The Starboard Sea: A Novel

by Amber Dermont

  I said, “I’ve been taking a survey. What are you gonna miss most about this place?”

  Over the spring, Kriffo had bulked up, expanding his already expanded girth. He looked uncomfortable in his body, like his muscles were a costume he’d put on wrong and couldn’t shed. He thought about my question and said that he’d miss his friends. “You guys, of course. I’ll miss knowing that there are all these great guys who one hundred percent have my back.”

  I agreed. “We’ve taken good care of one another.”

  “For a long time,” he said, “I was pissed at you for tackling me in front of everyone. But you turned out to be all right.”

  Kriffo spat over the side of the boat. I couldn’t tell if he was drunk.

  “Have you ever been out on this boat?” I asked. “These are real monsters.”

  “Just that night of the storm,” Kriffo said. “You know, the thing with the girl.”

  Kriffo had convinced himself that I was there for the hurricane party. That I was part of whatever they’d done. I said, “Yeah, that was pretty wild.”

  “It was mostly an accident.” Kriffo nodded. “I mean when you look at it that way, it’s really nobody’s fault.”

  “We did the best we could to save her. Right?”

  “Maybe not the best.” Kriffo sucked on his cigar. “We had to cut her loose. We could have died out there.”

  My shoulders began to shake. I made a fist to calm myself.

  “I don’t know how you and Race charge around on the water.” Kriffo shook his head. “Those waves scared the hell out me.”

  I left Kriffo with his cigar and his guilt and ran back up to the house to find Race. There was no way for me to ask Kriffo questions if he thought I was actually there that night. I would have already known the answers.

  Race stood alone on the third-floor balcony, drinking beer, looking down at his guests, the smell of marijuana, a mixture of fresh shit and mown lawn wafting up from below. “My Piranha Brother,” he said and bumped my chest. “You have everything you need?”

  I thanked him for the party.

  “That trophy cup is yours, you know,” he said. “My mom had one made for each of us. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the guys. It’s not like we’re pussies, but I think it’s good to have a little hardware for our hard work.”

  “I should start a bragging wall.”

  It was a nice gesture. Filled with his mother’s kind thoughts. She’d been there that afternoon when we won, waiting on the shore for the results. It was hard to view a regatta even when you were out on the water yourself—even if you knew where to look. Beautiful to watch but not exactly a spectator’s sport. Race had more or less banned his mother from watching him sail. “She knows I don’t like it. Makes me ner vous.” But there she was, and when we emerged chilly and soaked after our celebratory water plunge, she greeted us with thick fluffy towels. She told Race how proud his father would have been.

  Race and I looked down at his party together. Brizzey and Stuyvie were bobbing and weaving trying to dance to Peter Tosh. I asked Race, “Who looks good tonight? Who are you planning on celebrating with?”

  We ranked the girls at the party from “unfuckable” to “fuck yeah.” Race was interested in a Junior named Carmen. A brunette with long feathered hair. “I like a girl with an overbite,” he said.

  I said, “Aidan had just a hint of an overbite.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Race smiled.

  “But I thought you said you hooked up with her.”

  Like any bad liar, Race had forgotten his lie. “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

  “I was wondering if you could clear something up for me.” I rubbed my face. “See, that night of the storm, I thought Aidan came out here looking for me, but maybe she was still interested in you.”

  Race was past the point of denying that Aidan had gone to the party. He’d given Leo a job to make this truth disappear. “What happened then?” I asked. “Kriffo said you took her out on your cigarette boat.”

  “Let’s not do this,” Race said. “Things are good between us.”

  “How did she drown?” I asked. “We won our trophies. Just tell me.”

  “Why do you care? She was nothing.”

  I pushed Race against the balcony. In one swift move, I raised my arm, gripping his throat in my hand. My heart lurched inside my chest as I imagined what might have happened to Aidan. “What did you do to her?” I demanded. “Why did you hurt her?”

  I was choking Race so hard that he couldn’t answer. Race tried to push me off, but I used the full force of my body against him. After all our hours on the water together, all my self-control and determination to find the truth, and yet I still wound up with my hands around my enemy’s neck. As I felt myself ready to squeeze the life out of Race, I considered what had brought me to this moment, this confrontation. I understood that this moment wasn’t only about Aidan. My skin warmed. Flush with the memory of what I’d done to Cal.

  “I get it, Race.” I loosened my hold. “We’re not so different. I did something awful once too.” I let go, releasing my grip.

  Race sucked in air. I expected him to take a swing at me, but he didn’t. He just stared at me and breathed in heavily.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know what you did. Certain I can guess.”

  The night before Cal died, I came back to our room late, found Cal bare chested, his skin slick with sweat. He’d been lifting free weights in our room. His arms and chest muscles taut and sinewy. He had on gym shorts that I was certain belonged to me. The front of his hair was soaked with sweat, while my own hair was wet with rain. I was wearing a hand-me- down, my dad’s ancient green trench coat. The coat had epaulets and brass buttons and made me feel like a soldier in Napoleon’s army. I’d been spending as much time away from Cal as possible. Resisting temptation and punishing myself— for what, I didn’t dare admit.

  That night I’d walked into town for a cheeseburger. After dinner, I went to a pharmacy to read magazines. I flipped through a bunch of sports and sailing magazines, and I probably would have left without buying anything, except this anemic kid behind the counter kept looking over at me. I stared back, then turned away. He approached me and asked if I needed any help. The kid was my age, but he didn’t look like anyone I knew. He was thin, with pale, bloodless skin, black spikes of hair, and thick, rubbery lips. His fingernails looked bruised at first, like he’d slammed his hand in a car door, until I realized that he’d painted his nails black. He smiled at me. “Find anything you like?” he asked. He wasn’t creepy. Not really. But up until that point, I’d thought that whatever existed between Cal and me was separate and distinct from the rest of the world. It hadn’t occurred to me that a stranger could sense and recognize something so private.

  I asked the anemic kid if the store sold Penthouse. He bit his black nails and tilted his head. He told me that they carried Playboy and something that he thought was called Big on Top. The store kept both behind the counter. I asked to buy a copy of Playboy, paid for the magazine, and left.

  I walked back to campus in the rain, went to the chemistry lab, and tried beating off to the Playboy in the bathroom of the Science Wing. The women in the issue all had frizzy, bleach-blond hair, small tits. I could get hard, but I couldn’t stay hard enough to come. When I returned to our room, I was pretty worked up.

  Cal rubbed a towel across his chest and asked me to listen to him. He’d been doing a lot of careful thinking and had reached certain conclusions about our friendship. Mainly, he was confident that we hadn’t done anything wrong those times in the dark, wrestling on the floor and in bed. He shook his sweat-soaked bangs away from his eyes and forehead, then in a clear mea sured voice, he explained that he loved me as much as he ever expected to love anyone. More, even. We were young together. We’d always be young to each other no matter how fat, bald, and blow hearted we became to the rest of the world. He said, “It’s simple,
really.” When I didn’t respond, didn’t clear my throat or blink, even, Cal reached his arm out and touched his hand to my shoulder. When I still didn’t respond, Cal turned away, nodding his head and saying again, “It’s simple, really.”

  I thought of the kid at the pharmacy and the naked ladies in the magazine. I was sad, but I was also angry. I lunged at Cal. Hurled myself on top of his slick and sweaty body, razing him down onto the wood floor. I smashed my closed fists against his ribs. Cal tried to push me off at first but slowly made less and less of an effort to defend himself. He went limp. Maybe he thought I was playing a new version of our game. I punched his chin, slapped the sides of his face. When I couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer, I flipped him over. It was simple, really. There was something I could do to put an end to the matter. Something final. The violence aroused me. The close proximity of our bodies turned me on. It was nothing for me to force myself onto Cal. To keep him pinned down with my knees on his legs, my hand around his neck. I could fuck him knowing that he’d never want me again.

  All of the lights in our room were on, the door unlocked. I was still wearing my trench coat and the material fanned out over us, covering our bodies. If someone had walked through our unlocked door, he might have had the mistaken impression that I was on my knees, praying for strength. With one determined blow, I destroyed everything that was beautiful in my life.

  I rolled off of Cal and left him curled up on the floor. I cleared my throat, spat in a wastebasket, and told Cal that I was switching roommates, changing sailing partners. It was over between us. He didn’t move for a long time. I undressed and got ready for sleep. Finally, before turning off the light, Cal pushed himself up from the floor. I tried not to look at him. His face was red, swollen. He held his arms around his rib cage. Had I simply offered him a cold cloth or helped him to bed, I could have begun to make things right between us. He stood for a moment, not looking at me, then bent down and picked something up off the ground. “This yours?” The Playboy must have fallen out of the inside pocket of my coat.

  I didn’t speak to Cal again. Before we went to sleep that night, Cal said, “Don’t worry, Jason. You can pass. No one need ever know. Your secret will end with me.”

  On our last night together, I told Aidan this secret. She listened, nodding. Afterward, she was quiet, absorbing the hideous weight of my confession. I could feel her trying to summon the right words. “What you did,” she said, “was awful. What it led to, even worse.” She held my hand. “You can’t change what you did, but if you honor Cal, maybe a time will come when you’ll be ready to forgive yourself.”

  Race played it cool. He told me I could leave or stay. He didn’t care. “I’ll call you a cab,” he said. “Or I’ll pour you another drink. It’s all the same to me.”

  I leaned over the balcony and looked down at Race’s fake paintings. “My brother Riegel works for this Wall Street big shot. He told me the stock market crash was caused by a bunch of traders who’d made a dumb bet. They wanted to have some fun, create mayhem. I figure you guys, Taze, Kriffo, and Stuyvie, you all had some sort of bet to see who could hurt Aidan the most.”

  Race said nothing. Carmen with her overbite and low-cut T-shirt joined us on the balcony and told Race that his party kicked ass. Race was happy for the interruption. He had something he wanted to show Carmen and he steered her away from me and down the stairs.

  I was in a room full of happy, young people. I’d never felt older. Never felt more alone.

  FIFTEEN

  Nadia and I woke up early on her birthday, sneaked out of our dorms, and met at the Old Boathouse. Both of us dressed to go for a run. The Boathouse smelled of paint and varnish but especially of mold. A row of high windows ran along one wall, but the sun would not rise for several hours. Nadia had arrived first and lit up wide pillar candles that sent the aroma of fake strawberries and vanilla bean through the small, enclosed space. We took off our sneakers and flopped on the mattress she’d already covered with her own soft blankets. We kissed and she went right for my groin. “There’s no rush,” I said. “We’ve got your whole birthday to celebrate.” Nadia began taking off her tank top, and I said, “Did you ever do that thing when you were a little kid where your parents balanced you on their feet?”

  “Like an airplane?” she asked.

  I stretched out on my back and bent my knees and Nadia leaned over and squared her chest against my feet. Straightening my legs, I balanced Nadia. She was so light. We both made funny zooming noises as though she were careening through puffy clouds. Looking up into her face I saw her perfectly shaped mouth, smelled her saccharine toothpaste, noticed where she’d forgotten to tweeze a hair from a small mole on her chin. I also saw myself as a child, the broad grin on my father’s face as he balanced me in the air.

  “This is fun enough,” Nadia said, “but you can put me down anytime you like.”

  Nadia was just humoring me. The airplane trick a bad idea, a poor distraction. I sat up and said, “Once we do this. You can never take it back.”

  Nadia took off her tank top. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her left breast was larger than her right, and her nipples pointed out in different directions. Her arms and legs were tan but her torso was pale white. She slid off her running shorts and stood before me in just a pair of white lace panties. “Take them off for me,” she said. I brought her down onto the mattress. Hooking my thumbs around her panties, shucking them off in one clean move.

  Without much thought, I stood up and took off my T-shirt, my sweat pants, and then my boxers. Nadia stared at my body. She’d never seen me naked, barely seen me with my shirt off. After all the sailing and training, my body was lean, strong. I’d never been overly proud of my physique, but I was aware of the muscles along my abdomen, the tension in my calves, the thickness of my thighs, the definition of my pectoral muscles. This was as good as I would ever look. Nadia’s eyes widened, first with a kind of frenzy, a desire, then suddenly her eyes dampened and she began to cry.

  “What’s the matter,” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Nadia looked at me not with desire but with resentment. “You’re so much better looking than I am.”

  I told Nadia that she was the prettiest girl at Bellingham. I hugged her and kissed her neck.

  “You’re just doing me a favor.” She pulled her face away.

  There was no right thing to say. If I told Nadia that I did want her, she would hear the lie in my voice. She was a smart girl.

  “I’ve just been kidding myself, haven’t I?” She pulled her tank top back on. She couldn’t find her panties, but she reached over me and picked up her shorts. “You’re still in love with Aidan.”

  She didn’t say this in a mean or accusatory way. She wasn’t speaking out of spite. And she was right that I couldn’t stop thinking about Aidan.

  While Nadia tied her sneakers, I sat naked on the mattress staring at the dark windows.

  “Did you have sex with her?” Nadia asked. “Did you sleep with Aidan? Are you worried I won’t be as good?”

  That night on the Swan, after I told Aidan my horrible truth, I expected her to reject me. To run away, even. But she seemed to understand that I needed comfort. Aidan knew what it was like to have your love turn to rage, to hurt the one person that you cared for above all others. “You need,” she said, “to find a way to trust yourself again.” The last time I’d been physical with a person, with Cal, I’d lost control and turned violent. I hated knowing that there was a violence within me that could mix so easily with sex. I was afraid of hurting Aidan. And Aidan was afraid of something else. “I used to try,” she said, “to have casual sex.” She sat up straight on our bunk. “But then I realized I’m not a casual person.”

  We laughed. I ran my hand over her back. “Well, sex,” I said, “shouldn’t be a casual thing. Not if it’s worth having.”

  And so Aidan and I did all of the private things we could to each other’s bodies, holding back that one last thing. Believing t
hat there would be a time in the not too distant future when we would share everything with each other. Maybe we were beginning to fall in love, maybe we were just nursing each other back to health. For so long, I’d feared that I was hanging on to Aidan, on to all my thoughts and memories of her because of how our night together changed the meaning of all my nights with Cal. But I understood now that that it didn’t change anything. I loved them both. I’d opened my life up to each of them. I wasn’t worthy of either. If asked to choose between them, I wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t salvage things between Nadia and me. I stayed naked as Nadia dressed. “I care about you,” I said. “The last thing I want is to be a disappointment.”

  Nadia left, and I sat there for a little while among the old crew shells, the cans of dried paint. After Race’s party, I’d gone to Chester and told him how I’d confronted Race. How Kriffo had called the whole thing an accident.

  “They lied to her mother.” Chester couldn’t stop shaking his head.

  I begged Chester to come forward about the hazing, the harassment he’d put up with for years. “There’s got to be enough to get at least one of those guys kicked out. We could go after Kriffo. Say that he broke your arm on purpose.”

  “You really don’t get it,” Chester said. “Aidan was killed. Windsor looked that girl’s mother straight in the eye and said ‘suicide.’ No one cares about my arm or the scar on my face. No one cares about a skinny girl from California.”

  I picked up a paintbrush covered in a thick coat of dried white paint. I thought back to the night we’d painted the roof class of ’88. We had only a few days left before graduation. Not much time, but I realized that there was something I could do. I needed Chester’s help.