THE BOOK
"Heaven Knows, Anything Goes"

SYNOPSIS & EXCERPT (scroll down)

Synopsis

In 1979, Beverly Hills psychologist, Dr. Dianne de la Vega, meets movie star and vocalist, Dick Haymes, at a Los Angeles TV studio. Dianne is fascinated with Haymes’ commitment to perfection and the romance of his remarkable baritone voice. After an intense fourteen-day courtship, she moves into his apartment.

For Dianne, the first three months of their relationship is sheer bliss, a series of Hollywood banquets, parties, and hilarious housekeeping. Dianne learns what it means to be a celebrity. Only references to her sweeping auburn hair mar her excitement. “You must remind Dick of his ex-wife, Rita Hayworth. She had hair like yours” is the comment that makes Dianne doubt Richard’s love for her.

The two lovers are confident, in spite of Richard’s health and financial problems, ex wives, children and alcoholism. They have been given a second chance at love-this time unconditional love-until Detroit.

Dianne flies to Detroit for the closing night of the Big Broadcast of 1944 with Harry James, starring Dick Haymes. The show has been a smashing success in New York and Philadelphia thanks to Haymes’ popularity.

Sitting on the edge of her seat in the audience, Dianne realizes Haymes has been drinking to find the strength to go on stage. The last song he ever sings is for her-:”The More I See You.”

In response to the frantic phone calls from the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center and the Dick Cavett Show in New York. Haymes calmly cancels all future commitments and prepares to die. The oncologists give him one month to live.

Haymes tells the press when asked if he is ready to go, “I’ve had it all, known everybody, had everything except love. Now I have that, too.” He glances at Dianne who is devastated.

The morning after his death, she finds a single red rose wrapped in baby’s breath on her doorstep with a card-“In Memory of Love.” She knows it is from Haymes, who proceeds to guide Dianne to Maui, Alaska, and Findhorn, Scotland. She learns, as he leads her, that life does exist after death; we can communicate with our loved ones who have died; and most of all, unconditional love never dies.

EXCERPT of "Heaven Knows"

Part 1
Chapter1

Richard

The first time I saw her I was leaning on a bar (where else?) at Jerry Van Dyke's in the Valley. She smiled at me, that beautiful smile. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She wore a light mink coat and black velvet pants. She looked right at me, with those green eyes dancing, maybe a little shy. My TV director, Thom, introduced us. I stayed next to her the rest of the evening.

I had never met anyone like her. After all, in the world I lived, as Dick Haymes, crooner, ballad singer, movie star of Technicolor musicals, women like her didn't exist, and if they did, I ignored them. I've changed since then. Now that I’m dead.

I fell madly in love with her only to wind up pushing her away. I couldn't appreciate then what I know now. Once I was sure she loved me, I systematically did everything I could to destroy her love for me. I almost succeeded.

I can see her. She's grieving, of course, and all I can do is sit here and watch. Once she felt me kiss her. But for the most part I have no way of easing her pain. I can only sit beside her helplessly and watch her agonize.

The only hell there is, is the one we make for ourselves. The only devil there is, is the one we let loose in ourselves. Well, I made my hell and I've let loose plenty of the devil in me and now I'm paying my dues. Not because I'm being punished. No way. We're loved, not punished. We're allowed to experience the results of our efforts, that's all.
I had my chance. I was holding God in my arms and I didn't even know it, and now it's too late.

It will be a while before we can get together again, before I can hold her in my arms again and tell her how much I love her. I get the message to her, through her friends or strangers even. She's more open to me now that the evidence is so blatant. She's not censoring so much now that her grief is subsiding and all that psychology bullshit isn't interfering.
But it's not the same. Not like when I had her with me. When I lay next to her. I knew she wanted me to hold her (I always knew what she was thinking). I wouldn't.

She came to me every day, every morning and every night, except when she couldn't stand it any longer. Then she left town. And I slept through it. She seldom complained.
"At times when I am with you I feel like I'm not really there," she would say.

Funny, my other six wives made the same complaint. I didn't understand then. I do now. Now I've made a one hundred and eighty degree turn. Now I know how it feels to be there, to be ignored and unseen. That's what I mean by paying your dues. I had everything in the world at my feet for another, "comeback", as they call it, and this time with a woman who knew how to love-no conditions. What did I do?I devised every method I could to frustrate and test her. Always testing, testing, testing...

I couldn't believe it. She never gave up. She never let go. Yeah, she'd go away sometimes when she was hurting really bad, but she'd always come back. There was always another coming, half out of her mind with hurt and grief, but she'd come back.

She wrote on a photograph she gave me (I had pressured her for it), "I pray to God I will never betray the love I feel for you." And by God, she didn't. The only woman I ever knew who didn't, and I've known plenty, as everyone is well aware. No matter what I did, she'd look back at me with that quizzical look on her face, sort of sad. "Richie," she'd say, "it doesn't seem to matter what you do, I never stop loving you."

CHAPTER TWO

Keep it simple. Richard, you printed those words on all of your stationery, and boyishly tried to live up to them. Your celebrity status made your desire impossible.

I spent Christmas at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego this last week, the year of your death, 1980. I went to the Prince of Wales bar named for your "father?" I never believed what your mother, Margaret, hinted at until I saw the photograph of the Duke of Windsor taken there in 1920. A year after your birth. He was a guest at the Coronado Hotel that year.

The picture is in profile. No two men could have a nose like that and not be related. His face is handsome, refined (like yours), the high cheekbones are the same, eyes slightly slanting upward, slightly protruding (like yours). But the nose, a small nose, tilted upwards, detracts from the otherwise masculine face. There is no longer any doubt in my mind that for once your mother was telling the truth. From your very conception, there was no way to keep your life simple.

February, 1979.
"Dianne, it's Susan. Thom asked me to call. We're filming a pilot for a new show. Come on over to Theta Cable in Santa Monica. Dick Haymes is the MC. Wait 'til you hear him sing! Thom wants to do a face-over with you."

Sitting in my office in Beverly Hills, I listen as Susan, Thom Keith's girl Friday, tells me about the new show, Hollywood Cabaret. Thom Keith, writer/director of TV and movies liked to project my face over the singers he used in his TV shows to make them appear to be singing to me.

The year before, Thom and I met at a party in Newport Beach. Although we dated a few times, I backed off when I inadvertently walked into his house one morning. I found him in his pajamas surrounded by a bevy of Hollywood starlets in various stages of undress.

We remained friends out of our mutual interest in TV. I missed the days when I assisted Patrick Dennis, author of Auntie Mame, and producer of Media Noche, Channel 8, Mexico City.

I have just finished a therapy session with a client, an actress. Another child abuse victim. She regresses easily back to the age of five, then blanks out in screams of terror. At that moment, a visit to a television studio seems mercifully distracting.

"Sure, Susan, I'll be by about one. I'm leaving my office early and can stop at the studio on my way home. I have a new patient who insists on seeing me at my home in Santa Monica instead of, here, at my office."

I grab the jacket of my powder blue pantsuit as I hurry out into the blinding sunlight of Southern California and the chilly wind, brushing my long, auburn hair away from my face.