Come to the Edge

by Christina Haag

  In rehearsal clothes, we tumbled and wrestled on the small stage. There was ease, banter, and trust, and he’d lean against me when Robin gave notes. But over the past week, once we were alone and in street clothes, something was different between us. There was a seriousness, a glance too long, and, for me, the awareness always of where he was in the room. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I fought it.

  “Hey,” he called out from the bike. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  That night home was Brooklyn, the walk-up I shared with another actress on the outskirts of Park Slope. Not over-the-bridge Brooklyn, but eight miles as the crow flies and forty minutes on the D train—if it was running express. And that summer, it never was.

  A trek to one of the outer boroughs didn’t concern him. He flicked his wrist and the engine growled. “Hop on,” he said. I pressed my sandal onto the rubber-wrapped metal foot peg and slid on the back of the bike, pulling at the slithery fabric of my dress. “Hang tight,” he said as he revved the engine once more.

  My hands—where to put them. Certain they’d give me away, I tried the silver hitch behind me on the saddle. No good; I’d fall. As they fluttered forward, I thought, He will know if I hold him. He will know by my touch. It was as though I had no memory of the hour before. Earlier, in the theater, we’d begun to rehearse the kiss at the end of the play, the one we’d always marked or skipped over, a long kiss during the narrator’s speech about death and drowning. Robin wanted it passionate, extending well beyond what the script called for, and as we knelt on the itchy stage grass facing each other, she told him to grab me and he did.

  On the bike, I touched his back lightly, then placed my hands at the sides of his torso. We waved goodbye to Robin and Santina and the crew, and took off down Eleventh Avenue, past the warehouses and tire shops.

  A few blocks later, he turned right toward the river. At the stoplight, his legs dropped, decisive, to either side of the bike. He reached back, grabbed my arms, and placed them firmly around his chest, pressing twice so they’d stay put. And then, as quick as air, we swerved into the fast lane of the West Side Highway. If we hadn’t—if the light had been a little longer or he’d hesitated, taking time perhaps to adjust the mirror or run his fingers through his hair—he would have heard a sharp intake of breath before I gave over and let myself sink into his back. Before I surrendered. Then I knew. It wasn’t my hands that were telltale; it was my heart, pounding against the thin white cotton shirt he wore that night. I tried to slow it down, to slow my breath. He’ll know, he’ll know how you feel. It didn’t occur to me that he already did.

  I knew that if we spoke of it, everything would change. It was like a dream. And you know that if you tumble forward into it, there will be no way back.

  It was late, but the traffic was heavy. He dodged the taxis and potholes, and I held on, my knees wedged against his. Near the FDR Drive, he took the long, lean ramp up to the Brooklyn Bridge. The railings and cables were lit for the night. The sky was velvet. No stars. And the city moon, days from being full for the second time that month, scattered itself over the oily current of the East River like a soothsayer bestowing gifts. The wind flapped his shirt back, the cotton silk on my skin. I closed my eyes. And somewhere on the bridge, I rested my head against him and listened to the hum of the night.

  When we hit the Brooklyn side, I directed him from Adams to Flatbush. We passed Borough Hall and Junior’s Deli (still open, bustling and bright), the shuttered storefronts, and the Beaux Arts façade of the Academy of Music. And when I saw the domed clock tower where Atlantic meets Flatbush, I knew it was almost over. I wanted to keep going, to take him farther into Brooklyn, all the way to Brighton and the sea.

  “Here,” I said at Fourth Avenue. “Turn.”

  Union Street was wide and empty, and I pointed to a brownstone identical to many on the block. He parked the bike, and I slid off, dizzy from the speed, my eyes dry, my hair tangled. We stood close but apart, under the glow of a streetlamp, and he began to rock the toe of his sneaker against the curb.

  “This is where you live.”

  “It is. I feel like I have sea legs.” My face was warm, and I realized that if I said anything else, it wouldn’t make sense.

  But he nodded; it had been a long ride. Then I saw him look up to the door of the brownstone.

  “I had a thought,” he said. “What if we leave for Peapack on Thursday night after rehearsal instead of Friday morning. You know … spend the night, have the whole day?”

  On Friday, the crew would be in the theater, and we were going to New Jersey to rehearse on the hill near his mother’s house.

  “I thought I’d check with you before floating it by Robin,” he continued. “Whatever you think …”

  I fiddled with the bronze cuff, twisting it on my wrist. He watched.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” I said slowly. “Are there horses there?”

  “Yeah … there’re horses.” He looked at me as if he was trying to recall something. He’d stopped fooling with his sneaker and we were still.

  “So how do you feel?” I asked. “About the play?” Although it wouldn’t be reviewed and the setting was humble, it was a big deal. His New York debut and mine, and though we didn’t know it, his swan song.

  Although he’d mentioned that many of his cousins would be at the opening, as well as his mother’s friend Mr. Tempelsman, and this made him happy, I knew his mother wouldn’t be there, and neither would his sister. “They’re on the Vineyard.” I was quiet when he told me. Were the rumors true? Did his mother disapprove? But he quickly brushed it off. It was better this way, he said. If they came, it would only cause a fuss.

  “How do you feel?” I asked again.

  I imagined him not as he was, standing before me by a skinny tree on Union Street, but in his costume: the wool cap and leather satchel, and the striped schoolboy tie askew on the collar of his wrinkled button-down. It was hard to make John look nerdy, but onstage, in our play, he did. He’d perfected the hangdog look, and in a blue blazer sizes too small, he stooped.

  He was looking up at the tree, his lips pursed. “I feel good. I feel okay. I mean, I’m nervous—with you I’m fine.” He nodded, as if trying to convince himself. “But that speech I have about Kerrigan shooting the cows, sometimes I blank. Even though I say the words, I’m out of the scene.”

  I smiled. He was wonderful in the role. “Listen,” I said. “I’m going to tell you something an acting teacher once told me. If you’re in trouble—don’t just keep going. Stop, take a breath, and look into my eyes. It will ground you. It may feel like it’s forever, but it’s not, it’s just a moment. And you’ll remember. I promise. You’ll know where you are.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding again. “I’ll try. But same for you. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  I reached out my hand and he took it. Our eyes locked. I wanted to hold him, to be back on the bike, but when my hand slipped down again, we were no longer smiling and he spoke so low I could barely hear him.

  “It’s heady stuff. Very intense being with you like this each night.” It was an offering, a way into new territory, and when I stayed quiet, sure and unsure of his meaning, deciding whether to dodge, play dumb, or lunge headlong, he kept on. “I don’t mean in a bad way. I just—”

  “Oh, yes,” I began, astonished by my duplicity. “Friel is amazing!” And I continued to rattle on breathlessly about the magnificence of playwrights and the transcendence of the theater, before I turned to climb the steps of the brownstone, leaving him to his journey alone across the bridge to Manhattan.

  A week after the play closed, the motorbike was stolen, and in September the police found it abandoned in a field somewhere on Staten Island. I mourned the idea of the shiny new machine, but John seemed indifferent. He decided not to claim it. “Anyhow, they’re dangerous,” he said. “A good thing it’s out of my hands.” And the following spring, when we were together and I no longer retreated up brownsto
ne steps away from him, the motorcycle, whether it was red like I remember or not, became part of the story we told each other. “I didn’t care that it was stolen,” he would announce. “I bought it to woo you, and it was worth every penny.” He said this, whether it was true or not, always adding, “I can’t believe I took you all the way to Brooklyn, and you didn’t even invite me up for a glass of water!”

  “What’s your favorite New York memory?” he asked. We’d met at noon on the steps of his old school under the guise that I would help him find a present for his sister. And now, hours later, we had walked in circles all over the Upper West Side. It was four days before Christmas, and the city was crammed with tourists and shoppers. The tree sellers were out in full force, drinking steamy coffee at their makeshift stands, and the sky was clear, although the news called for snow.

  It had been more than four months since the play had closed, since he’d kissed me by the McDonnells’ horse barn, and we’d seen each other only a handful of times.

  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 assess 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, and I gave him Edna O’Brien’s 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 rehearsed 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 glass, 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 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 ca
mps. 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. 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 class ahead had broken into the office one night and read the files, recounting that the notes on each of us included not just missed classes 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.