Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [71]
“Jump up and down.”
“Be serious.”
“I am serious. Jump up and down!” What a stupid idea, I thought. A rubber nub embedded deep inside an ear wasn’t going to come loose from the impact of jumping up and down. But Cary had said to do it, so I did it. I jumped up and down. For several minutes. I got the predictable outcome, which was a headache. I called him back.
“Still there,” I said.
“All right. Sit tight. I’m coming to get you.”
No more than fifteen minutes later, Cary honked from the parking lot. I went downstairs and climbed into his somewhat beat-up Rolls, and we headed for the hospital. Cary waited in the car while I went into the emergency room. It took the doctor all of ten seconds to remove the little nub. He was about to drop it into the waste can when I asked if I could keep it.
He shrugged and dropped it into my hand. “Sterilize it before you use it on your gums,” he said.
Back in the car, I turned to look at Cary. “My ear is fixed,” I said.
“What did the doctor say?”
“He said that from now on, I’ll only be able to hear good things. Give me your hand.” I dropped the nub into it. “From me to you. From the bottom of my ear.”
“Hmmmph.”
He drove a few blocks in a befuddled silence, twisting his mouth around like he’d prefer to be talking to himself but didn’t want to be seen doing it. I decided to try to pull him out of his mental grease pit with silliness. I let out a dramatic gasp and flung the back of my hand to my forehead, pretending to go into a swoon.
“What’s wrong with you?” he sputtered. Now that the crisis was over we were back stuck being lovers at odds. But I didn’t feel like playing a lover at odds. I just felt like playing.
“I’ve just had surgery! I’ve been traumatized.”
“And what are the symptoms of this trauma?”
“I have an overpowering craving for ice cream.”
“I suppose nothing but licorice ice cream would do.”
“How did you know?”
There was a Baskin-Robbins a few blocks away. Cary pulled in and I went to get the ice cream. He said he didn’t want any, but I got him a scoop of butter pecan anyway and pressed the cone into his reluctant hand. As he was backing out of the lot, a small tuft of my licorice ice cream cone fell onto the seat.
“Dyan, could you be more careful?” he scolded. “You know Elsie used to fine me ten pence every time I spilled my milk on the table.”
“You poor thing. Well, to keep the family tradition going . . . ,” I said. I reached into my purse, scooped up some pennies, and dropped them into his shirt pocket. He swatted at my hand, toppling his ice cream onto the seat.
“Look what you’ve made me do!” he exclaimed. “Damn it, Dyan.”
“Now you have to pay the fine! Give me those pennies back!” I reached into his shirt pocket.
“Damn it, Dyan!”
“Damn it what, Dyan?”
He slammed on the brakes, came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, and smacked the steering wheel with his hands.
“Damn it, Dyan, do you want to get married?”
Now I really did gasp. Even with the nagging chorus of beeping horns flying past us, I couldn’t take my licoriced lips off his.
That night, for the first time, Cary spent the night with me at my apartment. In his arms, I slept like I hadn’t slept in ages. It was as if all this time I’d been sleeping on a thorn without knowing it. Now it was gone, and I was floating on air through a corridor of dreams.
I felt safe.
Just after dawn, Cary stirred awake and rolled over to face me.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” he said.
“I had a dream that you asked me to marry you,” I said.
“That was no dream. I asked you in real life. And you said yes. And I’m holding you to it.”
“No matter what I say or do?”
“No matter what.”
Later that morning, after Cary left, I took Bangs for a walk. It was early spring, and there were chirping birds and mailmen, lawn mowers and roses. The sounds, the colors, the smells . . . my senses had come alive like they’d never been before.
Love.
From the time I was a schoolgirl, it seemed that love was all we ever talked about and everything we were waiting for . . . without having the first clue what it was,