Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [56]
When he left the closet, I wondered if there was more to it. If, in childhood, he’d been scolded often—before he’d committed to memory when to be around his mother and when to stay clear, before he’d learned to temper his boisterousness around her, before she’d built him the Tower. He’d told me that when he was younger, after his father died and before his mother remarried, she was a different person than she was now, and there were times that had been difficult for him, times when she would be away for too long. I could see that they adored each other, that they understood each other with an uncommon depth, but I knew from my relationship with my father that with such depth came complication. Perhaps, as I did, he just wanted the weekend to go smoothly. I saw clearly, if I hadn’t known already, that if things were to last between us, I would need her approval. Without it, they would end—not right away, but they would end.
I was learning the rules, the unspoken codes, the secrets and agreements that make up the edifice of every family. And I was learning something else: that his anger, quick and rare, jumped to bright heat and was over.
…
That night I wore a dress he’d given me. (To learn my size but still surprise me, he’d asked for shoe size, hat size, and glove size as well.) Fancier than required, it was strapless, of fine, heavy, black Italian cotton, and in the right light, there was a sheen to the fabric. I loved that dress. It was his first real gift—something I might not have chosen, but when I put it on and felt the bodice snug around me, ran my hands along the folds of the full, flirtatious, tiered skirt, I thought he knew me better than I knew myself. As we walked across to the main house, fog had come in off the pond. Suddenly, he turned and took me in his arms. He was sorry about the closet, he murmured to my neck.
After dinner, we moved to the living room, and Mrs. Onassis had me sit beside her on the sofa as she poured the mint tea into fine china cups. She sat erect like a dancer. John was by the window, telling a story about some boat mishap earlier, and the dim room shimmered with laughter. He was across the room, and I missed him. Through the picture window, I could see that the rain had started. After everyone else had been served, she handed me a cup; it trembled for a second against the blue and white bone saucer. I looked down, trying to think of something intriguing or smart to say. But she began, her voice a low infectious whisper. My dress was lovely. And how had I done my hair, she wanted to know, drawing me out like a cat.
I looked up—his mother’s face, so open in the soft, broken light.
When the summer was over, John told me that his mother had given him some advice: Now that you are with Christina, you must be a man. She’d counseled that in the past, it had been different, but now he needed to grow up, to take charge and protect me. I was, she told him, very feminine. We were twenty-six then, but neither of us talked about what that meant. It hung like a treasure map between us. Inside, I smiled. This must be a good thing. That she had said it. That he had told me.
For years after that first weekend, even when my romance with him was over, there would be a letter from her now and then. On occasion, she would call—she’d seen me in a play or on television, or there was a book of hers she wanted me to have. It would arrive by messenger, and slipped inside the fresh pages would be an oblong cream card with the decorous Doubleday anchor at the top: Thought