The Starboard Sea: A Novel (2 page)

Dad and I said good-bye in front of Whitehall, my new dormitory. Before he had a chance to drive off, I decided to cost my family something more and reminded Dad that I needed an allowance. He slipped a leather folio from his sport coat, tore out a blank check, and signed it. “I trust you to fill in an appropriate amount.” Dad told me to open a bank account first thing in the morning and then to call his current secretary, his latest Gayla, to report the exact figure I’d deemed necessary for my financial survival.

We scanned through the car one last time to make sure I had unloaded all my belongings.
“Do me a favor?” he asked. “Try to like this place.”
“They’re all the same, right?”
“Don’t lose that check.” He looked me over. “Buy yourself a pair of socks, and call your mother.”
“Anything else?”
“Be sure to tell us if you need something.”
I knew we weren’t going to embrace, but it surprised me that my father didn’t hold out his hand or pat my back or wish me one last happy birthday. He nodded once and settled into the driver’s seat.
There wasn’t much for me to unpack, but the thought of hanging blue button- downs in my closet and fun-tacking posters and tapestries to the bare walls made me feel claustrophobic. I decided to go for a walk.
I followed the local wind, the sea breeze, and made my way through the town center, passing a post office, a general store, a bank, and an array of restaurants and gift shops. Bellinghem was a one-street venue. Everything the town had to offer sat lined up in a neat shooting gallery. Oval-shaped wooden signs swung outside the shops. Names stenciled in gold leaf. the singing lighthouse, the charmed dolphin, the lost mermaid. I figured these businesses catered mainly to parents visiting their children on weekends. Quickly, I thought of my own store names in defense: the Toxic Oyster,” the Slutty Sea Nymph, the Nauseated Fishmonger. I imagined a time in midautumn when my parents would drive up for the weekend. My mother would make us all wait while she picked out some overpriced silver knickknack in one of the gift stores. The three of us would then walk down by the waterfront, speaking only to point out different yachts in the harbor. In the evening, at dinner, Dad would order a bottle of his favorite Barolo and make sure that I had half a glass. This is how it had been at Kensington. Year after year. But no one in my family had mentioned any visits.
After a mile or so of passing saltbox houses, the road turned into a long camel stretch of sand. A groin made of orange and purple stones ran into the ocean and divided the beach into two sections. My best friend Cal and I had spent summers together in Maine hurdling and jumping off every big rock we could find. I always seemed to be drawn to jagged edges.
The high tide rushed in and washed over the break. That far from shore, only the sharp tips of the rocks were visible, and a strange figure stood a hundred yards out, surrounded by waves, with no discernible path behind itself. For a brief moment, I thought it was a cormorant. The tall black birds have no oil on their feathers, so they stand with wings unfolded, waiting for the sun to dry their plumage. But as I walked closer, I saw it was a person. Even closer, and I knew it was a girl. She had a bundle of curly hair streaming behind her. The wet feathers turned into the folds of a long, colorful skirt. Her arms rested at her sides. She belonged on the prow of an ancient vessel. I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined it. I’d been to Greece and seen broken statues. A tour guide told me that the heads were removed because the Greeks felt they were too beautiful for the conquering Romans to see. Had even one of those faces survived, it would have been hers.
For a few minutes, I just stood and watched her. She never moved. The tide continued to rise, and I knew that she risked being trapped. Risked being washed out by a rogue wave. With the break flooded, there would be no way for her to walk back to shore. Even a strong swimmer could be pulled out into the rip.
I waded into the cool water, pushing out with slow, deliberate steps. Waves lapped against my pant legs and sprayed the edges of my jacket. The sand fell loose, collapsed, and tried to swallow one of my loafers. Unwilling to lose a shoe, I pulled away from the suction and gripped my toes tightly into the soles. Before continuing, I thought quickly and removed my jacket, holding it above my head. I walked, pressing down with only my heels. Shivering and strutting in delayed motion, I looked ridiculous. The girl stood farther out than I had judged, and just as I thought I was getting closer, the horizon changed. Expanding the distance between us.
“Hello,” I shouted. “The tide’s coming in.”
She didn’t hear me, or else didn’t feel like responding.
“The break’s flooded,” I yelled even louder. “You’ll have to paddle in.” I was still a good hundred yards from her, but my voice echoed and rang out over the waves. “Hello. Over here. Can you swim?” If she couldn’t, I’d need to dive in and carry her back. “If you’d just nod or something to let me know.” Her face remained hidden, with only a hint of profile. A long, narrow nose and tall forehead. “I’m a strong swimmer. I can hold you.” She offered no response. Maybe she was deaf, or foreign. “Do you want me to come out? Hey.”
The “hey” got her attention. Just impolite enough. Just slightly menacing. I wanted to take it back and let her know I was concerned, not rude. She turned around quickly and looked to the beach. Then, like a gymnast preparing for a run of flips and tumbles, she skipped over the water in double time. From my view, she appeared to dance on the ocean. The rocks were arranged underneath her, just inches below the surface. Not the life-threatening flood I’d imagined. She hadn’t been in danger. Not really. I stood, wet up to my hips, watching her reach shore.
Once she hit the sand, she hesitated and looked back. I took my jacket off my head and straightened my necktie. She smiled to me across the water, waved, and cried out, “Thank you.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” I shouted.
“You have no idea.” She waved again and started up the beach. Her voice didn’t sound distorted or strained, but close, as though she was in the water beside me.
“Wait,” I told her.
I tried to run and catch up but managed only to splash myself and drop my jacket. The only untouched part of me was the inside knot of my tie. I felt like a puddle.
The girl was safe and dry and gone.

Walking back to campus took some time, as I traveled in wet leather shoes that puckered and squeaked with the sound of warped windshield blades. I wanted to avoid being seen as this soaked bog creature, so I crept along behind trees and mailboxes, wringing out the drips in my jacket every few steps. Even wet shoes reminded me of Cal. He liked the barefooted feel of summer grass and heated pavement. His own feet had high arches that worked like suction cups, gripping better than the treads on any boat shoes. When we sailed together, he loved to hitch himself to the trapeze and move along the gunwale with just the skin of his feet holding him to the edge of the hull. I followed him always in damp sandals or sneakers.

Now that Cal was gone, the differences between us had become more evident. I’d heard that amputees had phantom pains, twitches and spasms, their bodies unconvinced that the limbs were removed, still flexing the elbows not there and extending the make-believe knees. I felt more like the severed arm or leg longing for its missing body. I was anxious for something to cling to. For years, I’d been happy to simply experience my life as an extension of Cal’s. Another limb that picked up the slack. While knowing him, I’d always searched for similarities. For anything that might make us interchangeable. Cal and I looked alike. Both of us had wild brown hair that turned woolly when our mothers forgot to have it cut. Our bodies were trim and athletic. We were sporty sailors, lean and lithe, not larded or buff. We walked with the same crooked swagger and low bent knees. Each of us had a cleft in our chin, a weakness in the muscle that we thought made us seem tough. But there were differences. Cal had broken my nose by accident and joked that my face was asymmetrical, that he had caused my good looks to be a millimeter off. I had to agree that he was the movie star and I was the movie star’s stunt double. My eyes were a dull slate gray, Cal’s were magnetic. His eyes were two different colors. One was green. Not hazel or tortoiseshell, but a rain forest green. The other varied from misty gray to violet: his mood eye. My face received comfortable, comforting glances, but people stared at Cal. He commanded an electric attention. The only other physical difference between us was obvious at the end of a summer’s day. Cal’s skin tanned olive brown, and mine turned red with blisters. Cal belonged on a postcard from the Mediterranean. I, on the other hand, would always be Prosper the Lobster. At least, that’s what he called me.

Each time in Maine was a vacation from the months we spent together as roommates at Kensington. In the summer, we sailed without a thought for competition. Read without worrying about exams. We drank Johnny Walker Red and smoked Pall Malls. Kurt Vonnegut smoked Pall Malls, and we liked him. Mornings, we would fill a deep and ancient cooler with roast beef sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, and liquor thieved from our fathers’ reserves. We sailed all day and slept out on my family’s boat at night. In the late hours, we rested together, planned trips.

“As far down as Tierra del Fuego. Recreate Magellan’s voyage.” I massaged my neck with a beer bottle, rubbing the cold glass against my sunburned skin.

“You know, they named a part of the Milky Way after Magellan,”

Cal said.
“What, like a star?”
“A whole cloud of stars near the Southern Cross. It’s some kind of

phenomenon.” Cal rested on his back and stared up at the night. He turned over on his side and looked at me. “You know, the tip of Orion’s sword, it’s not a star. It’s another galaxy.”

“A whole other galaxy?” I asked. “How do you know?” “Celestial navigation. At night the stars are all real sailors ever need.” “Sea of Tranquillity,” I said.
We were quiet for a long time, drinking our beers and waiting for

the air to cool.

After changing out of my wet clothes, I made my way to the main dormitory, Astor, which housed the dining hall. New England boarding schools are a small, incestuous world. In theory, I already knew everyone I was about to meet. If I didn’t know someone personally, I knew of him, or knew his grip on the social ladder. Knew if his dad was a friend of my dad. Knew what his mother had kept in the divorce. Knew if his apartment faced Central Park from the east or the west or not at all. Knew if he wintered in Vail or St. Moritz. Knew if he summered at all, and if so, was it the Vineyard, the Hamptons, or Tuscany. Knew if his nanny had a French accent or a French Creole accent. Knew if he gave a shit about money. Knew if he couldn’t wait to self-destruct.

On the path from Whitehall, I ran into a friend from Kensington, Tazewell Marx. Taze the Dazed. He’d once bragged that he could fashion a bong out of anything: a Granny Smith apple, his roommate’s oboe, the trophy cup Cal and I brought back from Nationals. Our sophomore year, he’d been expelled for making pipes in ceramics class and selling them at the Kensington Christmas Craft Bazaar. The headmaster’s wife bought two for her ten-year-old nephew, when Tazewell cheerfully explained the pipes were “bubble pipes,” for blowing soap bubbles.

On weeknights, dinner at Bellingham was jacket and tie. As I adjusted my dress coat, Tazewell sneaked up behind me and pulled down the sleeve. He pinched my biceps.

“What’s this? A mosquito bite?” Taze let go of my arm and walked backward in front of me. He smiled with straight, expensive teeth.
I’d always liked Tazewell. His father had gone to Princeton with my dad. He lived on the West Side, three blocks down from the Museum of Natural History. In the settlement, his mother was awarded the vacation homes in Vail and Bridgehampton. Taze spoke Pidgin French, especially when wasted. He had thick dirty blond hair, an aristocratic face. Just the right combination of preppy and unkempt. One wrist showed off his grandfather’s antique Piaget. The other wrist was stacked with colored bracelets woven from embroidery floss. The bracelets were faded and frayed. Together, the watch and the bracelets were proof that Taze belonged to our world. The sun and salt water faded the bracelets. The same sun and salt water tanned his skin and burnished his hair with blond highlights. Rest, play. No one ever returned to school pale. The jacket Tazewell wore was blue-and-whitestriped seersucker. I owned one. Every guy I ever went to school with owned one. I think we inherited them from our fathers. We all managed to wear them about once a year. Regattas, dining clubs, lost days.
“I want you to meet somebody.” Tazewell turned and called back to a large lumbering figure wearing a yellow necktie knotted around his head. He looked like a cross between a frat boy and a chieftain.
“Jason Prosper, this Sasquatch here is my best buddy, Kriffo Dunn.”
The curves of Kriffo’s forearms were visible through his sport coat. He pulled the yellow necktie down over his head and around his thick neck, keeping the tie loose, his collar too tight to button. We shook hands and my fingers disappeared inside his fist. He had short black hair, his cheeks like a pair of round strawberries.
“Very pleased to meet you.” For a big guy, Kriffo had a gentle, almost mellifluous voice.
“I was psyched to hear you were coming.” Tazewell walked behind me and tried to step on the backs of my shoes.
“Not half as psyched as your girlfriend.” I stopped short. Taze ran right into me, and I elbowed him in the chest.
Kriffo laughed. The two boys made for an unusual couple. Tazewell, tall and trim, the handsome prince, always prepared to charm. Kriffo, the laconic and oversized knight-errant, willing to shield. I knew that Tazewell played soccer, and, for an instant, I saw Kriffo on the soccer field, geared up in a giant football jersey and shoulder pads, thundering down the sidelines, guarding his friend, and knocking down opponents. Kriffo’s family owned a sporting goods empire. dunn was emblazoned on lacrosse sticks, across kneepads, under chin straps, and on the backs of crash helmets. His family had its own catchphrase: “Tell your opponents, they’re Dunn.”
We entered the dining hall, a spartan room with long, dark tables, captain’s chairs, and low-hanging brass chandeliers. The walls were covered with portraits of sour-faced elders. Taze and Kriffo took off in pursuit of other distractions, leaving me lost. The line I thought I needed to stand in didn’t move and only seemed to get wider as more bodies filed in past me. I decided to force my way up to the front by saying, “Excuse me,” pretending to know where I was headed. This didn’t work. Students carrying trays of food seemed to be coming out on one side of the hall. I entered through this exit.
My New York sensibility kicked in. I felt myself hailing a cab. Cutting through a crowd of people, I reached over for a tray and silverware, then picked up a plate of chicken with roasted potatoes and a bowl of red gelatin. Just as I was leaving, a gangly boy wearing an apron and carrying a ladle accosted me.
“You . . . you can’t do that,” he stammered.
“What can’t I do?”
“You cut. I saw you cut.” The boy had a small patch of acne on his left cheek.
If I’d been smart, I would’ve kept walking. I would’ve ignored him completely, but now I was trapped.
“Look, I’m just hungry, that’s all.” Balancing my tray with one hand, I gestured with the other.
“Everyone’s hungry,” the boy said.
“Hey, Plague. You causing trouble?”
I swung around and saw Taze and Kriffo. For a moment, I worried that they were calling
me
Plague. Then I turned and caught the boy slowly backing away.
With his lilting, saccharine voice Kriffo asked, “What’s the disease, Plague?”
“This guy cut everyone.” Plague looked away.
“Jason.” Tazewell put his arm around me. “I want to apologize. Plague is a wombat who sometimes forgets he’s a wombat.”
Wombat was a term we used at Kensington to describe the servers, cooks, and janitors who waited on us. It felt good to hear a familiar term I could identify. Part of me enjoyed being an insider. But another part of me hated the meanness, the smallness of the word. Wombat. The kid looked completely normal, even the acne on his face was nothing special, but he wasn’t a student. A local kid paid by the school to serve us. I wondered what his real name was.
We—Tazewell, Kriffo, and I—sat on the far left of the dining hall, beside a wall of French doors that looked out onto the crowded harbor and an island across the bay. The only movement on the water was a single rower gliding by on a scull.
“Senior privilege,” Tazewell told me. “Underclassmen can’t sit by the windows. Hey, Race, don’t you have a home to go to?” Taze picked up a roasted potato wedge and pitched it at a boy with shaggy orange hair. “Fucking day student. Fucking day flick.”
“I missed you too, asshole,” Race said. His orange hair had splotches of wine red in it. The fur of a bleeding fox.
“My good friend, Jason Prosper.” Taze tipped his head toward me.
“I know this guy.” Race Goodwyn held out his arm. “I competed against you in Tortola. This kid kept me sailing inside his wake. Cutthroat but smart.”
I put my tray down and shook Race’s outstretched hand. “I’ve never been to Tortola.”
Cal had spent his final vacation there.
“Well, the guy sure looked like you. Do you sail?” Race asked. “I’m the captain of the team.”
Taze spoke up. “Prosper is going to save the day. Win us the Baker.” I didn’t like the idea that people were relying on me to win something for them. I wasn’t even certain that I wanted to keep sailing. Since Cal’s death, I’d developed a nasty habit of capsizing.
Race squinted at me. “So, Prosper, sounds like you’re a cause for celebration. You want to crew for me?”
Before I had a chance to answer, a short guy with a big blond head approached our table. With his oversized head he looked like he’d managed somehow to stunt his own growth. He carried two dinner trays and placed one in front of Race.
“They ran out of Jell-O,” the blond kid explained.
“Did they run out of silverware too?” Race asked.
“Eat with your hands,” Tazewell said. “Like a man.” Taze pulled off the remaining skin on his chicken and folded it into his mouth, laughing as he chewed.
“Stuyvie, this is Jason Prosper, my new crew,” said Race.
“I’m Stuyvesant Warr,” Stuyvie said. “Race’s sidekick.”
Stuyvesant Warr. Dick Warr. Faculty kids were the worst. They spent all of their time trying to prove that they weren’t snitches, and then the first chance they got, they narked on everyone.
Race had the build of a sailor—slender, not overly muscular—but he was too tall to be swift footed, or at least he was taller than me. Together we’d be cumbersome and awkward pair. I imagined the two of us tacking, scrambling across the boat and taking on water. Plenty of sailors believed in the classic hierarchy: The helmsman gave orders while the crew took orders. But Cal and I both understood that the roles were less about power and prestige and more about being right for the job. Still, I couldn’t help toss attitude at Race. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a full-time helmsman.”
Tazewell and Kriffo snorted, while Stuyvie looked down.
Race stared at me the way a patient father looks at a disobedient child. “Unlike you, Mr. Helmsman, I’m what you might call a good sportsman. I’d crew for a girl if it was the best thing for the team.”
That night at dinner, my friends were all trying to act older, more confident, more aloof, and yet I knew or would soon learn their boyhood secrets. At twelve, on an Outward Bound trip, I had listened to Tazewell, red faced and hysterical, cry for a good twenty minutes because he was frightened of riding a chestnut Tennessee walker down a nature trail. Our guide eventually persuaded him to saddle up behind me. While the old mare kept her smooth four-beat walk, Taze clung to my waist with anxious, clawing hands. Kriffo’s real name was Christopher. According to Tazewell, Kriffo spent his entire childhood insisting he was the real Christopher Robin. Kriffo, eighteen and gigantic, still tucked his pillows into faded pillowcases illustrated with cartoons of Piglet, Owl, and Eeyore. Kriffo would confide to me that all of the men in Race’s family died in their forties from the same congenital heart defect. Race’s dad spent his forty-third birthday with his son fishing for blues on their Boston whaler, then, without warning, dropped his pole, grabbed his son’s wrist, and collapsed. By the time Race taxied the boat to shore, his father was dead. Race asked his algebra teacher to help him devise a formula that would tell him the exact number of days he had left until his own forty-third birthday. I’d learn from Race that Stuyvie, the dean’s son, had applied to Bellingham twice before finally being accepted. We all had our own private humiliations and heartbreaks. The trick was pretending we didn’t.
Our dinner conversation stalled on how to improve the basketball team’s chances that winter.
“I’ve been telling Stuyvie he’s got to get his dad to start recruiting some brothers to help us out.” Race raised his fist and mimicked the black power sign.
“Next time you come to the city, I’ll drop you at 125th Street. You can catch a gypsy cab and scout for talent,” Tazewell said.
“I don’t know why Chester won’t play.” Race scrunched up a bunch of paper napkins. He played imaginary basketball, shooting his napkins over Tazewell’s head.
“Chester’s too good for us.” Tazewell smiled. “He’s waiting to go pro.”
“No way.” Stuyvie blocked a shot. “Dude can’t even dunk.”
Sitting across from us, at another table but within earshot, was Chester Baldwin. His father was a federal judge and Chester’s family owned a summer cottage with tennis courts in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard. I’d met Chester on the ferry from Wood’s Hole to the Vineyard and accepted an invitation to play a few sets at his home. I’d never been in a black person’s house before. The rugs were all cream colored, and I’d been asked to remove my shoes before entering the foyer. I stood in his living room, holding my racquet, desperate to hide the holes in the toes of my socks. On the fireplace mantel, there was a framed photograph of Chester as a little boy shaking hands with a thin-lipped Vice President Bush. On our piano, my mother kept a similar photo of Riegel and me meeting a red-lipped President Reagan.
While everyone at my table joked, I glanced over at Chester. A deliberate look, and Chester was prepared for it. He expected people to scrutinize his reactions. Holding my stare, he reached down and picked up one of the crumpled pieces of napkin that Race had thrown. Chester smiled at me. He balled up the napkin into a tight sphere, aimed, and shot the basket. The napkin ball landed in my water glass and quickly expanded. I looked at the glass, then picked it up and toasted Chester. He nodded his head.
“You know what we should really do?” Taze asked. “Go to Jamaica and bring back some Rasta men. Buy this school a green house and get our ganja farmers to work their magic. You should see this new poster I have up in my room. Huge blowup of Bob Marley, kicking back, smoking a big spliff.” Taze reached into his pocket and pulled out a flat metal cigarette case. “Speaking of which, let’s hit the Flagpole.”
We got up and headed outside. I started to pick up my tray, but Kriffo knocked my hand.
“Leave it. Gives our pal Plague something to do.”