Come to the Edge_ A Memoir Part 6

"I'm scared, too," I say, but we're both smiling.

As if to a.s.suage 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 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. 'n.o.body, 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 gla.s.s, 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. Cla.s.sicists shimmied solo. Girls who grew up in Manhattan took up s.p.a.ce, looping around the sides of the room and executing serpentine finger drills worthy of Indonesian temple G.o.ddesses. 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 sh.e.l.l 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 jeune fille who was careless and wanted to dance and wore stockings with tears. 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 pa.s.sionately 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 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 know me." 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.

Slowly I began to meet his family. A cousin here and there. Easter with his sister. And on the Sat.u.r.day of Memorial Day weekend, after stopping for the night at Brown for Campus Dance, we were on our way to Red Gate Farm, his mother's 464-acre retreat on the southwestern end of Martha's Vineyard. I had been there once before, but it was in winter, and we had been alone. On a morning when the sky was bright, he had taken me to the cliffs and told me the Indian legends-how they buried their dead facing east to the sun. Ancient graves had been found over the years, he'd said, in the tangled briar of his mother's property.

This time I would meet his mother. There had been greetings and goodbyes at holiday parties, and polite conversation, but nothing that she would have recalled. And even if she did, this was different. I was the girl he'd done the play with. I was nervous and anxious, and I overpacked.

On the Steamship Authority ferry from Woods Hole, we inched across Nantucket Sound to Vineyard Haven. We'd rushed from Providence up Route 195 that morning to make an early boat. Friends he'd invited caravanned behind us. We rallied in the ferry parking lot, and the cars stayed on the Woods Hole side. It was that time in late spring that aches with possibility, the time when it's forever cold in the shade, sometimes warm in the sun, and hovering always is the errant promise that there will be more.

The Islander Islander was clean and smelled of diesel. It was windy on board, but none of us stayed below. Excited for the weekend ahead, we planted ourselves on the upper deck looking for sun. Halfway across, John disappeared, and I lay sprawled on a bench in the center of the midsection-one leg bent, the other dangling out of a summer skirt, an arm propped over my eyes. Heat rose from the metal and wood, and my back was warm with it. I felt the engine's droning hum, the shift of pitch and drop over water. was clean and smelled of diesel. It was windy on board, but none of us stayed below. Excited for the weekend ahead, we planted ourselves on the upper deck looking for sun. Halfway across, John disappeared, and I lay sprawled on a bench in the center of the midsection-one leg bent, the other dangling out of a summer skirt, an arm propped over my eyes. Heat rose from the metal and wood, and my back was warm with it. I felt the engine's droning hum, the shift of pitch and drop over water.

A trickle of air buzzed in my ear. It stopped, started, then stopped again. I opened my eyes to find John crouched beside me, his face close to mine.

"You're sweet," he said loudly when I groaned. "Are you grumpy? Hmm? Just a little?"

I shook my head, and he watched me yawn.

"Oh, so sweet. Did anyone ever tell you you're sweet? Don't be too too sweet, or I'll bite you. Come on, get up, get up. No breaks for you," he half-sang. "C'mon-I'm the boss of you." sweet, or I'll bite you. Come on, get up, get up. No breaks for you," he half-sang. "C'mon-I'm the boss of you."

I rubbed my eyes and tried not to smile. "You are not not the boss of me," I insisted. But, laughing, I followed him around the pilothouse to the breezy side of the boat. the boss of me," I insisted. But, laughing, I followed him around the pilothouse to the breezy side of the boat.

We were almost there. White houses and low green hills. He turned, his hair already salty from the air. "See-aren't you glad you're here?" It was my first ferry ride there, and the first time for anything is an occasion, he said. He pointed out the places. West Chop Light, the yacht club, the sails of the schooner Shenandoah Shenandoah-and that way, down and around, to Oak Bluffs and the storied gingerbread cottages.

"What do I call her?" I asked. I knew the answer but wanted to make sure. He didn't dismiss the question. He may have antic.i.p.ated our meeting, just as I had, but for his own reasons. He considered it for a moment-eyes on the sh.o.r.e, on the busy wharf that was coming pristinely into view.

"Call her Mrs. Ona.s.sis. Call her Mrs. Ona.s.sis unless she says otherwise."

We were supposed to be met at the dock by Va.s.sili, a short, wiry Greek from Levkas. He'd worked for years on Aristotle Ona.s.sis's yacht and was now in John's mother's employ. Instead, there was a rounded man in a striped shirt with a most engaging smile.

"Maurice, what are you doing here!" John looked pleased.

"I'm surprising you," the man said brightly. I liked him immediately. Maurice Tempelsman was a financier, a diamond trader, and Mrs. Ona.s.sis's last love. Rob, John's friend since college and current roommate, knew him, but for the rest of us, there were introductions all around. He had come by boat, he said, and thought it would be fun if, instead of driving the thirty minutes to Gay Head, we continued on by water, anchoring at Menemsha Pond, a stone's throw from Red Gate Farm.

After lunch at the Black Dog, we piled into the open Seacraft. As the waves kicked up, Maurice pointed out the landmarks. When he saw me shivering in a jean jacket, he gave me his windbreaker and had me sit in the captain's seat behind him. I caught sight of John. He was perched up front as far as he could go-his face leaning hard into the wind.

Red Gate Farm was off an unmarked dirt and gravel road. If you continued on the main route as it swung north, you would come to the end of the island-the cliffs, the redbrick lighthouse, a small cl.u.s.ter of shops-and when the road wrapped back inland amid fieldstone fences and stunted sea-bent shrubs, there was a small library, a firehouse, and a town hall. But if you turned before the road curved and entered a weathered wooden gate that in those days was rarely locked, you would have found it. The land, a vast parcel of the old Hornblower estate, was wild with scrub oak, native grape, poison ivy, and deer ticks. It bordered Squibnocket Pond and a spectacular swath of private beach. Mrs. Ona.s.sis had bought the property in 1978, and the traditional cedar-shingled house-a series, really, of adjoining saltboxes with clean white trim-had been finished in 1981. There was a garage, a vegetable garden, the caretaker's lodgings, and tennis courts hidden by hedges. A short distance from the main house, there was a guest cottage, known as the Barn. Next to this, designed with John in mind, was an attached faux silo with a bedroom at the top that we called the Tower.

Wherever you looked you sensed proportion-a symmetry between what she had built and what had always been. It was there in the way the lawn ended and the wild gra.s.ses began, in the slant and angles of the saltbox roofs, in the cut trails that wound their way through dense brush to the beach, and in the pensive s.p.a.ce between the fruit trees in the orchard. It was there in the wildness she left, there in the stillness. She had built her house in agreement with the land, and the Tower, where we stayed, stood sentry.

The years that I visited, she remained on the island for most of the summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, returning for meetings in the city only when she had to. With her were Efigenio Pinheiro, her elegant, earringed Portuguese butler, and Marta Sgubin, who had begun as a governess to John and Caroline and was now cook, confidante, and cherished part of the family.

On moonless nights, the sky there was so black, even with a riot of stars arched above. In August, when the gra.s.s was parched and the sea untroubled like green gla.s.s, we often went up with friends, staying in the Barn and cranking the stereo. But when we were there alone, it was quiet in the Tower-the wind, crickets, a bird's call, and the oblivious blanketing beat of the waves. At sunset, there was a ruffle of scarlet in the west before the shadows came.

Being there felt like you were in someone else's dream-one created for pleasure, not to impress. Everything was pleasing to the eye. Things were in their place, without fussiness or clutter. Rustic New England pieces mixed with comfortable chairs and couches, and the rooms unfolded like a story. In her house, the intangible quality of light and color conspired to shift you to yourself, and what you felt was peace.

I remember looking in the kitchen for a gla.s.s one morning. Instead, I found vases and, attached to the inside of the white cabinet door, an unlined index card in her hand-which flowers in which vase in which room. It surprised me. When I saw a small carafe of sweet peas or a clutch of dahlias in a room, it seemed unplanned-as though they had just happened there, as though they belonged. Or there'd be a path that appeared to go nowhere, but when you reached the meandering end, you felt its purpose. What seemed happenstance was crafted, chosen by her unerring artist's eye.

Dinners were announced in the Barn by a buzz on the intercom, and showered and changed, we'd gather in the main house. No matter how glorious the day had been, this was the time I loved best. The dining room was simple: a plank pine table with candles sheltered by hurricane gla.s.s, a framed schooner above the mantel, and Windsor chairs. She sat at one end, and Maurice, with his back to the window, sat at the other. Nothing was formal on those nights when her table was full-it was happy and festive, although she rang a small silver bell between courses and placed each of her guests with a seer's sense of how the conversation would flow.

She was curious about John's friends and could pry a witticism from even the most tongue-tied. Talk centered on the day's exploits, a bird that was spotted, current events, a book read, an exhibit or play someone had seen in New York. And woven through were the family stories. Stones of remembrance for his father laid at a friend's cattle ranch in Argentina; John's fall into a fire pit in Hawaii when he was five and his rescue by Agent Walsh; summers on Skorpios-the Moliere plays directed by Marta that John and Caroline put on for their mother's July birthday. If the story warranted, she would mention with ease and fondness his father or Mr. Ona.s.sis, and I began to feel as if I knew them. When his cousin Anthony was there, they would tandem-tell their tales of a dreadful English camp in Plymouth and spar over who pushed whom down a glacier in the Alps when they were teenagers. One year, by force of argument, John would win. The next, it would be Anthony, winking over the candlelight when he had claimed the last word. At the end of each meal, after chocolate roll or berry pie, there was lavish praise for Marta, who appeared from the kitchen smiling.

After dinner, there might be a game-Bartlett's or charades, maybe. John and Caroline were both fierce players and in the spirit of fairness were often relegated to different teams. But always, we moved to the living room for mint tea or coffee. Waiting were the fluffed sofas and the cashmere throws, a wall of books, a fire if it was cool, and, in the dark distance, the far-off sound of the sea.

What she wore on those evenings I imagined belonged to this place, as if the fabric and metal existed only in her Up Island sphere. Large hoop earrings, a gold snake circling her wrist, an inexpensive necklace of silver and blue stones that John had brought from India and that she treasured, long-sleeved black T-shirts with jeweled necks, and slim printed skirts that fell to her sandaled feet. She was always radiant at dinner-hair pulled back, sun-kissed by the day.

The second summer, she lent me books. Some she had edited-I especially liked The Search for Omm Sety: Reincarnation and Eternal Love The Search for Omm Sety: Reincarnation and Eternal Love by Jonathan Cott-and others she picked from the shelf: a psychology study on family constellations, a collection of poems by Cavafy, Edith Hamilton's by Jonathan Cott-and others she picked from the shelf: a psychology study on family constellations, a collection of poems by Cavafy, Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way The Greek Way, Jean Rhys's Wide Sarga.s.so Sea Wide Sarga.s.so Sea, and a first edition of Lesley Blanch's The Wilder Sh.o.r.es of Love The Wilder Sh.o.r.es of Love, its cover somewhat crumpled. She smiled when she handed me the book of tales of Victorian adventuresses. "I think you will like this one."

The next summer, John and I lived in LA, near Venice Beach in a blue-gray house with a white picket fence. I was doing a play at the Tiffany Theater, and he was a summer a.s.sociate at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips, and we'd fly back whenever we could. John had become an uncle for the first time when Caroline's daughter Rose was born in late June. I was carting around Timebends Timebends, Arthur Miller's 599-page autobiography, and one afternoon while I was submerged in the McCarthy hearings and The Crucible The Crucible, his mother asked if I liked the book. I did, I said. Had she read it? "No, I haven't." She beamed like a child stealing candy. "But I've heard it's good-I just looked up the parts about Marilyn Monroe."

If I wanted to go off to the beach on my own, she would let me use her jeep. This incensed John, who, though a better driver, was relegated to one of the older vehicles. I had just gotten my license, but I still couldn't parallel park. (The driving lessons had been a prodding gift from John, and he'd written on the card, "Merry Christmas Baby! May the rest of us beware.") When he complained, she held firm. "She won't get my jeep stuck in the sand and you will."

On occasion, we'd venture off to the tamer parts of the island for Illumination Night or the Agricultural Fair, or for a concert at the gazebo in Oak Bluffs. One night, we went with his mother into Vineyard Haven for ice cream. We browsed the paperbacks at Bunch of Grapes, and caught an early showing of Roxanne Roxanne at the Capawock. (I liked it, Mrs. Ona.s.sis didn't, and John was indifferent.) But as I recall, she rarely left the environs near Gay Head, and her life there had its own rhythm. at the Capawock. (I liked it, Mrs. Ona.s.sis didn't, and John was indifferent.) But as I recall, she rarely left the environs near Gay Head, and her life there had its own rhythm.

If I was up early, I'd see her biking along Moshup Trail-sometimes with Maurice, sometimes alone-her head kerchiefed, maybe stopping off with her binoculars to spot a warbler or a Cooper's hawk. Some days after lunch, if the water was flat, she'd water-ski at Menemsha or join us at the beach to swim laps in her cap and rubber fins. Other afternoons, she would read outside in the quiet, bricked corner behind the library. There she was sheltered from the wind and could look out over Squibnocket to the sea, with a view of the changing dunes and the empty island just off her sh.o.r.e called Nomans.

By then I knew not to disturb her.

On the second morning of Memorial Day weekend, there was a big breakfast, and afterward John and Rob set up a net in back of the house. With Ed Schlossberg, who would marry Caroline that July, they measured out the boundaries for the 1986 inaugural summer volleyball game. It was an especially sporty crowd that weekend, and Mrs. Ona.s.sis, Marta, and Maurice stood by and cheered. Even Efigenio came out in his trim, striped ap.r.o.n to watch.

John was big on "Do your best, win or lose," and that day I tried. Despite my lack of ability, he was my own private coach. When I sent the ball sailing into the net and it ricocheted back to our side, he called a time-out to clue me in on exactly what I'd done right right. "Just aim a little higher." When my rusty underhanded girls' school serve made it over but landed in questionable territory, he argued fiercely with Ed at the net until the point was called. Swept up by his enthusiasm and the constant pep talks, I almost believed that if I just harnessed my inner jock, one day this might actually be fun. I kept my knees bent, like he said, and my hands p.r.o.ne, but I eyed with grat.i.tude the skinny girl across the court who was as disinclined as I was. After several hours and heated rematches, most of us lost interest and returned to the Barn, but John wasn't done. He corralled whomever he could for water sports at Menemsha. I took off for the beach. Like sleep, s.e.x, and food, time alone was a requirement.

There was a branched path that led to a set of silver canoes. From there you could paddle across to a break in the high dunes, slip the boat up on the sand, and walk to the ocean. He'd taken me there the day before. But first I had to find my book. I'd left it somewhere after breakfast.

When I reached the back of the house, I saw the volleyball net and a lunch tray pushed aside on a lone patio table. Nearby, on a cushioned chaise, Mrs. Ona.s.sis sat barefoot-a pencil in her hand and a ma.n.u.script resting on her bent legs. I thought to leave, but she'd already looked up. She wore large-framed sungla.s.ses that were nowhere near as grand as they appeared in photographs. The day before she had been polite-just shy of aloof-and I had been, too.

Rarely at a loss for words, I mumbled that John had gone waterskiing and I'd forgotten my book. Without getting up, she glanced, swanlike, to either side of the chaise, then shrugged. She seemed to me impenetrable. By then I'd found my battered copy of A Sport and a Pastime A Sport and a Pastime on a chair near the tray. I had it in my hand, but to leave I'd have to cross back in front of her. I could hear the stillness-that hot, dense three-o'clock kind-and I wanted to vanish, to be whisked off by some pa.s.sing bird. But something kept me there. Then, softly and without smiling, she spoke, her eyes toward the water. "I was watching you earlier-you reminded me of me." As I clicked off the many things this could mean, we began talking-how beautiful the day was, the ma.n.u.script she was working on, ballet, our childhoods in New York. I knew, as we spoke, that she was still watching. on a chair near the tray. I had it in my hand, but to leave I'd have to cross back in front of her. I could hear the stillness-that hot, dense three-o'clock kind-and I wanted to vanish, to be whisked off by some pa.s.sing bird. But something kept me there. Then, softly and without smiling, she spoke, her eyes toward the water. "I was watching you earlier-you reminded me of me." As I clicked off the many things this could mean, we began talking-how beautiful the day was, the ma.n.u.script she was working on, ballet, our childhoods in New York. I knew, as we spoke, that she was still watching.

In the course of our conversation there was a gesture to sit, which I did, at the very edge of her chaise. She set down the pages, bringing herself cross-legged, while I fingered a loose b.u.t.ton on the upholstery. Soon the pauses between us lessened. The gla.s.ses came off. She slid them high on the colored scarf that covered her hair and shaded her wide-apart eyes with her hand.

Later that summer, when we knew each other better, she would ask me to tell her all about the play the summer before. She wished she had seen it. And when I said how good, how funny John had been, she smiled with pride, pressing the tips of her fingers to her lips.

But on this day, we began, somehow, to talk about children-about babies and early bonding. Because I had no experience, I had strong ideas about the subject, and although the psychology of breast-feeding seemed a rather iffy topic, I risked it. No longer observing, she hugged her knees tight and leaned in with a quality of attention and empathy I'd rarely experienced. Things are so so different now, and women have more choices, she confided. She told me that when she had her children, the baby nurses just swooped in and spirited them away. They'd fasten them by their layettes to their cribs with large pins, and there was nothing you could do. Really, I said, amazed, wanting to take her hand in comfort. different now, and women have more choices, she confided. She told me that when she had her children, the baby nurses just swooped in and spirited them away. They'd fasten them by their layettes to their cribs with large pins, and there was nothing you could do. Really, I said, amazed, wanting to take her hand in comfort.

As she spoke, the years fell from her face. Like an actress, she could reach into the past, and with a shift of thought, her features would change, mirroring the emotions of another time. Beside me, at the back of the house with the sun still high, she was no longer in her mid-fifties, the poised chatelaine of Red Gate Farm and mother of the man I loved, but a young woman of twenty-six, her brow raised in wonder at all that would happen.

There was a lull. We smiled, relieved somehow. I stood to go. I could have talked with her all afternoon, but I had my book, what I'd come for, and I didn't want us to run out of things to say. I turned, but she spoke again, her eyes far away and remembering something. "Oh...about the volleyball-you don't have to."

As I walked across the gra.s.s, I felt changed. My step was lighter, and there was a tenuous catch at the back of my throat. Joy, maybe. I'd always a.s.sumed I would like his mother, but I hadn't guessed that it would be this much.

Later, when John got back, we traded stories. We were dressing for dinner in the large rounded closet on the second floor of the Tower, his clothes on one side, mine on the other. In between "did I like his shirt" and "this dress or that" and "shall I wear my hair up or down," I told him I'd canoed to the beach and that in the shallows of the pond near the old fishing shack, I'd seen two giant snapping turtles. "Oh, and I had a nice talk with your mother." Half-listening before, he now appeared alarmed, the pastel linen shirt he'd chosen trailing from his hand. "What were you doing there?" he scolded. "You never, never go there between lunch and dinner." He said it as though it was a canon I'd grown up with, adding that I should have known better. I felt my face grow hot. It was the first time he'd gotten angry with me; it didn't sound like him. And I felt terrible for committing a faux pas, for disappointing him when things were going so well and mostly for intruding on what was clearly his mother's private time.

When he left the closet, I wondered if there was more to it. If, in childhood, he'd been scolded often-before he'd committed to memory when to be around his mother and when to stay clear, before he'd learned to temper his boisterousness around her, before she'd built him the Tower. He'd told me that when he was younger, after his father died and before his mother remarried, she was a different person than she was now, and there were times that had been difficult for him, times when she would be away for too long. I could see that they adored each other, that they understood each other with an uncommon depth, but I knew from my relationship with my father that with such depth came complication. Perhaps, as I did, he just wanted the weekend to go smoothly. I saw clearly, if I hadn't known already, that if things were to last between us, I would need her approval. Without it, they would end-not right away, but they would end.

I was learning the rules, the unspoken codes, the secrets and agreements that make up the edifice of every family. And I was learning something else: that his anger, quick and rare, jumped to bright heat and was over.

That night I wore a dress he'd given me. (To learn my size but still surprise me, he'd asked for shoe size, hat size, and glove size as well.) Fancier than required, it was strapless, of fine, heavy, black Italian cotton, and in the right light, there was a sheen to the fabric. I loved that dress. It was his first real gift-something I might not have chosen, but when I put it on and felt the bodice snug around me, ran my hands along the folds of the full, flirtatious, tiered skirt, I thought he knew me better than I knew myself. As we walked across to the main house, fog had come in off the pond. Suddenly, he turned and took me in his arms. He was sorry about the closet, he murmured to my neck.

After dinner, we moved to the living room, and Mrs. Ona.s.sis had me sit beside her on the sofa as she poured the mint tea into fine china cups. She sat erect like a dancer. John was by the window, telling a story about some boat mishap earlier, and the dim room shimmered with laughter. He was across the room, and I missed him. Through the picture window, I could see that the rain had started. After everyone else had been served, she handed me a cup; it trembled for a second against the blue and white bone saucer. I looked down, trying to think of something intriguing or smart to say. But she began, her voice a low infectious whisper. My dress was lovely. And how had I done my hair, she wanted to know, drawing me out like a cat.

I looked up-his mother's face, so open in the soft, broken light.

When the summer was over, John told me that his mother had given him some advice: Now that you are with Christina, you must be a man. She'd counseled that in the past, it had been different, but now he needed to grow up, to take charge and protect me. I was, she told him, very feminine. We were twenty-six then, but neither of us talked about what that meant. It hung like a treasure map between us. Inside, I smiled. This must be a good thing This must be a good thing. That she had said it. That he had told me.

For years after that first weekend, even when my romance with him was over, there would be a letter from her now and then. On occasion, she would call-she'd seen me in a play or on television, or there was a book of hers she wanted me to have. It would arrive by messenger, and slipped inside the fresh pages would be an oblong cream card with the decorous Doubleday anchor at the top: Thought you'd like this, love Jackie Thought you'd like this, love Jackie.

The letters-on pale-blue stationery in blue pen, or on heavy lapis correspondence cards embossed with a white scallop (and one black-and-white postcard of Pierrot)-I kept tied with a red ribbon in a shoe box. The last arrived a month and a half before she died, before I flew back from Los Angeles to attend her funeral Ma.s.s at St. Ignatius Loyola-police barricades outside the baroque church and a slew of perfect white flowers blanketing her coffin.

"I hope all goes well," she wrote in the last letter in her artful, tended script.

And whenever she called-there would be her voice, more like music than speech, and I would feel a small thrill, like the kind you get from a cloak-and-dagger crush you want always to stay secret.

In the spring of 1991, five months after it had ended with John, I came home to a message on my answering machine. Excited and fl.u.s.tered, as though an idea had just come to her, she said, "I think I have someone to help you with your career. Call me, bye...It's Jackie."

The truth was, I didn't know what to call her. She was more than Jackie by then, more than John's mother, more than Mrs. Ona.s.sis. But there had never been a word for it, never the right word. I thought back to that first summer-how we'd gone from wary shyness, to approval, to enjoyment. And now I just missed her.

I remembered how she giggled when she ate ice cream in August and how her walk at times had a kind of slow swagger. I remembered a party early on when I'd failed to greet her as soon as we arrived. She had been standing by the windows in her living room with what I thought of as Important New York People, and I didn't want to interrupt. But a few days later, in the limo on the way to see a play for John's birthday, she made sure to correct me. Maurice, Caroline, and Ed were there as well, but she did it so gracefully, marking her displeasure in such a way that no one else knew, and I never made the mistake again.

And there was a windy ride one summer on Mr. Tempelsman's boat. I was alone with her on the back deck; we were on our way to pick up John, who was spearfishing off Gay Head. The whole way, she told me stories, the ones I wanted-not of the White House, but of her adventures in Greece and India and of the b.a.l.l.s and parties she'd gone to in Newport and Southampton before she was married, when she was a girl in New York.

I smiled, thinking of a spring evening a year later, when I'd run into her at the theater, a production of Macbeth Macbeth with Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. John was studying for finals that night, and I went alone. Afterward, she and Mr. Tempelsman offered me a lift in their Town Car, and when we pa.s.sed the marquee for with Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. John was studying for finals that night, and I went alone. Afterward, she and Mr. Tempelsman offered me a lift in their Town Car, and when we pa.s.sed the marquee for Speed-the-Plow Speed-the-Plow, she lit up. Had I seen it? I hadn't. The play, she said, was good, but Madonna was terrible. She drew out the last word, each sparkling ounce of syllable br.i.m.m.i.n.g with glee. The tabloids had been rife with stories about them that spring, stories he scoffed at. I leaned closer. "I think you should go," his mother said, smiling. "I think you should go next week-and have John take you. And go backstage!"

I remembered also how she always made a point of complimenting me-my hair or some detail of what I wore. At first, because of who she was, it stunned me. But what may have been good manners or the desire to nurture confidence in a young woman became for me a lesson in feminine grace and the poise of acceptance. She required that. And I learned, in the end, to simply thank her.

I replayed the message before I called her back, listening once more to the glide of her voice. Then I dialed the office number. It was the first time we'd spoken since Christmas, since I was no longer her son's girlfriend, and if I expected awkwardness, there was none. We caught up. We spoke of other things.

Then she explained why she had called. There was someone she thought I should meet, an author who was also a producer. Should she give him my number? Yes, that would be fine, Mrs. Ona.s.sis, I said, and thanked her.

"Oh," she said, stopping me, and for a rich moment I could almost hear her mind whirring before she landed. "Call me Jackie."

Whether it was an earned intimacy or an acknowledgment of the shift between us, I didn't know. But the following year, when I ran into her at a production of The Eumenides The Eumenides at the Brooklyn Armory and she greeted me with the same delight she always had and gave me a ride home in the Town Car, I called her Mrs. Ona.s.sis, as I always had. at the Brooklyn Armory and she greeted me with the same delight she always had and gave me a ride home in the Town Car, I called her Mrs. Ona.s.sis, as I always had.

On July 18, 1986, the day before Caroline's wedding, I took three cabs, a train, and a plane in my eight-and-a-half-hour journey to Hyannis Port from the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where I was in rehearsals for a summer stock production of Wendy Wa.s.serstein's Isn't It Romantic Isn't It Romantic. We were six days from the opening at the Sharon Playhouse, and Robin Saex, the director, had shuffled and juggled so that I could attend the wedding. When the flight, delayed several hours by fog, finally landed at Barnstable Munic.i.p.al Airport, the rehearsal dinner was long over, and there was a note waiting at the ProvincetownBoston Airline ticket desk: "Gone home, take cab, Come quick baby!"

I couldn't wait to see him, and as the cabdriver began to load my luggage into the trunk, I smiled, knowing that John would tease me when he saw what I'd brought for the thirty-six-hour stay. I had tried to pare down, putting clothes in piles of importance-yes, maybe, what are you thinking?-and shifting them back and forth, until finally, the agony of decision became too much, and I stuffed everything in. My dress, thankfully, had been decided. It was borrowed from Stanley Platos, a society designer. An ex-boyfriend's mother worked for Halston and knew Stanley well, and she thought he would have just the thing. It wasn't low-cut or short or tight, the way I tended to lean. It was sophisticated, a "lady dress"-the first I'd ever worn-and I worried that it would be right.

It was still early in our relationship-I was just beginning to get to know his family-and with the invitation came the understanding that along with performing a host of best man duties, John would be his mother's official escort. He'd be seated with her at the dinner, and although Maurice would also be there, she would require John's attention. She was concerned about how I would feel, he said, but when I rea.s.sured him that I would be fine on my own and had friends who were going, I received the thick envelope with the engraved response card in the mail. I had a reservation at Dunfey's, the hotel in Hyannis where many of the guests were staying, but a few days before the wedding, I was invited to stay at the house. As the cab got closer, I was afraid I would be intruding.