Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [27]
It was an interesting mix. Chris, a staunch Republican, was clearly headed for the financial sector, but he had a rich baritone and took voice lessons. Christiane, a few years older, was passionate and informed. Raised in Tehran and London, she and her family had experienced the Iranian Revolution firsthand, and she was more worldly-wise than the rest of us. She also dressed with great style. No slave to fashion, she knew what suited her and stuck with it. Lynne was the calming element in the house. A photographer and a dancer, she knew best how to arrange the couches in the living room, and of all of us, she was the most accomplished cook.
We each brought something to the house. Chris had a talent for smoothing things over with Mrs. Mulligan, the hawkeyed mother of our absentee landlord. Kissy made sure the chores were done. I arrived with a box of glasses and a set of turquoise dishes that my mother didn’t want anymore. Lynne contributed pans and skillets, and John’s African textiles and posters brightened the living room. His stereo was in there, too, along with all our records jumbled together in big white bins.
Early on, a friend had dubbed the house “Can of Worms,” predicting disaster because of the egos involved. But he was wrong. Except for some overheated political arguments and the occasions when John and Chris went food shopping and came home with hamburger meat and nothing else, all ran smoothly.
Since Lynne and I had both lived in the Brown co-ops, we suggested a similar but more simplified routine. Two people would shop once a week from a list we all contributed to, and everyone would pick a night to cook. Food tastes ran from vegetarian to total carnivore, with Chris and me on either ends of the spectrum and everyone else falling somewhere in between. Kissy’s specialty was crispy Persian rice with dill and yogurt. I took my cues from the Moosewood Cookbook. Chris liked burgers but tried his hand at pasta. Lynne’s boyfriend, Billy Straus, who ate most nights with us, excelled at all manner of trout. And Lynne taught John how to prepare tofu and even to like it. John showed the most improvement. He branched out, experimenting with a tattered copy of Cooking with Annemarie (Annemarie Huste had been his family’s chef when he was seven), but everything he made had some variation of what he called “sauwse”—a mixture of tamari and whatever else the spirit moved him to throw in. Pretty much everyone in the house had a significant other, and we usually had a full table for dinner.
One Saturday, the phone rang early. I was half asleep when I answered, but was soon made alert. The man on the other end said he knew where I lived. He said he hated the Kennedys and he threatened to kill John. Before the man hung up, Lynne’s boyfriend, Billy, picked up the extension upstairs to make a call, and afterward, he met me on the landing. I cried as I told him what the man had said. Should we tell John? We didn’t want to upset him. We climbed the stairs to his room, but he had spent the night elsewhere.
Throughout the day, each of the roommates was let in on what had happened, until finally we stood huddled in the living room, trying to decide what to do. Go directly to the campus police? The Providence police? Wait until we could speak to John? Call Senator Kennedy’s office, someone suggested. We were all worried and we argued. Then I heard the back door slam, and John bounded in, dropping his bags by the chair on the landing. He caught sight of our faces. “What’s up?” he said. No one spoke, but when Chris finally did, John said not to worry. He brushed it off so easily, that, for a moment, I felt foolish for being alarmed in the first place, for not intuiting, as he