I went topside and opened the flag locker, pulling out seven pennants and clipping them to the halyard. I ran the pennants up the main mast.
Proud of my idiocy, and with the
Paumanok
listing to starboard and me listing to port, I lowered myself onto the aft deck and pulled a small inflatable life raft from under the cockpit seat. I put the remainder of the beer aboard the raft along with two small oars, and I sat in the raft. I popped a beer and drank while my boat settled deeper into the water around me.
The sea came over the starboard side first, sloshed around the tilting deck and raised the life raft a few inches.
The
Paumanok
took a long while to sink, but eventually the stern settled into the water and the lifeboat drifted away over the swamped stern. I watched my boat as it settled slowly into the sea, listing at about forty-five degrees to starboard, its bow rising up out of the water and its mast flying the seven signal pennants that proclaimed to the world,
Fuck you.
It was nearly dark now, and as I drifted away, it became more difficult to see my boat, but I could still make out the mast and the pennants lying almost perpendicular to the water. It appeared as though the keel had touched bottom and that she was as far down as she was going to go.
I drifted with the tide for a while, working on a fresh beer and thinking about this and that. Obviously, what I had done was a very spiteful thing, not to mention a class A felony. But so what? I mean, someone was being very spiteful toward me. Right? I saw Alphonse Ferragamo’s hand in this, and Mr. Novac’s hand, too. And perhaps even Mr. Mancuso’s hand and possibly Mr. Melzer’s influence.
No good will come of your trying to take on forces more powerful than yourself.
True, but I was enjoying the fight.
What I didn’t enjoy was the loss of my boat, which in some semimystical way had become a part of me over the years. The
Paumanok
had always been my ace in the hole, my rocket ship to other galaxies, my time machine. That’s why they’d taken her from me. Well, as the signal flags said, Fuck you.
Of course, if I hadn’t been so spiteful and impulsive, I’d have gotten the boat back after I’d come up with the taxes, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that the
Paumanok
was not going to be used as a pawn or a knife in my ribs. It was a good boat, and it should not suffer the indignity of a government tax-seizure sign on it. So I hoisted a beer to her and lay down in the life raft and drifted around the bay.
Around midnight, after counting a billion stars and wishing on a dozen shooting stars, I stirred myself and sat up.
I finished the last half of a beer, oriented myself, and began rowing for shore. As I pulled on the oars, I asked myself, “What else can go wrong?’’ But you should never ask that question.
Part VI
At two hours after midnight appeared the land at a distance of two leagues.
—Christopher Columbus
Journal of the First Voyage, October 12, 1492
“You gotta try the
sfogliatelli
,’’ said Frank Bellarosa.
Susan took the pastry and put it on her plate beside two other “gotta try’’ pastries. Oddly, this woman, who looks like a poster girl for famine relief, packed down an entire “gotta try’’ meal without even turning green.
Anna Bellarosa was watching her weight, as she announced about six times, and was “just picking.’’ She picked her way through enough food to feed the slums of Calcutta for a week. She also picked out two pastries, then put artificial sweetener in her coffee.
Where this was taking place was Giulio’s, and it was now mid-September. Actually, it was Friday, September seventeenth, to be exact, and you’ll see shortly why the day sticks out in my mind.
As for the great unveiling, I understand everyone loved the painting, and everyone had a good time that night. Terrific. I had a good excuse for missing the art event of the year, of course, if I had wanted an excuse: “Sorry, but I was busy sinking my boat to piss off the Feds.’’ Regarding that, I hadn’t heard from the IRS yet, and I doubt they even knew the
Paumanok
was gone. It didn’t mean as much to them as it did to me. Maybe in the end, it was a futile gesture, but I wasn’t sorry I’d done it. And if they asked me about it, I’d say, “Yes, I sunk her, just as my ancestors dumped tea into Boston Harbor. Give me liberty or give me death.’’ I’d probably get about a year and a six-figure fine.
But I did have a closing date on the East Hampton house, and I’d probably be able to settle my tax delinquency within a few weeks. Then I could get out my scuba gear and remove the tax-seizure signs from the
Paumanok
.
Regarding my marital status, I’d accepted Susan’s suggestion and remained in residence. However, we were married in name only, as they used to say when describing a couple who shared the same house and attended social and family functions together, but who no longer engaged in conjugal sex. This may have been all right for our ancestors, but to most modern couples, it’s the worst of both worlds.
Anyway, back at Giulio’s, the fat lady was still singing, belting them out in Italian, a mixture of sweet melodic songs and sad songs that made the old goombahs weepy, plus a few numbers that must have been pretty raunchy judging by the way she sang them and the reaction of the crowd.
The crowd, incidentally, was slightly different from the lunch group. There were, to be sure, a few suspected mafioso types, but there were also some uptown Manhattanites as well, people who spent their entire urban lives trying to discover new restaurants that nobody knows about yet, except the two hundred people in the place. Well, the uptown crowd was going to have something interesting to report after this meal. Anyway, there were also a lot of greasy young Guidos in the place with their girlfriends, who looked like slim Annas, just dying to get married so they could blow up like stuffed cannelloni.
And there was this old geezer with a four-day beard squeezing the whaddayacallit—the concertina—while the fat lady sang. Frank gave the old guy a twenty to play “Santa Lucia,’’ and this must have been on the goombah hit parade because everybody joined in, including Susan, who somehow knew all the words in Italian. Actually, it’s a pretty song and I found myself humming it. Well, the place was packed and smelled like garlic and perfume, and everybody was in a very jolly mood.
Susan seemed really fascinated by Giulio’s and its denizens. Her infrequent excursions into Manhattan are confined to Midtown, Broadway, and the East Side, and she probably hasn’t been down in the old ethnic neighborhoods since my company gave a party in Chinatown five years ago. But if I had thought she would enjoy something like this, I would have taken her to Little Italy, or Chinatown or Spanish Harlem or anyplace other than The Creek. But I didn’t know. Then again, neither did she.
Well, a few events of note had transpired since the night I’d sunk the
Paumanok
that may be worth mentioning. Edward and Carolyn had come home from the southern climes, Edward with a deep tan, and Carolyn with a deeper understanding of the Cuban people, and also with a box of Monte Cristo number fours. So the Sutter clan was reunited for about a week before Labor Day, and we had a good time despite the fact that the
Paumanok
was at the bottom of the bay and the East Hampton house was sold. Incidentally, I hadn’t told Susan that I’d sunk the boat and would not have mentioned it, except that when Edward and Carolyn came home, they wanted to go sailing. So I sat everyone down and said, “The government slapped a tax-seizure sign on the boat, and it looked so obscene, I took her into the middle of the bay and sunk her.’’ I added, “I think her mast is still above water, and if it is, you can see seven signal flags that say ‘Fuck you.’ Well, I hope she’s not a hazard to navigation, but if she is, the Coast Guard will take care of it.”
There was a minute of stunned silence, then Edward said, “Good for you.’’ Carolyn seconded that. Susan said nothing.
Anyway, we took some day trips, saw a matinee in Manhattan, swam at Fox Point, and even played golf one day at The Creek, though I had the distinct feeling some people were snubbing us. I resigned from the club the next day—not because, as Groucho Marx, a onetime Gold Coast resident, once said, “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member’’—but because if I belonged there, then I
belonged
there. And I didn’t, so I don’t.
Capisce?
Anyway, the day after Labor Day, Susan decided to visit her parental units in Hilton Head, leaving Carolyn, Edward, and me to finish out the last days of school vacation by ourselves. It was a nice few days, and we spent them mostly at Stanhope Hall, riding and walking the property. Carolyn got the idea to do a photographic essay of the estate, and that took two days with me supplying the history and the captions for the pictures as best I could. Carolyn is not the sentimental type, but I think she knew that might be one of the last times that such a thing would be possible. One night, Edward, Carolyn, and I camped out in the mansion with sleeping bags, and we had a picnic on the marble floor of the dining room by candlelight.
Sitting around the candles, deep into a bottle of wine, Carolyn said to me, “You’ve changed, Dad.”
“Have I? How?”
She thought a moment, then replied, “You’re more . . . grown-up.’’ She smiled.
I smiled in return. “And my voice is changing.’’ I knew what she meant, of course. The last few months had been a time of challenge and change, and so I suppose it had been good for my character. Most American men of the upper middle classes never really grow up unless they are fortunate enough to go to war or go through a bankruptcy or divorce or other major adversity. So this was the summer I got hair on my balls, and it felt good and bad at the same time. I asked Edward, “Do you think your old man has changed?”
Edward, who is not usually tuned in to the subtleties of human behavior, replied, “Yeah, I guess.’’ He added, “Can you change back?”
“No. There’s no going back.”
A few days after that, I rented a van and drove the kids to school. We went first to Sarah Lawrence, and Edward was nervous about starting college, but I assured him that the liberal arts curriculum he was taking was similar to the one I took at Yale, and that I slept for four years. Thus assured, he strode confidently into the formerly all-girls school, his hair combed for the first time since his baptism, and his body smelling of some awful lotion.
Carolyn and I drove alone to Yale, and I always enjoy going back to my alma mater, as my college memories are good despite the turmoil of those years in the mid-sixties. Carolyn said to me on the way to New Haven, “Are you legally separated?”
“No. Your mother just went to visit her parents.”
“It’s sort of a trial separation?”
“No.”
“Why are you sleeping in separate rooms?”
“Because we don’t want to sleep in separate cities. End of conversation.”
So I drove her up to Yale. As a sophomore this year, Carolyn enters what we call a “college,’’ actually a dorm where she will spend the next three years. She is, in fact, in my old college, Jonathan Edwards. J E, as we call it, is a beautiful, old Gothic building with arches, climbing ivy, and turrets, situated around a large quadrangle. It is, in fact, the greatest place on the face of this earth, and I wished I was staying and not leaving.
Anyway, I helped her unload half a vanful of clothes and electronics, which barely fit in her room. It was a nice suite like my old place down the hall, with oak paneling and a fireplace in the living room. I met her roommate, a tall, blond young woman from Texas named Halsey, and I wondered if I shouldn’t go back to Jonathan Edwards to do a little more undergraduate work. You’re never too old to learn.
But I digress. Carolyn and I walked down to Liggett’s Drugstore, which is sort of a tradition, and with a few hundred other Yalies and parents, we stocked up on notions and sundries. We stowed the Liggett’s bags in the van, then walked the few blocks to York Street, “to the tables down at Mory’s, to the place where Louie dwells.’’ Don’t ask me what that means.
Mory’s is a private club, and I’ve kept my membership for this past quarter of a century, though I doubt if I get there once a year. But though I may have resigned from The Creek, and may eventually resign from my job and my marriage and from life in general, I will never resign from Mory’s, for to do that is to sever the ties to myself, to the John Sutter whom I used to know and like. I may indeed be a poor little lamb who has lost his way, but that night I was home again.
So Carolyn and I had dinner at Mory’s along with a hundred other families, many of whom I noticed were missing one or the other spouse. Carolyn is not a member of Mory’s, and may never be, as she discriminates against private clubs. Nevertheless, I regaled her with Mory stories, and she sat there and smiled at me, sometimes amused, sometimes bored, and once or twice disapproving. Well, yesterday’s high jinks are today’s insensitive behavior, I suppose, and maybe the reverse is also true. But it was a nice dinner, an exquisite few hours between father and daughter.
The oak tabletops at Mory’s have been carved with thousands of names and initials, and though we couldn’t find mine without clearing off someone else’s dinner, I did produce a sharp pocketknife for Carolyn, who carved away while I went around the dining room and said hello to a few old school chums.