Free Come to the Edge: A Memoir by Christina Haag Page B

this is where I get off. Thanks for the chivalry.”
    “My pleasure,” he said, and with that, he slid his foot between mine, tapping lightly against the inside edge of my boot. “Nice.”
    As I ran up the steps of the Am Civ building late for class, I felt a lightness and a bitter/sad tug deep in my chest. I may have chalked it up to the splendor of the day. If I’d been wiser, I would have guessed that I was a little in love with him even then. But I was twenty, and whatever I knew on that autumn-summer day was a secret to myself. And when a friend who had also known him in high school and noticed his metamorphosis from cute to Adonis later whispered, “God, he’s gorgeous,” I agreed. “Yes,” I said, “but I wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend.” I had seen the way some women looked at him, sharp sideways glances my way simply because he was talking to me. I’d heard about the campus groupies. Besides, I was with the French Canadian, and I thought it would be forever.
    We didn’t see each other much that fall. By winter, I’d moved out of the co-op. I’d outgrown its dusty charms. A space had opened up in a five-bedroom house on Benefit Street, where Poe and Lovecraft had lived. I moved into a cream-colored row house with maroon trim, molded bay windows, and a stone sundial in the backyard.
    A few months after I began living there, a tall curly-haired fellow named Chris Oberbeck appeared at the front door one morning. I’d met him at hockey games through my boyfriend, and he’d been to a party at the house the night before. Impressed, he’d come to inquire about it. He was looking for a place to live for senior year, with John, who was his fraternity brother, and Christiane Amanpour, a friend of theirs who was studying journalism and politics at the University of Rhode Island. Was the house available? As it turned out, my roommates were all graduating in the spring, and Lynne Weinstein, a classmate whom I’d known from New York, would be moving in. We joined forces and the next fall John, Lynne, Chris, and Christiane moved into the house as well.
    Benefit Street, with its gas lamps and cobblestones, runs north–south partway up College Hill on Providence’s East Side. It’s a full mile of Federal and Victorian houses, some with plain faces open to the street and wooden fans etched above doorways, others turreted and overdone, with porticoes and pilasters. As you drive down the street, there are flashes of colored clapboard and street names like Power, Planet, Benevolent, and Angell.
    By the mid-twentieth century, after major industry had left Rhode Island, the area fell into disrepair and was slated for the wrecking ball. Funds were raised, and preservation efforts began in earnest in the seventies. In 1981, Benefit Street was not quite the swank address it is today, but it was well on its way. Tenements and boarded-up buildings remained, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with grand homes. To me, a college student, that only added to the allure.
    Our house had a maple tree out front. It was on a corner lot, built into a steep side of the Hill, and afternoons there were drenched in light. At the entrance was a lantern and tall, brass-knockered doors in glossy black. On the first floor, there was a separate apartment and an alcove. From there, the staircase spiraled up to where we lived. There was a tiny kitchen in the back that had recently been renovated and smelled of pine; a dining room, with a bust of a naked woman on the fireplace mantel, an enormous table, and our bikes resting along the walls; the landing where the phone was; and the main room, with its high parlor-floor ceilings and double bay windows. From there, you could see past the alleys and the streets to downtown—the art deco skyscraper everyone called the Superman Building, the marble dome of the State House, and just over the rooftops, parts of the red wire letters of the Biltmore sign. Upstairs, there were two large bedrooms and a