The Starboard Sea: A Novel (3 page)

The Flagpole was a narrow stretch of lawn next to the seawall that served as the designated spot for illegal smoking and drinking. I thought it would have made more sense to hide in the woods or sneak off to the beach, but everyone seemed comfortable smoking under the cover of an oversized American flag. In the dark, I could see several orange embers pass back and forth between hands like swinging rows of Japanese lanterns. The cigarettes looked too big for our young faces.

“Brizzey,” Tazewell shouted. “Move your sweet ass over here.”

I’d forgotten about Bristin Abbington. She was from Greenwich and liked coming into the city for parties.
“Kriffo, are you going to let him speak to me that way?” It was nighttime and warm out, but Brizzey wore purple sunglasses with violet lenses and a fawn-colored fur coat that skimmed her knees. The coat was buttoned all the way up to the collar, and by the careful way that Brizzey shifted and teetered, I suspected she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“You lighting up, or what?” As Race spoke to Tazewell, he reached over and ran his hand down the sleeves of Brizzey’s coat. “Our naughty chinchilla,” he said.
“It’s
tanuki,
silly.” She spun around and laughed. “Japanese raccoon dog. Very rare. I should probably be arrested for wearing it.”
Bristin was the girl my mother wanted me to date. I’d kissed her first, at the Gold and Silver, an annual dress ball in Manhattan for the predebutante set. She’d talked Cal and me into going with her on a triple date. Bristin was my girlfriend for a while, I suppose, although we never really did much except listen to Beatles albums and make out on her little sister’s bed. She would stop me whenever “Dear Prudence” came on, abruptly sit up, brush her hair, and try to hum or whistle. She never sang the words. If I was a shit to her, and I know I was, it’s probably because she couldn’t find the melody.
That night at the Gold and Silver, I did a lot of fondling and groping. I slobbered over all my dance partners like some wet and hungry puppy. None of this was discreet, but then everyone date swapped. That was kind of the point, I guess. You drank either vodka and orange juice or rum and Coke. You tried not to mix the two. After a certain blindness set in, you saw how many people you could mess around with. It was careless in the most deliberate way. Learning the fast art of infidelity. Most guys were proud and comfortable as they moved from date to date, but I felt clumsy. Like I was playing charades using somebody else’s hands. On top of that, I lived in constant fear of running into one of these girls again.
“Brizzey knows Jason.” Taze blazed a joint and tried to decide whom to pass it to.
“We went to the Gold and Silver.” She opened the top two buttons of her coat, revealing a swath of tanned skin.
Girls like Bristin never let you forget that you messed around with them. They’ll hold it over you, as though there’s some residual source of plea sure remaining to be paid. The wind blew my hair across my face. I wanted to be in my room unpacking.
“The Gold and Silver is très juvenile.” A girl in shiny black pajamas and pink ballet slippers strode over to us. She held a silver lighter in her hand and flashed the flame off and on as she approached.
Tazewell leaned over to me, his eyes glazed. “Diana’s got a body built for two.”
After four years of being co-ed, Bellingham still didn’t have many girls. Demand far outweighed the supply, and the economics of the situation necessitated that the guys trade off with one another. All of the girls lived on the top floor of Astor Hall—the only place that was off-limits for guys. We weren’t allowed to visit them in their rooms and I thought of the girls tempting us like so many Rapunzels, hanging out windows and letting down hair.
Diana had white eyelashes that glowed in the dark. She greeted Tazewell and Brizzey by kissing them on both cheeks.
“
Somebody
was in France this summer,” Race joked.
“Ugly American.” Diana stood in front of Race, lifted her hand to his chest, and slowly wrapped her fingers around his tie. She pulled him in close, and then, before any of us could stop her, she set the point of his tie on fire with her lighter. The material didn’t flame so much as melt and smolder. Diana let go and jumped back.
“Crazy pyro bitch,” Race yelled. He pulled his tie loose, whipping it over his head and casting the thin snake of material to the ground.
Brizzey clapped her hands and laughed. “Synthetic meltdown.” Her laughter was infectious. With the exception of Diana, who calmly hid the lighter in her hand, stroking the igniter with her thumb so that a long lick of flame appeared to rise from her fist, we all began to laugh, not knowing why.
“Is someone going to control her?” Race unbuttoned his collar.
Tazewell sneered at Race. “Don’t be such a dick wagon. Go home. It’s past your bedtime.”
“You know she started it.” Race was already walking backward toward the pier. He hopped into a Boston whaler and geared up the engine.
Kriffo explained, “He lives across the harbor, on Powder Point. Throws a great party, so we keep him around.”
From there, things began to break up around the Flagpole. I was glad that I wouldn’t be the first to leave, but I didn’t want to wind up going to someone else’s dorm and hanging out. Most of the senior guys lived in Whitehall, but they were all heading over to Squire to watch
Platoon
. My clothes still needed to be put away, and I had to throw some sheets on my bed if I didn’t want to sleep on a plastic mattress. Classes were beginning the next day, and I wanted to check over my schedule.
As I crossed campus, I looked up and tried to find Orion. Celestial navigation was never my strong suit, and as I stood on the lawn in front of my new dorm, a sudden loneliness hit me. Cal was dead and I was at a new school, running around, wearing shoes without socks, and picking stars out of the sky. I stood there for some time, with my face up, not really searching for anything.

TWO

My dorm room was a large single. No roommate. I suspected my father probably had his hand in this, but as I slid across the hardwood floor, past a row of bay windows that looked out onto the harbor, I almost didn’t mind Dad throwing his weight around. Best of all, I had access to a fire escape. My own balcony. At Kensington, Cal and I had chosen to live together in the same room for three years. A white oak stood outside our window, and at night we climbed down the trunk and sneaked into town. We went to an all-night truck stop, the Starry Diner, and loaded up on cheeseburgers and french fries with white gravy. We complimented the waitresses, no matter what they looked like, and they gave us large pieces of warm sugar cream pie. Other times, if we had something to drink, we would just hang out in the tree, passing Cal’s pewter hip flask back and forth and swinging our legs beneath us. We picked out thin branches and dared each other to climb up on them. No one ever caught us, but one spring we came back from holiday and discovered that the tree had been trimmed back. The main branch that ran by our window was stumped in half. Cal took this measure as a personal affront. He demanded that we take action. The next afternoon, we jacked up one of the athletic vans, took two tires, brought them to a garage to have them removed from their wheels, and borrowed rope from the gymnasium. We suspended a pair of tree swings. One for each of us.

Pleased with my new room, I went to work hanging clothes on wooden hangers and fitting sheets onto my bed. I tacked up a poster of the Star Child from
2001: A Space Odyssey
. The poster had been on display over Cal’s headboard and was a constant source of tension. I thought the movie was unwatchable. Cal thought the movie was about him. He was the ape discovering tools, he was the computer who knew what was best, he was the mysterious monolith, he was the abandoned astronaut. The poster was the only wall hanging I’d taken from Kensington.

I tossed a shaving kit filled with miniature bottles of whiskey into the top drawer of my dresser. The whiskey probably wasn’t enough to get me kicked out of Bellingham but, even so, I hid the black mesh case under a mound of socks. Then I pushed the bureau and mirror next to my closet. I’d almost left behind a Polaroid of Cal I’d snapped after a long day of sailing. When I took the photo, Cal was standing at the end of a pier with his wet suit unrolled to his hips. In the picture that developed, the white border cropped Cal’s body at the waist. With no evidence of the pier beneath him or the clothes he wore, Cal appeared to hover above the water completely nude. I kept the picture hidden from my friend and used it as a bookmark. Now, as I stood in front of my dresser, I tucked the snapshot of Cal into the corner of the mirror, then I stretched out on my new bed, kicked off my shoes, and made a conscious decision to fall asleep, wearing my clothes and with the light still on.

I woke up to a man standing over me. A short guy, but solid and fit. His hair and eyebrows were the type of light blond that looked ridiculous on anyone other than a small child.

“I didn’t realize you were sleeping. I’m Mr. Tripp, your house fellow.” The man had his dinner jacket on but had removed his tie. His feet were bare. He smelled as though he’d just sucked down his second scotch on the rocks, before remembering that he’d been asked to introduce himself to me.

“I must have drifted off. Long day.” I got up out of bed and looked down at his bare feet. My toes were hairier than his. He had slender feet and high arches. My feet were stubbier, flatter.

“I’ll be your sailing coach.” Mr. Tripp gripped my hand and patted my arm. “We have big plans for you. I know for sure I want you to skipper, to sail on our first team. Some of the other boys might have a problem with that in the beginning, but don’t worry.”

I continued to examine his feet. A good high school sailing coach has calculated the strengths and weaknesses of every skipper and crewmate on every team in his division. I suspected that Mr. Tripp already had notes on me and knew that Cal and I won ninety percent of our races with our closely timed starts. Already knew that we preferred triangular racecourses over windward-leeward courses. Knew that we trained on 470s. In terms of sailing, he understood more about how Cal and I worked than Cal and I ever had. My new coach had had the time to examine it all from a distance.

Mr. Tripp cleared his throat and walked over to the wall of windows. I was afraid that he’d caught me staring at his toes. At that moment, I should have told him that I didn’t want to sail. That I didn’t want people relying on me to win for them and that I never liked the company of racing sailors. Just a bunch of gearheads in life vests. But I sensed that Mr. Tripp thought he could teach me something. He pulled up the screen of the middle window and leaned out.

“You know, this fire escape leads right down past my apartment. Not that you would ever use it to sneak out or anything, but I thought you should know.” He beamed and winked at me. Not a creepy wink, like most people give you, but a wink that told me he didn’t mind a little messing around in his dorm, as long as no one caused him any trouble.

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll only use it if I set myself on fire.” He laughed and said, “You shouldn’t sleep in your clothes. That’s how they get wrinkled. Okay, the waterfront, tomorrow afternoon.”

I skipped breakfast and arrived the next morning early for class. The lecture hall was shaped like a fantail, elevated at the top, with semicircular rows of bolted desks descending to a stage. I dashed up a set of stairs and chose a seat against the wall by a pair of tall windows. From my backpack, I took out a notebook and wrote “Modern U.S. History” on the cover. Together, the first letters spelled out MUSH, and on the basis of this acronym alone, I decided that the class would be easy. There were a dozen or more students waiting. All boys. The only one I recognized was Chester. He sat at the other end of the room, against the wall and parallel to me. We nodded hello, and I considered changing my seat to be closer to him. Before I could move, Race and Stuyvie entered the class and sat in the center of the lecture hall.

“Hey, Prosper. Want to see Mr. Guy go ballistic?” Race left his backpack on the seat of his chair, walked over to the blackboard.
Stuyvie kept lookout for Mr. Guy, poking his giant head out the door. Race pushed up his sleeves and waved a large piece of yellow chalk. We all waited to see what Race would write. He started to draw something, then erased the lines with the heel of his hand.
“Incoming,” Stuyvie warned and rushed back to his seat.
Race froze in place, his orange hair still wet from that morning’s shower. Because he had to do something, and fast, he scrawled “DILDO” in large rounded letters. Just as Race sat down, Mr. Guy entered, locking the door to the classroom behind him. He wore a plaid wool vest with a matching bow tie. He looked elderly but well maintained. Agewise, I guessed he was in that strange meridian between my dad’s age and my grandfather’s. I wondered if he’d taught at Bellingham for most of his life. It was conceivable that he’d graded papers analyzing Wilson’s Fourteen Points written by boys who would later shatter Japanese naval power at the Battle of Midway.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” He studied our faces. “None of you look particularly rested, but I trust you enjoyed your summer holiday.” His words were carefully chosen and his voice had a cultivated British accent. Right then, a boy’s face appeared in the door’s rectangular window. The boy twisted the knob and banged on the door. No one dared let him in. Mr. Guy opened his briefcase and sorted loudly through a stack of papers, ignoring the disruption. I noticed a small pink hearing aid in his right ear. The boy at the door gave one last knock before giving up.
I looked out the window just as a girl with long red hair pushed open the doors of Astor and raced down the front stairs. She carried a large leather bag and was headed straight for the outside of our classroom. The girl’s hair was so fiery and bright that it hurt to stare at her. Mr. Guy passed out the course syllabus. He turned to the board and saw what Race had written.
Mr. Guy didn’t speak so much as sing the words, punctuating each one with a snap of his fingers. “What is the meaning of this? Is this a new word for us?” He continued his ratatat snapping. “One does not use a dildo unless one knows the meaning of a dildo.”
Race fidgeted in his chair, leaned over, and whispered something to Stuyvie.
Mr. Guy stood in front of Race. “Leslie, could you possibly enlighten us?”
Leslie. I laughed to myself. Leslie was his name, not Race. I instantly liked Mr. Guy.
During this confrontation, I heard a tapping sound. Outside, the girl with the leather bag crouched down, trying to push the window open. Mr. Guy, addressing Race, stood with his back to us.
“Leslie, be of ser vice to the class. Teach us the meaning of
dildo
.” He sharpened his inflection but stayed calm.
“The meaning of dildo?” Race asked. “I don’t know, Mr. Guy. You tell me.”
Stuyvie’s body rocked with stifled laughter.
I leaned over to the window and unlatched it. The room was warm, and I didn’t think anyone would mind the fresh air.
“Young Leslie, is it not poor form to use a word one does not understand?”
I pulled the window open and gazed down at the curly-haired girl. She lifted up her bag for me to take.
“We would all like to learn the definition of this new beautiful word and add it to our burgeoning vocabulary. Accompany me, Leslie, to the board.”
As Mr. Guy led Race over to the blackboard, I reached for the handles of the girl’s brown tote bag. The dark leather felt soft and well traveled. I hid the bag under my chair. Chester glanced over at me, and I shrugged. Race glared at Stuyvie. The tops of Race’s ears had turned bright pink. He dug his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
Mr. Guy and Race stood at the front of the class behind a table and a lectern.
“Bring me a dictionary.”
Race ambled to the bookshelf, lifted the heavy text, and placed it on the table.
“Let’s see, now,” Mr. Guy said, putting on his glasses. “Our new word begins with a ‘d,’ unless that is, our Leslie here’s dyslexic. You didn’t mean to write ‘bilbo,’ did you?”
A few people snickered.
“ ‘Dilapidate,’ ‘dilate,’ ‘dilatory,’ that last one means ‘tardy,’ by the way, yes, ‘dildo.’ Ah, the origin is unknown. Not from the Greek or even from the Latin. Circa 1598, though, so we have a bit of history here, ten years after the great Spanish Armada was routed by the British. You want to write the following on the board, Leslie.”
Mr. Guy turned toward the blackboard and I could hear the girl outside grab hold of the window frame.
Mr. Guy spoke slowly. “An object serving as a penis substitute for vaginal insertion.”
As he spoke, I could hear the girl climbing. Her feet against the brittle shingles. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her arms flexing, trying to pull herself up. We were only on the first floor, but the window was a good five feet off the ground. She climbed, lifting herself quietly and holding on with tremendous discipline. I felt the strain on her face on my own face. She rose up and hung along the edge of the window like a hand puppet at rest. Careful to stay out of Mr. Guy’s line of sight. As she leaned over into the classroom, I knew she’d be unable to land without crashing and calling attention to herself.
“Do you have it all written down now? Excellent. Let’s use it in a sentence, shall we?” Mr. Guy paused. “Due to an error in judgment regarding his capabilities, Leslie was forced to supplement his own shortcomings by using a—”
Our shouts and laughter saved the girl. They were the perfect cue for her to enter, and we carried on long enough to cover the sound of her landing. Mr. Guy stayed focused on staring Race down. He didn’t notice the girl slide into the chair beside me and pull her bag out from underneath my desk. Her knuckles were scraped and torn. She brought her hand up to her lips and brushed the blood away. I waited for her to glance over and thank me. She didn’t. Scanning the classroom, I caught Chester’s eye. He wasn’t laughing at Race but staring at the girl and me. Chester shook his head.
For the remainder of the class, Mr. Guy went through the syllabus and explained what we would be covering that semester. The girl took notes using a thin brass fountain pen. Eventually, a long, dull buzzer signaled the end of the class period. She stood, gathering books and arranging them in the leather bag. I studied the print on her skirt, the unruliness of her hair. It was the girl from the beach. I’d only seen her in profile before. This time, she did not smile or thank me. She left the classroom quickly and headed down the hall.
Most of the girls I considered to be pretty had soft, rounded features. Small eyes. Creamy skin. This girl was different. Her features called attention to the high planes of her cheeks and forehead, the sharp angles of her lips and eyes. Unlike Bristin’s or Diana’s faces, which begged and invited “Admire me,” her face had a quiet authority. A frontier quality that said, “I am not to be put on display. I am not here to be looked at.” She stood tall. Had I not seen her crawling through a window, I might have mistaken her for a teacher. Even then, I was certain of her beauty, but I was also certain that a person could miss this about her.
It should have been the most natural thing for me to ask someone in the class about the girl, but it wasn’t. She’d come in through the window like some sort of changeling, and no one had bothered to notice her.