My father had never learned to sail. If he had I’m sure he would have made the connection between a jib and being able to come about neatly without losing ground or running sideways against a strong current. For that is exactly what this new craft did. Very much like the dingy. Only faster still. So I could get even farther out into the Sound than with the dingy. I can still see him standing at the end of the dock, me way out near the entrance to our cove heading in at sunset, his arms folded at the waist, his legs slightly apart, just waiting to see that I was coming back. As soon as he spotted the white styrofoam ball at the top of my cat’s mast, he would turn and walk back up the hill to our house. He never said a word about where I had been or how long I’d been out or why I didn’t let them know when I was going sailing or anything like that. He just wanted to know I was safe. I spent three summers taking that cat sideways out into the Sound and running her up and down the coastline as far away from my house as I could get and still be able to return by nightfall. I never thought about how much faith he had in me. Or how worried he might be. Toward the end of those years I began to argue with him. But that was a different time and I had discovered I was attractive to boys.

I went on my first real date when I was just twelve. This means that a boy called me on the phone and asked me to go to a dance with him. His parents drove us there and back. I had no idea what to say to him. I don’t remember his name. I don’t think I liked him much. I do remember wearing a dress with a crinoline under it. It rustled when I walked. He must have been my age. But other, older boys were showing up on the horizon. Boys who were already driving cars. Boys who did not go to private school. Boys who wore their hair in ducktails. One boy in particular whose name was Rusty. Yes that’s true. Red hair and all. He was a bad boy, or so it seemed to me, and therefore highly desirable at the time.