The Starboard Sea: A Novel

by Amber Dermont

  When I explained to Chester what I had in mind, I knew that there was a good chance he’d say no. But he liked my idea. “That’s clever,” he said. Together we sneaked out of Whitehall, climbed up onto the roof of the Old Boathouse. I’d gathered some unused brushes, some half-filled cans of white paint. Working quickly, cleanly, we managed to paint our message before the sun came up. When we finished, I jumped off the roof, then helped Chester down, careful not to hurt his arm. We sat on the wet lawn, our white message radiant in the dark.

  “What made you so sure those guys hurt Aidan?” Chester asked. “How’d you know?”

  “Because I loved her.” I peeled white paint from my hands. “And because I did something terrible once, something I’m ashamed of. I’m not so different from those guys.”

  Chester didn’t ask me what I’d done and I’m not sure I would have told him if he had. Instead he told me a story about another black student who’d gone to Bellingham. “His name was Shawn. Everyone here loved him. He was from Chicago, well built, played football, basketball. The white kids tripped over themselves just to hang out with the guy.” Chester and Shawn were never friends. “He was older than me. First time we were alone together in the gym, he told me to keep my distance. It wasn’t like I thought we’d be friends just because we were both black. But Shawn saw me as some kind of threat. He’d figured out a way to make a place for himself. Didn’t want me to ruin it for him.” Chester’s eyes began to water. He wasn’t crying exactly. “My allergies,” he said, “they’re killing me.”

  “So what happened?” I asked. “With Shawn?”

  “It was stupid,” Chester said. “I went into his room when he wasn’t there, crumbled some of my mother’s cookies and brownies all over his floor and closet, his bedsheets, even in his sneakers. His room got infested with ants.” Chester sniffed. “Later, I heard these seniors talking about how Shawn was ‘dirty.’ For a long time, I hated myself.”

  I told Chester I knew what it was like. To hate yourself for what you’d done.

  “That book,” I said, “the one you lent me. It scared me a little.”

  “How come?”

  I ran my hands over the wet grass. “The way the writer went back and forth between men and women. I’ve felt that way. I’m not sure what it makes me.”

  Chester nodded. “Doesn’t make you anything.”

  In the East, the sun cast a brilliant red light on a distant, developing storm. “Red sky at morning,” I said. “Sailors take warning.”

  “Let’s go.” Chester stood, offering me his good arm. I took his hand and allowed him to help me up.

  I made it clear to Chester that I would take all of the blame. “We’re in this together,” he protested.

  “If there’s any heat,” I said, “I’ll take it.”

  Our message lasted that morning almost through breakfast. The grounds people had been ordered to drape the roof with a tarp, but the winds were heavy and the tarp kept blowing off, revealing our indictment: the crimes and cover-ups of the class of ’88. By lunchtime, the entire roof had been painted over in red, but then the rain came, rinsing the red paint away, the white letters showing through. It would take several more coats of paint to cover up our accusations of a cover-up.

  At dinner that night there was all sorts of speculation. I sat at a long table with Kriffo, Tazewell, and Stuyvie. We ate fried chicken and chocolate pudding, Kriffo lamenting the fact that it would be for the last time.

  “Who do you think did the paint job?” Kriffo asked. “What do

  you think it means?”

  “It doesn’t mean shit.” Taze smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days.

  The great unwashed WASP.

  I smiled. “I did it. You guys inspired me.”

  All three of them exchanged looks. Wondering what I meant. “I didn’t want you to think”—I pushed back on my chair and

  picked up my tray.—“that you’d gotten away with anything.”

  For the first time since I’d been at Bellingham, the headmaster asked to see me. I went to his office ready for a fight, knowing that in many ways I was almost as untouchable as Race. Windsor wasn’t wearing a jacket or tie. He looked as though he’d just strolled off the golf course. His pants were decorated with pink whales spouting green water out of their blowholes. Windsor told me that he’d tried to reach my father but that my father seemed to be away.

  “He travels a lot,” I said. “Works hard to honor all of his charitable donations.”

  “I’m sure you know why I’ve called you in here.”

  Windsor leaned back in his cushioned seat and I leaned back in my hard chair. Neither of us said a word. I noticed the spidery red veins on his nose and cheeks. He probably saw a look of contempt flash over my face. We were at a stalemate. Windsor couldn’t kick me out without losing his dorms.

  “So how are we going to settle this matter?” Windsor asked. “I have a mind to send your father a bill for the cost of repainting the roof. You can tell him what you like. Create your own little cover story.”

  Windsor looked like a man who was angry not because someone had stolen his car but because someone had scratched the paint with a key. His was a vibrant, intense anger.

  “The one thing I can’t figure out”—I tore some skin from my rough, blistered hands—“is how you managed to write that fake suicide note. The one you passed off to Aidan’s mother.”

  “I assure you,” Windsor said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I left Windsor’s office invigorated, high, even. Running out into the Fishbowl where students collected between classes and free periods, I searched for Chester, hoping to tell him what I’d said to Windsor. A crowd of students were busy Scotch-taping sheets of paper to the wall across from our mailboxes. Almost everyone was laughing. Yazid stood by the mailboxes and watched.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Wall of Shame,” Yazid said. “The rejects are posting their rejection letters.”

  Yazid and I admired the memorial of denial. The embossed letterhead alerting Brizzey that she would not be attending Vassar. Skidmore’s red stamp of rejection negating Styuvie. I didn’t see any correspondence with Race’s name. Kriffo had posted his own note from Princeton so high on the wall that it was hard to read. It was nice, comforting, even, to see someone say no to my classmates.

  Yazid was headed back to England to study at Cambridge. He asked where I was going.

  I still hadn’t heard from Princeton. Still didn’t know if I was off their waiting list.

  “Check your mailbox,” Yazid said. “Maybe you’ll have your answer.”

  The envelope was thin. I hesitated before opening it. Told myself that either way, acceptance or denial, it didn’t matter. I’d be fine. I ripped through the envelope, tearing the message informing me that I’d been removed from the waiting list. My formal acceptance would appear shortly. I’d made it. I was in. A member of that exclusive group of men within my family.

  The night before graduation, I bumped into Stuyvie at the General Store. We ignored each other, but when I left the store, he was waiting for me outside, drinking fruit punch. Though he kept wiping his face with the back of his hand, he still had red stains on the sides of his mouth.

  “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 s
tate 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 encou
raging 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.