Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (10 page)

“She said, ‘What would I do with that silly old thing?' ” Cary said. He walked to the window and looked out on the street for a few moments, then, with his back still turned to me, said, “You know, when I was just a boy, my mother took me shopping one afternoon. Somehow we got separated, and I got lost, and I was really very scared, but I was determined not to cry. I'm sure I wasn't lost for more than three or four minutes, but I was really terrified, and suddenly I felt someone grab my hand from behind and spin me around. It was my mother, and she was very,
very
angry. ‘You see how it is, Archie?' she said. ‘Who looks out for you? Who came to save you?
Me,
that's who! I'm the only one in the whole world who cares about you, and you better not forget it!' ”

He let out a long sigh.

“It's so beautiful outside,” I said. “Why don't we take a walk?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Oneness

W
e'd walked in silence hand in hand for a good half hour as dusk settled over the tree-lined streets of Bristol and the streetlamps blinked on all at once as if to light our way. A cold breeze rattled the brittle autumn leaves, warning of heavy weather. After a while, Cary led us to a park overlooking the river Avon, where we settled onto a bench overlooking the water.

“I guess you know I went twenty years without seeing Elsie,” Cary finally said.

“I had no idea it was such a long time.”

He slumped forward, clasped his hands together, and sighed. Then he suddenly corrected his posture and sat up straight on the bench. He was looking at the river as he spoke.

“We weren't the happiest family, you know,” he said. “Elias, my dad—he liked drink and he liked women besides my mother. He'd disappear for days at a time. I didn't mind so much, really, because there was a lot less tension in the house when he was away. And I loved having Elsie to myself. I always felt guilty about that. Still do.”

“You were her only child,” I said. “It seems kind of normal to feel that way.”

“You're probably right, but still . . . When he'd come back after one of his tears, there was always a terrible row. They'd holler at each other for hours on end. I hated hearing them yell at each other. He was a piece of work, my dad. Worked as a pants presser. Didn't aspire to anything grander, but that didn't keep him from feeling like he'd gotten shortchanged.”

A foghorn boomed and the sound reverberated along the river. I shivered. Cary jammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and cocked his ear toward the sound. He seemed to be in his own world now, revisiting the haunts of his youth for the first time in many years and revisiting the history he'd spent those years trying to shut out. As he'd gone along, I got the feeling he wasn't telling the story to me anymore as much as he was telling it to himself.

“It's getting colder,” he said. “Do you fancy a drink? As I recall, there's a cozy little pub a few blocks ahead.”

We started walking again, arm in arm. “I completely adored her,” he said. “Maybe because she adored me. I mean, she was tough. She'd fine me tuppence for spilling my milk on the table. But I would've jumped through flaming hoops for those occasions when for no particular reason, she'd smile at me and take me in her arms. To me, it was like watching the sun rise.”

I wanted to press him for more of the story, but my instincts were to hold back. He would begin again when he felt like it. Every strand of the story he shared seemed to come at the expense of a pint of his own blood.

The pub was where Cary remembered it. There was a nook in the rear, out of view from the main bar area, and we managed to slip into it without being noticed. I went to the bar and got a pint of ale for Cary and a cup of tea for myself. When I sat back down with him, I didn't say anything, hoping he'd resume.

“Anyway, I came home one day and Elsie was gone. We had some of her cousins living with us by then—my father was working in Southampton—and they told me she'd gone to the sea for a rest. That seemed very strange to me. I couldn't understand why she wouldn't have taken me with her. I lay awake at night wondering if I'd done something wrong.” Cary squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them.

“Dear God,” I said.

“I was only ten years old. I thought she went away because she didn't love me anymore.”

I took Cary's hand and our eyes locked. Then he took my hand in both of his and went on. “The story about the seaside was too flimsy to hold up for very long. Finally, many weeks later, one of my cousins took me aside and said, ‘Archie, I have to give you some unhappy news. Your mother is dead.' ”

He lowered his head again, closed his eyes, and masked them with his fingers. “That's what I thought for twenty years. That my mother was dead.”

“Why would they tell you she was dead?”

Cary leaned back just as a shadow fell over our table. A ruddy-faced man stood grinning at us, holding two pints of ale. He set them down on the table.

“Just wanted to be able to tell me mates I'd bought Cary Grant a pint! You are a local boy, after all!”

“Very gracious, sir,” Cary said. Cary was always polite with well-meaning fans, and he was always fairly ruthless about protecting his privacy. But I think he was relieved by the interruption. He chatted for a couple of minutes, and after ascertaining that the man's third cousin once removed had indeed attended grade school with him, shook hands with the man and steered me out of the pub. Just as we were at the doorway, Cary turned and stepped back to the bar. He pressed a bill into the barkeep's hand and I heard him say, “Buy the house a couple of rounds on me.”

Walking back to the hotel, I had a feeling that had been all I would hear for the night.

W
e stood in the hotel hallway, each with our keys in hand, looking at each other.

My heart was heavy. My heart was full. Cary had opened up to me . . . the two of us were melding into one.

I felt it happening.

I didn't say a word.

He didn't say a word.

We just looked very deeply into each other's eyes.

I took his hand, the one that held the door key. I took the key, unlocked his door, and walked through ahead of him. He hesitated in the hallway a moment, then followed me in.

T
he clock on the nightstand read quarter past three. I was snuggled up against Cary, my arm draped across his chest. I felt him exhale and could tell he wasn't sleeping either. “You awake?” I whispered.

“Yes. Awake but happy.”

“Me too.”

“I'm glad, dear girl.”

“Cary?”

“Yes?”

“How did you find out Elsie was alive?”

He sighed and curled his arm around my back.

“I was thirty years old. I was in Los Angeles, and I got a call from my father. He'd managed to track me down through the studio. We thought it was probably a crank call, but for some reason I followed up on it.”

“And it was him?”

“Yes. I knew his voice immediately, even though I hadn't heard it in many years. Anyway, he said he needed to talk to me about something vitally important, and that he couldn't tell me on a transatlantic call . . .” He paused. “Dyan, do you really want to hear all this? Wouldn't you rather just enjoy the rest of the night?”

“It's up to you,” I said. Cary stretched and swung his feet on the floor, then got up. He got himself a glass of water and took a sip.

“I couldn't imagine what could be so important, but he persuaded me to fly to England. He actually asked me to meet him in a pub in Bristol. I almost didn't recognize him. He'd pretty well ruined himself with drinking. Jowls hanging, bloodshot eyes. He just looked like an old, broken-down alcoholic. Nothing like what I'd remembered.

“So we shook hands and exchanged some vague pleasantries. He rubbed the material of my jacket between his hands and said, ‘Learned a thing or two from the old man, didn't you?' The fact that this wreck of a human being had been the Elias Leach I remembered as my father—it was unimaginable.”

Cary paused. I could hear the clock ticking and a car rumble through the street below. Then there was a long silence. He was sitting sidesaddle in a chair across from the bed, facing the window. I thought for a moment he'd drifted off.

He finally continued. “I asked what he wanted to see me about. He looked down into his drink and said, ‘It's about your mother. She's not dead.'

“It didn't register for a solid minute. I was sure I hadn't heard him right. I thought maybe by now he'd gotten wet brain from drinking so much. So I asked him what in the hell that was supposed to mean.

“He said it again: ‘She's not dead.' He wouldn't look at me. Just kept staring into his pint like God was talking to him from the bottom of the glass. His mouth tightened and his shoulders were all tense and bunched up. He was acting like this was something he had to get off his chest but resented me bitterly for being the one he had to tell.

“So then he said, ‘I was trying to
protect
you! I
had
to put her in a mental institution.' I still couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about. A mental institution? I wanted to pick him up and throw him through the plate glass window, but I needed to understand what he was saying. I finally regained my senses. I grabbed him by the collar. ‘Are you telling me that my mother is alive?'

“He seemed almost to be crying, but they were angry tears: ‘I was trying to protect you!' He kept on bellowing that, like it would save him. It was as if, in his mind, he was on trial before a judge.

“He told me she was in Fishponds,” Cary said. “And that horrified me more than anything.”

“Fishponds?” I repeated.

“It's a state-run lunatic asylum outside of Bristol. Terrible place. So the bastard had put her in
Fishponds
.”

“Why would he do that? Did she have some kind of a breakdown?”

“Elsie never had a breakdown. She was probably depressed, but who could blame her, being married to
him
? No, he wanted to get her out of the way so he could do whatever he wanted and go on with his life without having to support her . . . or me.

“That was all I needed to hear from Elias. I stood up and walked out of the pub. It was pathetic, the way he hollered after me. ‘You should
thank
me! I did it for
you
!' But this was something he'd kept bottled up for twenty years now, and it turned out he was dying and probably knew it. He died within a year after that.”

I couldn't speak. I wanted to say something, but I could not find my voice.

Cary climbed out of his chair, paced a bit, and then sat on the edge of the bed. I sat up and moved over next to him. After a long minute or two, he went on.

“The next day, I rented a car and drove to Fishponds. I went through the iron gates and pulled up in front of this dark, grim stone building. It reminded me of some awful debtors' prison from a Dickens novel. I was very nervous. And you know, the strange thing was—maybe because I was still in shock over the whole thing—in my mind, I was still seeing her as she was when I was a child. So I looked for a woman with thick black hair and sharp brown eyes . . . smooth olive skin . . .

“When the nurse led me to her room, I went numb. I couldn't imagine the white-haired old woman with that sunken face and dead, hollowed-out eyes was my mother. I almost asked her if she knew where Elsie Leach was. But she was having the same kind of reaction. She squinted at me like she thought she'd seen me before, and she said, ‘Who are you?'

“I said, ‘I'm your son.' I could barely speak. She stared for the longest time, saying nothing, and then at last she said, ‘Archie. It's been a long time.' I told her I was sorry, that I had no idea she was here. She just kept staring.

“ ‘So how're you getting on, Archie?' she asked. I said, ‘I'm not Archie anymore. I'm an actor. People know me as Cary Grant.' I'm not sure that meant anything to her. In fact, all of a sudden, I wasn't sure it meant anything to
me.
It was surreal. Here was my mother packed away in a mental home all these years, while I went off and had a complete change of identity. I'd become wealthy and famous, living this very grand life, and all along, my poor mother had been
rotting away in this hellhole . . .
I'll never forgive myself.”

“But you had nothing to do with it, Cary.”

“That's not the way it feels.”

My heart was breaking, not just for Cary, but for Elsie too. There had to be a way to heal this, I thought. I would find a way.

T
he next day, Cary took me over to the Hippodrome, the theater in Bristol where he had gotten his start. His friend Noël Coward was there with the actress Elaine Stritch, rehearsing a production of
Sail Away,
and I was happy to see Cary's mood lighten upon encountering Noël. Cary had spoken fondly of him, saying he had been one of his early mentors in dress and comportment, and though Noël was only about five years older than Cary, the rapport between them reminded me of a particularly close uncle and nephew. They had a lot in common. Each had pulled himself up from a hardscrabble background by sheer force of personality and talent; each had acquired the sheen of refinement and wit. Noël, of course, was openly gay, and that effeteness was a huge part of his persona. He had never finished high school but had proved his creative mettle across many mediums—plays, songs, acting, screenplays, books—and thus earned the moniker “the Master.”

When the rehearsal broke for lunch, we joined Noël and Elaine at a nearby restaurant. After we sat down, Cary excused himself to go to the men's room, and Noël reached across the table, put his hand over mine, looked at me intently, and said, “You know, my dear, I am wildly in love with that man.”

“That makes two of us,” I said, laughing.

“Touché!” he replied. “Alas, there are so many who ardently hoped he'd come over to play on
our team . . .
but I think it's safe to say, he's solidly set in his ways.” Noël gave me a reassuring wink. Of course, his statement was freighted with meaning. With that subtle message, Noël was—for my benefit—dismissing the rumors that had circulated about Cary for years.

But it certainly wasn't as if I needed reassuring—especially after the previous night we had together.