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Mom and I know what to do. We climb back into the life raft, row back to the buoy, hoist the heavy galvanized anchor back out of the water, and drop it back down to the river bottom once more.

  Thankfully, the third time’s the charm. But Mom and I have made a mess of the cockpit with all the thick mud from our legs and our feet. We’ll need to scrub the decks just as soon as possible. I’m guessing we’ll also need to polish the hull where the rubber raft is now banging into it. None of this is too serious, but what I discover next is: there, right in front of me, is a one-inch scratch in the fiberglass cockpit where the excess anchor chain now lies. Dad sees what I’m looking at and shakes his head. I hang mine low, knowing it was probably my fault. I have screwed up again, and again let down my father.

  Maybe Dad should explain to Ro why I can’t seem to get her news stories right.

  Fall turns to winter before I know it, and Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day roll through like San Francisco’s fast-moving fog banks. I settle into a pattern, rationing my time-consuming playbacks at Channel 2, relishing my weekend airtime on KSFO, and doing my best to stay clear of The Boat.

  Meanwhile I struggle to understand what has happened to me. How could I have spent three solid months consumed by a mistake I know is behind me? Yet the more time passes, the more guilty I feel. And the more guilty I feel, the more determined I grow to know what, if any, damage I’ve caused. I want more than anything to confess my concerns to the owners of the cabin cruiser. I have absolutely no evidence, though. No case to make to them.

  In mid-March our extended family gathers at our house in San Bruno to celebrate Nicole’s second birthday. She is on cloud nine with the attention. Samantha and I are glowing with pride. It’s lunchtime, and a dozen or so of us are sitting around the table wearing ridiculous party hats, catching up on one another’s lives. Soon the conversation turns to Dad’s single-engine plane and the fact that someone at the airport recently put a ding in it without the common courtesy of leaving a note, making the whole thing, as he puts it, a true “hit and run.”

  BAM!

  An invisible two-by-four smacks me over the head.

  Oh my God, that’s it, I decide. “Hit and run”—that’s what I have done.

  I am dizzy in an instant, and the voices around me become one loud buzz, as if I’m listening to them through a long cardboard tube. The room disappears as Nicole makes a face about something and all the adults start to giggle.

  The conversation moves along to some other subject.

  But I am frozen. My skin is clammy. I wonder for a second if I will actually pass out.

  Fear. Shame. Guilt. Horror. A flood of emotions washes over me at once, but until I notice the salty taste at the corners of my mouth, I don’t even realize that my eyes have started to leak. Fortunately, no one else at the table has noticed, so I excuse myself and make my way to the downstairs bathroom.

  The tile floor is cold. But it’s the only makeshift bed I have at my disposal. Curled up in a little ball now, I let it all out, trying only to muffle the sounds that might give me away.

  So there it is: you may be guilty of a hit and run.

  It’s that familiar voice I’ve dubbed Doubt, the one that tells me I need to review my tapes, or pay another visit to The Boat in search of damage.

  You’ve got to confess, it taunts. Come clean now or you’ll never sleep another night of your life.

  You’re wrong, Doubt, I rationalize. The cabin cruiser owner was onboard at the time of the mishap. He even helped fend us off. Surely he would have been in the best position to know whether or not there was any serious contact.

  Well, what if that man was just a passerby who climbed aboard the cabin cruiser to lend a hand and really didn’t care what happened to the boat? The real owners may have no clue …

  But Josh and I talked to someone aboard the cabin cruiser later that day, explaining exactly what had happened with our two boats.

  You didn’t mention the creaking …

  But the two of us looked over the cabin cruiser together, and I’ve combed it with my binoculars countless times since. Never have I seen a single sign of any obvious damage.

  Like you’d be able to spot the damage on an old wreck like that … and what if you’re missing something?

  Suddenly there’s a tap on the door.

  “Honey, are you all right?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I answer my clearly concerned wife. I check my watch and scramble to peel myself off the bathroom floor.

  “We’re ready to do birthday cake now. We’re just waiting for you.”

  “Right. I’ll, uh, be out in a second,” I say, not knowing how I could possibly step out of this room even if I had the rest of the day to get ready.

  four

  fast-forward 1 month

  “Daaady, I am asking you a question. Can-we-go-home-now?”

  Nicole’s voice is serious, concerned, a little frightened even.

  “In a minute, sweetheart,” I say, realizing I’ve stalled my answer as long as possible.

  “I don’t think Mommy would like this,” she tells me again from her perch on top of my shoulders.

  “But we’re having fun, aren’t we?”

  Nicole says nothing. Her smile and giggles of a half hour ago are long gone now, and quite clearly, she isn’t having fun anymore. Maybe it’s the steady rain, which has drenched her clothes and long hair by this point. Perhaps it’s just that we’ve been standing here on this dock for what must seem like forever.

  I know this is stupid—keeping my shivering daughter outside in a downpour—but I’m on a mission, and she is my decoy. Of course, Nicole doesn’t understand any of this; as far as she knows, we’re just out admiring Grandpa’s boat from across the way. This is special “Daddy and Nikki time,” and it had sure started as a lot of fun. How could she know that I’ve carefully picked this observation point, the perfect place to stand with my cute little daughter, seemingly taking in the view of the boat one row over? Why would she ever guess that in reality Daddy is scouring the cabin cruiser next to us, searching again for any signs of damage?

  It’s the perfect undercover operation, really, brilliantly conceived and almost flawlessly executed. We are fooling everyone—not that there’s a single person around in the entire soggy harbor to fool, certainly not one who would give a damn one way or the other. Still, I can’t take any chances. People wouldn’t understand. They’d think I’m crazy.

  Nikki will just have to wait a little longer.

  This is April, and I am squandering almost every day of it at Oyster Point Marina, slithering around like the conniving criminal I’ve come to consider myself to be. I still spend entire mornings combing The Boat from end to end and staring out at the cabin cruiser until my eyes go blurry. Frustrated by my lack of answers, I have also begun devising new and elaborate schemes for scoping out both boats, covert operations like the one on which I dragged Nicole. The irony, I am learning, is that the more I catch myself sneaking around, the guiltier I feel, and the more convinced I become that I’ve done something truly unforgivable.

  Okay, chances are pretty good that, as a reader, you’re beginning to cringe with each reference to The Boat about now. I know this from the feedback of well-meaning friends who read an early draft of this memoir and warned me that I risked losing the interest of “normal” people if I dwelled too long on my growing consumption with the boat mishap. “It’s very tiring,” they cautioned.

  Tiring?! Hell-oh! I wanted to snap back at them. You have no idea. But here’s the thing: somehow, some way, I need to give you—all of you—an idea of tiring, a taste of the grinding agony of having one’s entire world reduced to a single all-encompassing fixation. Believe me, you’re getting off easy. You’ve now spent some ten or fifteen minutes reading about The Boat episode. I, at this juncture, have thought about nothing else for more than 150 days. Every minute. Every day.

  We’ll move on. I promise we will. But—and I’m very sorry for this—we
can’t just yet …

  May 4, 1993. Almost six months to the day after The Boat’s engine—and a big part of me—died in a sputter. It’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m wrapping up my compulsory daily visit to Oyster Point Marina when a flash of reflected sunshine draws my attention to one of The Boat’s many chrome stanchions.

  And then I see it. Right in front of me. A small gouge, or at least a good-sized scratch, in the polished chrome roughly a foot and a half above the deck.

  No!

  I never thought to scour the stanchions for any signs of damage; my focus has always been the actual hulls of The Boat and the cabin cruiser.

  Without even thinking, I squeeze my eyes shut and allow my tape of the whole boat mishap to play back for the millionth time. No stanchion anywhere. It’s not in my line of sight from my place in the cockpit. But there is Matt, standing just inches from where the stanchion must be.

  Suddenly it all makes sense. Our stanchion had made contact with the bow of the cabin cruiser that day. I even know precisely where, since the wind had recently blown back a corner of the blue canvas cover from the cabin cruiser’s bow section, revealing what’s known as an anchor plate, a solid chrome shield designed to accommodate heavy-duty anchor chain.

  The creaking—it wasn’t some nonexistent bowsprit, or any other piece of wood, bending under impact. It was our stanchion scraping across the anchor plate.

  For a split second I’m relieved, having found at long last a plausible explanation. But then the reality sinks in: we had made contact. Matt had been right. My own eyes and ears had failed me.

  If only I had checked more thoroughly!

  Now, as if to make up for the six months of missing it, I simply cannot take my eyes off the scratch in front of me.

  Ten minutes pass. And then another ten. And then at least ten more after that.

  It’s getting late and I need to get home. But I have a new problem now: I have to come clean, have to let the cabin cruiser owners know that I’ve found “damage.” Never mind that The Boat’s one-inch stanchion would’ve easily buckled or broken clean off before doing any harm to that massive anchor plate; we had made contact, and that is that.

  At a little after ten the following morning, I pull into the Oyster Point parking lot and jump out of my car like a junkie in hot pursuit of his fix. My overnight shift at Channel 2 had been hell as I counted the hours until I could get myself back to the harbor. Now, making my way down the dock, I notice that someone is aboard the cabin cruiser, a young guy I’ve seen a few times before, but not the same one Josh and I had talked to that first day. Thank God someone is there, I think to myself. At least now I can get this confession over with as quickly as possible.

  For two hours I tuck away in The Boat’s cabin, waiting for the guy on board to leave for a bathroom visit or any other reason. This way I can casually bump into him on the dock and casually mention that I discovered a scratch. Just a casual conversation between a couple of fellow boaters. All very casual.

  What I can’t figure out though is the pretense for sharing this information with him, six months after an incident that someone else on his boat had showed zero interest in discussing. And if my stanchion-versus-anchor-plate theory is correct, how can I possibly suggest that we might have damaged his—

  A moving figure on the horizon snaps me back to the moment. It’s the guy on the cabin cruiser, looking as if he’s about to head for the dock.

  Decision time.

  I don’t want to do this, confront him now, and make an ass of myself. But this inner voice, Doubt, tells me that I have no choice, that I couldn’t possibly live with the uncertainty of never knowing whether someone with the cabin cruiser would want my information about our scratch. It also suggests that I’m the scum of the earth if I don’t do the only right thing and confess my sins.

  There is another inner voice trying to whisper to me, some rational part of myself that understands this is all just garbage. It tries to tell me that my motives have nothing to do with helping others or doing the right thing, that in truth I’m only hoping this confession will somehow silence my voice of doubt and allow me to stop playing back all my endless virtual tapes.

  But this whisper of reason is all but inaudible.

  I know I simply cannot stop myself. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not anytime soon. So instead I make a deal with my rational self: I will indulge my craving to come clean right here and right now. But I will also make some calls in the next few days—calls to arrange for professional help for my growing problems.

  I step off the boat.

  Our paths, mine and Cabin Cruiser Guy’s, meet at the bottom of the main ramp leading up to the parking lot. I try my best to look casual, as if this encounter is purely by chance.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” I say with a quick nod of my head.

  “Hey.”

  “My name’s Jeff. I’m with the sailboat over there.”

  “Hey.”

  He is obviously a man of very few words. I, on the other hand, am one with a long string of them I can’t wait to unleash.

  “Listen,” I say, “about six months ago I was backing our boat out of its slip when the engine died and the wind blew us over to your boat which we checked out just as soon as we got back and talked to someone on board and everything seemed to be fine but I thought you should know that I just found a scratch on one of our stanchions and now I’m concerned that maybe we did in fact do some damage to your boat and—”

  Cabin Cruiser Guy is staring at me. Staring as one might examine with fascination a rare bird at the zoo. He doesn’t know what to make of me, how to process what I am trying to tell him.

  “I’m sure our boat is fine,” he finally says.

  Now I’m at a loss. This is not the indignant demand for reparations I’d been expecting, even hoping for, from him.

  “Well, please let me know if you find any damage.”

  “Rrrright,” he says, taking way too long to get the single syllable out of his mouth. It dawns on me that it’s possible I’m actually scaring this guy.

  The conversation is now complete. We both walk on along our own paths. Looking down, I see that my entire body is shaking.

  Casual. Very casual.

  Well, at least it’s over with, I try to rationalize. Now I can get on with the rest of my life.

  My sense of relief is tempered moments later, though, when I remember the bargain I’d just made with myself.

  five

  fast-forward 6 days

  I suppose it’s only fitting that the opening frames of my next tape segment would have me on El Camino Real, the historic six-lane thoroughfare spanning the San Francisco peninsula, and the very road I’ll forever associate with permanent records.

  Two decades earlier, while riding down El Camino in the back of my parents’ Ford LTD station wagon, I’d watched my father get a traffic ticket and, within minutes, slip into a funk so deep and dark that it gave me shivers. I understood even back then what it was all about. Dad, after all, worked in the insurance business. He was always preaching to us about permanent records: how crucial they are to one’s future, how many people and agencies have access to them, and most of all, how important it is to protect them at almost any cost. I knew that this ticket meant Dad’s record was no longer perfect, and if I’d had any doubts before about the significance of a blemish, I never would again after seeing his reaction.

  So now here I am, all grown up in 1993, heading down El Camino to an appointment certain to forever taint my own permanent record.

  It’s a Tuesday morning, and I am keeping my promise to myself, making good on the deal that allowed me to confess my sins to the guy from the cabin cruiser. It seemed like a fair trade-off at the time, but now, on my way to actually sit down with a “professional,” I am realizing what a poor decision this was. I know Dad would think so—even if I succeed in keeping any trace of this visit off my permanent record.

  My appointment is with Dr. X, a man I know nothi
ng about except that he comes recommended by my only link to the counseling world: my mother. Mom is a high school guidance counselor, so she had seemed like a logical starting point when I’d set out to find a psychologist. It wasn’t until I’d left her house that day that I realized the irony of a grown man turning to his own mother for advice in selecting a shrink. Now I can’t help wondering if my decision might have had something to do with the very confession problem with which I need help.

  I also wonder if Mom has shared our conversation with Dad.

  Samantha says I shouldn’t worry about any of this. That what I really need to do now is focus on getting myself better.

  She never has understood the delicate dynamics that hold my family together.

  Arriving early, it turns out, was not my best idea. While I’m fairly certain no one saw me park my car three blocks away, or snake my way on foot to this old brick building, I never anticipated I’d have company in the oversized closet that serves as a waiting area for the ground floor’s several psychologists. Fortunately, the middle-aged woman sitting across from me and fidgeting like a kid at church seems every bit as intent as I am on remaining anonymous.

  Following her cue, I bury my nose in an issue of Newsweek.

  I am waiting for someone to call out my name. But it’s five past eleven, and the door marked Dr. X hasn’t cracked an inch. Is the last patient still in there? Am I supposed to get up and knock on the door?

  Two more minutes pass. And then another. I am getting uncomfortable.

  “Jeff?”

  A stocky man in his fifties appears in the doorway. Did he really have to use my name like that, right here, out in public?

  “Dr. X?” I ask. I am watching the fidgeter out of the corner of my eye.

  “Yes. Come on in.”

  At least we’re now moving this conversation behind closed doors.