Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (30 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Liberation Day

O
n a cool, breezy day in March, after picking up Jennifer from school, I noticed that the gas needle was falling into the empty zone, so we stopped at a Texaco. “Fill 'er up?” the attendant asked.

“Uh, just a second,” I said, counting the money in my wallet. “No, just five dollars, please.” Our pantry was completely empty and I still had to go to the market. There, Jennifer ran ahead of me, picking things out, as I pushed the cart through the aisles, thinking of how to stretch our food budget as far as possible. At the checkout counter, Jennifer's eyes lit up at an equestrian magazine, and she started to point to it. I pretended not to notice and placed my items on the conveyor belt. The total was more than I expected and I had the cashier set aside several items.

At home, the mail had brought another notice from the bank. I was behind on the mortgage and I had thirty days to catch up, or . . . no more house. I took a deep breath and tried not to let Jennifer see my worry, but she was already on her way out the door to join some friends on the beach.

I'd bought this house in the Malibu Colony because I urgently wanted a safe, happy environment for Jennifer to grow up in, and she loved it. Her school was close by, and there was the beach, the sun, the fresh sea air, and lots of kids on the beach for her to play with. The thought of losing the house made my heart sink.

It was now about five years after the divorce and my meltdown. Since then, I'd made steady progress. I had stirred back to life, and little by little, so had my career. It started one day, in late 1968, when I was offered a screen test for
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
Later on the same day, Universal Studios offered me a four-picture deal.

Bob & Carol
was a movie about two couples who try their best to navigate the sexual revolution by overcoming such traditional hang-ups as, well, marital fidelity. The script was brilliant and I found the premise to be fascinatingly perverse, maybe because it was about people trying to find happiness in freedom from the borders of marriage, when I'd driven myself to madness while trying to stay safely inside them. The film reflected the prevailing anxiety about so-called “free love,” which not only wasn't free but in the story came with quite a hefty emotional price tag. Paul Mazursky had directed, and it co-starred Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, and Elliott Gould.

It was hard to turn down a four-picture deal—it meant getting to work right away—but something told me I needed to play Alice.

“A bird in the hand, Dyan,” my agent said.

“How do you know the bird in your hand won't just peck a hole in it?” I asked.

“With a big six-figure deal, you can have your hand sewn up and the bird stuffed,” my agent said.

I stuck to my guns and screen-tested for
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
My agent thought I was crazy, naturally. But being true to my creative standards paid off in its own way. I got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, and that led to a quick succession of roles that to me were exciting, challenging, and fulfilling. That triumph did a lot to restore my confidence in my own judgment. I was in demand.

Maybe I'd gotten spoiled, but then I'd always been particular about the characters I played. But after a back-to-back succession of movies, I stopped coming across roles that appealed to me. Many times, the characters were too shallow, too weak, or just didn't require much but showing up and being the Girl. I told my agent I only wanted to do parts that were uplifting to women. The problem was, there just weren't very many of them.

Auditions are kind of like parties; after you turn down so many invitations, they stop inviting you. Now I was paying the price for being so particular, and my finances were a disaster. I'd never worried much about money; I'd been working consistently for several years, Jennifer's school and basic needs were taken care of, and I always operated on faith that one thing or another would turn up. I didn't want to have to go to anyone for money.

For the first time in a long while, I felt myself being tugged back into a morass. For five years, I'd strived and strived and I'd made progress. Great progress, and not just with my career; I'd climbed out of the deep hole I'd fallen into mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I'd called Lily soon after I got out of the mental ward. What I'd been through was beyond my understanding. Here I'd always been an independent, spirited woman, and the quivering, insecure mess I'd been reduced to—it just seemed like a bad dream, but one that I was determined never again to have. I was a seeker and always had been, and I wanted answers. I wanted to get to the bottom of some of the
big
questions about life, and not only the ones that had to do with
me . . .
What I'd been through, I decided, could be useful. No, it
would
be useful. I knew if that had happened to me, it had happened to others.

During my first conversation with her, I told Lily I was genuinely seeking a spiritual path, but that there might be some obstacles—namely, that the word “God” made me extremely nervous because it had been such a flash point for conflict in my family.

“Can we just use the word ‘love' instead?” I asked her.

“That's the best word you could possibly use, because that's what God is,” she said. “God is Love.” And I knew I'd found my teacher. The idea that the power that ran the universe was something called love made sense to me. I didn't completely understand it, but I sure was going to explore it further. I spent many hours a day in pursuit of that tiny glimpse I'd had of it. I found myself growing stronger, calmer, and more secure.

It was funny how the people closest to me used such similar words to describe the change they saw come over me. They all talked as if I'd gone somewhere far away, with a stand-in walking through my life and saying my lines for me. “I'm starting to see traces of
you
again,” Mom told me a few months after I was out of the hospital.

“You're back!” Dad said. “We've missed you so much.”

Addie said, “I can finally breathe again—I've been so worried about you for so long.”

“Don't go away like that again!” Mary said. “We were scared to death you weren't coming back.”

So was I, my dear friends,
I thought.

So I just gave it all up. No more booze—not even wine; no more pills. For a while, I took a toke or two here and there to take the edge off, but eventually I decided I didn't want to use crutches anymore because I was tired of limping.

As for men . . . suffice it to say they could be just as tempting a form of escapism as anything else, but as months wore on, I found myself making wiser and better choices. I started appreciating them as companions instead of saviors, or teachers, or whatever the need of the moment was.

But I still wondered where my life was going, and I still felt like I was making it up as I went along. I'd turned down a lot of roles and a lot of money, and berated myself for putting Jennifer and myself in such a precarious position. I'd try to live according to my highest sense of right, as Lily had taught me, but here I was with a quarter tank of gas and a couple of bowls of salad to my name. Was it always going to be this hard? I really didn't know how much longer my strength could hold out. Being a single mom is hard enough, even if you're financially stable—which I certainly wasn't.

That night was chilly, and Jennifer and I sat by the fireplace cuddling and warming ourselves. I let out a sigh. It had been a rough few weeks and a particularly trying day. I felt like I was faced with a huge hurdle, and I didn't know how I was going to get past it. The idea of losing the house gnawed at me. Well, what was the worst that could happen? I had my beautiful daughter and I had my health back.

I ran my fingers through Jennifer's dark hair and looked into her big brown eyes.

Cary's eyes. My nose. Cary's chin. My skin. We were all parts of each other, I thought. Sometimes my marriage to Cary seemed like an illusion, but not very often. Here in my arms was the fact that it had all been real. Cary and I had been married, and that was a fact of my life. Jennifer was the fruit of that union, and she was the continuity.

From the time she was old enough to understand, I told Jennifer, “Your daddy and I have had some problems, but I know how much you love your daddy, and I know how much your daddy loves you. And that's good and right. Nothing and no one should ever come in between that. Your daddy and I are sorting out our issues, but they're our issues and not yours.”

Mostly, it worked out pretty well. Cary and I were always polite with each other and did our best to put Jennifer's best interests first.

“What's the matter, Mommy?” Jennifer asked as we basked by the fire.

“Why do you ask, honey?”

“Because you had to give back some of the groceries today.”

“I've just run a little low on cash, baby. That's all.”

Damn. Maybe the role as the swamp creature's love interest wasn't so bad after all.

Jennifer gave me a hug, then slid off the couch and went into her bedroom. She came out a moment later.

“Here, Mommy, I want you to have this. It will help.” She handed me the old cigar box in which she kept the money she earned from doing odd jobs around the house—the money she was saving to buy a horse. No mother in the world has to be told how high up in my throat
that
launched my heart.

“Thank you so much for offering this, sweetheart. But that's yours. We'll be fine. I promise.”

We hugged each other and I walked her into her bedroom and tucked her into bed. Back in the living room, I opened the cigar box. It contained a hundred and seventy-five dollars and forty-two cents.

That's all we had to our names.

I started to feel shaky in a way that I hadn't for a long time. I was beginning to feel that old stomach-twisting anxiety again. I was terrified of falling back into its jaws, and just as terrified of facing it as I was of numbing it. My mind was a hive of angry bees, and it buzzed with a miasma of worst-case-scenario thoughts.
Lose the house, hit the skids, nobody loves me . . .

A familiar pressure built up in me, and I felt like an overinflated balloon that could burst at any second. I didn't think I could take it another minute, and I urgently needed to let the pressure out. But I knew that the usual chemical options were nothing more than a Band-Aid, and when I started to sweat, they wouldn't stick. There had to be
another
valve through which I could release this mess of indigestible and unbearable feelings.

For some reason, I reached for my notepad. I decided I would write a business letter to the customer service department of the universe. It would begin:
Dear Universe, I am writing to complain of the miserable circumstances here on the planet Earth and in particular to point out my own personal unhappiness . . .

I took the pad and went out to the beach. I sat down on a fat log I'd hauled down from Big Sur.

I wrote:
Dear Universe, . . .

And then I put my pen down. I felt the darkness—not the darkness of the night, but the darkness in my soul—swirling around me, funneling around me like a tornado.

I looked up to the heavens and started to shout. All was anguish, from the hair on my head to the marrow in my bones.

“Does anyone care?” I screamed. “Is anyone listening? If anything or anyone is up there or out there, I need to know it! I've got a mess here. A
big
mess. And I am trying to climb my way out but I need some help! DO YOU HEAR ME? I need help, damn it, and I need help now!”

I thought of that day when as a seven-year-old I'd shouted at God and then suddenly fell down hard on my behind. And I halfway expected to be knocked off the log. In fact, I would have welcomed it. But nothing. I felt completely lost. And alone.

I sat back, truly drained, emptied out. But then something began to swell up in me like an incoming tide. And in the silence of the night, I heard:

Today is Liberation Day, and everything is going my way.

Where did
that
come from?
I wondered. The fact was,
nothing
was going my way. But deep, deep inside me, in a place I had never visited before, I was led to be still, very still. Then I heard these words and I wrote them down:

Today is Liberation Day,

And everything is going my way,

Right here right now,

please listen to what I have to say

I'm gonna stand up, kneel down, roll over,

kiss the ground and pray

Thank you, Love, for bringing to me

the answer to a lifetime prayer

Heaven isn't tomorrow . . . or yesterday,

or him or her or them out there

or ice cream

It's here right now, inside of me

And that blinkin' message has set me free

to do just what I'm meant to do

Love each and every one of you

it's here right now . . . as I sit here

and don't know how

to pay the rent or the laundry man

or the big tough lawyers with their get-even plan

it's here right now . . . for me . . . for you . . .

for all of us who refuse to do their will or their way,

just because they say

it's the way to do and the way to be

because they don't know

they just make up schemes

as they improvise their unsteady way along