The Starboard Sea: A Novel (4 page)

I went from history to physics and then calculus. My father had drawn up a four-year plan for me, and I was sticking to it. The same courses he had taken as a boy. After prep school, Dad had gone to Princeton, as had my grandfather before him. My brother Riegel, who claimed to be smarter than all of us, would be graduating from Princeton in the spring. I used to be expected to attend as well, but, over time, my father had decided that I didn’t have a chance of getting in. It was good enough that his eldest son had ensured the family legacy. A generational hat trick. Dad had given me college catalogs from schools like Hamilton and Union and Lake Forest. It made me sad to know that he had such little faith in me. Lake Forest College. L.F.C. Last Fucking Chance. At the time, I didn’t care where I was headed, but I wanted an acceptance letter from Princeton. I wanted to show my father that I could belong anywhere.

After third period, there was a free block of twenty minutes on my schedule. I’d planned on hanging out in the Fishbowl, an atrium near the mailboxes. As I’d passed through the corridors, I’d seen other kids flopped down on sofas, hanging out in between classes. We weren’t supposed to return to our rooms during the school day. I sat down on one of the sofas, but the main hallway became thick with students streaming out of Barracuda. Everyone seemed to know where they were going, and everyone seemed to be going in the same direction. I got up searching for a friendly face and almost walked into a phalanx of wrestlers. I could tell they were wrestlers by the way their ears stuck out. Like they’d been pulled from clay pots into handles. I spun around and allowed the force of the crowd to carry me down the hall and out of the building.

Outside, I saw Diana in front of the Academic Center, the Barracuda, speaking to a man wearing a wrinkled plastic windbreaker over a dark business suit. I looked around and decided to ask her what was going on. As I approached, I realized that the man she was talking to was holding his face in his hands. Diana was yelling at him.

“Go home,” I heard her tell him.

Keeping one hand over his eyes, the man reached into the side pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pale blue box with a white ribbon. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” I thought. When he offered the gift to Diana, she waved her hands in protest. He threw his arms around her and slid the box into the tote bag she carried over her shoulder. Diana shrugged him off, retrieved the box, pulled the white ribbon, and threw the gift at the man. The box landed on the pavement, and a square of cotton coughed itself out, along with a small, shiny object. Diana turned and saw me staring. Without any hesitation, she strutted up to me, grabbed my arm, and said, “Come on.”
I craned my neck and caught the man kneeling over his gift, desperate to fit the cotton block back into the box.

“Who was that?” I asked.
Diana clicked her tongue. “No one.”
“Was that your dad?”
“He gets on my nerves.” Diana squeezed my arm and pinched me

through my jacket.
We fell in with a group of students.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Chapel.” Diana bit her lip. “Tell me, is he still there?” I glanced back at Diana’s father. His hands were shoved deep in his

pockets. He looked like he’d just returned from the wilderness, like he could use a shower, a shave, a haircut, a hug from his daughter. It scared me to see a grown-up this messed up.

“Yeah, he’s still there. Did he surprise you or something?”

“It’s always like this.” She let go of my arm. “But I never see it coming.”
The Chapel was built on a hill, separated from the lower campus by a two-lane road. Cars stopped on either side of the crosswalk as an influx of students proceeded to block traffic like a herd of lazy sheep. We marched into the building, bells echoing from a loudspeaker attached to a telephone pole. There was no bell tower.
Diana pointed me to a seating chart hanging in the vestibule, then took her place. I found my name and the location of my pew. With its tall wooden ceiling and concave walls, the Chapel’s structural design resembled the frame of an inverted whaling ship. Rows of long benches, in a T-formation, ran down either side of the altar and along the center. All of the walls were lined with stained-glass windows. The images on them weren’t religious scenes or saints but generals and monarchs, their identities stenciled in colored glass. I read off names to myself as I walked down the aisle. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Attila the Hun. There was a lectern with a microphone, an organ, and an empty choir box. A plain wooden cross hung above the raised altar. Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lion-Heart, Henry the Navigator. Four straight-backed wooden chairs stood empty on the stage. The chairs had been upholstered with red velvet cushions. One of the chairs had a higher back and was also embroidered with a golden crest. Oliver Cromwell, Louis the Sun King, Napoleon, Admiral Nelson.
An older woman stationed herself at the organ and began to play what I soon realized was the theme music to PBS’s
Masterpiece Theatre
. Everyone around me started singing. The only words I could make out were from the chorus: “We shall follow, follow, follow.” The school hymn. Dean Warr and another, more diminutive man entered from the back of the Chapel. They proceeded down the aisle toward their velvet thrones. The short man fiddled with his green bow tie and waited in front of the gold-crested seat. His hair was dark but graying at the temples. As he stood with his chin out, singing the second or third verse, I realized that this man was another of Dad’s old Princeton’s buddies. The headmaster himself. Jolly Raleigh Windsor.
Once the song finished, the students waited for Mr. Warr and Mr. Windsor to be seated, then followed their example. After a moment of surveying our sleepy faces, Mr. Windsor stood and approached the lectern. He adjusted the silver neck on the microphone and gripped the edges of the podium. His voice, bold and in stereo, ricocheted off the stained glass onto his audience. A well-served squash ball.
“How many of you are afraid of the dark? How many of you have woken up in wet sheets? Have any of you cheated on a quiz, or borrowed money fully aware you’ll never pay it back? How many of the Ten Commandments do you know? Of those you know, how many have you broken?” Jolly Raleigh stared at us accusingly, then lowered his voice. “I slept with a night-light until I was twenty-five. I’m proud to tell you that I was a high school junior when I finally stopped wetting my bed. Commandments? By the time I graduated, magna cum laude, from Princeton, I had dishonored my mother and father. Forged my best buddy’s signature on checks. Eloped with my best buddy’s high school sweetheart. Lied for the thrill of lying, and so often, I had forgotten when it was I’d lied. The real question is, am I ashamed of any of this? The answer: not even a little.” The headmaster paused dramatically. He cleared his throat and raised his voice again. “Shame, I have come to realize, is a scourge. The scourge of cowards. I’m going to let you in on a secret: Everyone— your parents, your teachers, your government, your closest friends—has either disappointed you, or will. It is our duty to forgive them, to not ask too much of them, for in return, they will not ask too much of us. So, you have cheated, stolen, lied: What else is new? You think that makes you horrible or special? What makes you horrible is if that’s
all
you’ve done. I’ve made my living through hard work, decisive action. The woman who eloped with me and I still have a happy marriage. I gave my mother three beautiful grandchildren and purchased my father a Mercedes SL convertible for his sixty-fifth birthday. I have outgrown my youthful indiscretions—I have atoned for them, but I do not regret them. The trials and missteps of my life, I’m proud to say, helped me become the decent gentleman you see before you.”
I shifted around in my seat, desperate to share a grin or knowing look with anyone. The guy to the right of me was conked out asleep, and the guy to my left was preoccupied scratching his balls.
“I want nothing less,” Mr. Windsor concluded his speech, “than to be impressed by each and every one of you. If not during your time at Bellingham, then later, when you make your first Wall Street million, discover a vaccine, or run the Boston Marathon in two and a half hours. Be sure to notify the
Bellingham Alumni Newsletter
of your achievements. I’d like you all, when you retire to your rooms tonight, to figure out how you will make this happen. Ask the question, ‘How might I distinguish myself?’ ”
(When I later asked Diana what she thought of Mr. Windsor’s candid lecture, she told me that the headmaster gave the same motivational speech every year. A copy was available on tape at the Bellingham Bookstore for seven dollars. Parents and alums could also buy a Chapel kneeler embroidered with the line, “Shame is the scourge of cowards.”)
“I’d like to close this morning’s ser vices,” Mr. Windsor said, “by announcing plans for the construction of two new dormitories made possible by a generous family donation. I am extremely proud to report that the trustees have voted for the dormitories to be named Windsor House and Prosper Hall. The groundbreaking ceremony will be scheduled for later this semester.” He smiled and returned to his throne.
My father hadn’t mentioned anything about endowing dorms. I felt myself becoming a cliché. The boy in trouble. The wealthy father. The school in need and willing to offer refuge. The organ player chimed in with a recessional march, and everyone stood as the headmaster and dean walked down the aisle together. I waited for my turn to file out of the Chapel.
Dean Warr stood outside together with the headmaster greeting their congregation. “Jason! Why don’t you come and say hello to Mr. Windsor?”
The headmaster shook my hand. “I’m sorry I missed your father.” He squeezed hard. When I returned the pressure, he squeezed harder, and then released his grip.
In the background, I could hear the church bells.
“Dad sends his best.” I folded my fingers behind my back and rubbed the joints.
“I hope he’ll be here for the groundbreaking ceremony.” The headmaster pursed his lips. “I’d like to invite you to my house for dinner.”
I thought it was funny when people told you that they’d like to do something but then didn’t actually do it. At that moment, the bells turned from a steady chorus to a repetitive, skipping static. The bells continued to skip. The source of the broadcast was nothing more than a record player. A needle skittering over black vinyl. Jolly Raleigh pretended not to notice.
“Well, then.” He looked me up and down. He turned his back and continued to greet students.
I was amazed that the headmaster wasn’t more discreet. And I was even more amazed that my father would allow our name to be attached to anything so public, but I supposed that if he was going to pay for a building, he wanted due credit. My father believed that if a person could throw money at a problem then there was no problem. He’d been given the challenge of finding me a new school and he had solved it without much fuss.
Cal and I had once resolved to someday donate a dormitory to Kensington. The only requirement for this generous gift was that our school would have to name the building Squalor Hall. That way, when people asked students where they lived, they’d have no choice but to respond, “I live in Squalor.”

Unofficially, I was already on the sailing team. All I had to do was show up that afternoon. Officially, I still had to prove myself and try out. The wind was calm but the sun beat down brightly as I went to the boathouse after classes. I’d changed clothes in my dorm room and was wearing a hi-tech long john–style neoprene dry suit with a hip- length neoprene life jacket. Soon everyone would be wearing this type of suit, but there I was, showing off. Mr. Tripp wore shorts and a long- sleeved shirt with new york yacht club running down both arms. “Race, you’ll be Jason’s Argonaut,” he said. “Your task, boys, is to find the Golden Fleece.” I was the helmsman captaining our Fireball. Race was my crew. Race had on red waterproof sailing pants, thermal underwear, and a body harness that fit around his chest, waist, and groin. He would use the harness to attach himself to the trapeze. “Nice suit.” He grinned. “No, seriously, where did you snag that?”

We rigged the boat together. I loved the ritual and ceremony of stepping the mast, fitting the mainsail first and then the jib. Of literally making the boat. Tweaking it in reference to the wind in anticipation of how she would sail. Together, Race and I made sure that every batten was secured in its pocket, that the clew was secured to the end of the boom, that the halyards were secured to the head of the sail. We made sure everything was safe.

The funny thing about sailing accidents is that it’s rare to read or hear a real description of what went wrong. In the most severe cases there are no survivors to tell the story. In more minor accidents, people are too worried about lawsuits and insurance to ever be completely honest. Our boat, like most racing boats, had a center mainsheet system. As helmsman, this meant I had more control over the shape of the rig but less freedom to move across the boat when tacking and jibing. I had to use a dagger grip to simultaneously hold the tiller extension and the mainsheet. Quickness was the key. I had to be quick to move across the boat, quick to communicate to Race. Race’s main job, as crew, was listening to me and doing everything to keep our vessel stable.

We launched the boat and took her out past the water garden of ignored moored yachts, out deep into the bay. That afternoon the ocean was a dark plum color. Sparkling mirrors of light reflected the sun’s rays. For a tall guy, Race was nimble and sure-footed. We went farther and faster than any of our teammates. Race and I worked well together. He pointed to a shipbuilding marina on the far side of the harbor. “My grandfather built all that,” he said. “And now it’s mine.”

Most people when they first start sailing make the mistake of trying to angle their boat directly into the wind. To sail directly into the wind is impossible. The closest you can ever come is a forty-five- degree angle, but you’re always aiming for the power of that engine. Race and I zigzagged along, chasing the invisible wind, drenching ourselves in salt spray, and increasing our speed. “Faster, faster,” I thought. We were only competing against ourselves. Race had hooked himself into the trapeze, and the two of us were cruising at a quick clip. I realized that before the day ended, we’d need to capsize. We’d need to practice righting the boat together. Need to make sure that we could work efficiently and be a team. I figured I would end our cruise by capsizing us close to shore in shallow water. Coach Tripp motored by in a launch. Using a bullhorn, he told us to alter to a downwind course. I called, “Ready about!” to signal that Race should prepare to tack. He answered, “Ready.” I released the mainsheet from the jammer, moved the tiller extension forward and up, and Race unjammed the jib sheet. I called out, “Hand-a-lee,” and pushed the tiller away, keeping my arm straight. I’d done this thousands of times. Race was supposed to come in and release the trapeze. But we were traveling too fast. It is so easy to be wrong. As Race tried to come in, the wind overpowered the Fireball, forcing Race to lean too far back on the gunwale. Our boat heeled excessively, tipping over and filling with water. The Fireball flipped, spitting me out. The boat failed to right itself and the hull stayed exposed above water like a turtle’s shell. I went underwater briefly, then bobbed up. Race was still hitched to the trapeze wire. He did not rise to the surface. Coach Tripp drove his launch closer, and I called out to him and waved. I stripped off my life jacket and dove under the boat in search of Race. His head had somehow slipped into a bundled of knotted rope hanging off the boom. He was snared and dangling underwater like a worm baited to a fishing line. The ropes, the noose choking him. Race struggled and pulled at the ropes, only tightening their grip around his neck. His red hair fanned and haloed all around him. He kept his eyes shut and didn’t seem to know that I was beside him. Seeing me might cause him to panic and hold me under. I swam behind him. Though I was terrified, I knew exactly what to do. I popped back up to the surface, found my life jacket floating on the surface, unzipped the pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. It’s not easy to cut rope underwater. Harder still when holding your breath, and when the person whose life you are trying to save is thrashing about in front of you. I held on to the rope, cutting it from the mast, hoping to pull Race to the surface in time to snag the tight tangle away from his neck. I had to leave him once, in order to retreat to the surface for air. Coach Tripp was still in the launch. “There’s rope knotted around his neck,” I said, holding up my knife. “I’ve cut one loop.” I dove back down before I had a chance to hear Coach Tripp’s response. Diving, I thought, “This is the first day of my senior year.” Slick as a seal in my neoprene suit, I thought of Cal, of how he’d died. I slit the final rope, unhooked Race from the trapeze wire, and clutched him in my arms against my chest.