by David Klass
“Why not?” Mrs. Simmons asked.
“Because it says: ‘Successful applicants will be highly motivated college-bound students with exceptional academic and extracurricular backgrounds.’ That’s not exactly me.”
“It’s not exactly not you either,” she said. “Look, I can’t promise they’ll take you. Probably they won’t. It’s a very competitive program, and most applicants are rejected. But Mr. Desoto made the call for you, and he thinks it’s worth a try.” She saw my doubts, and leaned forward, and said in a very low voice, “When you came to see me the first time, you opened a door, Joe. You knew what you were doing. Give it a chance.”
I looked back at her. “Can I keep these pages and think it over?”
“Don’t think too long,” she said. “Here’s the name and number of the man you need to call to schedule an interview. If I were you, I’d call him tonight.”
I read the pages over five or six times in school that day, always when I was alone and no one could see and make fun of me for dreaming crazy dreams. Twice I almost ripped the pages up, because crazy dreams can cause you lots of pain. But I didn’t tear them up, and that night I read them one more time and then called the phone number Mrs. Simmons had written down for Dr. Rossini. I guess the first thing I did wrong was mispronounce his name, because he said, “No, it’s Ross-ini—like the famous composer.”
I didn’t ask which famous composer. “I guess Mr. Desoto called me about you, I mean you about me,” I stammered.
Even though I was garbling the English language horribly, Dr. Rossini didn’t hang up. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’ve known Victor for years. He speaks very highly of you. We should meet and talk. There’s only one problem.”
The problem was that he had to see me in the next two days or it would be too late, and the Sea Gypsy was anchored up the Hudson River, nearly a hundred miles north of Manhattan. “Do you drive?” Dr. Rossini asked.
“I have my license but no car,” I told him. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll have to call you back.”
I went downstairs, and my dad was sitting there watching a boxing match. I headed to the fridge and got him a beer, and brought it to him along with some salted peanuts. “Here,” I said, “thought you might enjoy a snack and a drink.”
“Hey, thanks,” he said, swallowing a peanut. And then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What do you want?”
“Just … your car,” I told him. “I need to borrow it.”
He made me tell him the whole story. I thought he might laugh at me and my crazy dreams, but he chewed a few more peanuts and thought it over. “You can’t drive my car out there alone,” he said. He took a big swallow of beer to wash down the nuts, and let out a belch. “I’ll take you. We can go tomorrow morning bright and early.”
“What about the car wash?”
“Let people drive dirty cars for one day.”
“Are you serious? It’s nearly two hours’ drive each way. It will take all morning.”
“One of the perks of running your own business is that you can give yourself a vacation anytime you want,” Dad told me. “Besides, it’ll give me plenty of time to tell you all about women.”
I looked back at him. “Forget it. I’ll ride my bike up there.”
29
My father and I left at ten the next morning, heading north on the Palisades Parkway, which runs along the Jersey side of the Hudson River. It was a mild November day, there was plenty of sunshine, and the traffic was light. Dad found a sports call-in show on the radio, sipped coffee from a plastic cup, and drove much too fast. “Slow down,” I told him. “I’d like to make it to this interview in one piece.”
“What are they going to ask you?”
“I have no idea,” I told him. “Maybe questions about ships.”
“What do you know about ships?”
“Nothing,” I admitted.
“Then how are you going to pass the interview?”
“I’m not,” I told him. “They’re gonna laugh me off the boat.”
“That’s my boy,” he said, and took another sip of coffee.
We crossed the Hudson River on the Rhinebeck Bridge, and I looked down but couldn’t see the Sea Gypsy. The river was beautiful, though—it was hard to believe that this same gleaming blue water that flowed past forested banks on either side was headed out to sea, and would soon be passing under the George Washington Bridge, past the town of Bankside, and providing a backdrop for tourists’ photographs of Manhattan.
As we got a few miles from the boat basin where the Sea Gypsy was anchored, my dad turned off the radio. “Joe, here’s some advice,” he said. “Just be yourself.”
“How can I not be?” I asked.
He swatted me lightly on the top of the head. “I mean at the interview today. You have a lot going for you.”
“Like what?”
“A great father,” he said. “Who would love to work with his son at the family business. But if that son should prefer to go another way, his father will understand. There’s more to life than washing cars.” It was the only time I had ever heard my dad complain or say anything negative about what he did.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that. Any advice about ships that I can use in this interview?”
Dad thought for a minute. “Nada,” he said. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll wing it on my own.”
We drove along a narrow road on the east bank of the river, and turned a bend, and in the distance a boat basin came into view. There were several dozen small and middle-sized sailboats and motorboats, and one much larger and unbelievably gorgeous sailing ship. Its sails were furled and it rocked gently at anchor. I couldn’t stop looking at it—it belonged in some old black-and-white pirate movie.
My dad saw it, too, and he surprised me by pulling over on the side of the road. “Nice-looking tub,” he muttered.
“Not too shabby,” I agreed.
“Listen, Joe,” my dad said, “sorry I can’t help you much—I don’t know squat about ships. But if I was putting together a crew for a sailing ship—even a student crew—there’s one thing I would want that you are.”
“What’s that?”
“A lifeguard,” he said.
“Yeah?” I turned it over in my mind. It made sense.
“Yeah,” he said. “Go with it.”
“I don’t have much else. Thanks.”
He pulled onto the road again, and soon we were at the boat basin. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’m gonna go find myself a diner and grab a bite to eat. And I’ll come back to pick you up. That way I won’t cramp your style.”
“Sounds good,” I said, opening the door and getting out. “Bring back something for me.”
“You got it.” He grabbed my shoulder. “Good luck. Oh, one more thing. If this guy does laugh at you—break his nose.
I stepped out of the car, and watched my father drive away at high speed. I think maybe he was nervous for me. In seconds his car disappeared between the trees, and I was all alone. I walked to the big boat, and saw a couple of teenagers on the deck, doing different jobs or sunbathing and reading books. They were all barefoot, wore shorts and T-shirts, and they looked relaxed and tanned and happy. Suddenly I wanted this job very much.
I reached the gangplank, and a female crew member asked me, “Can I help you?”
“My name’s Joe Brickman. I’m here to see Dr. Rossini.”
“Come on board. I’ll get him.”
I walked across the gangplank and stood on deck, feeling the sway of the ship as it rocked at anchor. A big man with a red beard came hurrying up from belowdecks, crouching slightly to get through the doorway. “Joe? You’re early.”
“Sorry. My father drives too fast,” I told him.
He grinned and we shook hands. He had a fierce grip—maybe he had spent a lot of time coiling rope or something. “So,” he said, “what do you think of my little sailboat?”
“Not too shabby,�
�� I said.
“Want the grand tour?”
“Sure.”
He took me from stern to stern, explaining things as we went, till we ended up beneath the mast, which he informed me was a hundred-and-ten-foot-tall Douglas fir. “It carries a mainsail of three thousand square feet,” he went on. “When that sail catches a strong wind, there’s nothing like it on earth. Believe me.”
Then we headed down, and he showed me the galley, and the mess, and the cabins where the crew members slept. I saw that there wasn’t a lot of spare room on a sailing sloop. Dr. Rossini talked a lot and didn’t ask me anything about myself, and I started to relax. That was a mistake.
“And here’s my office, which is also my cabin,” he said. It wasn’t much larger than the crew cabins, but it did have a desk and a couple of chairs. He motioned me to one of them, and he sat in the chair by the desk. He took out a pad and pen, and then pulled a piece of paper from a drawer, studied it, and frowned. “I didn’t have a chance to really look over your transcript before. Your grades aren’t so hot, Joe.”
“No, sir, they’re pretty cold,” I said.
He smiled at my ice cube of a joke, put down the transcript, and looked at me. “What’s the problem? Algebra isn’t that hard.”
“It is for me,” I admitted. “I just don’t like it.”
“To tell you the truth, it wasn’t my favorite subject either,” Dr. Rossini said. “What about history? That can be interesting.”
“Yeah. I guess I just didn’t try hard enough.”
We sat there and looked at each other awkwardly for a few seconds, and I thought to myself that I should have ripped up the application after all.
“I don’t get it,” he said. He looked thoughtful, and said to himself, and then to me, “I’ve known Victor Desoto for twenty years, and this is the first time he’s gone out on a limb for one of his students.” Dr. Rossini studied me for a few seconds. “Let’s take another tack. Do you know much about sailing, Joe?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever been on a sloop like this before?”
“No, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir. Call me Dan. I’m not having much luck here, Joe. What do you know a lot about?”
I looked back at him. “Nothing,” I confessed. “I don’t know why I’m here. I’m just wasting your time.”
“Time is something one has on a boat,” he told me, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s take yet another tack. What are you worst at?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “Talking to girls.”
The corners of his mouth lifted in a surprised smile, and then he burst out laughing. He rocked back and forth, roaring with laughter. You can tell a lot about someone by the way they laugh. Dr. Rossini was a good guy. Watching him laugh, I found myself grinning back at him, and I relaxed a little bit.
“That’s probably the most honest answer I’ve ever had at an interview,” he finally said, gasping for breath.
“Well, that’s one thing about me. What you see is what you get. I’m not great at classroom stuff. But I’m the captain of my soccer team, and we just made the county tournament. And I’m the captain of my wrestling team. They didn’t make me captain just because I was the best wrestler or soccer player. I’m good at getting people to work hard.”
“That’s not a bad quality on a boat,” he noted. “I wrestled myself in high school. It’s a tough sport.”
“I love it,” I told him.
“What do you like best about it?”
“Pinning somebody. Maybe that sounds too harsh, but …”
“That’s what I liked best, too,” he said. “What else, Joe? I need some more.”
“I like bio,” I told him. “I’m in an advanced biology class, and I’ve been getting B’s. I know a lot about fish.”
He sat forward. “What kinds of things do you know?”
“I’ve had my own tanks for years,” I told him. “I know a lot about what fish eat, and how they swim, and how clean their water has to be, and stupid stuff like that.”
“Stupid stuff like that, huh?” he said, taking some notes on his pad. “Do you know I have some tanks on board?”
“I didn’t see them in the grand tour.”
“I’ll show them to you in a minute. What else, Joe? Anything else you want to tell me? Don’t hold back.”
I didn’t have anything else, so I borrowed my father’s line. “If I was putting together a crew of a boat, one thing I would look for is a lifeguard,” I said. “I’ve taught junior and senior lifesaving at our town pool for years. I’ve pulled three people out of the water who were in trouble, and my town’s police department gave me a commendation for saving one guy’s life. He had a heart attack.”
“Is that right, Joe?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Dan.”
He put down his pad and stood up. “Fair enough,” he said. “Come, let me show you my fish tanks.”
He led me back through the corridor, past the galley and the mess, and peered through a doorway. “Good, it’s over. Come on in.” He ushered me into a large room I hadn’t seen before. “This is our common room—I would have shown it to you, but there was a meeting going on here, and once I walk into a meeting I never get out. Now, come over here.”
On one side of the room were three large aquariums. We walked over to them. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Nice,” I said.
“Why three different ones? Why not one giant one?”
This wasn’t a difficult question for me. “They’re three totally different worlds,” I said. “Freshwater, brackish, and marine. Different fish, different plants, different food—even different amounts of light.”
“Okay,” he said, walking over to the biggest of the three tanks, “tell me about this one.”
“Marine,” I said. “Tropical.”
“Why do I give it more light than the other two?”
I had two tropical tanks myself, back home in Lawndale, so I could answer this one. “’Cause the fish are mostly from coral reefs, in shallow water with lots of sunshine,” I said. “So you’re making it like home for them.”
“What do you see in this tank? What kind of world are we creating?”
Every good tank has its own personality. I leaned forward and tried to sense what was going on inside the glass walls. “A busy one,” I finally said. “But I guess coral reefs are busy, so that makes sense. You’ve got living rock at the bottom, covered with anemones and sponges. I see you’ve built caves with the rocks, so that your shy fish can take refuge.” I ran my eyes slowly up the tank. “You picked fish that swim at all different depths, to keep things interesting all over the tank. Bottom feeders like that goby, and mid-level swimmers, and those cool squirrelfish near the top. I guess you feed them shrimp and fish flake, and I would guess some live food for that parrot fish—”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Dr. Rossini cut me off. “I can tell you do know a lot of stupid stuff about fish,” he said with a smile. “This interview’s over, except for one last test. If you want to take it. It’s completely up to you.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, “but I’m not much good at tests.”
“You came from Jersey, so you probably crossed the river at the Rhinebeck Bridge,” he said.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “We followed your directions.”
“The bridge is a little more than two miles north of here. Think you could swim to it and back?” he asked.
I looked back at him. “Now?”
“The river’s cold, so I can lend you a wet suit.”
“Dr. Rossini, there are things I can’t do, like solve a trig problem. But when it comes to physical stuff, like swimming a couple of miles in a cold river, I don’t mean to boast, but that’s stuff I don’t have a problem with. And I don’t need a wet suit.”
“Good,” he said. “Neither do I.”
“You’re coming?”
“If you run out of steam, I’ll have to pull you t
o shore,” he said.
“Does that mean I have to pull you to shore?” I asked him.
He grinned. “No,” he said, “because I’ll be ahead of you the whole time. C’mon, I’ll lend you a bathing suit.”
Two minutes later we were in bathing suits, in a motorboat near the stern of the big sloop. Two crew members from the Sea Gypsy were going to trail us in the motorboat, to check up on us and keep boat traffic away. “Ready?” Dr. Rossini asked. In his bathing suit, with his big stomach, he looked like a friendly walrus.
“Whenever you are.”
“I don’t want you to think of this as a race, Joe,” he told me. “But then again, why not think of it that way.” So saying, he dove gracefully into the water and started swimming northward. I followed him in, and was surprised by how cold the water was. Maybe I should have opted for the wet suit.
I could tell right away he had done a lot of long-distance swimming. He kept a steady stroke and pace as we fought the slight current upriver. I swam on his right side, matching him stroke for stroke and kick for kick. We reached the shadow of the bridge at the same moment, and my arms and shoulders were feeling it. “You okay?” he asked.
“Never better,” I lied. “You need to rest?”
“Last one back is a rotten egg,” he said, and took off on the homeward leg at the same strong, steady pace.
That was a hard swim back for me. The water seemed to get colder, till it chilled me to my bones and weakened me. My arms and legs felt waterlogged, so that each stroke was an effort. I tried to breathe regularly, but small waves found their way into my mouth and nose. Finally, over the top of a wave, I saw the Sea Gypsy, a hundred yards ahead.
Dr. Rossini saw it, too, and increased his pace. I stayed with him. Now the sloop was fifty yards away, now forty. He kept going faster and faster—the man not only looked like a walrus, but swam like one, too. Soon the big sailing ship was just thirty yards away. I heard some people shouting from its deck, and saw that a small crowd had gathered to watch the end of the race. Somehow in that split-second glance, I spotted my father—the tallest person on the deck—cupping his hands and shouting to me.
I swam to my father. He had given me this strong body eighteen years ago, and now I put every bit of heart and soul and muscle I had in swimming back to his voice. “COME ON, JOE. BRING IT, SON. COME ON, BOY.” Dr. Rossini was the far better swimmer, but I was eighteen years old and had done endless push-ups and sit-ups and run countless miles training for wrestling and soccer, and some of that stored-up stamina must have come back to me. I found a second gas tank I didn’t know I had, and caught up to Dr. Rossini. We raced in side by side, straining for the finish line. I kicked and stroked with everything I had. When we got to the side of Sea Gypsy, I outtouched him by about a tenth of a second.