The Starboard Sea: A Novel (33 page)

The losing team invited us to have dinner at the Kensington dining hall. I was grateful when Coach Tripp begged off. “Prosper,” he asked me, “where should we go to celebrate?” I took everyone to the Starry Diner for burgers and fries. One of the doe-eyed waitresses recognized me and asked, “How come you don’t show your face round here anymore? Did you forget about us?”

I’d never been so happy to be recognized, remembered. To be told that this was a place where I belonged. Cal had taken a part of me with him. Maybe all I wanted was to reclaim some small bit of that boy.

“Awesome burgers,” Race said. “Taste just like victory.” It occurred to me that I had Race to thank for this good feeling.

I woke up the next morning still high from having won. On the back of my door, I’d taped up a calendar listing the sailing team’s racing schedule, marking down our victories, making notes on our team’s losses. Race and I had won all of our individual invitationals. Our recent conquest had qualified us for the Baker Trophy. I looked over the calendar, then noticed today’s date. Exactly a year had passed since Cal’s death.

There was a knock on my opened door. Chester, too polite to barge in. He held something up. “Score.” He grinned, closing the door behind him. Chester had stolen Diana’s naked photo from Tazewell’s room. “I’m going to return it,” he said. “To the rightful owner.”

I’d forgotten how pretty Diana was. Her naked skin incandescent. Chester was embarrassed, but we both took a long look at the photo. The two of us imagining our hands cupping Diana’s breasts. When Chester held up the picture, I noticed the photographer’s reflection in the mirror. The image was fuzzy, a wild blur of hair, a squinting eye. Aidan had taken the snapshot. There was more between Diana and Aidan than I might have imagined.

I congratulated Chester, then said, “Since you’re an expert, I need your advice.” I had an anniversary to honor.
“We could break into her room,” Chester said. “Or you could just ask Brizzey to return Cal’s photo.”
“She’d light it on fire,” I said, “before she’d ever give it back.”

Race stopped by my room that night. He’d sailed over from Powder Point on his father’s Bermuda-rig sloop
Spray.
“Up for a little night sailing?” he asked.

We cruised out into the middle of the harbor, the white jib and mainsail glowing in the moonlight. The sails snapped as we dropped anchor. Race opened two cans of Coke, poured some of the soda out into the ocean and splashed some rum into the cans. “Yo ho ho,” he said, handing me a drink. “Let’s plan our attack.”

Since we were seeded first for the Baker Trophy, we’d have a home water advantage.
“The key,” I said, “is just knowing our own waves and rocking the course.”
“Yeah,” Race agreed, “but I’m worried about Coach Tripp. That dude has zero strategy. He’s the hole in our boat.”
“He’s not so bad,” I said. “He’s only twenty-three.”
The nearly starless sky was black and cloudy. We knocked back our rum and Cokes, the fizzy drink spicy, sweet. I convinced Race to play a game Cal and I used to love. We’d see who could come up with the most common words, sayings, and clichés that came from sailing. “Batten down the hatches,” “give a wide berth,” “taken aback,” “aboveboard,” “true blue,” “high and dry,” “hand over fist,” “know the ropes,” “three sheets to the wind,” “walk the plank,” “catch my drift,” “on an even keel,” “loose cannon,” “miss the boat,” “chew the fat,” “let the cat out of the bag,” “no room to swing a cat,” “beat a dead horse,” “shake a leg,” “slush fund,” “cut and run,” “close quarters,” “deep six,” “scuttlebutt,” “chockablock,” “the cut of your jib.”
“Aloof,” Cal once said.
I challenged him to explain.
“It’s from
a luff,
” he said. “To sail to windward. To keep your ship distant from the shore.”
“We should make up our own phrase,” I suggested. “Add our own contribution to nautical lore.”
Cal thought about it for a while and then said, “How about, the starboard sea?”
“What?” I asked. “Like the sea on the right side of the boat? That doesn’t mean anything.”
“No,” Cal insisted, “it means the right sea, the true sea, or like finding the best path in life. It’s deep. I’m telling you, it’s going to catch on. By this time next year, everyone will be using it.”

Race did his best to play Cal’s game. More for my benefit than his own. He saw that the game made me happy.
“Hard and fast,” he said. “It’s another way of saying a ship’s beached.”
“Did you see those boats last fall?” I asked. “The ones the helicopters winched and flew.”
“Yeah. They brought them to our shipyard. Total loss. Real shame.”
“I appreciate being out tonight.” I stretched out over the bowsprit. “It’s been a rough day.”
“How so?”
“Anniversary. My best friend, he died a year ago.”
Race didn’t say a word. I could smell his clean laundry smell.
“My sailing partner, Cal,” I said. “You probably competed against him.”
Race nodded. “Taze mentioned something about him.”
I told Race about Cal, then explained that Brizzey had stolen my photo of him. “She swiped it after we fooled around.”
“What a klepto,” he said. “That’s how she wound up here, you know. Stole her roommate’s Rolex. She came to my house once and made off with all my best CDs. Someone should lock her up.”
Race promised to get my picture back. Told me it was the least he could do. “At this point,” he said, “I owe you. You’re the best crew I’ve ever had.” Race looked out over the water. “No one reads the wind like you. It’s like you can actually see it.”
“Everything I know,” I said, “I stole from Cal.”
The boat cradled us, lulling me to sleep. I located the Great Bear, Ursa Major, and found her binary stars, Mizar and Alcor, the horse and rider.
“Which one’s the rider?” Race asked. “That’s the one I want to be.”
I told him I wasn’t sure. “It’s funny,” I said, “how a really bright star can actually be two stars. How your eyes can’t separate them or tell them apart.”
“What’s really amazing,” Race said, “is that all those stars are dead. But we still see their light.”
Race was right. The stars we were watching, the ones Cal and I had used so often to guide ourselves into and out of storms, were actually extinct, their brightness long extinguished. Cal and Aidan, my binary stars, both dead.
“We could stay out here tonight,” Race said. “My mom would vouch for us.”
I took a sip of Coke and stared at Race, our faces inches apart. I said, “I owe you. After Cal died, I never thought I’d sail again. Figured I was bad luck. Means a lot that you trust me.”
“You’re not bad luck.” Race reached out, planting his hands on my shoulders, his fingertips digging into my skin. “Or maybe you are.” He laughed. “But maybe I’m bad luck too. Two negatives make a positive, right?” Race held on to my shoulders, rubbing them briefly before letting go.
A moment passed between us. Race said, “My dad died out on this harbor, you know. We were fishing when he had a heart attack.”
I did know this story, but I listened as Race described how he’d had to motor back to shore alone, captaining the vessel while his father faded away. “The whole time I was piloting the boat, I kept thinking that if we never made it back to shore, maybe he’d stay alive. Doesn’t make any sense, I know. But when we got to the pier, that was when he stopped breathing for good.” Race took a long chug from his soda. “You would have liked my dad. He made beautiful boats.”
“Do you really want to sleep out here?” I asked.
Race surveyed the sky. “Looks like it might rain.”
Instead of sailing, we powered back. I wondered what might have happened if we’d stayed out there together. Race was growing more and more relaxed. Willing to share his thoughts, his feelings with me. This was more than simple camaraderie. Race and I had actually become friends.
“Would Cal have liked me?” Race shouted over the engine’s thrum. “Would he have thought I was a good sailor?”
Suddenly, I saw Cal and Race together in the same boat. Cal would have thought that Race was too much of a grind, too practiced and studied a sailor. He would have seen through Race’s egotism into the heart of his insecurity. “He would have thought,” I said, “that you were aces.”

Race dropped me off at the pier. We said good night just as it began to shower. The soft rain sounding like a conspiracy of voices. “Be safe getting home,” I said. “Don’t drink and sail.”
“I’m not going home. Going to pillage the ladies of Astor. Celebrate our victory and claim our reward.”
“The booty master of Astor. Good luck to you.”
Race invited me to join him, but I didn’t feel like visiting Nadia. More than anything, I didn’t want to climb through Aidan’s old window. We said good night again. Race punched me on the shoulder and said, “I mean it, man, it’s like you see the wind.”

I didn’t sleep well. Thrashed around sweaty and confused. Thinking about Race and his father. Feeling guilty for our friendship. I dreamed of water: black waves, fiery rain. I thought I heard someone in my room singing over me. When I woke up the next morning, I could hear the distant sound of machinery. The foundations for Prosper Hall and Windsor House were being poured and I could hear the dormitories, my legacy, taking shape. I was about to head off to the shower when I noticed a padded bra on my bureau propping up my picture of Cal.

At Chapel, Windsor announced that Race and I would be vying for the Baker Trophy. Race actually jumped up out of his seat, urging me to do the same. We stood there as our teachers and classmates applauded. Soaking in their thunderous approval. Afterward, Tazewell congratulated me and said, “I’ve never seen Race so happy. You’re a good influence on him. It’s like he’s had a personality transplant.”

Though hosting the Baker Trophy was a big deal, the day of the regatta was a full day of competition at Bellingham. Chester had his own championship finals and Nadia had her final lacrosse game of the season. Everything was happening on campus staggered at various times. I hoped to have a chance to see Chester and Nadia play. At lunch, I asked Nadia whom she was competing against.

“Miss Lilly Tate’s School for Young Ladies. Have you ever heard of a sillier place?”
I had just enough time before my meet to catch Nadia in her microskirt and mouth guard. She played attack wing, rifling her stick like a marksman, feeding the ball to the offense. I stood on the sidelines and listened as the Lilly Tate girls complained to their coach, Colin Florent, that he’d forgotten to fill the water bottles. Florent, a stocky, thick-armed man, called out to a woman snapping photos with a fancy Leica, “Hannah, can you run and get some water.”
Watching Hannah Florent, I thought of what Marieke had said about Bellingham’s beach, how ordinary it was. Hannah’s rich chocolate hair was coarse and streaked with gray. She had the creased, freckled skin of a woman who had spent too much time in the sun. I watched her struggle to collect the stray water bottles and saw how the girls on the lacrosse team ignored her.
“Can I help you?” I asked. “Want me to show you where you can fill those up?”
Later Nadia would complain that I’d left the field and missed her big play. I told Nadia that I was sorry, I hadn’t meant to bail on her, but I didn’t want to lose out on a chance to meet the woman who’d caused Aidan to break all those windows.
I carried the water bottles for Hannah and made small talk, but I didn’t introduce myself. Hannah kept taking deep breaths, hungry for the salt air. “This school is so beautiful,” Hannah said. “You must love going here.”
“It has its advantages.”
Hannah wore a white tank top and linen pants. Her arms were sleek and muscular. She looked less like an artist and more like an athlete.
“Our girls are always thrilled when we play co-ed schools.”
“What do you teach?” I asked.
She told me that she taught art and I mentioned that my family owned a Sargent, a Miró, a Calder. Showing off. Hannah nodded and told me that I was lucky and that she was always amazed by her students’ art collections.
“People mostly buy art,” I said, “to feel like they’ve escaped the middle classes.”
Hannah laughed, a rich, sonorous laugh that shook her entire body. “You’re a funny one, aren’t you?” she said.
I brought Hannah to the Athletic Center and together we filled up the bottles, methodically, efficiently. “We’re quite a team,” she said. “We could be professional water boys.” We brought the bottles back to the sidelines and looked out over the field at the girls playing lacrosse. Warriors in skirts and elbow pads. I pointed to some of the storm damage, showed Hannah where the Baraccuda’s glass fin had been mended and glazed.
I was running late for my sailing meet. Race would be worried. Before I left, Hannah thanked me and said, “I never caught your name.”
I don’t know why I said what I did. Maybe I wanted Hannah to remember something, or maybe I wanted to test her, but when she asked me my name I didn’t even pause. “My name is Aidan,” I said. “It means fire.”

Just before the regatta, Coach Tripp pulled the sailing team together for a pep talk. He had on a red baseball cap, a Bellingham sweatshirt, and plaid Bermuda shorts. Coach had his own superstitions, and after we won our first regatta, he decided to quit shaving. His beard had come in all patchy and orange, but it made him seem older. We stood around in a circle waiting for instructions, but Coach didn’t say anything at first, just stared at all of us. This made me listen even harder. “Sometimes,” he broke the silence, “when we’re huddled like this, it scares me. I feel so powerful, like whatever I say might actually matter.” He took off his baseball cap. “Sailing is the art of asking questions: Where is the wind? How will it come to me? High pressure, cold and sinking. Low pressure, warm and rising. Isobars joining areas of equal distress. Forming closed concentric patterns. I plot weather systems on maps and they are as good as stories to me. Detailed notations of where I’ve been. The best days of my life have been spent on the water.”

Coach Tripp was known for getting carried away. I looked over at Race, ready to share a smirk, but Race was dead focused. He wanted to win this meet more than anything else in his life.

“I don’t want this journey to end,” Coach said. “I wish we could keep winning together. I hope all of you will continue to be the best at everything you do. I hope you’ll always think of me as your coach.”

Of all the days I spent sailing at Bellingham, the day of the Baker Trophy Regatta was the least challenging and, in many ways, the least memorable. On a mild, sunny afternoon in May, Race and I cruised around the harbor, besting our best competition. We’d sailed nearly perfect meets, master classes in mastery. Anticipating each other’s moves, making each other better with every tack. When our times were announced, Race and I dove off the pier and into the water. Both of our noses were sunburned, our bodies in almost identical muscular shape, our hair highlighted in similar shades of red and blond. We could have been mistaken for brothers.