If I Forget You(11)

“You know how to drive that thing?” Margot asked.

“Fuck yeah,” the older of the two Jones boys said. “In my sleep.”

And here was the beauty: the rippling blue-green ocean; the bright, warm sun; the big white boat cutting through the chop like a knife through warm butter, and the entire island becoming clearer behind them as it receded; Margot, sitting in the bow and pulling her cardigan around her against the wind while she looked back and saw the high bluffs of Aquinnah rising up like great sand castles to the sky.

At one point, the younger of the Jones boys, lighting another joint and bringing it around, first to Margot and then to his brother behind the wheel, said, “Dude, make sure you don’t miss Nantucket, or we’re heading all the way to Portugal.”

The three of them laughed heartily at this, and Margot, high from the tequila and the grass, began to think that sounded pretty damn good, just pointing east and going and going until they ended up in another country. For a brief second, she entertained the idea of her parents’ reaction when they saw the boat gone and it didn’t return. There was something delicious in the idea of her father’s anger, her mother’s harsh disappointment, her sister, always so judgmental, saying “I told you so.” But of course this was madness, as the boat had enough gas to get them to Nantucket and back certainly, but not much beyond.

And this, the inviting of trouble, suddenly nagged at Margot, a pin piercing the balloon of her good time, and she shouted to the Jones boys above the waves, “We can’t stay long, you know. We have to be back before my mom and dad. Way before midnight.”

“It’s cool,” the younger Jones said. “We’ll make it work.”

Out on the water, the sun was going down and the ocean was brilliant and the boat was fast as it steamed across the sound, Nantucket Island visible now, a hunk of brown in the early-evening light against the starboard horizon. To the right, a ferry chugged slowly toward the mainland, and out and about small fishing boats sat still as toys in the distance.

Soon they were approaching the island, and as it came into view, the younger Jones broke out the tequila again and they each did a shot, this time straight from the bottle. The boat slowed now and they followed the curve of the island from offshore, and they cheered when they saw Madaket and the fire they’d come for. It was suddenly dusk, grayish air where it used to be clear, and the younger said, “Dude, you know where the shoals are, right?”

“Yeah, man, I got this,” his brother said, and a moment later, as if on cue, there was a sickening sound, like metal being sawed through, and then the whole boat lurched suddenly forward and Margot instinctively grasped the railing to stop herself from going over.

“What the hell, Jones?” she yelled, and now the sound they heard was at once overwhelming and wrenching and she wanted to cover her ears, but she was afraid to let go of the railing. Then another sound followed it, surprisingly congruent, a symphony that had suddenly reached its bridge, and now there was the sound of roaring water, as if somewhere below a thunderstorm had struck, a downpour falling off the side of a house invisible to her.

“Oh f*ck,” one of the Jones brothers said, and she didn’t know which one and it didn’t matter, for she had been at sea enough to know what this meant. The boat came to a complete halt and started, ever so slightly, to list to the left.

The engine was off and the three of them were looking over the side. In the growing dark, the shoal was clearly visible and the jagged rocks were right below the surface. Margot was too afraid to cry yet, but she knew the boat was sinking.

“What do we do?” she yelled. “What the f*ck do we do?”

“We swim,” said the older Jones.

Margot looked to the beach, maybe a quarter mile away. This was the craziest thing that had ever happened to her—her father’s boat, which cost more than most houses, pierced in the hull and about to sink into the ocean off the coast of Nantucket. She had been in trouble before, but never like this.

They were young and fit and experienced swimmers from summer after summer on the island, so the swimming was the easy part. Swimming toward the beach shortly became like flying with the wind at their backs, pushing them in and in until they were walking with their soaking wet clothes in the high surf.

Turning around, they saw the dark had now fully crept in, and with the boat’s running lights off now, it was if the Whaler had never been there, just the endless slap of the sea.

At the beach, the party was full of kids who moved in their circles; some of them Margot knew and some she didn’t, but they were all kids from various boarding schools, versed in the same lingua franca. Once the incredulity died down, one of the boys who lived closest to the beach offered to give her a ride in his jeep back to his house so she could make the call she dreaded.

It was a practiced call and one Margot had made before. It was not her father she called, or her mother, though by making this call, she was in effect calling both of them.

Kiernan, her father’s assistant, answered on the second ring. His strong South African accent was unwavering even as she told him most of the truth, skipping the tequila and the joints but otherwise keeping her account accurate. She knew that it was now out of her hands. And she also knew, from experience, that there was not much anyone could do to touch her.

*

In the end, as it is always does with the rich, propriety won out. Kiernan cleaned up the mess she’d made, as he was paid to, as he always cleaned up messes, she supposed. Discreet calls were made to the sheriff. No one wanted to make a fuss.