Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [14]
It came without warning on that spring day—a gauntlet. We were close to Park Avenue, by the Brick Presbyterian Church, when Rachel turned to me with what looked to be a smile and said, “Do you really believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?”
My mouth fell open. I felt like I’d been slapped. I’d known her for eight years, and she’d never said anything like that. We were close to the corner, and I could hear the cabs whizzing by. It wasn’t just the theological issue—in fifth grade, we had studied Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam, and in seventh grade, for the whole year, I had been obsessed with Chaim Potok—it was that her words exploded the foundation of everything I knew: a world solid and immutable, with all the rules in place. Whether I conformed or rebelled was another matter; it was there, safe, to push against.
No one had ever asked me this question, and when she did, doubt slipped easily beside me. In that instant, everything began to fade: the mansion, the Arts Days, the felt banners, the Virgin with her lily and her book, the quiet on the stairs and the darkened stone, the shoe box full of gloves.
We stood at the light, awkward and silent. I believe she was happy, as if a war inside her had been won, but I was unmoored. I had no answer; I wouldn’t for years. As we crossed the street, I wondered how long she had been waiting to say those words. What I didn’t know then was how long I’d been waiting to hear them.
“Don’t be afraid!” my father yells. He’s waist-deep in water, far out on the second sandbar. I’m on the first—hands on my hips, foam at my ankles, and heels deep in wet sand. It’s August. That’s when they come, the sandbars and the jellyfish and the warm, shallow moats behind me near the shore. The waves are longer now, thicker—with storms roiling to the south. It’s the best time to ride our navy canvas rafts, hurling and bouncing all the way, until we hit sand and fall off, scratched and breathless from the race. It’s when we stand on our father’s shoulders and dive off into the shimmering wall of waves. “Careful,” he’ll say when I scrabble up his back. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”
My father is happiest in the ocean. It’s something I have with him.
I can’t see, but I know he’s wearing the old suit, the blue-and-white-checked one. He has a new one with anchors he got for his birthday (same kind, different pattern), but he never wears it. Janie’s father is younger. His suit has big Hawaiian flowers—pink and orange—and it hangs to his knees. He grew his hair long for the summer. But my father never changes. He’ll wear the old suit until it fades to white or my mother throws it out, whichever comes first.
“Come on!” He’s using his happy/angry voice, the one you pay attention to, the one that might hurt. So I dive in through the heavy surf, the water a cool, bright knife. “See,” he says when I shoot up beside him like an otter. We’re past the break and I stand on my toes. “Now how hard was that.” It’s not a question and he’s laughing. He’s always laughing then. It’s the summer he turns fifty. He’s happy with my mother. They have parties with wooden dance floors built just for one night, a bartender in each corner, and a band. He’s still Fun Daddy and takes us for rides on his motorbike in the fields around our summerhouse.
My mother drives us to the station in the white wood-paneled Ford wagon. We wait for my father’s train and place pennies on the tracks. My brother Bobby and I climb off the platform ledge. Below, it smells like oily gravel. We line our coins up carefully, dull copper against the silver rail. My mother gives us extra ones for Andrew. He’s only three, too small to come with us, and he watches from above.
My father always takes the Cannonball. Before it stops, steam hissing like Hades underneath, I spot him between the cars, and when he sees me, he makes a Daddy face.