Mrs. Hacking, wearing a wide-brimmed maroon rain hat and a Dole-Kemp sweatshirt, scanned the sails for the ones from her camp, all marked with blue stripes. It was a chilly Adirondack day, and the race participants wore heavy foul-weather gear but for Chrissie, who had unwisely worn a silk scarf on her head as though she was starring in the “True Love” scene of High Society. The one time Evelyn had watched the race before—the time of the badly rigged boat that she would apparently never live down—she had assumed that the Fruit Stripe was a serious race. Now she knew the drill better. The day before the race, all the older teenagers and twentysomethings on the lake would go to the host’s house to help mix drinks. They would pour into paint buckets one bottle after another of lemonade, cranberry juice, or white-grape juice with a dump of green food coloring. Varying amounts of vodka were added, mixed, and then poured back into the juice bottles, now evoking the colors of Fruit Stripe gum packages, with a mark on them of V for “virgin,” S for “strong,” and T for “toxic.” The drinks were stored in an ice-filled canoe onshore during the race, and last time, Evelyn had spent the awards ceremony hurling into the shrubbery at Camp Georgia after selecting a bobbing bottle marked T from the canoe and thinking it meant “tame.”
Most of the racers took the Fruit Stripe lightly, taking a bottle of T with them and, when the wind was too weak, using a paddle to move around the course and happily disqualifying themselves. However, Mrs. Hacking had a Yankee reverence for outdoor sport, and expected Shuh-shuh-gah’s residents and guests to win, place, or come in last. First place meant possession of the Lake James Yacht Club trophy for a year, second meant she got to hang the Fruit Stripe banner from her boathouse, and last meant the racers got all the leftover drinks. A boat from her camp coming in second to last, which showed the racers had neither skill nor wit, made Mrs. Hacking turn red with fury.
In the back of the pack, in a dead spot on the lake, Evelyn saw the blue-striped sail that belonged to Chrissie and Pip. Mrs. Hacking gunned the motor, spraying freezing water onto Evelyn and Preston.
In under a minute, the motorboat was circling the sailboat. Though it was not long after the start, Chrissie’s boat had taken on several inches of water already, and Chrissie was trying to bail out the boat with a travel coffee mug while Pip lay miserably on the bow of the Sunfish.
“Your line in the water is too low. Bail her out. Bail her out!” Mrs. Hacking said.
“I’m bailing!” Chrissie shouted. “We got off course!”
“Look to starboard, Chrissie. You’re getting pushed into shore.” The wake from the boat was rocking the Sunfish, and Pip wrapped her arms around the hull. Mrs. Hacking had procured a megaphone from somewhere inside the motorboat and now began booming into it. “Chrissie! The wind is coming from the west side of the lake. Come about. Come about!” With her other hand, Mrs. Hacking spun the steering wheel so she stayed nipping at the sailboat’s side. “Pip, show Chrissie what to do!” she yelled.
Pip pushed the brim of her raincoat hood back. “I’m trying, Grandmother,” she said, resigned.
“Come, Chrissie, look at the angle. Look at the angle. You’ll never get out of it now! Grab the rudder—watch it—watch it—no, no, no, no! Good Lord! Watch it!” Mrs. Hacking shouted as the boom swung over and nearly cracked Chrissie in the head; Chrissie desperately shoved the rudder back and forth. “I thought Bing said she knew how to sail,” Mrs. Hacking said to Preston, though she said it into the megaphone. Preston took a long drink of his cranberry juice, the T version. Evelyn reached for the bottle and took a swig in sympathy—with Chrissie, with Bing, with Pip, or with Preston, she wasn’t sure—but she was trying not to move too abruptly, lest Mrs. Hacking turn the megaphone on her.
“It’s luffing. It’s luffing!” Mrs. Hacking shouted as a wave came up and hit Chrissie in the arm. “Everyone else is around the third buoy, Chrissie! You’ve got to get out of there! This is a dead spot. Get out of there!”
“Can I get back in the boat with you, Grandmother?” Pip called out.
“I wish you could, Pip, but you’re going to have to finish the race.”
A horn sounded from the other end of the lake. “That’s first place!” Mrs. Hacking yelled. “We have to get back to the party! Get some wind, Chrissie. You’re going to be out here for hours!” Pip, lying flat on her stomach in the front, waved a sad farewell.
Mrs. Hacking gunned the motor again, heading toward Jumping Rock, and the wake deposited a few more inches of water in the sailboat once the motorboat left. Evelyn looked back, watching Chrissie get smaller. Chrissie was overly anxious and had made her own mistake in forcing an invitation to the Hacking house, claiming sailing know-how, and generally trying too hard. And Chrissie’s presence on the other side of the invisible behavior line let Evelyn stay cleanly on this side of it. Yet, looking at Chrissie dipping her cup into the freezing water that went up to her ankles, with the patrician girl in the front who was doubting her every effort, Evelyn wished a gust of wind would come and help them out.