Come to the Edge: A Memoir (12 page)

“It’s a Small World … I remember that!” To prove it, he hummed a bar. “We went with my cousins Anthony and Tina. Maybe we were there at the same time.”

“May
be
 …”

“Remember the goats?”

“Oh my God, I do!”

“I liked those goats,” he said, as if he still missed them. He began to shake his head softly, a smile beginning on his lips.

“I was wrong about you. I was sure you’d say Serendipity.” He was referring to the fancy ice-cream parlor near Bloomingdale’s, with the faux Tiffany lamps and the spiral staircase, where Upper East Siders had birthdays in grade school. “Girls always like Serendipity. I thought that would be your favorite.”

I smiled. I liked it fine, I told him, but there were other things I liked better.

His face had gotten wistful in the sudden dimming light. After a moment, he turned to me. “I have to tell you … I didn’t think you were going to show today.”

His eyes caught mine. I’d thought the same thing about him.

“But I’m glad you did. I’ve missed this.”

Those were the words I needed, the ones I’d waited to hear; and we walked faster, whether from cold or happiness, I did not know.

West by the river, there was a last gasp of sunset. We’d arrived at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway for the third time, and the streetlights came on. When he turned, like an admission, to walk me back once more, we laughed.

“What about you—what’s your favorite?” I asked.

“Beatles. Shea Stadium.” For him, there was no pause.

“You were
there
?” I gasped. “How old were you?”

“Five,” he said, satisfied. “And hansom cabs.” Except, he told me, every time there was a major change in his life—a new school, his mother marrying Onassis—she’d take him for a carriage ride around the park to break it to him.

“Ah, you couldn’t escape.”

“Too true,” he chuckled. “Too true, I couldn’t.”

We stopped in front of a dress shop that had always been there. In the window, there were sale signs written out in Magic Marker and old-fashioned mannequins covered in polyester jersey.

“I remember this place, it was here in high school,” I said.

“Wanna know something?” He leaned in, and where my scarf had loosened, I felt his breath. “I bought my mother a dress here once. A present in fifth or sixth grade. Two dresses, actually. For $19.99.”

I was charmed and asked the obvious. Did she wear them?

“That night she did.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “But only in the house. She was very convincing. She said she loved them. She said they had style.”

We’d reached Seventy-ninth Street for the last time, and there, on a crowded corner at twilight, between a Baptist church decked in Christmas wreaths and a news kiosk, he kissed me. Before we parted, I handed him back the glove, and he took both my hands in his and pressed them to his lips. And the snow that had been promising all afternoon to fall had finally and quietly begun.

I left for Mexico the next day, a family vacation, but stayed on an extra week to travel on my own. I slept in a hammock in Yelapa, downed shots of tequila before parasailing, and spent New Year’s Eve on a cliff top with strangers toasting the sky. I thought the time away would make me sure of what I already knew. When I returned two weeks later, there was a letter waiting. It was short and to the point. As he filled out his law school applications, he couldn’t stop thinking of me. “I’m imagining you all alone in the hot Mexican sun,” he wrote. Unlike the missives from India two years before, with their crossed-out words and serpentine scrawl, he had printed each letter squarely, perfectly, without confusion.

“PS,” he added at the bottom. “I want to see Your Tan.”

I waited a few days, then called him, and this time I didn’t look back.

W
e stood on the pavement between Eighth and Ninth avenues waiting for cabs, a huddle of friends from college. We’d been dancing that night at a new Cajun restaurant, once an old post office annex. John had a new job at the 42nd Street Development Corporation. The office was next door in the McGraw-Hill Building, and the restaurant was his find. He would rent it out, or his friends would, for birthday parties, celebrations, and, as people we knew began to get married, the odd bachelor party. With the tables pushed back, it made for a great dance floor, and at night, with Talking Heads or Funkadelic blaring, the large picture windows that faced the vacant lot and the welfare hotel across the street made it a snow globe of light on what, in the mid-1980s, was a desolate stretch west of the Port Authority. When I arrived alone, the party was in full swing.

I had been in a play that night. Each spring at Juilliard, the members of the graduating class perform for two weeks in repertory, a nod to the European roots of the training. It was thrilling to shift gears and worlds like that; it was why I wanted to be an actor. The slate that spring was a Jacobean tragedy, O’Casey, Ibsen, and Sam Shepard. Tonight—the tragedy. I was Annabella, murdered for her incestuous love of her brother Giovanni. Believing their passion is pure, they forgo morality and society’s judgment, and when they cross the line to carnal pleasure, it seals their fate.
Romeo and Juliet
with a twist.

When I came offstage, I removed the heavy makeup and the wig of human hair the color of mine but longer, thicker. I let the brocade gown drop to the floor and stand by itself in a poof. I untied the hoop skirt and unlaced the stays of the boned corset. I pulled off the wig cap and the bobby pins that held the pin curls to my head and made the wig lie flat. I shook out my hair, lined my eyes with black pencil, and slowly inched fishnets up my legs. A tear; I pulled higher. Then I put on the new dress I’d bought at a thrift shop behind the planetarium days before. I slipped the black sheath of silk crêpe over my head—slim straps on the shoulders and a bias-cut; it fell to mid-calf and flared slightly there.

With six dollars and a token or two in my pocket, I headed to Columbus Circle to catch the A train. I slung my Danish schoolbag across my back; it was purple and stuffed with dance shoes, leotards, scripts, scarves, the
Post
, a red paperback of Yeats’s poems, and my journal. When I reached the subway steps, I changed my mind and hailed a cab. The bag was heavy, and I was eager to get to the party. Anxious, too. Chris Oberbeck, our roommate from Benefit Street, was getting married to his college sweetheart, and this shindig was in their honor. Although John and I had been seeing each other for almost three months, this was the first time we would be together as a couple with people we’d known for years.

Our courtship since mid-January had been hidden, sporadic, and intense. Separating from the long relationships we’d been in—John’s for five years and mine for three—had proved more difficult and painful than we had imagined. And there was the fact that we’d known each other for so long. I was afraid that if I took the leap, I might lose my friend. What was undefined held safety.

One February night, as I was walking to meet him, the wind bit the backs of my knees and my mind raced.
This can’t work … How can he … What should I …
But when I saw him at the street corner waiting, his chin tucked, his head dipped to one side, I only knew I was where I should be and this was right. There was nothing else.

Still, it was stop-and-start.

In late January, he’s going to a conference in Pennsylvania, and he asks me to meet him there afterward. “To take a weekend together,” he says. It’s not a concept I understand. I have boyfriends, and we just do things. But for some reason, I find the phrase so sexy. He describes the hotel where we’ll stay, a place he’s never been. “There’s a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in the room,” he says, reading the brochure. On January 28, the day the
Challenger
crashes, he leaves a short message on my answering service saying the trip is off. I don’t understand at first—it’s a tragedy, surely, but not one that affects him directly. When we speak, he explains. His presence is required at the memorial service at the Johnson Space Center in Houston with President Reagan and other dignitaries. It’s either him or Caroline, and his ticket is up, Jacuzzi or no.

…

We meet for lunch at Café Madeleine on West Forty-third Street, and he whispers, “I miss your ears. I miss your hair, your freckles, your laugh.”

I leave school one day, and tied to my bike I find red roses and a postcard of a French courtesan. On the back, unsigned:
YOU RULE MY WORLD
.

We’re at the Palladium. As we dance, he moves to shield me from a photographer I haven’t noticed. Unlike mine, his eyes are peeled for that sort of thing. In the picture, I am laughing. I think it’s a game. The caption reads, “Mystery Woman.”

Headed to Martha’s Vineyard in a small plane, we hit a winter storm. Buffeted by high winds, we’re rerouted to Hyannis. With no place to stay, we arrive unexpectedly at his grandmother Rose’s fourteen-room house. It’s late. On our way up the dark staircase, we run into his aunt Pat in a Lanz nightgown. She’s in her cups. Then his uncle appears. Neither knew the other was there. Upstairs, we find a bedroom that’s used only in summer. We push the twin beds together and lie under the thin coverlet, as the wind rages. In the morning, before we leave for the Vineyard, we walk on the breakwater as far as we can go. The waves slap the sides and he steadies me on the wet rocks.

On a warm day, he bikes from Manhattan to Park Slope with tiramisu from his favorite restaurant, Ecco, melting in his backpack. We eat it on my brownstone roof, homing pigeons cooing nearby, and watch the light fall over the faraway city.

…

A morning: He kisses my forehead and tells me to sleep in, tucking me into his king-size water bed. When I wake up, he’s gone.

After seeing Ronee Blakley at the Lone Star, he gives me the first of many driving lessons. In this, he is both brave and patient. I’m a born New Yorker, and driving is not in my skill set. With the Scotch from last call warm in our throats and Al Green in the tape deck, I sit on his lap, and we drive his Honda in circles around the Battery Park lot for what seems like hours. The stars are white and cold, and we laugh as he explains over and over how the engine works, what it does. And I learn somehow. I learn well.

But there are weeks I don’t see him. Things are not resolved with his girlfriend, and they’re not for me either. After one stretch in March when we haven’t spoken, John appears at a performance of
Buried Child
. I am Shelly and spend much of my time onstage in a patchwork bunny jacket peeling carrots. A friend who is there that night tells me that John wandered the halls alone at intermission humming to himself.

Afterward, we meet and cross Broadway to McGlades, a bar where the Juilliard actors and dancers congregate. It’s awkward at first, until after a beer or two, he suddenly reaches across the table. Half out of his seat, he takes my head in his hands and pulls me closer, the table wedged between us.

“I was going to leave right after the play. I keep trying to forget you, but I can’t. I can’t let go.” His words come so quickly. He looks worried.

“What?” I say.

“I’m obsessed with you. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“What?”

“I’m obsessed. You make me an emotional person, and I’m not.”

“No, John …” I laugh, taking his hands from my ears. “I can’t hear you.” I hold them between mine over the table, and we smile knowing something has been laid bare.

“You’re funny,” I say.

“Why?”

“You’re a funny boy. You can only say that covering my ears.”

He sighs, but he doesn’t look away. “I’m scared.”

“I’m scared, too,” I say, but we’re both smiling.

As if to assuage me, he kisses each knuckle, then turns my palm over.

“I can’t stop looking at your hands. There’s a poem … have you seen
Hannah and Her Sisters
?”

Yes, I tell him.

“When I saw it, I kept thinking of you. You look like the actress. Your hair. When Michael Caine’s in the bookstore and he gives her the book—”

“I remember. ‘Nobody, not even the rain—’ ”

“ ‘—has such small hands.’ ”

He leans back and his eyes close. I touch his cheek. “What are you thinking?” I ask, but he shakes his head.

“What is it?” I make him look at me.

“On the street—I keep thinking I see you. You make me emotional, and I’m not like that. I want to say your name all the time.”

The cab stopped on Forty-second Street, and I walked across to the restaurant. Through the glass, I could see faces I knew. Happy. Young. Some from high school, most from college. John’s roommate, Rob Littell, with his shirt askew, was sliding across the floor doing his ski move. Art majors boogied in groups, punctuating with jumps and hoots. Classicists shimmied solo. Girls who grew up in Manhattan took up space, looping around the sides of the room and executing serpentine finger drills worthy of Indonesian temple goddesses. Frat boys got down with Iranian beauties, making up with enthusiasm what they lacked in finesse. I dropped my bag by a pile of jackets near the door and found my friends, the roommates from Benefit Street. Chris was talking to Kissy, and Lynne stood close to her boyfriend, Billy.

“He’s here somewhere,” I heard Lynne say over the din. “He was just asking about you.”

Then he appeared, smiling so big, and anything I feared was gone. With one hand, he led me into the center of the dance floor. And when the fast song got slow, when the Stones bled into Joan Armatrading, I leaned into him. If there were people talking about us, about me, if there were eyes of judgment or of envy, I shut them out. Like Annabella, the character I had left on the stage that night, I looked into the eyes of my Giovanni and thought of the love that overcomes everything.

When the party was over, we drifted outside. The April air was balmy but still cool enough for a coat. There were no cabs in sight. John stepped off the curb to scout, and I turned to say my goodbyes. After a moment, a friend whispered as she hugged me, “Be careful, Christina.” I knew she was not referring to the slick street.

I was stunned. Was there something she knew that I didn’t? I wanted to say, Can’t you tell? Can’t you see how he feels? How I feel? How happy we are? How long we’ve waited? How right this is?

“What?” I said, my face flushed.

She stopped herself. She knew him well. “Just be careful.”

A cab pulled up, and John whisked me inside. “1040 Fifth,” he said to the driver, before sinking back beside me and pushing his foot against the jump seat. “Mummy’s away tonight.” And we set off.

1040. His mother’s home. The stone scallop shell of the Pilgrim above the taut green awning. The paperwhites in the vestibule at Christmas. The front gallery where everyone gathered at parties. The narrow hallway near the bedrooms that was lined with black-and-white photographs and collages of summers in Greece, the Cape, Montauk. His old room, with the captain’s bed and the navy sheets and the old school paperbacks and the tall cabinet filled with his father’s scrimshaw. I had been to 1040 many times, but this was the first time I would be alone with him there.

I don’t know why we went there that night instead of to his apartment across the park or to mine in Brooklyn. As the cab drove off, I did not find it curious that we, at age twenty-five, would stay at his mother’s, but rather I thought it was wonderful that there were so many possibilities. I remember a quickening of hope that maybe, with John, I could grow up and not grow up, I could have an adult life but not lose the girl, the
jeune fille
who was careless and wanted to dance and wore stockings with tears.

When I was twenty-five, I wanted freedom. I was afraid of being hemmed in, of having responsibilities and limits. None of the grown-up women I knew seemed happy. Not my mother or her friends or the few of mine who had begun to marry. When I was twenty-five, I cared passionately about two things: acting and love. With John, I thought I could have both. He was the first boyfriend I’d had who wore a suit and tie to work, but he also possessed the playfulness of a large dog.

The lights got brighter as we drove past the strip of triple-X theaters near Times Square, and I thought,
There’ll be no relationship talks, no conflicts, no jealousy, no drama. None of the things that love has led to in the past
. I thought this only because these were things that hadn’t happened yet and conflict was a level of intimacy I feared, one that tore at the gossamer skein of romance. In the cab, on that night, I felt hope.

As though he read my mind, he pulled me close, one fishnetted leg on his, and looked at me with what appeared to be wonder. “I can’t remember being this happy. Why is that?”

“I don’t know why. I don’t know, it’s strange. We’re different—”

“But you know me, you
know
me.”

“I know you.”

“It’s like we’re simpatico.” We both smiled when he said it.

“I keep trying to go slow, but I can’t. I can’t help myself.” He pushed my hair back and kissed me. Then, pressing his forehead to mine, he said solemnly, “I can’t imagine us fighting ever.”

“Me either,” I said back, as if it were a vow, a good thing, a thing of mystery and of promise. And with that, the words of caution were banished from my mind, and we sped off on the wet city streets to the latticed iron doors of his mother’s apartment building.