Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [80]
We were going to stay with Cary’s friends Charles and Louisa Abrams, who had a country home outside of London. Charles was the owner of Aquascutum, one of the most venerable high-fashion clothing companies in England. We spent a couple of days with them, taking walks down the country lanes, lazing in the back garden, reading, and enjoying the peace—until somebody spotted us and blew our cover. One afternoon the four of us came back to find a clot of reporters gathered outside the gate. “Okay, I think it’s time to let a little air out of the media balloon,” Cary said when we got inside. “Time for a press conference.”
“A press conference?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle all the questions. I’m an old hand at it.” Cary called his London press liaison and set up the conference for the next morning at the Savoy Hotel.
When the time for the press conference arrived, Cary was as cool as gin and tonic on the rocks. He was smiling, relaxed, and on. He played the press like a piano.
In the spirit of gossip reportage in those days, the questions were designed to elicit cute, quotable answers. How did you first meet? How long was it before you were in love? When did you propose? Cary was a master at giving reporters catchy lines and whimsical comebacks without tipping his hand. That way both sides came away happy.
The clincher came when a reporter asked, “Would you two like to make a movie together?”
In response to the question, I gave a very enthusiastic nod. The laughter took Cary by surprise and he shot me a glance, then turned back to face the press. “In all seriousness, I’m very close to exiting the movie business once and for all,” he said adamantly. “Dyan and I are a family now, and I’m so looking forward to being a dull and domesticated house husband.”
As much as I loved the idea of doing a movie with Cary, it certainly didn’t take first place in my thoughts. I couldn’t picture Cary as being dull and domesticated, but the house husband part—I kind of liked that idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pressure Cooker
In the weeks before the wedding, I kept telling myself that after we were married, everything would be all right. In the months before the baby, I told myself that after the baby came, everything would be all right. I told that to myself daily.
After our honeymoon, Cary’s shell opened and closed and opened and closed. Sometimes he let me in, sometimes not. When it was closed, he wasn’t so much temperamental as he was withdrawn, but his moods shifted without warning or apparent cause. It was like watching TV with someone who was always changing the channel; you were never tuned in to the same show long enough to get comfortable. Of course, I’d spent days at a time at his house, but now that I was officially residing there, I started to get a different perspective.
For one thing, I really started to see what a solitary person he was. If the phone rang, nine out of ten times, it was for me. My friends knew I preferred for them to call during the day, so I wouldn’t be distracted with calls after Cary got home. Cary rarely called anyone but Stanley Fox. He went to the studio almost daily for four or five hours for final negotiations on Walk, Don’t Run, which he continued to declare would be his last film. He got home early and was disappointingly content to kick off his shoes and blank out in front of the television. Hoi Ping seemed like a lost memory, a night out seemed about as distant as Jupiter, and if Cary was being invited to any parties, he sure wasn’t telling me about them. Walk, Don’t Run would be shot in Tokyo, and I was eager for Cary to lock up the deal. They would have a five-or-six-week location schedule, and I thought the time away together in an exciting, exotic city like Tokyo would boost both our spirits. I was in a house on a hill in Beverly Hills, but the way the mood had been, it might as well have been Wuthering Heights.
Bangs did keep me company and her status as an indoor dog was nonnegotiable, though I occasionally had to defend it; Gumper continued to preside over the backyard like