The Starboard Sea: A Novel (32 page)

Once everyone returned from break at the end of March, I stayed focused on sailing and completing my course work. My grades still mattered if I hoped to get in to Princeton. I had the second half of Mr. Guy’s Modern U.S. History, along with another semester of calculus and English lit, but my other classes were all electives, classic senior slump fluff. Geology: Rocks for Jocks and something called the Great American Songbook, a class that consisted of listening to the chorus director’s collection of vintage forty-fives and occasionally singing along to protest songs.

Race and I traveled to meets and regattas sometimes twice a week. I always liked the way the word “regatta” sounded. An old Venetian word. Cal had looked it up once in a mammoth dictionary. “Regatta” originally meant “to compete,” but because Venice was such an empire, a city of water and gondola races, the phrase took on other connotations: “to catch” and “to haggle.” But my favorite of all the alternate definitions was “to contend for mastery.” I knew from Roland that “yacht” was the Dutch word for “hunt.” When the two terms combined, I felt a special drive, a quest—the hunt for mastery. For most people, regattas and yachts didn’t evoke much more than fancy boats and rich people, but I loved that idea of being the best.

The rules for any regatta read like they were drawn up by a team of idiot lawyers. It was easier to get disqualified than to understand the rules. This too was a source of great plea sure for me and for Cal. On the day of a regatta, no one from either team was allowed on the water or to view the course before the race began. This referred not only to team members and coaches but also family members. Cal’s dad once got caught sculling on Lake Kensington before a big meet, thereby disqualifying our boat. Sailing—the sport of sticklers. Race was also a stickler for rules and was especially gifted at pointing out when our competitors faulted. Cal was the same way. He was the one who’d turned in his father for cheating.

It was hard for me to admit that I enjoyed sailing with Race. But when the two of us were side by side riding the waves, searching for smart winds, when he called out for us to tack or heave to, I was happy to follow his lead. Like any good skipper, he knew when we needed to reduce sail and when we could afford to hoist our spinnaker. Together, we understood our winds, recognized the difference between a header and a lift. On calm days we could turn a line of puffs into enough fuel to bring us first place. When the winds were fluky, we knew when to ease the sails and douse the jib. We still didn’t talk much or laugh at the same things, but the water and air created enough of a language between us.

When I first saw the schedule of sailing meets, I knew that the toughest competition would come toward the end of the semester, when we traveled to Kensington. I hadn’t been back there and had almost no intention of ever returning. None of my friends or coaches had bothered to stay in touch, and I’d been happy to seal off that part of my life. Coach Tripp had asked me if I would be okay. “I know you have some tough memories there.” If I’d been honest, I would have requested politely to sit out the competition, but I was a member of a larger team, playing a supporting role, and so I asked Coach Tripp if I could address the entire squad, if I could tell the others what I knew from my own experience about sailing on that lake, how best to find the wind.

Lake Kensington was natural, glacial, and shaped like a lazy four- leaf clover. Half the shore was flat and level, while the other half rose into craggy cliffs that formed a rough canyon like the edge of a broken bowl. Thermals would drop down suddenly off the lip of the gorge. The differences between blue-water sailing and lake sailing are subtle and varied. The terrain around the lake shapes the winds in surprising ways, resulting in sudden gusts. I explained that we would probably find ourselves tacking more than we did out on the ocean. Making almost constant adjustments. Though the waves would be smaller, there would be more of them. A steady rolling chop. The lack of saline would also impact the weight of the wind and the movement of the water. Then there was the question of seiche. Because a lake was bounded on all sides, but still subject to barometric pressure, the water would often rise and pool on one side of the lake only to move rapidly without warning, surging like a runaway tide. “It’s like the way water moves in a bathtub when you stretch back or move your legs.” Lake Kensington was known for these sudden rolling tides, but if you checked the waterlines along the cliffs it was possible to predict a shift. In some ways, it was easier to sail on a lake, but because my team wasn’t used to it, it would be harder for us.

During the entire drive to Kensington, I sang to myself, remembering all the songs I’d sung for Aidan. To add to my superstitions, I’d strung the key to the library onto a shoelace. I sailed every meet with the key beating against my chest. It wasn’t always easy keeping my ghosts alive. But I tried. Sometimes it was enough for me to simply hold that dried tangerine in my palms, the waning scent still able to remind me of the first night I snuck into Aidan’s room. With Cal, it was both easier and harder to conjure him. Easier in that all I had to do was set off with Race out on our sleek 470. Harder because I sometimes mistook Race for Cal. They didn’t look alike or even sail alike. But they smelled the same, like fresh laundry. It was probably just the matter of their housekeepers using the same detergent, but often enough, when we tacked, as Race crossed over me, I would breath in the air scented with green apples and soap. I’d think Cal was sailing with me.

I was no longer sure that Race would confess to me. Tazewell had slipped up that one time in Yazid’s room but was otherwise on guard. Taze busied himself playing face-off man for the lacrosse team and scoring with freshmen girls. Kriffo played catcher for the baseball team, still hoping to get into Princeton. One night at dinner, I’d mentioned Aidan’s name to him, trying to draw him out, and he asked, “Who are you talking about?” When I reminded him about the girl who’d drowned, Kriffo said, “She told me I had a sweet voice. What do you think she meant by that?” Stuyvie didn’t seem to trust me like the other guys. We never spent any time alone together. I’d replaced him as Race’s sidekick.

When we arrived at Lake Kensington, Race and I sat at the end on the dock. His mother had made us both roast beef sandwiches and we ate lunch together while studying the water. The other team hadn’t arrived yet and Race and I enjoyed the quiet. I was ner vous, and I told Race that I was worried about competing against my old team. “I want you to know something,” Race said. “Coach Tripp is a nice guy, but we’re going to win this meet because of you.”

The wind had blown through Race’s hair and I had to stop myself from flattening his cowlick. “No,” I said, “we’re going to win because we’re a better team.”

We would be competing both as a team and for our own individual times. The meet consisting of two rounds of racing. After the first round we would return to shore and switch boats with the other team. It was considered poor sportsmanship to leave your challengers with a boat that needed to be bailed out. Race often left me to do the bailing.

I stood on the molasses-colored beach in my neoprene suit and watched the guys from the Kensington sail team arrive and rig their dinghies, debating whether or not I should go over and say hello. I recognized almost all of them. There was Jake Trotter and his caved-in chest, still terrified of being seen without a shirt. There was Mitchell Field who once challenged Cal to eat as many eggs as Cool Hand Luke. Cal won the contest, then spent two days doubled over, throwing up. Donald Fisher, the guy who had cracked the joke about me getting a 4.0 because of Cal’s suicide, saw me and looked away. He had on the exact same neoprene suit as I did.

Of all my former teammates, my favorite was Jonathan Porter. He was the kind of guy who would have made a great priest. Or maybe a monk. He had an angelic face and was always off studying how to raise bees or how to feed a village in Ethiopia for a month with just a bag of rice and a box of frozen fish. Jonathan and I sang together in choir. Jonathan, our high tenor, always taking the solo at lessons and carols, soaring through the high notes on “Once in Royal David’s City.”

These boys were safe, smart, and slightly above average. When I’d traveled among them, I’d taken them for granted. Cal called them “Team Beige.” We were an arrogant pair, but Cal always felt that arrogance backed up with talent was just good self-promotion. I imagined that some of these guys had forgotten about me, but I knew that all of them remembered Cal. My best friend knew how to get people to root for him. When we won together, Cal was the guy they congratulated. Not me.

The last time Cal and I had gone sailing was on this lake. Not for a regatta, just a regular day of practice. Neither of us knew that it would be the last time we sailed together. We were barely on speaking terms but still sneaking into each other’s beds. The winds that day were pure doldrums. We stalled out in the middle of the lake. Nothing to do but wait and wish for a pair of oars. Cal and I stretched out on the bottom of the boat head to foot, the two of us singing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” “Sail on silver girl,” Cal and I bellowed. “Sail on by.”

When we finished singing, Cal draped his arm over my thigh. We continued to bitch about the dead air as he rubbed my leg. Staring up at the sky, I hoped the wind would stay calm. I made a wish that Cal and I could be stranded there forever.

The Kensington coach gave me a quick salute but didn’t bother to come over and find out how I was managing. He had a meet to prepare for, strategies to discuss, so I tried not to mind. Race approached me and said, “These guys look like a bunch of poofs.”

“They’re nice guys,” I said. “But they’re no match.”

The lake had a clay bottom. The water so pristine and clear I could see the hull of our boat. It was a good swimming lake, and Cal and I had sneaked out any number of evenings and gone skinny dipping. Kids would often dive down, pull out wet clumps of clay, clouding the water. Cal hated when anyone did this. It made him mad to see the purity of the water disrupted.

While Race and I made our way out onto the middle of the lake, our white sails like some giant’s handkerchiefs, I noticed the sky darkening, the winds picking up. From the shore, sailing must appear to be a maddening series of tacking and jibing, backing and forthing, toing and froing. Though the maneuvers might have seemed arbitrary, the skipper orchestrated everything. “It’s going to be a wild day,” Race promised. I was prepared to work myself to near exhaustion.

The most exciting parts of any regatta are the timed starts and the close turns around buoys. I’d tried to explain to Aidan how sailors had to tack behind a designated area, jockeying for position, waiting for the signal to advance. “You can’t simply park a row of sailboats in a line and fire a starter pistol.” Cal and I had been masters at crossing the starting line right on cue. Though he was aggressive around buoys, Race was cautious with his starts, always worried about being penalized. When we crossed the imaginary starting line first at Kensington, I knew the regatta was ours to lose.

The weather on the lake that day was rough, the waves able to break our speed. Race and I knew we’d need to tack when the bow of our dinghy met the top of the smallest wave in a series. Each time the boat began to turn, I released the jib, positioning myself windward, trimming the sails. Race relaxed his body against mine, and though we shouted rallies of orders and agreements in urgent, curt voices, from time to time we’d catch each other’s eyes and smile, as if to say, “Can you believe how lucky we are? Could anything in the world be as much fun?”

Everything tastes better after a day of sailing. My appetite would surge from all of the energy I’d expended. Sometimes when I sailed, I simply daydreamed about the meal I’d enjoy afterward, hoping to have a chance to reward myself.
I was in the middle of such revelry, when across our starboard side

I saw Jonathan and Mitchell about to capsize. They were our only real competition, and if we beat them, we would come in first and most likely win the entire meet. It was hard to watch. We were sailing downwind. Jonathan and Mitchell should have been following a zigzag course, but they’d caught a wave and were traversing over it, catching speed. Seiche, I thought to myself. Unlike a surfer, a sailor never wants to tie his fate to a single wave. Jonathan and Mitchell stayed with their wave too long, bearing away, luffing the sails. Their bow dug into the wave, taking on water. I could hear Cal’s voice reminding me, “Between winds and waves, a sailor needs to worry more about waves.” Waves could toss a sloop up and bury it. It was like Cal was right there in the boat with me, shouting over to Jonathan and Mitchell to look out.

Jonathan and Mitchell began to jibe, and in the roughness of the wave, the boom glanced the shroud, snapping the wire and breaking the mast, the sails collapsing. It was like watching flower petals fold in on themselves after being shot at by a cannon.

I saw all of this in a flash as Race and I cruised by, confident that we’d won.
If Race and I had been better citizens we might have stopped to help the boat in distress, but we had our eyes focused on a larger goal. I looked back and saw Jonathan treading water. Mitchell clung to the boat, shaking his head.
Jonathan was pretty upset about the accident. “Freak of nature,” I said. “What matters is you’re both safe.” A launch had towed them back to shore.
My old teammate kept repeating the story, uncertain what had happened. Jonathan was the type of guy who’d never broken anything, never even caused himself any harm. His wealth insulating him from danger and meanness. He didn’t know how to handle bad things. “It’s just a dumb boat,” I said. “Entirely replaceable.”
“But I destroyed it,” Jonathan said. “It’s my fault.”
It comforted me to see Jonathan distressed and willing to take responsibility. Shame wasn’t the scourge of cowards as Windsor insisted. Shame could be a good thing.
“Cal,” I told Jonathan, “once ran my family’s yawl aground. He not only destroyed the keel, he accidentally hit my face with the boom and broke my nose.” I pointed to my crooked bridge.
“What did you do?” Jonathan asked.
“What else could we do? We laughed about it.”