Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [48]
I had been in a play that night. Each spring at Juilliard, the members of the graduating class perform for two weeks in repertory, a nod to the European roots of the training. It was thrilling to shift gears and worlds like that; it was why I wanted to be an actor. The slate that spring was a Jacobean tragedy, O’Casey, Ibsen, and Sam Shepard. Tonight—the tragedy. I was Annabella, murdered for her incestuous love of her brother Giovanni. Believing their passion is pure, they forgo morality and society’s judgment, and when they cross the line to carnal pleasure, it seals their fate. Romeo and Juliet with a twist.
When I came offstage, I removed the heavy makeup and the wig of human hair the color of mine but longer, thicker. I let the brocade gown drop to the floor and stand by itself in a poof. I untied the hoop skirt and unlaced the stays of the boned corset. I pulled off the wig cap and the bobby pins that held the pin curls to my head and made the wig lie flat. I shook out my hair, lined my eyes with black pencil, and slowly inched fishnets up my legs. A tear; I pulled higher. Then I put on the new dress I’d bought at a thrift shop behind the planetarium days before. I slipped the black sheath of silk crêpe over my head—slim straps on the shoulders and a bias-cut; it fell to mid-calf and flared slightly there.
With six dollars and a token or two in my pocket, I headed to Columbus Circle to catch the A train. I slung my Danish schoolbag across my back; it was purple and stuffed with dance shoes, leotards, scripts, scarves, the Post, a red paperback of Yeats’s poems, and my journal. When I reached the subway steps, I changed my mind and hailed a cab. The bag was heavy, and I was eager to get to the party. Anxious, too. Chris Oberbeck, our roommate from Benefit Street, was getting married to his college sweetheart, and this shindig was in their honor. Although John and I had been seeing each other for almost three months, this was the first time we would be together as a couple with people we’d known for years.
Our courtship since mid-January had been hidden, sporadic, and intense. Separating from the long relationships we’d been in—John’s for five years and mine for three—had proved more difficult and painful than we had imagined. And there was the fact that we’d known each other for so long. I was afraid that if I took the leap, I might lose my friend. What was undefined held safety.
One February night, as I was walking to meet him, the wind bit the backs of my knees and my mind raced. This can’t work … How can he … What should I … But when I saw him at the street corner waiting, his chin tucked, his head dipped to one side, I only knew I was where I should be and this was right. There was nothing else.
Still, it was stop-and-start.
In late January, he’s going to a conference in Pennsylvania, and he asks me to meet him there afterward. “To take a weekend together,” he says. It’s not a concept I understand. I have boyfriends, and we just do things. But for some reason, I find the phrase so sexy. He describes the hotel where we’ll stay, a place he’s never been. “There’s a heart-shaped Jacuzzi in the room,” he says, reading the brochure. On January 28, the day the Challenger crashes, he leaves a short message on my answering service saying the trip is off. I don’t understand at first—it’s a tragedy, surely, but not one that affects him directly. When we speak, he explains. His presence is required at the memorial service at the Johnson Space Center in Houston with President Reagan and other dignitaries.