Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (24 page)

“Thank you, Betsy,” she said, smiling appreciatively. Oh, well. There were worse things she could call me.

Later, back at the hotel, Cary became very quiet. I could tell he was upset and asked what it was. “Why wouldn't you confer with me before you invited my mother to come and stay with us?” He was visibly angry.

“I just assumed that's what you'd want! Why
wouldn't
you want her to stay with us?”

He was silent. I went on. “You lost her for all those years. Now that you've found her . . . I just don't understand. You jump through flaming hoops to make her happy. You do everything except what's obvious, which is to
bring her into your life—our lives
! Why?”

Cary regained his cool, as he always did after he'd lost his temper. He exhaled and touched me on the shoulder. “I've lived with this situation a lot longer than you have, dear girl.” He said it with such weight that I lost the momentum to challenge him. He went on. “I don't expect you to understand. I don't think anyone can.”

I let the moment breathe for a bit, and then I asked, “Do you love your mother, Cary?”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe she loves you?”

There was a pause. A long pause.

“I think she loved Archie.”

I went to him, put my arms around him, and held him close for a long moment. Without moving, I whispered, “Give her a break, Cary. Please. Just give her a break.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Husbands and Wives

W
hen we got back from England, I had a pile of messages from my mother beseeching me to call her the minute I got home. When I called, I could hear the tears in her voice, and considering how strong my mother was, I thought something terrible had happened.

“Your father,” she sniffled, “is seeing another woman.”

I had no idea what to say. My dad—the single most monogamous man on the planet, and after thirty-three years of marriage, still gaga over Mom—having an affair? I would've had an easier time believing it if she told me she'd been kidnapped by the jellyfish people and taken for a ride in their flying refrigerator.

“Mom, that's crazy,” I said. “Dad? Cheating on you? No way!”

“He's lying to me, honey. I've been married to him since 1934. I
know
when he's lying.”

I asked Mom what Dad was lying about to her. She told me that for the past several months he'd had to be away on business a lot—every ten days or so. Dad always told her where she could reach him when he was away, but he was rarely ever gone long enough for her to ring him. But she needed to talk to him about something on one of his trips, and the hotel he was supposed to be staying at said he wasn't registered as a guest. And the past two times he was away, same thing.

“There must be an explanation,” I said.

“Yes, there is! He's having an affair.”

I called my father at work. “What's going on? Mom thinks you're having an affair.”

“Oh no!” he said. “I was afraid of that.”

“So you are having an affair?”

“Only with a building contractor. I'm building a weekend house in the woods outside Portland. It's a surprise for Mom.” The house would be finished in three weeks, and Dad wanted me to plan to fly up for the unveiling. He'd have to make one more trip south to wrap it all up. In the meantime, I covered for Dad, or at least I tried. I told Mom that Dad had been staying with his cousin Jack to save money and there was nothing to worry about. I put her mind at ease enough to get her through his next trip away, but it was tough. She was right; my dad
had
been lying. She could see right through him. I wondered if that came with time, or if it came with love. I wondered if Cary and I could ever be that close.

T
he Las Vegas Strip flashed past the windows of the limo that was shuttling us from the airport to the Sands Hotel, and Jimmy Stewart's eyes were glued to the view. Neither he nor his wife, Gloria, had been to Vegas before, and it was such fun to see the ever-laconic Jimmy take it all in. “Looks like a mountain range made of costume jewelry,” he said of the blazing lights and blinding glitter.

We'd come to town at the invitation of Frank Sinatra, who was throwing a party at the Sands. The bash was in honor of the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of the actress Rosalind Russell and her husband, the producer Fred Brisson. Frank flew a big group of us out in a private jet. Cary had been best man at the Brisson wedding, and it was the first social activity that had piqued his interest in a long time. Frank himself was in top form. He'd recently married Mia Farrow, the blooming star, and released another hit album,
Sinatra at the Sands,
with Count Basie. The whole Rat Pack showed up to celebrate in style.

The party raged on for three nights, and it was a real bacchanal. I felt energized by it all. There was music and dancing, gambling and drinking, and a lavish buffet every night. On the first night, when Cary had drifted off to chat with Fred Brisson, I found myself dancing one after the other with Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis Jr. Not two seconds after my last dance, Frank Sinatra himself took me by the arm and said, “Dyan, I insist that you gamble away some of Cary's money. He's got a lot more than he needs.”

“How can I lose the most money fastest?” I laughed.

“Craps is a good start. Come on, I'll give you a personal lesson.”

So Frank steered me to the craps table. I had beginner's luck, because within a few throws, chips were piling up. I picked up the dice, blew on them, and tossed them. “Way to go, Cannon!” Frank exclaimed, clapping. But now a large crowd was gathering around us. “Blow on them for luck, Dyan!”

Snake eyes.

“Never say die!” Frank said as my chips were raked away. Even though I lost, I felt more lighthearted than I had in a long while.

The next thing I knew, Cary was murmuring in my ear. “Dyan, will you come with me please?”

“Cary Grant!”
Frank said, draining his cocktail and clapping Cary on the shoulder. “You just jinxed a hell of a roll. Would you mind standing at least ten yards clear of the table? I'm trying to make your wife an
independently
wealthy woman.”

Everyone at the table laughed.

Cary forced a smile and led me firmly by the arm into the corridor.

“Where have you been? I've been looking for you everywhere.”

“Just having fun. Frank was teaching me to shoot craps.”

“Would you mind very much trying not to make such a spectacle of yourself?” he said quietly.

I was lost. I had just joined in with Cary's good friends, at
their
invitation.

“Honestly, Cary, I don't understand. Explain this to me.
How
am I making a spectacle of myself? Don't you like to see me having a good time?”

He spoke under his breath. “Of course I do, Dyan. But you have to remember who you're with.”

“You weren't more than a hundred feet away. How was I going to forget?” Cary didn't answer but continued to look at me accusingly.

“I don't know how much longer I can take this,” I said. “Honestly, Cary, I feel like I'm losing my mind.”

“You see how you're talking? Can't I say
anything
without you feeling attacked?”

“I'm feeling like I'm about to have a breakdown, Cary.
That's
how I'm feeling.”

“Then why don't you have one and get it over with? It might be a good thing.”

“I can't believe you said that.”

Cary took a step back, shrugged, and exhaled softly. “I didn't mean it the way it may have sounded, Dyan. I'm thinking you just need to let it all go.”

I broke free of his arm and ran to hide in the ladies' room. A few moments later, Mia Farrow came in looking for me. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Cary said you were feeling sick to your stomach.”

“I'm okay. I'm better now.”

And I was. I'd realized something. I had gotten into a terrible habit of beating myself up for not meeting Cary's expectations—whatever they were. I decided that for the rest of the weekend, I would let go of the idea that I could do anything at all to satisfy Cary. I would refuse to let anything he said get to me. It actually worked. He came at me a couple of times with one disparaging remark or another, but I smiled and pretended not to hear them. Remarkably, he eased off.

We partied like college kids for the rest of the weekend.

J
ust when things seemed like they couldn't get any worse, they did. Right after we returned from Vegas, Cary stayed home to devote a full day to me—or at least to pointing out my flaws and imperfections. He practically trailed me around the house from morning until night, calling out my shortcomings. He had developed an obsession with knobs and handles. It seemed that I turned them too hard or not hard enough. I overtightened the knobs on the shower and stripped them. I didn't turn the knobs at the kitchen sink tightly enough, so they dripped. I was ruining the stove by not turning the burners on gently enough. I was ruining all the doorknobs in the house by forcing them instead of jiggling them. I pointed out that we were renting the house temporarily, but Cary said that was all the more reason to treat things with respect. I hadn't learned to treat things with respect, he said, because I had no respect for myself. And because of that, I had no respect for anyone else, especially him. All of these were acts of rebellion, he said. I resented him, he told me—
again—
because I had set him up as an authority figure when he wasn't.

On and on and on it went. I didn't place a coaster under my water glass. I parked my car in the driveway crooked. I shouldn't be so friendly to the mailman because he could get the wrong idea. I shouldn't be so friendly to the maid because it was good to keep a distance.

I needed a solution, a coping mechanism, similar to the one I'd used in Vegas. It was on that day, about the time he was pointing out that my wardrobe needed an organizing principle, be it by color, style, or weight—the choice, unbelievably, was up to me—that I started experimenting with the art of disconnection. In a way, this had been where it was leading for some time. It was impossible to field Cary's criticisms one by one—impossible. But if I didn't find a way to deal with them, I would surely die the death of a thousand cuts.

R
eally, I'd begun to see the assaults as an energy form, a kind of entity, and I could tell when the entity was taking over. It was black and menacing. I thought of the black cloud of termites that had chased me from the dining room in the old house. It was like that.

“I want you to look at something,” Cary had said, taking me by the arm to my bedroom closet. “You see, this indicates
no sense of order whatsoever.
You need to . . .”

It happened spontaneously. I stopped hearing him. His lips moved, but all I heard was the sound of wind. It was a pleasant, soothing sound, even if Cary's lips were moving to it. I started hearing the wind more and more after that. It was the only way I could survive. Cary noticed on some level that it was harder for him to get to me, though there's no way he could know that I was spending more and more time with the wind.

I felt myself come briefly to life when I got a call from the director David Swift, who offered me the lead in the movie version of
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
“You're not just my first choice, you're everyone's,” he said. “We all agree that you
own
that role.”

Needless to say, I was thrilled. I told him I'd call later to confirm, after discussing it with Cary. Then I asked myself what was I confirming, and why did it have to be confirmed? I felt my heart sinking.

I knew presenting this news to Cary would be a touchy affair, and it was important to catch him in the right mood. So when he came home, I waited for him to finish his Manhattan.

I told him about the offer. He sighed wearily and said, “Dyan, you know how I feel about that. I don't want you to work. You're the mother of a young child.”

“Is this open for discussion?”

“No.”

“Cary, you've got many friends and colleagues who've balanced children and career very successfully.”

“What other people do doesn't concern me in the least. Dyan, you wanted to start a family. I'm holding up my end of the bargain, and you should hold up yours.”

I began to retreat into silence, but Cary was attacking one of my few surviving hopes for the future. I couldn't allow him to rewrite history. “My end of the bargain never included a word about me not working, Cary!”

“Does your end of the bargain include putting family harmony ahead of your own interests? Because right now things are too fragile to survive the stress of you being away on a movie set.”

“All right,” I said. I thought about it. Maybe he was right. Viewed from a certain angle, he
was
right. But then, viewed from a certain angle, anybody could be right about anything.

I no longer had my own view.

A
nother couple of weeks of life in Zombie Land went by, and the time for me to go to Portland for the surprise unveiling of my parents' love shack arrived. My mother was still unsettled about Dad's quirky behavior. Luckily, Mom had a bowling tournament near Portland that weekend, which made it easy to set up the surprise. And what a coincidence—Dad had “business” in Portland until the end of the week. So Dad told Mom he'd come to watch her bowl in the tournament. That by itself made Mom happy; she could at least be pleased that he could take time out of his secret life for her.

Mom had driven to Portland with two friends who were in on the conspiracy. After the tournament, they pretended to get lost and found themselves in front of a gate that had a dirt road leading up to a house. There were lights on inside. Mom was appointed to go to the front door and ask for directions. When she rang, I answered. It was good that she was healthy and strong, or I'd have worried about giving her a heart attack. “Hi, Mom,” I said. “Welcome home!”

Then my father stepped into view with open arms, laughing heartily and with a ton of emotion. Mom's tear ducts were about to burst. “I needed a place to take my girlfriend!” he said. “You
are
my girlfriend, aren't you?” Mom squeezed his cheeks with her hands and gave him a mock slap. “You sneaky thing,” she said, kissing him. “I just can't believe my eyes.”

Dad had done a lot more than just build the place. The kitchen was already set up with her favorite plates, pots, and pans. There were new shoes and dresses in her closet. He'd put all of her favorite cosmetics in the bathroom, right down to her brand of mascara and her favorite lipstick. For my father, Mom's happiness was his own happiness.
That,
I thought, was a true fairy tale marriage. And it was real.