Read Online Come to the Edge: A Memoir by Christina Haag - Free Book Online

slithered through the crowd to the back room. I was alone. The year before, I would never have thought of walking in without a friend in tow, both of us flipping our hair a block or two before so it was fluffy by the time we entered the bar, but by eleventh grade, I was more confident. I’d stopped wearing beige corduroys and clogs all the time and had on boots, a cut velvet skirt I’d found at a thrift shop near HB, and an old cashmere V-neck of my mother’s that I pulled low. As if Donna Summer played continually in my head, I moved through the bar at half speed, swaying as I went. I imagined myself provocative.
    The Collegiate boys had gathered around a table in a corner booth by the divider, mai tais and rum and Cokes all around. I crushed in next to my boyfriend. “Hey, babe.” His words made me feel grown-up. He kissed me and I melted. John and his friend Wilson sat across the table. They were down from Andover on a break. Both had gotten cuter since I’d last seen them. John was taller, not as gawky. He had turned sixteen.
    Some song came on, and I had to dance. “Uncool,” my boyfriend scolded. “Be cool. Chill” came the chorus from his friends. They never wanted to dance, not even when there was a dance floor, not even at parties where everyone else was dancing. They were more into getting stoned and watching Saturday Night Live and The Twilight Zone , and it had begun to bore me. John leapt up. “I’ll dance with you,” he said, grinning. He grabbed my hand, and together we cut a rug in the skinny aisle of the bar. We made it almost to the end of whatever Motown song it was before one of the waiters stopped us. “No dancin’, guys. Mike says.”
    We slid back down to our drinks, laughing like bad children. “Hey.” My boyfriend jabbed me underneath the table with his elbow. I took a beat, peered down my shoulder at him, and, summoning all my ESP/witch powers, transmitted, Pay attention, babe . With a whip of hair, I turned back to Wilson and John, whose heads were now bopping to the Stones. “Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd!” they sang.
    He’s fun , I thought. He doesn’t need to be cool—he just is . He had a way of looking up at you—his eyes barely out from under his bangs, his chin tucked in—and for a second I caught him watching. I didn’t drink the White Russian in front of me; I picked up the sticky swizzle stick and twirled it over my lips. And another thing , I told myself as my boyfriend’s arm staked itself around my neck, he’s a great dancer .
    …
    Mrs. Onassis had glittering Christmas parties then. They were always the first of the season—an easy mix of her friends and family, with Caroline’s classmates from Harvard and John’s from boarding school and the city. I delighted in seeing my cohorts on their best behavior, scrubbed and suited—the Boys especially. They were glamorous affairs, coats taken at the door and hors d’oeuvres passed, but without the pretension or stuffiness that accompanied many grown-up parties. Mrs. Onassis welcomed all of John’s and Caroline’s friends as if they were her own. While the adults tended to stay in the living room, with the sofas and the long terraced windows that looked out over the park, we stood crowded near the bar in the brightly lit gallery. Kennedy cousins and Caroline’s smart friends milled about, and a buzz raced through the rooms.
    Many years later, at one of these parties, I would sit in the corner of the living room with Mike Nichols sharing a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries. We had just been introduced by John’s mother, but as the party swirled around us, he confessed that he had fallen madly in love, hadn’t thought it possible, couldn’t believe his luck. The light was dim, and I listened, transfixed by his giddy praise of an anonymous dulcinea. I was twenty-six, but he seemed years younger, a troubadour in thick glasses. And the next spring, he married Diane Sawyer.
    These were happy