The Starboard Sea: A Novel (37 page)

“All of you guys get to leave after graduation,” he said, “but I’m stuck here all summer. It’s not fair.”
“You could visit Brizzey,” I said. “She seems to like you.” Stuyvie shook his head, rolled his eyes. “As if.”
I started down the sidewalk. Stuyvie followed. It occurred to me that Race and Taze might suddenly appear and jump me. I wasn’t looking for any more trouble.
“Just thought you should know,” Stuyvie said, “that not everyone got off scot-free.”
I stopped walking.
“You didn’t think that I got suspended for some dirty jerseys. Trust me. I caught all sorts of hell over your girlfriend. My dad didn’t let me get away with anything. I’m going to fucking state college. Zoo Mass.”
“Sorry.” I shook my head and backed away. “I can’t help you.”
Later on, I thought about what I should have said to Stuyvie. How I should have pointed out that his punishment, his week of watching television, the black mark on his permanent record, his future at a state college, was nothing compared to Aidan losing her life. I understood that Stuyvie’s dad had done what any father would try to do— protect his son. But in doing so he’d only done his son more harm.

On the morning of graduation, Chester came to my room to tell me some good news. He’d seen Diana on her way to the headmaster’s house. “Brizzey was wrong about her not paying tuition. Diana’s been doing correspondence courses. Dean Warr arranged it.” This seemed like a nice thing to have done. I didn’t want to become so cynical that I couldn’t believe in bad people sometimes doing good things. Diana was going to march with all of us and receive her diploma. “She looks beautiful,” Chester said. “She’s like glowing. Totally luminous.”

For graduation the girls wore white dresses and the boys blue suits with red ties. The ceremony was held on the waterfront, and as I walked over to line up for the pro cession, I saw Diana standing on the front lawn of the headmaster’s house. There was a small gathering of students and faculty, and I stood off to the side while Windsor dedicated two maple trees. Diana had donated them both to replace the elms that had fallen in the storm. The trees were still saplings, but Windsor spoke haltingly of how their red leaves would bring shade and comfort for generations to come. The trees were dedicated to Aidan. “They’re from our farm,” Diana told me.

Diana had on a simple white sundress, her hair pulled back off her cleanly scrubbed face. When she saw me, she broke out into an unexpected smile. We were supposed to line up for the ceremony. Our parents were already seated, the brass quartet warmed up and cued up, but Diana took me by the arm. “Let’s make them wait for us,” she said.

I asked how she was doing, and she told me that she’d taken up horseback riding and dressage. She couldn’t afford her own horse or even lessons, but she’d begun volunteering at a stable. “I shovel horse shit,” she said. “And they let me ride for free.” She wasn’t going to college, not yet. “My dad still needs me around. I might take some classes, but I’m happy just staying close to home.” Her father had lost their money, but somehow Diana seemed stronger, nicer, even.

I told her that I’d spent months worried, confused over Aidan’s death. “Doubt that I’ll ever know what really happened at that party,” I said.
It was warm, but Diana shivered. She looked at me with her pale eyelashes and said, “There was no party, Jason. There was never going to be any party.”
Diana explained that Tazewell and the others had come up with a scheme for getting back at me for Race’s sailing accident. “They were going to haze you. They wanted you to feel what it was like to be caught hanging underwater.” Tazewell had bragged to Diana about the plan. The guys had invited me out to Race’s and me alone. “They wanted to hurt you.” Diana had seen Aidan that Saturday morning right after I’d left with Riegel. She’d told Aidan what the Company had planned for me. “My bet is that Aidan went there to protect you.”
When I didn’t show up, when there was no one to torment or torture, they did to Aidan what they’d planned to do to me. Just when you thought you had an approximation of the truth, there was another truth underneath.
“What bothered me,” Diana said, “was that thing with the suicide note. But Aidan used to read me passages from her journals. Crazy depressed stuff. Someone could have torn out a few pages. Passed them off as something they weren’t.”
The white sail of Diana’s dress blew around her in the wind. She’d obviously thought about contacting Aidan’s mother and wondered how something like that would play out. Chester called over to us. The graduation pro cession was about to begin. Diana said, “Windsor and Warr will just stonewall. They’ll turn Aidan’s mother into the crazy woman who can’t get over her daughter’s suicide, who blames everyone but herself for her child’s death.”

For the next few hours, I sat under a big white tent and listened to the graduation speeches, and even as I crossed the stage to shake Windsor’s hand and receive my diploma, I kept thinking, “Aidan saved my life.” If not for her, I would have drowned. If she hadn’t gone to that party, Tazewell and Race would have simply rescheduled my torment. But Aidan had hoped to save me and they had dragged her from that boat and left her to die out in the harbor during a storm. I felt like I was being pulled up from the bottom of a well. Out of the darkness and into the light. I finally had my awful answer.

I asked Diana why she hadn’t told me this. She’d known at least part of the truth that day we sat out by the Flagpole.
“I wasn’t sure about anything. Couldn’t get Tazewell to admit the truth. Still can’t.” Diana looked out at the water. “Plus, I was caught up in all my own troubles. I’m a selfish girl. I was mad at Aidan. Mad that she was gone. That she couldn’t listen to me or help me anymore.”
Diana pointed out that she had asked Aidan to warn me. “My first instincts were to protect you.” Her ultimate loyalty was not to Tazewell but to Aidan and the people Aidan cared about. “She was crazy over you,” Diana said. “She kept this list of all the snacks you brought her. All the songs you played. I told her she was really lucky. Not one of those boys ever gave me anything.”

Only my mother made it to my graduation. Riegel had already started working for our father, the two of them traveling together. “Your dad sends his love and regrets,” she said. “He’s going to buy you a very fancy car to make up for it all.”

Nadia asked to say hello to my mother, and I reintroduced the two of them. They both had on similar green dresses and my mother complimented Nadia on her good taste. The whole time Nadia stood with us, I could see my mother looking over her head waving at the other parents, so many of whom were her friends. Sensing that she’d been dismissed, Nadia hugged me and said good-bye. I thought my mother had been rude and I told her so.

“Is she your girlfriend?” my mother asked. “She’s perfectly welcome to come to dinner.”
As we packed, Mom told me that she and Dad had reconciled. There would be no divorce. No splitting of assets or parting of ways. “It’s for the best, really,” she said. “We need each other.”
This news neither surprised nor comforted me. I took a long look at my mother. She was a pampered woman. One of that rare tribe of individuals who could truly claim never to have worked a day in her life. My mother had relented, had changed her mind about the divorce. Her fear of being alone was the only thing holding our family together.
After dinner, I showed my mother the waterfront. Wanting her to see where I’d raced. I wasn’t as eager to leave campus as I’d expected. I described all the different buildings and trees the storm had damaged, pointing out the places that had been repaired. Mom and I stood by the seawall, and I finally told her about Aidan, described the first time I saw her. “She looked like a bird,” I said. “Like a cormorant.”
“Roland taught you that,” Mom said. “How those birds dry their wings in the sun.”
She was right. He had taught me that. “You loved him, didn’t you?” I said. “That’s why you two were always walking on the beach together.”
“Oh, if I had any romance left in me”—my mother crossed her arms over her chest—“I would say that he was the great love of my life. You don’t get many of them, you know. Most of us are too foolish to realize when we’re in the midst of one.”
My mother had her own lost love, her own private sadness that had led her to make too many compromises. I worried about her happiness.

Mom and I would spend the night at a hotel in Bellinghem before driving up to Maine to begin our summer. I told her I still needed to say good-bye to a few friends.
“Take your time,” she said. Then she added, “I’m sorry again about

Nadia, but I don’t like encouraging that sort of behavior. She may think she’s your girlfriend, but I know better.”

I shrugged my shoulders and began to turn away, but Mom reached out, cupping her hand against my neck.
“Last week I ran into Caroline.” She lifted her palm up to my face. “Told her you were graduating. She was thrilled to hear that you were back sailing. We both agreed that we’d never seen two more perfect partners. You and Cal out on the water together. You have no idea how beautiful the two of you looked.”
She reached out and rubbed the side of her thumb over the cleft in my chin.
“Where is the sun?” she asked.
“I am your son,” I said.

I’d already said good-bye to Coach Tripp, Chester, and Yazid. Coach Tripp surprised me with a gift. A sextant. “It’s just plastic,” he said. “I know it’s not fancy, but I figured it would be a good start.”

It was one of the nicest gifts anyone had ever given me. Coach Tripp told me that he was leaving Bellingham. He’d been recruited to sail some rich guy’s yacht around the world. “Looks like we’re both graduating from this place,” he said. “Or at least leaving it behind.”

I told him that his new job sounded like a dream.
“Thanks for all of those star lessons,” I said. “You taught me well.” Chester had been accepted to Columbia and we planned on seeing

each other when we could. His was the one friendship I knew I would keep. He didn’t blink when I told him how I felt about Cal and Aidan. I would always be grateful for that quiet moment of acceptance.

All around me students were leaving, packing up their old lives, preparing for new ones. Come fall, I’d find myself at Princeton, with Tazewell lurking always in the background. I’d seen him that morning in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, a towel wrapped around his thin waist. “Someday,” I said, “I want you to tell me how you managed to get away with it all.” Tazewell spat into the sink and said, “It was easy. I come from a long line of pirates.”
Maybe what separated us and made me different from the Company was that I didn’t aspire to get away with my crime.

Years from now, I would attend an opening at Dill’s art gallery and be forced to air kiss Brizzey on both cheeks. I might travel all the way to New Zealand for a regatta only to find myself competing against Race. I’d receive newsletters and updates about Kriffo’s sports injuries and Stuyvie’s big plan to replace his father as dean. I would remain steeped in all their glories.

I found myself near the once forested area where we’d had the groundbreaking for Prosper Hall. Somewhere there was a picture of my father, Windsor, and me smiling our ceremonial smiles as our shovels cut the earth. Trees had been cleared, construction begun, the dimensions of the new dormitories made clear with cement and rebar. I wondered who would live in these quarters, boys or girls. Would there be a fire escape, or would the windows be sealed to prevent anyone from sneaking in or out? I’d never really thought about having children, but any son or daughter of mine would be a legacy at Bellingham, would have a home named after him or her. A home borne of a father’s desire to hide his son’s shame.

Just one last time, just to say good-bye, I walked down to our beach. As I trudged across the familiar sand, I stripped off my suit, leaving my clothes on the shore, and dove into the cold Atlantic.

The wind was picking up. I scanned the harbor for yawls. For one I might steal and sail across the equator, past the horse latitudes, down to the southern hemisphere. Hoping to find myself under Argo Navis, the ship of stars. The boat that ferried Jason and his Argonauts to their Golden Fleece. The constellation, once the largest in the sky, had been broken up, separated by astronomers. Where once there had been a single constellation, now three smaller groupings of stars glittered. Carina, the keel; Vela, the sails; Puppis, the stern.

I wanted to sail under our shattered constellation. Aidan and Cal my fellow privateers. The two of them giving off more light, more warmth than I deserved. Cal would teach Aidan how to work the lines, her red hair fiery in the moonglow. She would whisper to Cal how sorry I was. Convince him to forgive me. It was only because of Aidan that I had begun to forgive myself and only because of Cal that I had learned to care for Aidan. The three us part of some larger whole.

I wanted to swim until the dark water and navy sky were one. I felt myself rising, soaring away from this school. Hunting the sky for yachts. Believing that it took those three extravagant boats and those sturdy helicopters to chariot Aidan and Cal away from me. The tide was coming in, the waves gaining strength, but I felt buoyant, triumphant, even. I ducked my head underwater, held my breath, lengthening the keel of my body. Swimming closer to the rocks, I heard the waves and wind creating their own siren’s song, the soft voices of my lost friends. I flipped over, floating on my back and leaning into the starboard sea. The night descending, stretching above me like a map promising instruction, direction.

I would spend the rest of my life searching for guiding stars.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the generous support I have received from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Vassar College, Emerson College, the University of Houston, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Inprint. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Rice University, Justin Cronin, Marsha Recknagel, Susan Wood, and my colleagues and students at Agnes Scott College.

For his incomparable wit and careful reading, I extend my deepest gratitude to the brilliant Ethan Bassoff, a man who works tirelessly and dreams brightly. I am in awe of my editor, the radiant and wise Daniela Rapp, and forever grateful for her luminous vision. Thank you to all the good people of InkWell Management and the sainted souls at St. Martin’s. Much adoration for Lindsay Sagnette, who first gave me shelter. Cheers to Cynthia Merman for her thoughtful and elegant copyediting.