Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [68]
The night before we left, we went to a party in a small A-frame in the woods—a roof raising for Mouse McDowell, one of Andy’s cousins. We danced barefoot in the small hours to Little Feat and the Band with the inn staff and various Carnegie descendants—McDowells, Fergusons, Fosters. The virgin house throbbed to the beat and reeked of bourbon, weed, and sawdust. The heavy night air wafted through the glassless windows, and when Prince’s Dirty Mind came on, John pulled me in, mouthing the words on the back of my neck. We danced like there was no one else in the room, his arms over my shoulders, mine on his back.
On our way back to the inn through an open field, with horses and armadillos rustling unseen in the dark, he told me he loved me for the first time, though I already knew. And as the night began to deepen, we made love on one of the porch swings at Greyfield, a fan overhead ticking time.
Afterward, I thought I heard someone. “There’s no one there,” he said. But moments later, below the high porch, Andy walked by, his blond head aglow in the darkness.
That fall, John switched apartments and began law school. He left the shared two-bedroom in a doorman building off West End Avenue where he’d lived for almost two years and moved to the top floor of a renovated town house on West Ninety-first Street. The building, more spruced up than those on the rest of the block, had a red door with globe lighting. Steps from the entrance was a community mural depicting people of all races in harmony, but if you left your bike outside overnight or neglected to pop the car radio, it was likely to be stolen. The apartment was a block from the park, around the corner from a D’Agostino market, and across from the PS 84 schoolyard, and afternoons, the sounds of children playing fell lightly over the street.
Before our trip to Cumberland Island, he took me to see the apartment, and we walked through the empty rooms on a summer night. We stood in the largest one discussing the pros and cons. “What do you think?” He spoke softly, leaning in to nudge me. “Should I take it?” He wasn’t sure; there was another place closer to NYU. If there was a choice of trails up a mountain or where to set up camp for the night, instinct served him, but with less corporeal decisions, he’d check himself and weigh what others thought. Maurice thinks this, he’d tell me, or Mummy and Caroline said that. As the amber light deepened in the room, I saw, in a way I hadn’t before, how much he trusted my counsel, desired my guidance, and, more than simply wanting my approval, needed me to be happy here, too.
I touched his cheek. “I think it’s grown-up. I like it,” I said, before asking if he would leave his water bed behind.
While we were away, the bare rooms were outfitted with sturdy essentials—comfortable furnishings you could kick about. A nap-inducing canvas-covered couch, a leather recliner, a plain coffee table, a small dining set. Simple lamps and mirrors. The masks he collected peered from the walls. I opened a kitchen cupboard. It was stocked with matching dishes and oversize mugs. In the linen closet, new sheets and towels had been stripped of their plastic and folded squarely by someone who knew how. “You must have a fairy godmother,” I teased. He winked, aware this wasn’t the norm. “Well, Mummy did what she does best and called up Bloomingdale’s and Conran’s. Nice, huh?”
At the back, down a dark skinny hall, there were two small rooms. In the one that would become his study, there was a saw-horse desk and a pine bookshelf. Spider plants crowded the window. The bedroom was furnished with an antique highboy, a new brass bed with an art deco lamp of his mother