Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [58]
Whether it was an earned intimacy or an acknowledgment of the shift between us, I didn’t know. But the following year, when I ran into her at a production of The Eumenides at the Brooklyn Armory and she greeted me with the same delight she always had and gave me a ride home in the Town Car, I called her Mrs. Onassis, as I always had.
On July 18, 1986, the day before Caroline’s wedding, I took three cabs, a train, and a plane in my eight-and-a-half-hour journey to Hyannis Port from the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where I was in rehearsals for a summer stock production of Wendy Wasserstein’s Isn’t It Romantic. We were six days from the opening at the Sharon Playhouse, and Robin Saex, the director, had shuffled and juggled so that I could attend the wedding. When the flight, delayed several hours by fog, finally landed at Barnstable Municipal Airport, the rehearsal dinner was long over, and there was a note waiting at the Provincetown–Boston Airline ticket desk: “Gone home, take cab, Come quick baby!”
I couldn’t wait to see him, and as the cabdriver began to load my luggage into the trunk, I smiled, knowing that John would tease me when he saw what I’d brought for the thirty-six-hour stay. I had tried to pare down, putting clothes in piles of importance—yes, maybe, what are you thinking?—and shifting them back and forth, until finally, the agony of decision became too much, and I stuffed everything in. My dress, thankfully, had been decided. It was borrowed from Stanley Platos, a society designer. An ex-boyfriend’s mother worked for Halston and knew Stanley well, and she thought he would have just the thing. It wasn’t low-cut or short or tight, the way I tended to lean. It was sophisticated, a “lady dress”—the first I’d ever worn—and I worried that it would be right.
It was still early in our relationship—I was just beginning to get to know his family—and with the invitation came the understanding that along with performing a host of best man duties, John would be his mother’s official escort. He’d be seated with her at the dinner, and although Maurice would also be there, she would require John’s attention. She was concerned about how I would feel, he said, but when I reassured him that I would be fine on my own and had friends who were going, I received the thick envelope with the engraved response card in the mail. I had a reservation at Dunfey’s, the hotel in Hyannis where many of the guests were staying, but a few days before the wedding, I was invited to stay at the house. As the cab got closer, I was afraid I would be intruding.
I’d been to the Cape house twice before, but on that night, everything looked different. The Compound, as the press and locals called it, was really a cluster of three houses, the largest bought by Joseph P. Kennedy in 1929 and the two adjacent “cottages” acquired later by John’s father and his uncle Bobby. The Shriver family had a house nearby. There was a large pool and tennis courts, and at the main house, a circular drive and a towering flagpole. As we approached Irving Avenue and the sea, there were detours and barricades, along with a smattering of onlookers milling about on the road—the next day at the church there would be thousands. It was still foggy, and the streetlamps cast an eerie light. Suddenly, the cars ahead came to a dead stop, and police began directing vehicles without clearance to turn back. As an officer approached, I rolled down the window.
“I’m a friend of John’s.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but we can’t let you through.”
“Could you at least call the house? They’re expecting me.”
“I’m sorry, miss. We can’t disturb the family. You’ll have to move along.”
The driver grew impatient and began swerving up a driveway to turn around. “I’m dropping you at a pay phone in town, lady.”
“Wait!” I implored. There was a screech of tires, and the driver threw me a look.
Just then, through the haze, John appeared, barefoot and shirtless, an orange sarong tied low at his waist.
“It’s all right,