.
That was some pretty special ice cream and cake, I thought, as a giant red tulip bloomed from the palm of my hand. I took another spoonful of ice cream and the tulip went away. Then it came back. I heard footsteps. They were looking for me. I tiptoed out of the kitchen and squatted under the nook beneath the stairs. I didn’t want them seeing me with the tulip shooting out of my hand. They might ask where I’d gotten it and I wouldn’t be able to tell them. They might think I stole it.
Sometime later, it could have been seconds or it could have been hours, I contemplated just how fragile and beautiful a glass of milk is—now that I was one.
I wanted to get up, but I didn’t want to spill myself over the glass rim of myself. Then I heard footsteps. No, no, no. Keep away. I don’t want to be spilled . . .
Then I was back in the living room with Cary and Dr. Hartman.
“What are you feeling, Dyan?” Dr. Hartman asked.
I cocked my head and looked at him.
“What is it, Dyan?”
“Every time you speak, all these letters tumble out of your mouth.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“It’s rude. They’re getting on my blouse.” Then I must have scrunched up my eyes at him. “You’d better take your shirt off.”
“Why?”
“Because your muscles are growing so fast they’re going to rip it.”
I looked at Cary. I suddenly saw him as a boy of ten, twelve, fourteen . . . It was as if the years had first rewound, and now they were fast-forwarding. Cary was turning into an old man in front of my eyes. His skin sagged, his eyelids drooped, his neck hung like tangled bedsheets . . .
“I don’t think I like this,” I said. “Make it stop.”
Cary laid his hand softly on my shoulder, but it melted into yellow goo. “Dyan, this is your opportunity to ask the universe anything you want. Now, try to calm down.”
“Everyone, please remain calm,” I said. Ask the universe something . . . “Okay, universe. I want to ask you, what is God?”
Suddenly, I saw Cary’s face had expanded to the size of a close-up on a gigantic movie screen. He opened his mouth to speak and his mouth turned into a tunnel and I was traveling fast through it, into the cavern of his throat, and sliding on down through space . . .
Dr. Hartman said something to me, but the words echoed as if he’d shouted from within a cave. The walls had turned crimson and were breathing, in-out-in-out, and a sonic roar, like a jet, screamed inside my head. Then came the dancing bears, at first jolly and smiling, then scowling and singing nursery rhymes in German . . . as the walls became increasingly more swollen until they were about to close in on us all, and I screamed, “Make it stop!”
“Take this.” Dr. Hartman gave me a pill. My mouth was as dry as dust, but I swallowed it. Cary had