The Starboard Sea: A Novel (28 page)

Right before leaving for Christmas Break, I checked my mail one last time on the off chance that Princeton had advanced me from their waiting list. Inside my mail cubby was a Season’s Greetings card signed by Windsor and a cardboard tube. I opened the cylinder and pulled out a scroll, unfurling a long glossy photo, a color copy of the all-school portrait we’d taken earlier that fall. It had been sunny that day, our faces cast in a warm golden light. We were a good-looking, cheery group of kids, quick to smile on cue.

In her floral skirt, Nadia sat hunched over in the grass, a miniature garden fairy, while Kriffo reigned on the top row like some colossus. Chester stole a glance at Diana, who had blinked, a princess waiting to be kissed. In an accidental sight gag, Yazid’s hair blocked the lower half of Stuyvie’s face, making it seem as though Stuyvie had a werewolf beard. Brizzey dominated the center of the picture facing the camera head on, grinning and glamorous.

With their gaudy hula girl ties, Tazewell and Race had in fact beaten the clock, doubling their appearances in the photo. They grinned brightly on the top tier of the bleachers, then reappeared like bookends standing on the opposite side of the picture. I had to admit, I was impressed. They’d performed a clever magic trick, multiplying themselves, exerting their influence.

Finally, I searched for myself. I too was on the top tier of the bleachers, but there was an empty space between Tazewell, Race, and me. Unlike my classmates who stared happily into the lens, I’d been captured in profile with my back to the camera. I thought of that day, how I’d turned and watched Aidan fall out of sight. Tazewell and Race had performed another magic trick. They’d made Aidan disappear. She was that empty space between me and my friends. For those who didn’t know her, there would be no official record of her at Bellingham. No lasting image. Nothing to remember her by.

THIRTEEN

At Christmas, I returned to my childhood: my collection of Hardy Boys mysteries, the red and gray plastic pieces from a lost game of Battleship, coins of white sand dollars, my varsity letter from Kensington. In the late afternoons, I wandered down to the lobby and chatted with the doorman, Max. He was teaching me how to play chess. I was hopeful that Chester might return to Bellingham, and I was willing to do whatever it took to maintain that friendship.

Mom seemed happy to have me reinstalled in our apartment. She’d dyed her hair a soft blond and I told her it looked pretty; I also noticed that she could have passed for one of my father’s secretaries. Every morning she made me fresh juice, reaming the orange halves against a jadeite hand juicer, producing not much more than a few swallows. Mom wanted to know what my plans were for Winter Break, how I hoped to keep myself busy. When I was little she was very good at arranging playdates. That was how Cal and I had met when we were just four years old. Mom worried that I’d lost touch with my old friends, but Cal was the only true friend I’d had in New York. Everyone else had turned out to be a mere acquaintance. If I’d even bothered to venture just a few blocks away from the apartment, I would have been caught up in the bustle of shoppers and Christmas lights, but the Upper East Side had an attractive dullness and gravity. I was content to stay in the quiet of our neighborhood.

Mom had decorated a tree and the whole apartment smelled of fresh spruce. On Christmas morning, Dad came over and the four of us had breakfast together with Dad flipping pancakes and Mom telling our housekeeper, Lotta, how to fry bacon. Dad had lost a few more pounds while Riegel had gained a tire of flab around his midsection. Mom patted both of their bellies, then Dad and Riegel crouched down into boxing stances and my father gently cuffed Riegel on his neck. Everyone agreed that the salt air had been good for me and even Lotta said, “The pink is back in your cheeks.” I still hadn’t told my family about Aidan and what she’d meant to me. I was secretly proud of my restraint, my stoicism. My ability to manage this pain all on my own.

As we sat in the kitchen eating forkfuls of syrupy pancakes and dry bacon, I felt grateful to my family for even the illusion of closeness. The apartment had seemed a little empty without Dad. It no longer carried the musky odor of an adult male. My mother and I weren’t tripping over his enormous loafers or cringing at the sound of his booming laughter. My parents were on the precipice of their divorce, and it meant a lot to me that we could still sit down and share a meal together. After breakfast, Mom gave Dad a framed watercolor of our house in Maine. “I’m taking an art class,” she said.

“You made this?” Dad held the small painting and smiled. “Pretty impressive.”
Dad showed off the painting and I had to admit that it was good. The palette of pastel colors soothing. Mom had captured the rustic quality of the house along with the pretty rosebushes and dark shelter of pine trees. None of us had any idea that Mom could draw or paint or even see things in a beautiful light. I hadn’t given her enough credit. Not ever. We each gave her a big hug, and Mom asked, “What’s gotten into you all?”
Dad pulled me aside, confessing, “I didn’t get your mother anything.”
I hadn’t bought my father a gift, but I had picked out an Hermès scarf for my mom. An orange-and-black silk square with a galloping horse in the center. I surrendered the scarf to Dad. He promised he owed me one.
Mom oohed and ahhed over her present while Dad claimed the bright colors complemented her new hairdo. I did the math on my generosity. The price of the scarf could have financed a ski weekend in Vermont. Still, allowing Dad to give his estranged wife a Christmas present seemed like the right thing to do.
Riegel gave me a Christmas card with a drawing of a reindeer peeing in the snow. “Ho Ho Ho” in neon reindeer piss. Inside he’d slipped what looked like pink and blue Monopoly money but what turned out to be five hundred dollars in U.S. trea sury bonds. I thanked him and he said, “It’s a sentimental gift. The trea sury just stopped printing these bonds. You can’t get paper ones anymore, only electronic transfers. Hold on to these babies.”

Dad and Riegel argued about the stock market crash. Dad was convinced that high-speed trading was to blame, but Riegel felt that Black Monday was a combination of triggers. “Illiquidity and overvaluation,” he said.

“Computers will destroy Wall Street.” Dad insisted that the market had become too volatile. “The lesson learned is to cut back exposure.”
Riegel belched and said, “Your problem, Dad, is that you’re risk averse.”
“How averse to risk can I be?” Dad asked. “I’m going into business with you.”
I considered for a moment whether or not I would follow Riegel and work with Dad. One late night in Whitehall, Kriffo, Tazewell, and I had talked about what we wanted to do once we graduated from college. Tazewell wanted to be an heir. Kriffo planned on ruling over his family’s sporting goods empire. “How about you, Jason?”
“You know,” I said, “it’s crazy, but I’ve never thought about it.”
Kriffo spit out some tobacco juice and said, “That’s because you’ve never had to.”
But I would have to. And I wanted to decide soon while it was still my decision to make.

Our illusion of family closeness was short-lived. Dad spent most of my break away on business in Berlin and Hong Kong. “The world is shifting,” he said. “Markets are opening. Soon we’ll all be speaking German and Chinese.” Mom went to Aspen. She invited me along, but she was going with a group of her divorced friends and some man, a mysterious Robert I’d never heard of before. After she mentioned Robert’s name half a dozen times to Lotta, I began to fear that my mother was in the midst of a romantic distraction. Not something I wanted to witness.

Riegel was around for part of my break, but mostly he used our apartment as a crash pad. We went jogging together some mornings. Just like the old days. “Got a secret for you,” Riegel huffed and puffed as we raced down Fifth Avenue. He told me that Dad had been right about computer trading causing the stock market crash. “It was Hiro,” Riegel said. “Hiro was the snowball that started the avalanche.” As we ran, my brother explained how his boss and a handful of other money jocks had nearly caused the world’s economies to collapse. “The reason no one can figure out why Black Monday happened is that it started as a secret bet. These guys, Hiro’s pals, wagered they could bring the markets to their knees. They started in Hong Kong, then swept through Europe. Dad got out before the real damage, but Hiro was trading so quickly, staying ahead of all the margins. He made a killing.”

“I find that hard to believe. Sounds like Hiro is just pulling your leg.”
“Trust me,” Riegel said. “Hiro’s part of a new breed. Those guys would short-sell their grandmothers.”
“So it was stupid a bet?” My ears burned from the cold. “You know, my friend’s mother lost her job.”
“It may take awhile to recover,” Riegel said. “But the markets are actually up for the year. I think Hiro did everyone a favor. Gave the world a wake-up call.”
I shook my head. “Another friend of mine, her dad lost everything. What would Hiro think about that?”
Riegel brought up some phlegm from his throat, spat on the sidewalk. “People lose money every day,” he said. “If it’s your job to make money, it’s your job to go out and make more.”
Just as we were about to exit the park, I picked up my pace, sprinting ahead of my brother, finishing up strong. I heard Riegel breathing heavily, lumbering behind me, eager to catch up. I refused to let him pass me.
A few nights after Christmas, I had the apartment to myself. Hiro and Riegel had rented a mountain house and were entertaining investors up in Stowe. Riegel asked me to tag along, but I thought I’d take advantage of the solitude.
For my first dinner alone, I ordered kabobs and sour cherry rice from my favorite Persian dive and had a six-pack delivered up to the penthouse. Mom had left me a few New Year’s gifts—gloves, a hat, a scarf—and I unwrapped them while waiting for my food to arrive. Every year mom bought me a cashmere sweater, and this year’s model was a black V-neck. I pulled the soft light wool over my head and admired myself. Mom had good taste and the sweater fit perfectly. She’d tucked a tiny note card inside the sleeve, “You are my Sun. Love, your Moon.” When I was little, on cloudy days, Mom would point up at the sky and ask, “Where is the sun?” And I would yell, “I am your son.” It was silly, but I slipped Mom’s card into my wallet when I paid the deliveryman.
I decided to have my feast in our formal dining room. My greatgreat-grandmother the only family member available to keep me company. I broke out the good china, the sterling silverware, and tore into some beef on a stick. The greasy meal tasted better than the Christmas prix fixe Mom had made us suffer through at the Rainbow Room. I raised my Heineken and toasted the Sargent portrait. For a moment I considered whether Riegel or I would inherit the painting. Mom believed inherited wealth was better than money earned. “We’re a dying breed,” she liked to say. “But we hold our place in history.” It seemed to me that while my life would be comfortable, it might not be as comfortable as Mom’s had been. With my cheap takeout, I was already exhibiting symptoms of the downwardly mobile. Every Prosper generation after mine risked being a little less prosperous. As much as she admired our ancestors’ wealth, it bothered Mom that Riegel was so consumed by making money. “Your brother knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Riegel had probably spent that very day avalanching down Mount Mansfield in pursuit of new investors.
For my own reasons I’d been angry with Riegel for weeks. If he hadn’t driven me around during the storm, I might have spent the day with Aidan. She never would have gone to Race’s. I’d asked Riegel how he’d done on his Melville paper, and he said, “I dropped the class. My professor had it out for me so I bailed.”
My brother would always remain oblivious of the pain he’d caused. “Screw Riegel,” I thought to myself. I pushed back from the table and went up to the Sargent, rubbing my greasy hands together. I took my thumb and pressed my shiny fingerprint into the corner of the painting, right above Sargent’s signature. Marking it as my own.
I drank my third beer, feeling buzzed and considered going out. If I couldn’t be with my family, I wanted to be with strangers. It was snowing lightly and I thought it might be nice just to go for a walk. I finished my meal, then left the dining room in a mess.

Outside, the cold air felt like needles in my chest. I’d thrown on my camel’s hair coat and stuck a beer in either pocket, but I’d neglected to wear my new scarf, gloves, or hat. Even though I’d grown up across the street from it, I’d never crossed into Central Park at night. People were mugged, killed in the park. The previous summer, a guy named Robert Chambers had become famous, had actually been dubbed “the Preppy Killer.” Riegel thought the nickname was ridiculous. “Chambers goes to BU. His mom’s a nurse. Dude’s a total scholarship reject. Not a preppy at all.”

“Maybe,” I’d said, “it’s supposed to mean that he kills preppies.”

I’d seen Chambers at Dorrian’s, knew him a little. He was loud, a braggart. Whether or not he was an official preppy didn’t interest me. The fact that he’d killed someone and seemed on the verge of getting away with it did strike me as something worth paying attention to.

Chambers was notoriously free on bail, probably partying in the city that very night. Dorrian himself had put up the money for Chambers’s bond and I thought about heading over to the bar and having a drink, quizzing Dorrian on his generosity. I took long strides through the drifting snow, trying to remember the girl’s name, the one Chambers claimed had begged him for rough sex, had tied him up with her own underwear, had forced him to kill her. The
Post
made her out to be a slut, claimed she kept some sort of sex diary. It scared me that I couldn’t remember her name. She was a brunette, I knew that much, and also that she’d been found strangled in Central Park right behind the Met. Suddenly, I wanted to go to the actual scene of the crime, to pay her some respect. From the newspaper photos, I knew that she was a pretty girl.

Crossing Fifth Avenue, I walked swiftly, taking pulls from my beer, and soon found myself behind the museum by the obelisk. The massive shaft reaching out into the night. Cleopatra’s Needle. The obelisk, the oldest thing in the park, more than three thousand years old, had been given to New York as some sort of Egyptian bribe. My mom was on the board of the Met and had chaired a few fund-raisers in its shadow. Mom told me how it had taken almost a year to transport the monument across the ocean and up Fifth Avenue like Cleopatra’s own barge. The obelisk was older than the baby Jesus and somehow it gave me hope to think that something this old could last. Cal couldn’t make it to eighteen, Aidan died without knowing her father, but this pink granite monument would stand watch over the city forever.