Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [87]
“Depends on what you mean by ‘exciting,’ ” I said. “We’ve got a very quiet home life. When he’s not making a movie, he comes home at five and kicks his shoes off at six.”
“What do you do for dinner?” another asked. “Do you have a cook?” I started to feel like somebody had called a press conference.
“Yes, we have a cook, and his name is Colonel Sanders.” And I told them the story of my counterfeit fried chicken, which had them splitting their sides.
Several days later, as I was taking a long soak in the tub, Cary stepped into the bathroom with a newspaper. “I think you should see this,” he said.
I thought he wanted to share another article about childbirth, or child rearing—or tennis—but this had nothing to do with motherhood or sports.
“Just a bit of gossip I thought might amuse you,” he said, then read from the paper: “ ‘A friend in Beverly Hills tells us that Cary Grant has been singing the praises of his new wife’s cooking, particularly the fried chicken she served him on a recent weekday evening . . . However, Dyan Cannon, the mother-to-be of Mr. Grant’s firstborn child, confided to a friend that she is no Julia Child and that she passed off a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken as her own cooking, which won her heaps of the glamour god’s gustatory goodwill. If that’s the way to Cary’s heart, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear of women from around the world lobbing drumsticks over the Universal Studios wall . . .’ ”
Cary cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. I pinched my nose and hid underwater for as long as I could hold my breath. When I came up for air, he was still there.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh dear. Oh my God.”
Cary broke into hearty laughter. “That’s the most amusing gossip item I’ve ever read about myself!” he said. “And maybe the only one that ever got the facts straight! Good stuff.” He started to leave, then turned.
“Dyan, seriously, there’s something you’ve got to keep in mind. When it comes to this creature known as Cary Grant . . . the walls have ears.”
I’d heard the line about “living in a fishbowl,” of course. Now I really understood what it meant.
Later that night at about half past ten, I was rooting through the refrigerator. Other than cheeseburgers, I hadn’t had a lot of cravings, but now my appetite was raging like an unfed guard dog. “What are you looking for?” Cary asked.
“Mexican food.” That was a little peculiar. I’d only had Mexican food about twice, but for some reason nothing else was going to appease me. I was obsessed with chicken enchiladas, which I’m not sure I’d even had before.
Cary smiled tenderly and took me by the arm. “The lady wants Mexican food, the lady gets Mexican food.”
“Where are we going to find it at this time of night?”
“Casa Vega. Their specialty is being open until two A.M.”
The restaurant was just a fifteen-minute jaunt over the hill, down the canyon, and east along Ventura Boulevard. We walked out with a double order of enchiladas for me and carne asada for Cary. We were quiet in the car, but it was a different kind of quiet than the icy silence that enveloped us so much of the time now. Halfway back home, Cary took my hand and spoke softly. “Dyan, you’re the only woman I’ve ever trusted enough to have a baby with,” he said. “This is what I’ve always wanted—a real family. I wanted it so badly it terrified me.”
I slid close to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “I understand, Cary. But this is a different family than the one you came from.”
There was a long silence.
“Do you know what forever is?” he asked.
“A long time?”
“That’s how long I’ll love you.”
“And I hope after that, too,” I said.
“You’re going to have a tough time getting rid of me, even then.”
I slept that night like I hadn’t in months.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Completion
On February 25, 1966, I got up feeling on top of the world, had a cup of tea, and suddenly felt a trickle of wetness running down my thigh. My time had come. Cary grabbed his keys and almost knocked me over on his way to the phone to call the hospital. Bangs knew something was up and she