Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [47]
“It’s a Small World … I remember that!” To prove it, he hummed a bar. “We went with my cousins Anthony and Tina. Maybe we were there at the same time.”
“Maybe …”
“Remember the goats?”
“Oh my God, I do!”
“I liked those goats,” he said, as if he still missed them. He began to shake his head softly, a smile beginning on his lips.
“I was wrong about you. I was sure you’d say Serendipity.” He was referring to the fancy ice-cream parlor near Bloomingdale’s, with the faux Tiffany lamps and the spiral staircase, where Upper East Siders had birthdays in grade school. “Girls always like Serendipity. I thought that would be your favorite.”
I smiled. I liked it fine, I told him, but there were other things I liked better.
His face had gotten wistful in the sudden dimming light. After a moment, he turned to me. “I have to tell you … I didn’t think you were going to show today.”
His eyes caught mine. I’d thought the same thing about him.
“But I’m glad you did. I’ve missed this.”
Those were the words I needed, the ones I’d waited to hear; and we walked faster, whether from cold or happiness, I did not know.
West by the river, there was a last gasp of sunset. We’d arrived at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway for the third time, and the streetlights came on. When he turned, like an admission, to walk me back once more, we laughed.
“What about you—what’s your favorite?” I asked.
“Beatles. Shea Stadium.” For him, there was no pause.
“You were there?” I gasped. “How old were you?”
“Five,” he said, satisfied. “And hansom cabs.” Except, he told me, every time there was a major change in his life—a new school, his mother marrying Onassis—she’d take him for a carriage ride around the park to break it to him.
“Ah, you couldn’t escape.”
“Too true,” he chuckled. “Too true, I couldn’t.”
We stopped in front of a dress shop that had always been there. In the window, there were sale signs written out in Magic Marker and old-fashioned mannequins covered in polyester jersey.
“I remember this place, it was here in high school,” I said.
“Wanna know something?” He leaned in, and where my scarf had loosened, I felt his breath. “I bought my mother a dress here once. A present in fifth or sixth grade. Two dresses, actually. For $19.99.”
I was charmed and asked the obvious. Did she wear them?
“That night she did.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “But only in the house. She was very convincing. She said she loved them. She said they had style.”
We’d reached Seventy-ninth Street for the last time, and there, on a crowded corner at twilight, between a Baptist church decked in Christmas wreaths and a news kiosk, he kissed me. Before we parted, I handed him back the glove, and he took both my hands in his and pressed them to his lips. And the snow that had been promising all afternoon to fall had finally and quietly begun.
I left for Mexico the next day, a family vacation, but stayed on an extra week to travel on my own. I slept in a hammock in Yelapa, downed shots of tequila before parasailing, and spent New Year’s Eve on a cliff top with strangers toasting the sky. I thought the time away would make me sure of what I already knew. When I returned two weeks later, there was a letter waiting. It was short and to the point. As he filled out his law school applications, he couldn’t stop thinking of me. “I’m imagining you all alone in the hot Mexican sun,” he wrote. Unlike the missives from India two years before, with their crossed-out words and serpentine scrawl, he had printed each letter squarely, perfectly, without confusion.
“PS,” he added at the bottom. “I want to see Your Tan.”
I waited a few days, then called him, and this time I didn’t look back.
We stood on the pavement between Eighth and Ninth avenues waiting for cabs, a huddle of friends from college. We’d been dancing that night at a new Cajun restaurant, once an old post office annex. John had a new job at the 42nd Street Development Corporation. The office was next door in the McGraw-Hill Building, and the restaurant was