Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve by Christopher Andersen Read Free Book Online Page A

reasons for try- ing to keep their romance under wraps. To begin with, Chris and
    Gae had not yet gone public with their split. Even more impor- tant, Matthew and Alexandra were staying with Chris at the Williamstown house, and he did not want to confuse or upset his young children by showing up with a woman other than their mother.
    It would be nearly two months before Chris brought Dana home for dinner with the kids. If he had any worries about how they would react to this new woman in Dad’s life, they quickly vanished. Dana’s natural, easygoing manner, her boundless energy, and her window-rattling laugh made her an instant hit with Matthew and Alexandra. Soon Dana was joining them for spirited miniature golf tournaments, marathon bike rides, and some good- natured roughhousing on the front lawn.
    The one thing Dana did not do was stay over. Chris was still not sure what the kids would think if they saw Dad sharing a bed with Dana. Gae showed up in late August to bring three-year-old Alexandra back to London, leaving Matthew, seven, to spend a little more time with his father.
    At this stage, Dana was still reluctant to risk alienating Chris’s children. By the time her parents came to see her perform at Williamstown, she was still not staying overnight at the Reeve house. Over dinner at a local restaurant, Chris told the Morosinis that he “enjoyed dating” their daughter. “I mean, she’s so much fun, so wonderful. We have a great time together . . .”
    Without missing a beat, Chris then launched into a description of the house he was still renovating. “The master bedroom is huge and has an octagonal shape with windows facing in every direc- tion,” Chris told them, scarcely trying to conceal his enthusiasm. “There’s a spiral staircase leading up to it, and this big king-size
    California bed right in the middle of the room that is so com- fortable.”
    Charles Morosini studied Chris’s face for a moment, and cocked his head quizzically. Before he could ask Chris if he was seriously talking to him about his and Dana’s sleeping habits, Dana hastily changed the subject.
    In fact, Chris was still concerned about Matthew walking in and finding his dad beneath the sheets with Dana. So he waited until they went sailing off the coast of Maine with Uncle Kevin aboard Chris’s forty-foot yacht, Chandelle . The first morning at sea, Matthew, who slept in the main cabin, walked to the bow to find Chris and Dana sharing the same bed. Dana, unfazed, pulled back the covers and invited Matthew to snuggle. As soon he set- tled in, Dana ambushed him with tickles. In retaliation, Matthew clobbered her with a pillow, and soon there was chaos in the for- ward part of the cabin. “We laughed so hard,” Dana told a friend, “but I told them we had to stop before somebody fell overboard.” It was the breakthrough Chris had been hoping for. Matthew’s easy acceptance of Dana opened the way for an even more re- laxed and open relationship. Now, when Dana sang during the cabaret show at Williamstown, Chris joined her onstage for a duet or two. Perched on stools and clutching microphones, Dana and Chris were, said one regular audience member, “obviously besotted with each other.” Their repertoire nearly always in- cluded two standards: the Gershwins’ “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and Cole Porter’s “It’s De-Lovely,” the tune they
    would come to think of as “our song.”
    Now that Chris publicly acknowledged his break from Gae Exton, the press was quick to paint Dana as the scheming Other
    Woman. Apparently relying on reports that Dana had spent a con- siderable amount of time with Matthew and Alexandra, one tabloid story stated that she had been hired to care for them. “SUPERMAN,” the headline blared, “DUMPS HIS KIDS’ MOM FOR BABYSITTER.”
    That fall, they continued their affair in New York. While Chris was ensconced in his duplex co-op on West Seventy-eighth Street near the American Museum