Ten Degrees of Reckoning (22 page)

When Judy Sleavin returned from the United States for the first anniversary of the collision, she brought everyone in the group floral caftans and fishnet stockings. The mischief had begun, and Judy had met her match in these women. They never abandoned their time for tears and practical advice and emotional support, but for balance they instituted the Outrageous Award. Each person attempted to win it by doing something excessively unconventional between meeting times, and the competitive stories every month brought raucous hilarity. Privately, the Wild Girls talked about the astounding fact that it was Judy, with her tremendous tragedy, who had injected the wackiness. Val asked, “Is this the person, or is this an American, or is this the result of her head injury?”

It wasn’t always easy for Judy to be around people, even the Wild Girls. In her everyday life she continued to have uncontrollable crying spells, trouble learning new things, and difficulty remembering appointments. The flashbacks hadn’t magically evaporated when she returned to New Zealand, as she had hoped. Sometimes, with conversation swirling around, she would slide right into her past. She would pull herself back out by silently thinking of the steps in her chocolate chip cookie recipe. Sometimes she had to double and triple the ingredients before she regained her composure. Any one of those flashbacks might have turned Judy into a recluse, but she fought against it. She had always taken pleasure in social activities and in cultivating friendships. She accepted every invitation to go walking or touring or quilting. She knew that some people might be reluctant to include her when she was in mourning, or even be offended by observing her hour of happiness, but it was vital to her. She wasn’t trying to replace her family or immediately create new memories, but she looked forward to any outing; it gave her hope that someday she could again be a part of a community. And intuitively she knew what the author Amy Tan so eloquently said in an interview: “Hope is the adrenaline of the soul.” She told me she thought if she acted like a happy person, maybe one day she would be happy again. In response to my letters asking how she was doing, she would say, “Still practicing.” That had been her motivation in hosting the second Pizza Night, but even she didn’t realize then that the Wild Girls would have the most profound effect on her happiness in the years to come.

In a letter to Tim dated February 1997, Judy wrote:

I’m tired, I’m depressed, around every corner is another nightmare. I’m crying a lot more. But . . . then there’s the Wild Girls and I forget my misery.
 

They would become her surrogate family, her champions, her safe place. They were so tender with her, but not with the usual restraints. They offered compassion laced with honesty, respect with expectations. They invited her to be a part of their family weddings and celebrations, and they lit candles with her each year at the anniversary of the collision. They traveled to the United States as a group, to integrate her Kiwi and California families, to Italy for a cultural infusion, and to Deep Water Cove to give gratitude. They went to a jazz festival in the Bay of Islands and to a coroner’s inquest in Kaikohe. They were with her for everything.

There is a large supporting cast of characters who remain interested in Judy’s welfare. When I flew to New Zealand to do research and interviews for this book, I had no idea just how many people still wanted to protect her from a prying stranger’s questions. These were the people involved in the search for the
Melinda Lee
or at Deep Water Cove, people involved in recovery efforts, people from the hospital, and generally people with whom Judy has had no contact for a few years now. I had to climb up on scaffolding at a construction site to seek out one reluctant individual, in order to assure him that I meant no harm to Judy. Sometimes I brought a Wild Girl or two to prop up my credentials. And when I said enough to let people know that this book was being written at Judy’s request, the information flowed. They were all modest in recounting their personal involvement and efforts, but there was no reticence. The event had had effects on their own lives, and each person asked me if Judy would want to get together for a cup of coffee sometime, “whenever she felt like it.”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to start from scratch. Besides all the formal legal documents and reports I had access to, Annique Goldenberg had kindly produced her Hole in the Net log, with its wealth of information. Annique and Marco were on their boat,
Ruquca,
in Thailand when I contacted them, but they traveled back to New Zealand several times to see Judy and other friends they had acquired during their stay. After Judy was rescued, they were among the first to travel from Opua to Whangarei to visit her at the hospital. One day they pulled Isabelle aside and gave her some distressing news. Their daughter Geneva, then age four, had been diagnosed with leukemia. They had to leave for treatments in Auckland, and wouldn’t be able to continue their usual hospital visits with Judy. Could Isabelle cover for them? they asked. They preferred that Judy think them neglectful rather than have her worried about Geneva. Isabelle was impressed that their first consideration was to shield Judy from further painful information.

Before the Goldenbergs left for Auckland, Annique urged another cruiser, Kerry Rauber, to go and visit with Judy. Kerry had an unusual story to tell. When Kerry arrived at the hospital, Isabelle said she “looked a mess.” She told Isabelle she had come to see Judy, but she wondered if it would be a good thing. She wasn’t even sure if Judy would remember her; they didn’t know each other extremely well.

Kerry and Peter Rauber had sailed out of Bristol, England, in 1993. They met the Sleavins first in the Panama Canal, where they were rafted up together for a few hours, and then again much later, in Niue, in the South Pacific. They didn’t see the family in Tonga, but they, too, departed from Nuku’alofa, some twenty-four hours after the
Melinda Lee.

Kerry told Isabelle that she had been having visions ever since the collision. She could see Annie in red clothing, her body resting peacefully near a cluster of islands, but she couldn’t find the islands on any of her charts. Isabelle was not disbelieving. Kerry seemed to know more than any of the other cruisers who had visited, and she even confirmed some of the things Judy had told Isabelle privately. But Kerry was having trouble sleeping, because of those visions and because she could “hear” Mike telling her to go visit Judy. Isabelle assured Kerry that she would arrange a meeting later, when Judy was discharged from the hospital. Kerry told her not to rush, that she and her husband, Peter, had decided to remain in New Zealand for a year to make sure Judy was going to be all right. Minutes before, Kerry had remarked to Isabelle that she and her husband didn’t know the Sleavins very well, and here she was telling her they were going to remain in New Zealand to make certain of Judy’s well-being. It amazed Isabelle, all these exceptional cruising folks who wanted nothing more than to improve Judy’s life, whatever the adjustment to their own plans.

From the time she was a child, Kerry had to accept what she called her “special feelings.” There were times when she could see, in her mind’s eye, circumstances and details that were very real to her but unknown to anyone else. They became more significant to Kerry in her teens; she would hear in the news a story of a murder, for instance, and in a momentary flash she could see some relevant information such as clothing, location of the body, and other details. Very often these details would be confirmed in later news broadcasts. She wasn’t frightened, but she was a teenager and didn’t want to be odd, so she tried to ignore these experiences.

When she and her husband were sailing toward Opua, New Zealand, an unusual feeling of dread came over her. Kerry sat in the cockpit, trying to understand what was occurring, and then announced to Peter that “something evil” was going to happen. As she heard herself speak, she could hardly believe the words coming from her. Her stomach was in knots. She tried to remain calm and allow thoughts to flood through her. She knew an accident would happen, to a family, and only one adult would survive. Images kept coming, and she started sketching as fast as they came. She saw a large, dark ship and felt “something sinister.” She saw lights in windows, and silhouetted figures looking out. She felt very low in the water in comparison with the silhouetted images. Most of all, she felt an incredible sense of loss and desperation.

The next day, the
Melinda Lee
didn’t check in on the Hole in the Net as scheduled. When
Aquavit
came on from Opua Harbour to say they had not arrived, there was a lot of speculation among the yachties on the radio. The
Melinda Lee
was never overdue, everyone agreed. Maybe they had taken shelter from the rough conditions? Someone who knew them said they were experienced enough to sail through any conditions, and would follow regulations that prohibited anchoring prior to clearing customs and immigration. Maybe they were having battery troubles? Kerry knew what had happened to them. She also knew that Annie and Ben must be dead, but she wasn’t certain at that moment if it was Mike or Judy who had survived. She was certain that only one of them would come through.

She and Peter got out a detailed chart of the coast. Kerry marked a spot where the survivor could be found. Peter was skeptical. How could they call on the radio and say, “Oh, try having a look for the survivor of a collision at these coordinates”? At that point, there hadn’t even been confirmation of an incident.

On the morning after the collision, Kerry was drained and shattered, but the seas were calmer in the area where they were sailing, and Peter put on the engine and slowed the boat down. He saw how distressed Kerry was, and told her they would start circling the area and look for any signs of what she had “seen.” She began crying, and described to her husband a vision of Annie, in the water floating facedown, dark wavy hair tangled around her head. Kerry could “see” that she was wearing something red, and she could “see” other things caught up on the water near Annie’s body. Kerry knew Annie wasn’t far from them. As Peter and Kerry continued to circle, they came across flotsam. They saw cockpit cushions and various pieces of white fabric. They saw fuel cans. They also saw dolphins. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t find Annie and finally motored on into Opua. Kerry felt a sense of having deserted Annie, but she knew it would have been a recovery effort, not a rescue.

In Opua, everything was confirmed. When asked later how she could know such things, Kerry answered rhetorically.

“How do I do that? How do you explain being spoken to by a dead person? The easiest way to explain is to try to recall a recent conversation you have had with someone. You can hear their words and see their expressions, but they are not there. That is how it feels to me. I cannot reply, but I can stop it and start it. I didn’t know Judy well enough to take my ‘odd’ experiences to her in the hospital, but I knew I had to speak to someone.”

Kerry had to decide what to do with the information she had. That was when she first “heard” Mike Sleavin suggesting she take her sketches of the ship and the coordinates of the flotsam to the investigators. She contacted the New Zealand MSA and told them what she knew. The meeting did not go well.

Kerry continued to have images of Mike long after she spoke with the investigators upon her arrival in Opua, and that is when Annique suggested she speak with Isabelle. In February, when Isabelle felt Judy had recovered enough to speak with Kerry, she telephoned the cottage.

“Are you sitting down?” Isabelle recalls asking Judy. “This is going to be a difficult conversation.”

Judy immediately invited Kerry to come and visit her in Tutukaka. Kerry’s visualizations of the incident and of Annie might not have made a big difference to the investigators, but they made a huge difference to Judy. She wanted to share her own wide-awake dreams of the family, and Kerry’s revelations gave her some solace, letting her know her family’s presence was strong, even to comparative strangers.

On her visit, Kerry recalls being shocked that Judy remembered who she was.

“How could I forget?” Judy had said to her. “You told everyone we had wonderful children.”

“It’s true,” Kerry had assured Judy. “Cruising kids seem much better behaved and more responsible and respectful than land kids, in general. You and Mike had great parenting skills, I could easily tell. Both your kids were wonderful, but there was something about Ben and his behavior that touched me deeply. I am so very sorry, Judy.”

They were both weeping.

“You know what, Kerry?” Judy had said. “You touched my children deeply. You told so many cruisers how wonderful they were, and it got back to them, and they were so proud.”

They went over to the house to see Babe, and she invited them out on the deck for tea.

“What are those islands, Babe?” Kerry recalls asking.

“The Poor Knights. A marine reserve. Subtropical currents from the north wash past and bring plankton that support coral and marine life. There are caves, as well, so it’s a great dive spot,” Babe said.

Kerry was still staring out. Babe continued.

“The larger, northern one is Tawhiti Rahi, and its southern partner is Aorangi Island, I believe. But from this distance, can you make out how the rocky contour looks like the knight’s head? Captain Cook gave the islands the English name. If you come around a bit you can see a third island. When the sun is setting, it’s a beautiful scene,” Babe said.

“That’s where Annie is,” Kerry said quietly. “It’s exactly what I saw in my mind but couldn’t find on the chart.”

In the years since, Judy has moved to her own place, but Babe and Ian planted three pohutakawa trees on their property, and Ian built a bench for Judy, all on a hill overlooking the ocean and the Poor Knights.

Over the course of my e-mails with Kerry, I began to worry about how disclosing those visions would affect her.

“Are you certain, Kerry? I don’t want to disturb your own life with this telling,” I wrote, several times.