Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [0]
Copyright © 2011 by Christina Haag
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
ALFRED MUSIC PUBLISHING CO., INC.: Excerpt from “Love Is Here to Stay,” music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, copyright © 1938 (renewed) by George Gershwin Music and Ira Gershwin Music. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
DGA LTD: “Come to the Edge” by Christopher Logue, copyright © 1996 by Christopher Logue. Reprinted by permission of DGA, Ltd.
VINTAGE BOOKS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.: Five-line poem from The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, translation copyright © 1990 by Jane Hirshfield.
Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
All photographs courtesy of the family of Christina Haag, except this page (Robin Saex Garbose) and this page and this page (© L.J.W./Contact Press Images).
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Haag, Christina
Come to the edge: a memoir / Christina Haag.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60490-7
1. Haag, Christina 2. Television actors and actresses—United States—Biography. 3. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. 4. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1960–1999. 5. Kennedy family. I. Title.
PN2287.H14A3 2011 792.02′8092—dc22 2010045787
www.spiegelandgrau.com
Jacket design: Evan Gaffney
Jacket photograph: © L.J.W./Contact Press Images
v3.1
For my mother
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.
—CHRISTOPHER LOGUE
Amor vinciat
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
August 1985
Beginning
Waiting
Falling
Holding
Ending
After
February 1986
Acknowledgments
About the Author
August 1985
Seeing a place for the first time at night gives it a kind of mystery that never leaves.
John’s mother’s house in rural New Jersey was on a private stretch of road between Peapack and Bernardsville in an area known as Pleasant Valley. Bernardsville, a charming town an hour west of New York City, claims Meryl Streep as its hometown girl, and buildings from the turn of the century have been converted into video stores and pizza parlors. Peapack is smaller, quieter, with an antiques store and two churches. Close by are Ravine Lake and the Essex Hunt. The Hunt was founded in 1870 in Montclair but soon relocated nearby, and Mrs. Onassis rode with them for years. And in the surrounding fields of Somerset County, John had gone on his first fox hunt.
On the left side of the road as you approached the house, there was a meadow and a ridge with a dark line of trees at the top. On the right—country estates, deeper woods, and a small river, a branch of the Raritan. The house was nestled on a hill. What I remember is the peace and comfort of being there. It was a place to rest and recharge. Mrs. Onassis had a great talent for making you feel welcome, for creating an atmosphere of elegance and ease in all of her homes, although each had its own special character.
The cottage in Virginia, which she used during foxhunting season, was simple, with pressed linen sheets that smelled like rain, a sloping roof, and a large sunlit bathroom with a sisal carpet and a comfortable chair to read in. When John and I lived in Washington during the summer of 1987—he was interning at the Justice Department, and I was performing at the Shakespeare Theatre—we spent weekends alone there. It was a particular pleasure to sink