Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [86]
As the time for Cary to come home neared, I started feeling guilty about serving Kentucky Fried Chicken to Cary when I’d promised a home-cooked meal. Then I used my powers of reason to convince myself that as long as he thought it was a home-cooked meal, then that was as good as the real thing. Giving in to my predilection for culinary forgery, I dumped the chicken from its bucket onto a serving platter, put the mashed potatoes in a bowl, and slid them both into the oven. I knew it was a wacky thing to do, but I also had known that passing off La Scala’s rosemary chicken as my own was strange too. I didn’t want to lie, so I never claimed to have made it. Well, it worked once . . .
And it worked again. Cary pronounced it absolutely the best fried chicken he’d ever had, and he stuffed himself. Thank you, Colonel Sanders. After dinner, Cary ducked into the bedroom and came out holding something behind his back.
“Whatcha got there, Irving?” I asked.
“My little contribution to this wonderful feast.” And he held out two Picnic bars, one for each of us. “You’ll have to forgive my little outbursts,” he said. “I’m pregnant, you know. It’s hormonal.” We laughed together.
In the next few days, I heard him extol the glories of my chicken to three or four people on the phone. One of them was Artis Lane, a painter who had done a portrait of Cary several years earlier. I’d met Artis and her husband, Vince, through a close friend and former vocal coach, Laura Hart. Since Cary and I both knew Artis through different channels, and we’d been talking about getting together with her for some time, Cary made a date with Artis and Vince. Vince and I connected like we’d already known each other for a hundred years. I didn’t know it then, but in the time to come, Vince and Artis would prove to be two extraordinarily important people in my life.
In late January, about a month before I was due, Addie threw me a magnificent baby shower at the Beverly Hills Hotel and invited about two dozen women. After a lavish lunch, I docked myself in a big, comfortable chair and started opening gifts.
In the midst of the festivities, Cary popped in to say hello and the girls were all atwitter. Many hadn’t met him before, and I once again witnessed that unassailable Cary Grant magic. It was as if a projector had switched on. They were watching a Cary Grant movie, but in 3-D. He stayed for a half hour, and for much of the afternoon the girls couldn’t stop marveling at my good fortune.
“Think about it, Dyan. Cary Grant is every woman’s dream, and you’re the one who’s married to him.”
As paper gift wrapping accumulated next to my chair, bits of conversation about married life floated past my ears like ticker tape in a parade. Birthday surprises, forgotten anniversaries, infidelities, unexpected moments of joy, painful disappointments. They talked about what Dan, Harvey, Stewart, or Tom did or did not do, and what was wonderful and what was not. And so it was with Cary Grant. The names didn’t matter. But when the women carried on about how dazzling, wonderful, thrilling, and romantic my marriage surely was—because I was married to Cary Grant—I felt like I was listening to a fairy tale about a white knight and one lucky damsel, but a fairy tale that had nothing to do with me. My marriage wasn’t any more or less a fairy tale than theirs were. It just seemed to be. Of course, I’d wanted to believe in that fairy tale too, and just because my bubble had been burst didn’t mean theirs had to be. Yes, it was an amazing thing to be married to Cary Grant, but I didn’t think of him as “Cary Grant.” I thought of him just as my husband.
“It must be