Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.

by Rob Delaney

  la mer

  For two summers during college, 1997 and 1998, I quit New York for Marblehead and drove a boat called a “launch” on Marblehead Harbor. A launch is a glorified water taxi that takes rich people out to the middle of the harbor, where their boats are moored. Marblehead, a town of twenty thousand souls, has five yacht clubs. I’d be very surprised if there were another town on our planet that had a higher number of yacht clubs per capita. The Eastern, Boston, Dolphin, and Marblehead Yacht Clubs had their own launch services. The Crescent Yacht Club employed me and I drove its members, exclusively, from the dock to their various opulent sailboats and powerboats.

  Our busiest day and night of the summer was always the Fourth of July. A wealthy community, Marblehead could afford to mount a high-quality fireworks display. Also, since Marblehead is a peninsula with a large island that’s attached by a thin causeway, its natural harbor is both protected from the open sea and surrounded by land on three sides. So, the harbor is several square miles of water filled with around two thousand boats, ringed by beaches and docks and parks. You’d be hard pressed to find a better place to drink fourteen beers and watch fireworks. Though my earliest Fourth of Julys found me sitting on my dad’s shoulders and watching fireworks from the beach, after puberty I saw the holiday as one of the few days of the year when it was perfectly acceptable to drink into unconsciousness.

  The launch would operate nonstop on the Fourth, ferrying people to and from their boats. Then, after the fireworks, my fellow launch operators and I would respond to radio calls and pick up families with kids, old couples, and dangerously crowded motorboats filled with drunk people in their twenties. Our staff consisted of our boss—Dockmaster Bill; my high school friend and bandmate—Michael; a couple other college kids; and me. Bill was a salty dog in his forties who’d grown up on the water and worked at the Crescent for at least ten years. Michael and I had known each other since we were about seven and then became very close in high school when we were both heavily involved in theater, as well as drinking and talking about boobs.

  Our workday finished up at eleven p.m. and then we were free to get into whatever trouble we felt like getting into. For Michael and me, in the summer of 1998, that meant getting drunk, appropriating a little dinghy that belonged to the yacht club, and using it to cruise around the harbor to see who was out and about. It wasn’t rare for us to take the twelve-foot motorboat out for a drunken cruise in the middle of the night. We’d do this a few times every summer with no real fear of getting in trouble, since drunken shenanigans on the high seas of Massachusetts are as run-of-the-mill as mustaches on cops.

  Being filled with beer and on the water is something people have been doing since they figured out how to ferment hops, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s fun and it feels good. You’ve thinned your blood with the alcohol that’s sloshing around in your belly, complementing the rise and fall of the sea you’re floating upon. It just feels right to have booze in your guts as you float around Mother Ocean, like a dumb, fat buoy, at the mercy of the sea and filled with spirits. Sailors refer to the ocean as “the drink” too, as in “I slipped and grabbed for a halyard, and my wrench fell in the drink,” so clearly there’s something substantial and enduring to this alcohol/sea connection.

  Sometimes Michael and I would putt out to Children’s Island—an island about a mile beyond the mouth of the harbor—and go for a stroll. Growing up, I’d gone to day camp on Children’s Island for years, and it felt entirely naughty to trespass on it as a drunken adult. Like most islands around New England, it smelled like seagull shit and wild grass. I’m sure if I caught a whiff of it right now I’d start crying.

  When I was a counselor on the island, I’d had to become a certified lifeguard. Part of the training consisted of an overnight springtime visit to the island where we were supposed to practice different rescue techniques. Upon arrival, we discovered that the Marblehead cop who taught the course was insane. He must have been certified forty years ago over the telephone or something. Clearly no one was checking up on him, because he had gone entirely “rogue” and used educational techniques that were, I now realize, abusive. The most memorable thing he did was show us a slideshow of ACTUAL DEAD DROWNING VICTIMS from Marblehead police files.

  He began the slideshow by asking, “What’s the difference between a saltwater drowning and a freshwater drowning? … I’ll tell you: saltwater animals eat people, freshwater animals don’t. So when you find someone who’s drowned in saltwater, they’ll have been eaten somewhat, and when you find someone who’s drowned in freshwater, they’ll be all bloated up. So what you find is horrible, just in two different ways.”

  He then got out a slide projector, positioned it in front of a white sheet that was suspended in front of a fireplace, and started showing us pictures of a variety of corpses that had been pulled out of the water a few miles in various directions from where we sat in our sleeping bags, in a lodge, on a small island, in the middle of the dark terrifying night. My friend Ellen was there; we were adhered to each other in fear as he clicked from corpse to corpse. The island didn’t have electricity, so the slide projector was powered by a portable gas generator that hummed outside of the building, efficiently masking the sounds of any approaching ghosts or child murderers. One particularly ghastly saltwater drowning victim was a skeleton whose meat had been almost entirely removed from it. Almost. The gut contents within the rib cage had proven difficult to access for the fish and bottom feeders, so the ribs rather effectively “caged” a rotten buffet of guts that poked out the bottom and protruded between the ribs. The slide that followed that was of a dead baby. A fucking dead baby! And since this baby had drowned in freshwater, it was bloated and huge. Next photo was a close-up of the dead baby’s bloated face. We cringed and then the screen immediately went black and the generator went out. Then it came back on. Then off again. The generator sputtered. The dead baby’s face strobed on and off as the generator outside choked and a room full of sixteen-year-olds screamed. WHAT IN CHRIST’S FUCK DID THIS HAVE TO DO WITH LIFEGUARDING!!!! Twenty years later, my best guess remains “Not a thing.” Officer Soulmurder went out to check on the generator, and when he returned he said, “Bad news; the generator broke.” We shuddered in relief and then went outside to practice moving people with spine injuries from one end of the island to another.

  Sadly, that next summer, a man named Thomas Maimoni took a woman he’d just met named Martha Brailsford out for a sail, killed her, and threw her body in the ocean behind Children’s Island. When she first disappeared, Maimoni said he didn’t know what had happened; they’d finished their sail and upon getting back to land he hadn’t seen her again. But, some days later a lobsterman was pulling up his traps, and up came Martha on his line. I, thank goodness, was on the other side of the island teaching a small boatload of ten-year-olds how to sail. But my friend Doug so happened to witness her being moved from the lobster boat to the police boat, and he was able to confirm that saltwater fish do, in fact, like to snack on people.

  But on the Fourth of July, as our shift ended, Michael and I were in a very jovial mood. We cracked open our cooler of beers and downed a few, getting drunk very quickly. We then motored around and said hello to people, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. While I rarely smoked when I wasn’t drinking, I chain-smoked when I drank, and it wasn’t rare for me to go through two packs in a night.

  As we circumnavigated the harbor, one particularly loud powerboat caught our attention. It was about a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser. We pulled up next to it and started talking to its passengers in that easy manner that drunks around the world have: “Hey, you’re drunk, I’m drunk, let’s be best friends immediately!” A group of two guys and two girls in their thirties were onboard. Neither Michael nor I had ever met any of them before, but we chatted for a bit, and then we invited them onto our boat to cruise around. They got off their very nice boat and onto our twelve-foot open dinghy. Six full-grown adults were forced to jockey
for comfort on the tiniest vessel on the sea worthy of the label “boat.” Weighed down considerably, we headed for the mouth of the harbor.

  A famous three-hulled sailboat or trimaran called the Great American II was moored at the mouth of the harbor. The Great American II was famous because it had broken the record for circumnavigating the globe that was set by a guy named Magellan. How amazing is that? The Guinness Book of World Records is filled with things like “Most Consecutive Weeks at Number One on the Billboard Charts” or “Largest Goiter.” The motherfuckers on the Great American II sailed around the planet faster than fucking Magellan. That really makes all other record setters look like small potatoes. Micro-potatoes. Potatettes. What’s that? Can you not see it? No, you can’t; it’s ants laughing at tiny little potatettes through their ant-microscope. Don’t use a magnifying glass to look at them or they will ignite. Sorry to go on; I just want to drive home the magnificence of a crew that sails around the world so fast it causes a record from five hundred years ago, set by a bad-ass son of a bitch, to go up in flames.

  One thing that Michael and I liked to do was build up some speed in the dinghy and then race UNDER the netting between the hulls of the Great American II, kind of similar to the way you might ride a skateboard on your belly under a parked tractor trailer—the difference being that if you fell off our floating skateboard, you’d be in sixty feet of cold water in the middle of the night, drunk. With our new and spirited Fourth of July crew, we thought we’d show off and cruise under the GA II to demonstrate what fun we were. A sober observer would have recommended against it, but we were six drunks on America’s birthday, so fuck you.

  As we built up speed and Michael aimed the boat between the trimaran’s hulls, I got an inkling that this might be a bad idea. We approached the larger boat and Michael yelled, “Duck!” One or more of our guests lurched to the side and our boat immediately capsized. We were all in the ocean, fully clothed, in the middle of the night, drunk, and our boat was upside down.

  Michael and I struggled mightily to right our dinghy. We couldn’t. Even if we could have flipped it over, the motor had filled with saltwater and it was ruined. The best we could do was tie the upside-down dinghy to the stern of the GA II. Then, as everyone began to legitimately panic, we decided to climb onto the trimaran to keep from drowning. It was very, very difficult to climb up there. The trimaran didn’t have a ladder, nor did it have anything we could easily grab on to. I remember thinking, “It’s possible I’ll die in the next few minutes.” After many failed attempts, I managed to propel my body up and out of the water enough to grab on to a railing and pull myself up onto the boat. Everyone was scared, but nobody was screaming or crying or anything. I think they thought Michael and I might somehow know what we were doing, which we very much did not. The water and the fear began to sober us up. Once I was on the boat, I pulled everyone up after me, with the exception of Michael. He had decided he should swim back to the yacht club and get another boat to come save us all, the idea being we might possibly “fix” the situation without getting in trouble with our boss or the police. I, however, was of the opinion that the only important thing was to remain alive. We didn’t have a radio and this was a few years before cell phones were pervasive, so our options really were to spend the night on the boat or alternatively, if you were an insane person, swim to shore for help.

  Michael and I were drunk, cold, wet, and arguing, and our four passengers were up on the netting of the Great American II twiddling their thumbs and likely ruing their decision to join us. I was hanging over the side, pleading with Michael to join us on the boat where we were essentially guaranteed to not die. Swimming across half the harbor during the daytime, in a bathing suit, while sober, would have been challenging enough. Plus the water was less than sixty degrees, which is about forty degrees less than the temperature of, say, a human body. You could hang out in it for a while, but if you didn’t get out or drown, you’d ultimately get hypothermia. The swim was at least a quarter of a mile if you traveled in a straight line, and there were respectable waves and a bit of a swell. On top of the current, you would have to swim around boats, so you’re absolutely not going in a straight line, thus adding a good amount of yardage to the swim. If you were thrown into the ocean and told you had to swim that distance, you’d be like, “Wow, that’s too bad. Oh well, here we go,” but you would accomplish it, and you’d have been rightfully proud of yourself. You could say, “I just swam halfway across the harbor,” and people would be impressed. At night, when drunk, and fully clothed, including shoes, it was a colossally bad idea.

  Michael and I had a screaming debate. He wanted to swim back to the yacht club, go get another launch, pick everybody up, and then try to salvage the launch we’d “borrowed” and very much fucked up.

  I said, “Michael, FUCK swimming the harbor! We’re all drunk, let’s sleep on a comfy boat and flag somebody down in the morning. Who gives a shit if we get yelled at or even fired? We’ll be alive.”

  “I can do it! Let me go!”

  “NO, stay here, you could get hypothermia or a wave could go in your mouth and choke you or fucking fifty other things!”

  “Don’t argue with me, I’m losing strength arguing! I’ll be back.” Then he just swam off.

  I did a quick cost-benefit analysis of jumping in and physically restraining Michael but it seemed like that might kill two people instead of one, and I felt responsibility for the people who were now soaking wet and shivering on the GA II, lamenting their decision to hop in a tiny motorboat with a pair of morons.

  As Michael swam off, I quickly lost sight of him. I tried to keep our four guests calm, and I told them that Michael would either be back in a bit to pick us up, or he’d die and we’d get picked up the next morning. I was very upset that Michael wasn’t on the boat, and that the worst possible outcome wasn’t that we were all going to spend a shitty night on a boat—a boat that cost fifty million dollars and was likely comfortable inside but fuck if we knew for sure because we were locked out and would have to spend the night on netting, spooning for warmth, dehydrated, and sobering up until the sun rose and a passing lobsterman radioed my boss or the cops. On top of that, I was sitting there, wondering if my good friend was floating face down, the waves carrying him on his journey toward becoming fish food.

  I didn’t have a watch on, so I couldn’t be sure how long Michael was gone. After what felt like twenty minutes, I started to get worried. Very worried. I imagined telling Michael’s dad that he was dead. I knew and loved Michael’s dad, so I really indulged that nightmare fantasy, imagining his face and what he would do with a new, raw Michael-shaped hole in his life. I thought, There’s no fucking way he’s alive. The best, BEST case scenario is that he got tired, pulled himself up onto another boat, and passed out. He’d been gone too long and since the errand he was on was fucking incredibly dangerous, he had to be dead. I was totally incapable of spending the night on the boat knowing my friend was dead and I was somewhat responsible. I thought, He’s a fucking idiot cunt stupid head death-wish-having motherfucker, but why did I allow us to go on the boat ride in the first place? Had it been my idea? Why did I let us pick up those strangers? Was that my idea? Who did what? How? Why? Should I have punched him in the face, knocked him unconscious like in a movie, and then pulled him onto the boat with us? Is he, in fact, correct and ‘not getting in trouble’ should have been a higher priority for me? Should I have joined him on the swim? All those thoughts were replaying again and again in my head. I began to scream for help. I remember breathing deep into my belly and trying to scream as loudly and clearly as I possibly could. It wasn’t a horror movie scream; it was almost singing. I wanted my scream to reach somebody asleep in a nearby boat, or a police sergeant in his bed, or our boss asleep in his home in Salem, or Michael’s dad, or my mom. I bellowed a few times and waited for the sound waves to transform into actual, physical people who could help us. Each “help!” was greeted with silence, or at most, a halyard clanging
against a mast or the lapping of little waves on the side of a neighboring boat. Nobody was coming to help. It was pretty distressing to realize that yelling over a comparatively little chunk of ocean at land you can see but not touch is a thoroughly futile exercise.

  It was then that I realized Michael was dead. I envisioned the divers who would soon be looking for his body. I’d heard that the harbor was pretty murky, so I wondered if he’d be hard to find. After I genuinely don’t know how the fuck long, I heard the familiar sound of one of the Crescent launches starting up from across the harbor at the yacht club. It was FUCKING MUSIC. I saw its running lights turn on. It started to glide across the water and turned toward us. Michael had made it. He pulled alongside the trimaran and I helped our four guests down into the launch. Michael was shivering violently and was sheet-white. He said, “You gotta drive,” and collapsed onto the deck. I drove us all back to the club. Our passengers had been blessedly docile during our purgatorial stay on the Great American II. I think we were collectively ashamed of our stupidity and eye-contact or talking became painful after a certain point. I took Michael to the pier house and closed the door. He was pre-hypothermic, dehydrated, and a mess. I made him lie on the ground and I got on top of him and pulled my shirt up so I could heat his body. I held him for a bit, very, VERY excited to have him alive and in my arms. I knew there’d be consequences of some kind to follow, be they medical, professional, or even legal, but I absolutely didn’t care since I had been STONE certain that he was dead a half an hour earlier.

  Once he warmed back up, we realized that we were lying down hugging with no shirts on while four strangers milled about outside the door. We’d have told them to fuck off back to wherever they came from, but the dock of the Crescent was miles from where we’d picked them up, so they were waiting for us to drive them (drunk) back to their car.