Part 6 (1/2)

”I'm scared, too,” I say, but we're both smiling.

As if to a.s.suage me, he kisses each knuckle, then turns my palm over.

”I can't stop looking at your hands. There's a poem...have you seen Hannah and Her Sisters Hannah and Her Sisters?”

Yes, I tell him.

”When I saw it, I kept thinking of you. You look like the actress. Your hair. When Michael Caine's in the bookstore and he gives her the book-”

”I remember. 'n.o.body, not even the rain-'”

”'-has such small hands.'”

He leans back and his eyes close. I touch his cheek. ”What are you thinking?” I ask, but he shakes his head.

”What is it?” I make him look at me.

”On the street-I keep thinking I see you. You make me emotional, and I'm not like that. I want to say your name all the time.”

The cab stopped on Forty-second Street, and I walked across to the restaurant. Through the gla.s.s, I could see faces I knew. Happy. Young. Some from high school, most from college. John's roommate, Rob Littell, with his s.h.i.+rt askew, was sliding across the floor doing his ski move. Art majors boogied in groups, punctuating with jumps and hoots. Cla.s.sicists s.h.i.+mmied solo. Girls who grew up in Manhattan took up s.p.a.ce, looping around the sides of the room and executing serpentine finger drills worthy of Indonesian temple G.o.ddesses. Frat boys got down with Iranian beauties, making up with enthusiasm what they lacked in finesse. I dropped my bag by a pile of jackets near the door and found my friends, the roommates from Benefit Street. Chris was talking to Kissy, and Lynne stood close to her boyfriend, Billy.

”He's here somewhere,” I heard Lynne say over the din. ”He was just asking about you.”

Then he appeared, smiling so big, and anything I feared was gone. With one hand, he led me into the center of the dance floor. And when the fast song got slow, when the Stones bled into Joan Armatrading, I leaned into him. If there were people talking about us, about me, if there were eyes of judgment or of envy, I shut them out. Like Annabella, the character I had left on the stage that night, I looked into the eyes of my Giovanni and thought of the love that overcomes everything.

When the party was over, we drifted outside. The April air was balmy but still cool enough for a coat. There were no cabs in sight. John stepped off the curb to scout, and I turned to say my goodbyes. After a moment, a friend whispered as she hugged me, ”Be careful, Christina.” I knew she was not referring to the slick street.

I was stunned. Was there something she knew that I didn't? I wanted to say, Can't you tell? Can't you see how he feels? How I feel? How happy we are? How long we've waited? How right this is?

”What?” I said, my face flushed.

She stopped herself. She knew him well. ”Just be careful.”

A cab pulled up, and John whisked me inside. ”1040 Fifth,” he said to the driver, before sinking back beside me and pus.h.i.+ng his foot against the jump seat. ”Mummy's away tonight.” And we set off.

1040. His mother's home. The stone scallop sh.e.l.l of the Pilgrim above the taut green awning. The paperwhites in the vestibule at Christmas. The front gallery where everyone gathered at parties. The narrow hallway near the bedrooms that was lined with black-and-white photographs and collages of summers in Greece, the Cape, Montauk. His old room, with the captain's bed and the navy sheets and the old school paperbacks and the tall cabinet filled with his father's scrimshaw. I had been to 1040 many times, but this was the first time I would be alone with him there.

I don't know why we went there that night instead of to his apartment across the park or to mine in Brooklyn. As the cab drove off, I did not find it curious that we, at age twenty-five, would stay at his mother's, but rather I thought it was wonderful that there were so many possibilities. I remember a quickening of hope that maybe, with John, I could grow up and not grow up, I could have an adult life but not lose the girl, the jeune fille jeune fille who was careless and wanted to dance and wore stockings with tears. who was careless and wanted to dance and wore stockings with tears.

When I was twenty-five, I wanted freedom. I was afraid of being hemmed in, of having responsibilities and limits. None of the grown-up women I knew seemed happy. Not my mother or her friends or the few of mine who had begun to marry. When I was twenty-five, I cared pa.s.sionately about two things: acting and love. With John, I thought I could have both. He was the first boyfriend I'd had who wore a suit and tie to work, but he also possessed the playfulness of a large dog.

The lights got brighter as we drove past the strip of triple-X theaters near Times Square, and I thought, There'll be no relations.h.i.+p talks, no conflicts, no jealousy, no drama. None of the things that love has led to in the past There'll be no relations.h.i.+p talks, no conflicts, no jealousy, no drama. None of the things that love has led to in the past. I thought this only because these were things that hadn't happened yet and conflict was a level of intimacy I feared, one that tore at the gossamer skein of romance. In the cab, on that night, I felt hope.

As though he read my mind, he pulled me close, one fishnetted leg on his, and looked at me with what appeared to be wonder. ”I can't remember being this happy. Why is that?”

”I don't know why. I don't know, it's strange. We're different-”

”But you know me, you know know me.” me.”

”I know you.”

”It's like we're simpatico.” We both smiled when he said it.

”I keep trying to go slow, but I can't. I can't help myself.” He pushed my hair back and kissed me. Then, pressing his forehead to mine, he said solemnly, ”I can't imagine us fighting ever.”

”Me either,” I said back, as if it were a vow, a good thing, a thing of mystery and of promise. And with that, the words of caution were banished from my mind, and we sped off on the wet city streets to the latticed iron doors of his mother's apartment building.

Slowly I began to meet his family. A cousin here and there. Easter with his sister. And on the Sat.u.r.day of Memorial Day weekend, after stopping for the night at Brown for Campus Dance, we were on our way to Red Gate Farm, his mother's 464-acre retreat on the southwestern end of Martha's Vineyard. I had been there once before, but it was in winter, and we had been alone. On a morning when the sky was bright, he had taken me to the cliffs and told me the Indian legends-how they buried their dead facing east to the sun. Ancient graves had been found over the years, he'd said, in the tangled briar of his mother's property.

This time I would meet his mother. There had been greetings and goodbyes at holiday parties, and polite conversation, but nothing that she would have recalled. And even if she did, this was different. I was the girl he'd done the play with. I was nervous and anxious, and I overpacked.

On the Steams.h.i.+p Authority ferry from Woods Hole, we inched across Nantucket Sound to Vineyard Haven. We'd rushed from Providence up Route 195 that morning to make an early boat. Friends he'd invited caravanned behind us. We rallied in the ferry parking lot, and the cars stayed on the Woods Hole side. It was that time in late spring that aches with possibility, the time when it's forever cold in the shade, sometimes warm in the sun, and hovering always is the errant promise that there will be more.

The Islander Islander was clean and smelled of diesel. It was windy on board, but none of us stayed below. Excited for the weekend ahead, we planted ourselves on the upper deck looking for sun. Halfway across, John disappeared, and I lay sprawled on a bench in the center of the midsection-one leg bent, the other dangling out of a summer skirt, an arm propped over my eyes. Heat rose from the metal and wood, and my back was warm with it. I felt the engine's droning hum, the s.h.i.+ft of pitch and drop over water. was clean and smelled of diesel. It was windy on board, but none of us stayed below. Excited for the weekend ahead, we planted ourselves on the upper deck looking for sun. Halfway across, John disappeared, and I lay sprawled on a bench in the center of the midsection-one leg bent, the other dangling out of a summer skirt, an arm propped over my eyes. Heat rose from the metal and wood, and my back was warm with it. I felt the engine's droning hum, the s.h.i.+ft of pitch and drop over water.

A trickle of air buzzed in my ear. It stopped, started, then stopped again. I opened my eyes to find John crouched beside me, his face close to mine.

”You're sweet,” he said loudly when I groaned. ”Are you grumpy? Hmm? Just a little?”

I shook my head, and he watched me yawn.

”Oh, so sweet. Did anyone ever tell you you're sweet? Don't be too too sweet, or I'll bite you. Come on, get up, get up. No breaks for you,” he half-sang. ”C'mon-I'm the boss of you.” sweet, or I'll bite you. Come on, get up, get up. No breaks for you,” he half-sang. ”C'mon-I'm the boss of you.”

I rubbed my eyes and tried not to smile. ”You are not not the boss of me,” I insisted. But, laughing, I followed him around the pilothouse to the breezy side of the boat. the boss of me,” I insisted. But, laughing, I followed him around the pilothouse to the breezy side of the boat.

We were almost there. White houses and low green hills. He turned, his hair already salty from the air. ”See-aren't you glad you're here?” It was my first ferry ride there, and the first time for anything is an occasion, he said. He pointed out the places. West Chop Light, the yacht club, the sails of the schooner Shenandoah Shenandoah-and that way, down and around, to Oak Bluffs and the storied gingerbread cottages.

”What do I call her?” I asked. I knew the answer but wanted to make sure. He didn't dismiss the question. He may have antic.i.p.ated our meeting, just as I had, but for his own reasons. He considered it for a moment-eyes on the sh.o.r.e, on the busy wharf that was coming pristinely into view.

”Call her Mrs. Ona.s.sis. Call her Mrs. Ona.s.sis unless she says otherwise.”

We were supposed to be met at the dock by Va.s.sili, a short, wiry Greek from Levkas. He'd worked for years on Aristotle Ona.s.sis's yacht and was now in John's mother's employ. Instead, there was a rounded man in a striped s.h.i.+rt with a most engaging smile.

”Maurice, what are you doing here!” John looked pleased.

”I'm surprising you,” the man said brightly. I liked him immediately. Maurice Tempelsman was a financier, a diamond trader, and Mrs. Ona.s.sis's last love. Rob, John's friend since college and current roommate, knew him, but for the rest of us, there were introductions all around. He had come by boat, he said, and thought it would be fun if, instead of driving the thirty minutes to Gay Head, we continued on by water, anchoring at Menemsha Pond, a stone's throw from Red Gate Farm.

After lunch at the Black Dog, we piled into the open Seacraft. As the waves kicked up, Maurice pointed out the landmarks. When he saw me s.h.i.+vering in a jean jacket, he gave me his windbreaker and had me sit in the captain's seat behind him. I caught sight of John. He was perched up front as far as he could go-his face leaning hard into the wind.

Red Gate Farm was off an unmarked dirt and gravel road. If you continued on the main route as it swung north, you would come to the end of the island-the cliffs, the redbrick lighthouse, a small cl.u.s.ter of shops-and when the road wrapped back inland amid fieldstone fences and stunted sea-bent shrubs, there was a small library, a firehouse, and a town hall. But if you turned before the road curved and entered a weathered wooden gate that in those days was rarely locked, you would have found it. The land, a vast parcel of the old Hornblower estate, was wild with scrub oak, native grape, poison ivy, and deer ticks. It bordered Squibnocket Pond and a spectacular swath of private beach. Mrs. Ona.s.sis had bought the property in 1978, and the traditional cedar-s.h.i.+ngled house-a series, really, of adjoining saltboxes with clean white trim-had been finished in 1981. There was a garage, a vegetable garden, the caretaker's lodgings, and tennis courts hidden by hedges. A short distance from the main house, there was a guest cottage, known as the Barn. Next to this, designed with John in mind, was an attached faux silo with a bedroom at the top that we called the Tower.

Wherever you looked you sensed proportion-a symmetry between what she had built and what had always been. It was there in the way the lawn ended and the wild gra.s.ses began, in the slant and angles of the saltbox roofs, in the cut trails that wound their way through dense brush to the beach, and in the pensive s.p.a.ce between the fruit trees in the orchard. It was there in the wildness she left, there in the stillness. She had built her house in agreement with the land, and the Tower, where we stayed, stood sentry.

The years that I visited, she remained on the island for most of the summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, returning for meetings in the city only when she had to. With her were Efigenio Pinheiro, her elegant, earringed Portuguese butler, and Marta Sgubin, who had begun as a governess to John and Caroline and was now cook, confidante, and cherished part of the family.

On moonless nights, the sky there was so black, even with a riot of stars arched above. In August, when the gra.s.s was parched and the sea untroubled like green gla.s.s, we often went up with friends, staying in the Barn and cranking the stereo. But when we were there alone, it was quiet in the Tower-the wind, crickets, a bird's call, and the oblivious blanketing beat of the waves. At sunset, there was a ruffle of scarlet in the west before the shadows came.