Flat Water Tuesday Read online

  I touched the bottom of the scull, the boat representing a cool month of mowing his lawn and lugging wood up from the lumber yard every morning in my brother’s station wagon and hauling it into his shop out back of the house, then sweeping out the scrap and bagging the off-cuts while he and Tom worked. My father paid me fifty cents below union wages then, when I was training hard every afternoon. He wound up paying for the last twenty-five percent of the boat anyway.

  He’d driven to Fenton along Route 7, a map neatly cut from the back of the school catalogue and taped to the road map of the state thruway. He’d arrived to find the boathouse doors open to the late afternoon sunlight. It looked and smelled like a workshop in there and my father felt at home, I could tell. I knew he would have looked over Channing’s tools and the fittings and riggers on the wall. He would have noted with approval the neat boxes of screws and the endless cans of paint and varnish and caulking and sealant and cleaning agents and itched to touch it all but wouldn’t have done so because it wasn’t his workshop and he’d no more touch another shop’s equipment than fly to the moon. In his worn chinos and work shirt and baseball hat he was all work, all business. He understood how to bend steel and wood and people, if he needed to.

  He wouldn’t go back into the main school with me, have a look around or maybe something to eat. He just wanted to sit in the truck and talk before moving on. But I knew he didn’t want to park the truck in the visitors’ area, next to the Volvos, Jeeps and BMWs. He didn’t want to embarrass me. I hated that. I felt a surge of protectiveness toward him that I didn’t want.

  He believed that by encouraging me to spend a year at Fenton he was depositing me at the gates of a better world. Years later, after I had failed to make any more money than he had, he and I would argue. It was inconceivable to him that a person with my education—so agonizingly hard won—would choose to do anything else but make money and embrace the life that generations of us had been denied.

  Once my father had established that the boat was indeed secure, that his handiwork had not failed him, he looked over the long sea of green around him, the manicured fields and glowing white lime in front of the modern field house. He squinted over the soccer and lacrosse training fields, acres of lovingly, expensively maintained grass. The football goalposts held his attention, and the stern blue bleachers rising out of that luxurious emerald sweep. “They play good ball at this school?” he asked.

  “They lost their first game to this other school, Taft, because they have no kicker and the quarterback kept overshooting the receiver.”

  “Bob Wiley says the Niccalsetti Lions might be undefeated this year. They promoted the second string quarterback. Wiley says he isn’t as good as your brother was.”

  “They’ll never have another Tom Carrey on that team.”

  He grunted, gazed out at the field, as if seeing my brother—graduated from school, home now, jobless, aimless—backpedaling into that perfect green carpet. “Did you talk to the rowing coach yet?”

  “At a meeting.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not as well as it could have.”

  “These guys as good as they say they are?”

  “They could be. Some college coaches think so, that’s for sure.”

  He nodded. “You cleared the scull with your coach, right?”

  “Yes. They don’t scull as much out here. He wants me in a four-man boat. They call it the God Four.”

  “Is that right? The God Four? Just remember that the sculling is what got you here.”

  “The races that mean anything aren’t going to be in the single. I have to row with other kids.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, you’re going to have to row in the four and there’s no two ways about it.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And you got all hot under the collar as usual because you thought you’d just come up here and do things your way and everybody else, why, they can just go hop.”

  “I’m not a team player, Dad. Come on, you know that better than anyone. Single scullers don’t need to be team players. I’m not used to depending on others. The whole reason I like the sport is because it’s all about me. My decisions. My fitness level. My strategy in a race. If I lose, it’s down to me. Same when I win. It sucks needing other people to win.”

  “Then why not just pack it in and come home, Rob? You can row in the Black Rock Canal until you’re my age and I’ll see if you can get a place on my work crew in the meantime.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “It didn’t cross my mind. Or your mother’s mind.” He looked at me hard then around me, as if he wanted to kick something. “For four years you push yourself harder for this sport than I’ve ever seen a kid push himself. You go out in your boat in the snow for crying out loud, and then you have the sand to tell me you don’t want what they have here because you can’t abide the thought of rowing in a team? Goddamn it, Robby, there’s a time for being a stubborn fool and there’s a time for going with the flow and this sounds like it’s one of those going with the flow times.”

  “And what if I lose? What if this boat loses, if they aren’t as fast as they need to be, then what? Then I came all this way and got down with some kids who can’t move a boat.”

  “Then at least you joined in and didn’t wind up sitting on the shore waiting for nothing. It appears this scull has given you all you’re going to get from it. So try throwing your dice on another table.”

  “It’s not that easy, Dad.”

  “Things are sometimes a hell of a lot easier than people think they are. Go and row in the four, or the eight, or whatever they say. And don’t look at me like that. How about you just say you’ll do it so I can cross it off my list of idiotic things to worry about.”

  “All right. I’ll do it, then. I’ll row in their four. But I won’t like it.”

  “Your liking anything is the last of my concerns, son.” He squatted and sighted down the smooth hull of the boat. “Might as well get this unstrung and in the boathouse. This building looks almost new. I thought the book said they’d been rowing here for a hundred years.”

  “The old boathouse was further down the river, about a mile away. They closed it up a few years back when they bagged a few million from some rich alumnus to build this one.”

  He glanced up at me. “Are you telling me that one man gave the school the money for this building?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’d they give him in return?”

  “Put his name up over the door.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  We walked into the dark cold. He looked down at the wooden floors, grunted. “They could treat these. You kids marching in and out of here all day, all wet, you’d think they’d treat the wood. Or maybe they just put in new flooring when the old one wears out, they have that much money.” He looked at me. “You’re going to need the rafter racks for the boat. I guess I can drill one in right up there.” He focused into the gloom above. I looked around and saw that there were scull trolleys underneath what I later would learn was one of the club eights. “They want me to put it on those. We’re not supposed to drill holes in the walls around here.”

  He looked at the rolling racks and grunted. “All right. Saves me some work.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I sure do know you didn’t.”

  We unbuckled the cradle. He had put cotton pads under each buckle, tied them with string. The scull looked great, there weren’t even faint scuff marks from it moving on the cradle. It had been kept perfectly still for five hundred miles down that road. He worked methodically and slowly as usual, laying back each strap one by one, making sure I saw him do it. He pulled the riggers from under the boat and walked them into the boathouse while I untied the bow ball. “I saw some pretty girls while I was driving through town. I expect they haven’t slipped under your radar.”

  “They haven’t.”

  “You’ll wa
nt to be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “You got your mother’s looks on you and girls are going to take notice of it. I’d imagine a fellow can get in a whole lot of trouble not thinking straight, and trouble isn’t what you need right now.”

  He helped me lift the boat out of the cradle, set his jaw and inched it into the house, then opened up the passenger door to the truck and pulled his tool belt out, strapped it around his waist and picked up the riggers from inside the boathouse door. Kneeling by the boat, he selected a wrench and pulled out a bottle with the screws inside. He handed me a palm of screws and another driver. “You take the right-hand one.”

  “Starboard.”

  “What is?”

  “On a boat right is starboard.”

  “We’re not on a boat.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “All right. And what’s left?”

  “Port.”

  “And the front?”

  “Bow. You know, bow ball.”

  “I didn’t make the connection.” He held the rigger to the splashboard, began screwing in his side, smooth, quick turns that didn’t scratch the protective plate.

  “The back’s the stern.”

  “I know it. And you’ve got the bow deck and the stern deck and the slide and the seat. The oars are called sculls, right? But the boat’s a scull, a single scull. Explain that.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you know the difference between all of it.”

  “I do.”

  “Good man.”

  * * *

  We sat in the truck’s cab while he ate part of the lunch he hadn’t bothered to eat on the drive down. He’d lost weight since my sister’s death. Three years ago he would never have skipped lunch, would definitely have stopped for it. He’d brought along a bag of my mother’s sandwiches and a thermos of black coffee, both of which he passed to me. When he was finished he lit a cigarette, pushed the pack back in his pocket, lifted his chin. “I know, I know, go ahead, make sure the door’s open. You don’t need any of this smoke in your lungs.”

  I rolled down the window instead, looked out over the water. It was getting plenty late. Channing was going to start to miss me already, not that I truly gave a damn. My father reached under his seat, picked up a copy of The New York Times, set it between us. “I bought this in Mohawk, on the thruway. There’s not much news you need outside The New York Times. Take it. I looked at it already, got the general gist of things.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He rummaged under the seat again and shook out a brown manila envelope, the kind he sent invoices to his customers in, Carrey’s Joinery up in the corner. He placed it on the dashboard. “That’s cash for your bookstore account.”

  I reached out, placed a finger on the envelope.

  “You don’t need to fall over yourself thanking me.”

  “Thank you.” I looked at him when I said it.

  “I went to the dean and we had a little talk. He told me they give you an option to buy tuition insurance. You pay them some extra money and they give back the balance of what you’ve paid in if your kid manages to get himself thrown out for any major infractions. You want to hear what they consider to be major infractions?”

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “Drinking’s up there at the top of the list. Right next to it is smoking, any kind of smoking. I figure a kid with your ability would be out of his mind to smoke, but I may as well remind you.”

  “You smoke.”

  “No boarding school or college is interested in me for anything and never will be. And don’t be a smartass.”

  I looked out over the river while he took an angry drag on his cigarette. Then he started in again. “The school also lists premarital intercourse as a rule infraction. And being AWOL. And driving a car. And taking drugs. And showing disrespect to those in authority. This place isn’t fooling around is what I’m saying.”

  “Did you take out the insurance on me?”

  “I figured since you already did all the things they don’t want you to do while you were back at home, you might consider retiring from your old life and focusing in on the job at hand.”

  Lines of students were filing out from the field house. He sipped his coffee, agitated. “Another thing they don’t tolerate is fighting. I thought I’d bring that up as well, all by itself, as another issue altogether.”

  “Half the fights I get in aren’t my fault, Dad. And it’s not a big deal.”

  He smacked the steering wheel. “Do you know how many times I hear that? It’s never anybody’s fault. You send some millionaire’s kid home with a busted jaw, son, and get kicked out, understand you’ll be signing up somewhere in town as I certainly don’t need a hothead on my payroll and, on top of that, I can’t afford a lawyer to protect you. That’s the way it works.”

  “How do you know Connor Payne is rich?”

  “I took a goddamned educated guess, Robby.” He flicked the cigarette out the window, where it tumbled, sparking, into the grass. Then he looked at it angrily, furious at himself for littering. “You think eight or nine months of your life is a long pull, don’t you? It’s not even a year, kid. You haven’t been drafted. You’re not carrying a weapon and calling anyone ‘sir.’”

  I let him sit there for a beat and cool off. “I’m not planning on getting in trouble, all right? I’m going to be okay.”

  He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out his leather wallet and it fell open in his hands. He extracted some notes, all new and crisp. They were held together with a paperclip. “Take this. You ought to have some walking around money.”

  “I can’t take any more of your cash, Dad.”

  “Go on.” He coughed, hard and deep in his chest.

  I picked up the bills, slid them into my pocket. They were fresh from an ATM somewhere on the I-90 and they cut into my leg. He’d been driving up here and thinking about the money in the envelope and figured it wasn’t enough so he had drawn more at a rest stop. He drove me nuts.

  “What time is it?” he asked suddenly.

  “After five.”

  “I wish I could have sent you kids to a place like this when you were younger.”

  “Wendy would have been kicked out inside an hour.”

  “Wendy would’ve been running the place inside fifteen minutes and wouldn’t have to crack heads to do it.” He grabbed his cigarettes, a reflex, contemplated the last one and returned the box to his pocket. “Ah, hell, I didn’t mean to say all that other stuff to you, Robby.”

  “I’m not keeping score.”

  He nodded, settled it, had to cough a couple of times before he could speak again. “I’m driving into Hartford. I’m staying overnight so I can see a doctor tomorrow morning about something. Then I’m heading back. I have a job to finish. I won’t be able to stay.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “If you think of anything you need, you just call home. I’ll be checking in with your mother and Tom before dinner.”

  “I won’t need anything. Thanks for the scull, Dad. You didn’t have to go to all the trouble.”

  He rubbed the bottom of his chin so I heard the scratches of his one-day beard. “One of those college coaches called a week or so ago. A man who claimed he was from Harvard. Your mother almost had a heart attack in the kitchen. They sent through some information. A catalogue or something like that. It’s in the bag of stuff your mother packed for you. They asked to be sure you saw it.” I watched him run his fingers over the worn steering wheel, counting the indentations, dividing them. “You get on that Harvard team and you’re my first blood relative to make it to college.”

  “They’re only interested because I’m a good rower, Dad, not because I’m smart.”

  “The way I calculate it, you get in, you’re smart enough.”

  I didn’t tell him I had just received a postcard of my own from them with a picture of the Newell Boathouse on the front and a scrawled me
ssage at the bottom from the freshman coach telling me he hoped my grades would improve while I was at Fenton. And congratulations for my Canadian Henley win. I hadn’t told anyone. I could have told my father and he’d have it to chew over on the drive home, but I didn’t. Instead I said, “They figure just hearing from them will make you drop everything.”

  “They’re right, aren’t they?”

  “They either take me or they’re going to be rowing against me.”

  He turned in his seat. “You won’t tell them that, will you?”

  “I’m sorely tempted.”

  He laughed. “Don’t let your mother hear. You be sure she doesn’t catch wind of that little proposition.”

  “Even if it’s true?”

  “Especially if it’s true.”

  He grinned. He looked pretty tired. Then something occurred to me. “Why are you seeing some quack in Hartford? What’s wrong with the doctors in Niccalsetti?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with them.”

  I didn’t press him. I thought at the time, stupidly, that he’d have the sense to tell me if there was anything I needed to know. So I let it pass and said, “I have to meet a teacher off campus for something.”

  “The teacher you’re going to go work those punishment hours for, like a skivvy?”

  “He wanted to know if I could paint.”

  He laughed. “You think you can handle this place?”

  “It’s a bunch of preppie geeks. How tough can it be?”

  “No tougher than anything you kids have been through. I can guarantee you that.”

  I reached over to shake his hand and he took it, then pulled me to him, his chin rough on my ear. We gave it a few seconds.

  6.

  Carolyn got up very early, showered and dressed in the bathroom. I was still asleep when she started up the coffeemaker and cleared out the dishes from the night before. She smoked a cigarette in the dawn light coming from the line of windows over the kitchen appliances, ate two grapefruits, section by section, drank a bottle of Evian and sat in front of the computer with another cigarette. She would have turned off her cell phone before she started working. She was pouring herself into this documentary for me and I think at some level she thought I at least deserved a good, finished, edited piece of work before she tossed me out. Either that, or she was throwing herself into work to avoid a final confrontation.