he had work to do and didn’t feel able to cope, and Mommy called me. By the time I got up there and took the ferry out, Daddy was in the wild blue yonder. Raving about the flung spray and the blown fume and all that—the wild green Atlantic—absolutely flying. Andy was never able to tolerate Daddy in those moods, he was up in his room with the door locked. I suppose he’d had a party-sized dose of Daddy before I arrived.
“In hindsight, I know, it seems poorly considered, but—you see, I could have sailed it single-handed. Daddy was going stir-crazy in the house and what was I to do, wrestle him down and lock him up? and then too, you know Andy, he never thought about food, the cupboard was bare, nothing in the fridge but some frozen pizzas… short hop, something to eat on the pier, it seemed like a good plan, you know? ‘Feed him,’ Mommy always used to say when Daddy started getting a little too exhilarated. ‘Get some food down him.’ That was always the first line of defense. Sit him down—make him eat a big steak. Often that’s all it took to get him back on keel. And I mean—it was in the back of my mind that if his spirits didn’t settle once we were on the mainland we could forget about the steakhouse and take him in to the emergency room if need be. I only made Andy come to be on the safe side. I thought I could use an extra hand—quite frankly I’d been out late the night before, I was feeling a little less than all a-taunto, as Daddy used to say.” He paused, rubbing the palms of his hands on the thighs of his tweed trousers. “Well. Andy never liked the water much. As you know.”
“I remember.”
Platt winced. “I’ve seen cats that swam better than Andy. I mean, quite frankly, Andy was just about the clumsiest kid I ever saw that wasn’t out-and-out spastic or retarded… good God, you ought to have seen him on the tennis court, we used to joke about entering him in the Special Olympics, he would have swept every event. Still he’d put in enough hours on the boat, God knows—it seemed smart to have an extra man aboard, and Daddy less than his best, you know? We could easily have handled the boat—I mean it was fine, it would have been perfectly fine except I hadn’t been keeping my eye on the sky like I should, the wind blew up, we were trying to reef the mainsail and Daddy was waving his arms around and shouting about the empty spaces between the stars, really just all kinds of nutty stuff, and he lost his balance on a swell and fell overboard. We were trying to haul him back aboard, Andy and me—and then we got broadsided at just the wrong angle, huge wave, just one of these steep cresting things that pops up and slaps you out of nowhere, and boom, we capsized. Not even that it was so cold out but fifty-three-degree water is enough to send you into hypothermia if you’re out there long enough, which unfortunately we were, and I mean to say Daddy, he was soaring, off in the stratosphere—”
Our chummy college-girl waitress was approaching behind Platt’s back, about to ask if we wanted another round—I caught her eye, shook my head slightly, warning her away.
“It was the hypothermia that got Daddy. He’d gotten so thin, no body fat on him at all, an hour and a half in the water was enough to do it, floundering around at those temperatures. You lose heat faster if you’re not perfectly still. Andy—” Platt, seeming to sense that the waitress was there, turned and held up two fingers, another round—“Andy’s jacket, well, they found it trailing behind the boat still attached to the line.”
“Oh God.”
“It must have come up over his head when he went over. There’s a strap that goes around the crotch—a bit uncomfortable, nobody likes to wear it—anyway, there was Andy’s jacket, still shackled to the life-line, but apparently he wasn’t buckled in all the way, the little shit. Well, I mean,” he said, his voice rising, “the most typical thing. You know? Couldn’t be bothered to fasten the thing properly? He was always such a goddamned klutz—”
Nervously, I glanced at the waitress, conscious how loud Platt had gotten.
“God.” Platt pushed himself back from the table very