Come to the Edge_ A Memoir Part 5

We searched that afternoon in small artisan shops I knew on Amsterdam Avenue. In one, with room for only a handful of patrons, dull light flooded the floor-to-ceiling windows, and every crevice was packed with pillows and textiles, mohair coats, sheepskin jackets, and imported leather bags. "Gold or silver?" he said, studying a tray of earrings in one of the cases. Before I could answer, he held one to my cheek-a small silver hand with a coral bead. He kept it there, cold teasing my skin, and leaned back to a.s.sess it. "I say silver. Like the moon." He bought a different pair for his sister and, months later, would give me the wrapped box with the silver hands.

When we stopped for lunch, he told me he was applying to law school, something that his family had encouraged and he had waffled about over the summer. Now, though not exactly thrilled or even certain of his future as a lawyer, he had decided. After hot chocolate, he asked about the play I was doing at Juilliard-one that was closing that night-how my love life was, if there were still problems, if I was happy. It was territory we had covered before.

On an August night during the run of the play, we'd gone to Central Park. To talk, we'd said. It was a perfect night. The punishing humidity of July was gone, and there were stars in the city sky. He carried a paper sack with a couple of beers he'd bought at a corner store on Columbus, and as he walked, they chimed against each other. By the Ramble, he took my hand, and we walked off the path toward the lake. There was a large outcropping there, and we climbed it. I wore wedged espadrilles, and so I wouldn't fall, he led me over the pocked ridges to the farthest spot.

We sat for hours by the water on the big rock near the Ramble. Our own world, he said. And under a moon no longer blue-as it had been the week before by the horse barn in New Jersey-but quartered, words we had long held tumbled out. How he felt, how I did. Our lips bruised from kissing, we promised we would be together, but not, I told him, before we ended the relationships we were in. When we left the park with the night half over, clouds had begun to blanket the sky and everything seemed simple.

The play closed two days later. Photographers loitered outside, we got congratulatory telegrams from Friel's agents at ICM, and there was heated talk of moving the production to a bigger house for a commercial run. "I'll be guided by you," he told me privately as we weighed the decision. Before the performance on closing night, we stood for the last time in our costumes in an empty room on the third floor. He gave me a first edition of Synge's Riders to the Sea Riders to the Sea, and I gave him Edna O'Brien's A Fanatic Heart A Fanatic Heart. Books are not always a customary closing gift, but we had both brought them.

At the closing-night party at Fanelli's on Prince Street, he kissed my shoulders when no one was looking. "Don't make me wait too long," he whispered. "Sort things out, but come back to me." I was leaving for Maine the next day, to a friend's house on Vinalhaven-a self-imposed exile, without phone or electricity, that I presumed would bring me the resolve to break with the man I'd been with for almost three years and whom I still loved.

It was weeks before I saw John again. I was in rehearsal for a PBS broadcast celebrating Juilliard's eightieth birthday, and we agreed to meet afterward by the Dante statue near Lincoln Center. When we got off the phone, he ran to an open window, his roommate later told me, and yelled to anyone within earshot, "Christina's free...the girl I'm going to marry is free!" But I wasn't; he had kept the vow, and I hadn't.

All through dinner at the Ginger Man, I waited for the perfect moment to tell him. I watched his face in the candlelight, felt his pleasure at seeing me, laughed at his exploits since I'd seen him-tales of Hyannis and the Vineyard. I'd missed the happiness of being with him-the newness, the edge of ease and tension between us-and I knew that once I told him, that would all change. Greedy, I wanted more of the night. As in a spell self-cast, for hours I made myself forget what I had come to say.

We made our way to the park again, this time far from any path, to the darkened south end. He laid his jacket on the ground and waited for me to sit first. It was just after Labor Day-still green, still warm, with a few precocious leaves skittering about. "It never feels like this," he said as he held me, his face open. "I should tell you," I finally began, and wound my way awkwardly through the words I'd rehea.r.s.ed hours earlier. Something about owing it to the relationship. I left out the part where, a week before, when I'd gotten back from Maine, Brad had fought for me, and that his apartment-an actor's usual disarray of laundry, scripts, and dust-had sparkled. The worn yellow floor had shone, and he had bought flowers. I left out the part where he'd said, "He'll leave you. One day he'll leave you." And that somewhere deep inside, I was afraid this was true.

I believed I was doing the right thing, but as I spoke, my voice suddenly sounded hollow. What I really wanted, although I didn't know it, was for John to make me see how wrong I was. To grab me as he had in the play and tell me he couldn't live without me. Instead, he listened. He was quiet for a while, then gracious. "I'm glad it got this far-at least I got you to the park again." His face, shadowed by trees, was a cipher, and when I reached for him, he pulled back, leaped up, and ran out of the park. I called out, sure he was just over the hill, but there was no one. Frightened, I grabbed his jacket and found my way through a maze of bushes to the walkway by the drive. At Sixth Avenue, I caught up with him-his arm outstretched for a cab. He looked angry. "There's nothing more to say," he said, cutting me off and jumping into the cab I thought he'd hailed for me.

It was well after one a.m., and I was alone on Central Park South, save for a couple of fancy working girls who slouched across the street and traded cigarettes. It had happened so quickly, and there was so much I hadn't said, but I watched the taillights travel up to Columbus Circle and disappear north onto Broadway.

A few weeks later, I heard that he'd gotten back with his girlfriend. In October, we met with Robin at the P & G bar on Amsterdam to look at pictures from the play. She gave us each an orange plastic flip-book of three-by-fives, and we went over the contact sheet with a magnifying gla.s.s, circling the others we liked in red pencil. When she left to use the pay phone, I asked him how he was. It was good things had worked out as they had, he answered coolly, fixing his eyes on the ceiling, the bar, the door-anything but my face-until Robin returned.

I buried myself in work: a leading role at school that fall and the PBS Live from Lincoln Center Live from Lincoln Center broadcast, in which, somewhat prematurely, I was cast as Blanche DuBois seducing the paperboy. Slipping into someone else's skin had always been a saving grace for me, and it was then. Some days I succeeded in not thinking about him at all. broadcast, in which, somewhat prematurely, I was cast as Blanche DuBois seducing the paperboy. Slipping into someone else's skin had always been a saving grace for me, and it was then. Some days I succeeded in not thinking about him at all.

One day, I got a note from the head of the Drama Division asking to see me in his office. A summons, though not uncommon, was cause for trepidation. Michael Langham was an exacting director and a brilliant mind. During World War II, as a lieutenant with the Gordon Highlanders, he'd been captured near the Maginot Line and had spent five years in POW camps. There with the approval of the German guards (and fellow prisoners as actors) he had begun to direct plays. For many years, he'd served as the artistic director at the Stratford Festival in Canada, and later at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and his innovative productions of Shakespeare were renowned. Now in his mid-sixties, with a shock of silver hair, he was still dashing and often wore pink cashmere, as he did on that day.

His door was open. I knocked anyway.

"Come in." I heard the clipped, familiar voice from inside. "Close the door behind you."

I sat across from him in the low-ceilinged room, its walls lined with framed costume sketches and the wide desk between us. His eyes, sharp with thought, were a deep, changeable blue.

"So, what's wrong with you, my dear?" he began, dispensing with small talk.

I'd lost weight in the past month, and I mentioned the cold I couldn't shake.

"That's not what I meant." He was impatient. His eyes hadn't left me, and he flexed his fingers under his chin. "You're distracted. I saw your last performance. You had glow but not enough glitter." As he spoke, I let my eyes wander up the curved cable pattern on the arm of his sweater. "I've spoken with your teachers. It's apparent on the stage."

I closed my eyes, mortified. Not just Michael-the whole faculty Not just Michael-the whole faculty. I saw them seated around a long, oval table discussing my personal life. The year before, I'd been let in on a secret. Two students in the cla.s.s ahead had broken into the office one night and read the files, recounting that the notes on each of us included not just missed cla.s.ses and lazy consonants but who was with whom and in what extracurriculars they indulged.

"Do you drink?"

I shook my head.

"Do you do drugs?"

"Well, I-"

"Are you addicted?"

"No," I said quickly. Michael had been sober for years, but there were rumors of his indiscretions. One in particular, with a red-haired actress in Minneapolis, that had almost ended his marriage.

"Still, it's something." He got up and moved around the desk, his hands clasped tight behind his back, his head proceeding slightly in front of his body. "I believe it's love," he concluded with some distaste, as if I were an awkward bit of staging to be solved. "You're addicted. I believe you're in love with love!"

I burst into tears and began to apologize.

Michael handed me a handkerchief from his pocket. He didn't require details, and for that I was grateful. It was about the work. He patted me lightly on the back and told me to take care of things. "We have great hopes for you," he said before I reached the door. I turned and saw that his face had softened. There was a rim of red wetness around his jeweled eyes, a sort of kindness.

At the end of November, I got an invitation to John's annual birthday bash, this time at a club in Midtown. It was a curt, breezy note, something about losing my address. You can, of course, bring a date, he wrote. I went alone, and when I saw him through the crowd, laughing easily, surrounded by friends, I knew he had moved on. And I was sure of something else-I had made a huge mistake that night in the park. It had taken me that long to know. As I left the party, there were flurries in the night air, but they melted before they hit the pavement. I wondered if everything that had happened that summer had meant nothing, if it had just been a mirage of the play, a trick of the theater.

A smaller voice said, Wait Wait.

Then in December, I ran into him at a Christmas party in the East Twenties. He'd come with his girlfriend, and I was meeting Brad later, but at some point, we found ourselves in a corner of the kitchen, and the steely awkwardness that had been there all fall had vanished. We flirted. The light in the room was bright and we weren't alone, but it felt as if we were. And before I left, he asked if I would meet him the next day. He needed help picking out a gift for his sister.

"Favorite memory?" I repeated the question.

After lunch, we wandered all afternoon near the planetarium, past the stores on Columbus and then down to Lincoln Center. Now we were on Broadway again-walking each other back and forth between Seventy-ninth Street, where my bike was locked, and Eighty-sixth, where his apartment was. It was after four and we kept putting off saying goodbye. As we walked, our breath came out in short white puffs.

My hands were cold; I'd forgotten gloves and he offered his. St.i.tched brown leather and fuzzy on the inside.

"Favorite now...or of all time?" I put the gloves on. Even with s.p.a.ce at the fingers, they were warm. I kept one for myself and handed him back the other.

"Childhood. The best one."

I closed my eyes, and I was there. Running up the steps in a cherry velvet dress during intermission at The Nutcracker The Nutcracker to touch the beaded metal curtain that hung by the tall windows across from the bar. I'd turned my back and pretend to look out on the giant courtyard. Careful at first, I'd make the beads sway-the weight on my fingers a pleasure-but when I saw, balconies below, that the curtain rippled into a full-on spin, I'd get bolder, my touch now a jangle, until a guard or my mother would stop me. It was as much a part of the tradition as the Sugar Plum Fairy or the Christmas tree that grew. to touch the beaded metal curtain that hung by the tall windows across from the bar. I'd turned my back and pretend to look out on the giant courtyard. Careful at first, I'd make the beads sway-the weight on my fingers a pleasure-but when I saw, balconies below, that the curtain rippled into a full-on spin, I'd get bolder, my touch now a jangle, until a guard or my mother would stop me. It was as much a part of the tradition as the Sugar Plum Fairy or the Christmas tree that grew.

Sunday dinners with my kindergarten best friend at a Chinese restaurant on Third Avenue. Wide round tables at half-moon booths, a fountain of magic rainbow-colored water at the entrance, and uniformed waiters who'd load up our Shirley Temples with maraschinos. We'd gnaw the stems and line them at our plates like twigs. Halfway through dinner and bored of our parents, we'd slide off the shiny vinyl banquettes to whisper secrets under the table. The starched tablecloth-a cave entrance-and our mothers' legs poised, even in the darkness.

And skating at Rockefeller Center-always cold, always shadowy-but the music and hot chocolate were better than at Wollman Rink. Plus they had rental skates that didn't make your ankles buckle.

"Well, Madam?" he persisted. Under our boots as we walked, the crunch of salt and ice.

"The World's Fair," I answered. "I'm almost five, and my mother's in a beige suit and heels, very pregnant. I remember going with my father up to the highest deck of the observation tower-the one that's still there and looks like a s.p.a.ceship. We went in one of the small exposed elevators that rode up an outside track, but my mother stayed below. I held my father's hand, and the whole time I could see her, but she got smaller and smaller. And when we reached the top, I could see the tip of the city over the trees, and my father leaned down and said he was proud of me. Then we went on It's a Small World After All, and I got to sit between them in those little boats."

"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."

"Maybe..."

"Remember the goats?"

"Oh my G.o.d, 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 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 Ona.s.sis-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.

We 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 Romeo and Juliet with a twist. 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 crepe 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 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... 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. 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 s.e.xy. 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 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 s.p.a.ce Center in Houston with President Reagan and other dignitaries. It's either him or Caroline, and his ticket is up, Jacuzzi or no. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Cafe 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 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 Buried Child. I am Sh.e.l.ly 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."