Ten Degrees of Reckoning (14 page)

I rushed back to the hotel to call my husband, John.

“Are you keeping something from me?” I asked. I was so afraid of what he was going to say.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know what to do,” he replied. “This last year has been so grueling with your preparation, and I felt that I shouldn’t interfere with the Boards.” He told me Mike’s brother had called, and he read me the notes he had taken, but absolutely nothing made sense. I lay down on the bed and wept.

I remembered Ben’s first birthday. John and I were staying with the Sleavins at their home in Saugus, California. Judy came and sat beside me and told me Ben’s godmother was her oldest and dearest friend, Bonnie, whom she had met in Ohio during her restaurant years.

“Mike and I would be honored if you will be the godmother of our next child. Whether it’s a boy or a girl, we want our next one to be just like you!”

“A crazy cruiser on a small boat, you mean?” I asked.

“No, a person just like you, in all respects,” she said.

“Are you pregnant now?” I asked.

“No, but we’re madly working on it,” she said.

“But I’ll be out at sea. How can I possibly be a good and responsible godmother?”

“You have your ways.” Judy said.

I cried, and hugged Mike and Judy and said, “Yes, of course, thank you, thank you, I am so honored to be chosen.”

In October 1988, on a passage between Tonga and Fiji, John and I had our trusty ham radio operator Russ Faudre relay a phone patch to the Sleavins in Saugus.

“You have a beautiful little goddaughter, Anna Rose Sleavin, born October second. Over.”

“I can’t wait to meet her. Tell her I love her. Over.”

I loved being Annie’s godmother. When she was not yet four, we went to Disneyland together. She held my hand on every ride and whispered to me not to be scared in the darkness of the Pirates of the Caribbean experience.

When we were on the
Melinda Lee
sailing with the family to Costa Rica, she once fell and lay with her head in my lap as I treated the large cut over her eye.

“You’re very brave,” I told her.

“Okay, but tell me the story again about Trixie,” she said. She loved stories about my girlhood cocker spaniel.

She often climbed up on my lap, and because of the extreme heat, we’d be stuck together, bare legs against bare legs. It was heaven for me.

And Ben. He was funny.

“I know the exact song to teach other kids who don’t know any English,” he told me. ‘Do Wah Diddy’!”

His uncle Jeremy Graves would later say as part of his eulogy, “Since my son is the same age as Ben, I always had a measuring stick by which I could gauge what Ben was learning. When we visited the
Melinda Lee,
I saw that Ben’s world had expanded in so many new directions by meeting new people, seeing new lands, eating new foods, hearing new languages, hearing new music. When he was seven years old, he showed my son Austin and me how to set a course, hold the wheel, and read the compass. The world he was growing up in truly amazed me.”

It was fortunate that so many members of the family had come to visit the Sleavins on the
Melinda Lee
in various ports in the Caribbean, to have the opportunity to share, as one of them put it, the fantastic quality of their lives. The younger generation—the cousins Sara, Austin, Simon, Drew, and Shannon—would always be enriched by the treasured time they had spent on the
Melinda Lee,
even if they could not begin to comprehend its ending.

The
Melinda Lee
was always ready for company. An excerpt from one of the group letters we had all received:

Come visit, you won’t go home hungry. Seriously, let Maureen know if you’d like to come visit, we have lots of open dates (like from now to eternity).

—Love, the Sleavins

Thirteen

The Sailboat

MIKE’S FAMILY GOT TOGETHER AND DECIDED THAT Colleen Polley, Mike’s sister, would go to New Zealand immediately. Two of her children, Drew and Shannon, were almost the same ages as Ben and Annie. Shannon and Annie were only six weeks apart in age. The two girls had made many plans while the Polleys were visiting in the Virgin Islands. Annie said having a cousin was even better than having a friend. They had giggled madly at the idea of sailing to a place called The Baths because the water was as warm as a tub.

As her flight took off, Colleen wondered how her husband, Jerry, was going to be able to tell Drew and Shannon what had happened to their adored relatives. And, she wondered, what would Shannon, at her tender age, even understand?

At age seven, Shannon Polley wrote the following:

Fourteen

Willing to Live

AFTER A TWENTY-MINUTE RIDE, THE HELICOPTER TRANSporting Judy landed on the roof of the Whangarei Hospital, the main hospital in the Northland District. Judy, wrapped in a silver hypothermia blanket, was carried on a gurney to the emergency room. Straightaway, she asked the nurse for water, but was told they would have to check things out first.

“Check things out? I thought you were taking me to a party, all wrapped in this silvery paper.”

Judy had learned early in life to deflect serious problems with humor and laughter, an attitude that sometimes seemed inappropriate to people outside the immediate family. The nurse was confused by this performance, but Judy felt a little better. She might still be bleeding from her head wound, but at least some of her personality was oozing out and attempting to connect with people despite the pervasive sorrow.

She looked damaged, like a package that had been thrown about. She had bruises over most of her body, and a black eye. Wherever her face wasn’t raw and reddened from overexposure to the elements, she was very pale. Her feet and legs were swollen, and her hands and feet had multiple infected cuts. She was severely dehydrated and could barely speak through her cracked and blistered lips. Over the course of a thorough examination, the physicians determined that Judy had three crushed vertebrae and two cracked vertebrae. The laceration behind her ear was embedded with foreign matter, and the bony part of her skull in that area was fractured. The portion of her brain that sustained injury would compromise her visual recognition skills, probably irreversibly.

The physician on call made certain Judy slept that night, with soothing balms and sedatives. When she awoke in the morning, she couldn’t move and lay still on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She wished now that she had passed along her story and then succumbed to her injuries. She and Annie had been so sure they would be rescued. If the ship had picked them up or alerted authorities, the three of them would be together, grieving for Ben, but at least together. And if they couldn’t be together in life, then why couldn’t her wounds have been critical enough so she could join them in death?

After Judy’s terrified understanding that Ben had died, some part of her had separated into a machine on automatic drive, to deal with Mike and Annie’s survival. To a casual observer, she might have seemed heartless, restraining herself from making any attempt, however futile, to look for Ben, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Even grief-stricken to her core, she functioned as the experienced sailor she was, well prepared for emergencies. She was a wife and mother with a family to get safely to land. She was broken, but she had discipline to spare. And she was never one to waste energy trying to undo what already was done. She was someone who moved on to the next step. When Annie, and then Mike, died, she was relieved that the lower half of her body was numb. She was relieved that her head was matted with blood. To her it meant that her injuries were life-threatening and she could die as soon as she told her story. Now she was terrified that she was going to live, without her beloved family.

All the rituals that might have comforted Judy had to go on in her absence. She was immobile, in shock, not ready to respond to the embrace of these familiar rites. While the family was memorialized—at the Church of Saint Patrick in Tacoma; at Temple Beth Haverim in Agoura Hills, California; and at a nondenominational service at the Opua Cruising Club in New Zealand—Judy lay sedated, awaiting her release from the nightmare.

Isabelle was one of the health social workers at Whangarei Hospital. She had finished her usual early-morning swim session and was back in her car, on her way to breakfast at Caffeine Espresso Café, her favorite gathering spot, before heading to work. She was listening to the radio, a story about the sole survivor of a boating tragedy having been airlifted to the hospital the previous night. When she arrived on the ward, Isabelle was immediately assigned to Judy’s case, and her first impression of Judy was of someone who had suffered long weather exposure, severe dehydration, and general trauma. But, she observed, the trauma could certainly not be limited to the physical injuries, because no physical pain could account for the torment her eyes held. Although the social workers had training in post-traumatic stress disorder, patients who required their expertise usually had been involved in more conventional incidents. The team assigned to Judy would need more than educational skills. Fortunately, the hospital, and Whangarei itself, would extend to Judy all the attention and consideration she required.

Whangarei is a pleasant little city of about fifty thousand people, less than three hours north of Auckland by car. It is situated on the western end, at the inner reaches of Whangarei Harbor, on the banks of the Hatea River, and is the industrial and commercial center for the Northland. There is an oil refinery, essential to the entire country, at Marsden Point, on the southern side of the harbor entrance. Restaurants and galleries in the Town Basin overlook the international yachts that berth in the city marina. The city itself offers many diverse activities, including nature walks, artists’ centers, bookstores, and boutiques. Car repair places, called “panel beater” shops, and marine services are just a walk away from the galleries. Within easy driving distance are beautiful parks and beaches, and as you head out of town in any direction there are rolling hills with dairy farms and orchards. The name Whangarei is Maori in origin and has several meanings;
wh
is pronounced as
f,
and it doesn’t hurt to roll the
r
to reveal your cultural interest. In New Zealand, both English and Maori are the official languages.