Saling to The Bottom

"Your husband accepted this?" I asked watching the two women as well between glances at the kids.

"He was relatively adjusted to my other needs by then. I am what you call bi-sexual, but I have a strong need for the 'female touch' as the French say."

I nodded my head as if I understood but wasn't sure I could.

"Mia was jealous of Fredrick, and all the more because he saw no threat to us in her. It wasn't just that she is a woman as he said once, 'she lacks the ability to love you more than herself.' He was right, of course, the kind of commitment that a true marriage takes is beyond her. I told her as much when she asked that we marry after Fredrick's death."

"But you did marry?" I said.

"Yes, I felt that I had a responsibility. You see she needs me. She can't help what she is any more than you can change being a tall powerfully built man. I would have recognized you anywhere from the description that Mia came home with last night. You are every bit the Viking, they said you were. You have a physical presence that is attractive in a truly masculine way. A woman will always feel a little intimidated meeting you, but I see you have a kind and protective soul. In this, we are somewhat alike. We are people who accept responsibility for those we love and who love us. My husband, Frederick knew this was essential and taught me," as she said this she had moved very close to me.

"You're telling me this for a reason?" I asked.

"You didn't ask what I do to earn my bread. I'm a doctor. Your wife is ill, and it must be serious because she is hiding it from you. I think you have already suspected this. Life gives us burdens. I have mine, and you will soon be shouldering yours," as she said this she moved to Ulrich to tell him it was time to head back to the beach.

We spent the day in the sun, in the water, and on the sand; but inevitably, it was time to head back to Annabelle. What Anja said was haunting me because inescapably, I knew it was true. Leslie was ill, and it was serious enough that she had brought Kat to me. However, I understood Anja's subtext as well. My problem with Leslie was more about me now than her. Yes, she made a terrible mistake. It was caused by a kind of blindness. She didn't intend to hurt me, but my actions were intentional. I meant to hurt her, but I had also injured Katrina. I deprived my daughter of the home she deserved. I had run out on my responsibilities without looking back, but I should have looked back to see my daughter. Now it was time to take responsibility.

*****

After a day of sun, sand, and water Kat was ready for bed early. She insisted that I read her a story, and that she sleep in the pilot bed next to me. I was sure now that Leslie had put her up to sleeping near me, but I could feel that we were building a relationship. It wasn't father-daughter yet nor would it be for some time. Kat and I were two people circling each other trying to figure out whether we went together.

I was glad she was in bed early because I had issues to settle with her mother. Diane was going out again, but I told her that I wanted her in early as we would be leaving in the morning before the tide turns.

"What's the hurry, Mike?" Diane said.

"We have good weather, and I would like to make the most of it."

She grumbled but said she would be back in time to leave with the morning tide.

I knocked on the stern cabin door with a bottle of Cabernet and two glasses, and Leslie opened the door in her robe.

"Bit tired after last night and our long day," she said explaining her dress, "I suppose we need to talk."

"I need some answers," I said taking a seat at the small cabin table.

"First let me apologize. You caught me a bit by surprise that first day in St. Lucia. I didn't realize that you knew about my encounters with Roger. I didn't know why you had left. I thought initially that you had found someone else or suspected I was pregnant. You see I was never sure of your love for me," she said.

I began to protest, but she reached out and put her fingers across my lips. Then she sat down not in the available chair, but across my lap. Looking deeply into my eyes she began to speak again," Michael I loved you with my whole soul and still do. Only Kat and you mean anything to me. I'm sorry for what I did.

"Please understand fundamentally I'm a weak person, but perhaps unfortunately extremely smart and perceptive. I couldn't stand to see you hurt, and I knew those bastards you worked for had no intention of giving you a partnership. At your firm Christmas party, I saw how things were, and I also learned what I needed to do to change things for you. I couldn't help myself, in a way it was just too easy for me to reverse your fortune. I know I'm a whore. Maybe I should have made that clearer to you. You never asked where I got the money to fix my eyes and straighten my teeth. Well, I sold my virginity to a man in his sixties.

"I know that if I had been a stronger better woman, I never would have lost you. I'm sorry for the trouble we've had, and how Kat has suffered. It's all my fault. You don't have to forgive me, but please love Kat. She deserves a father. She's a wonderful girl."

I looked into those deep brown eyes and knew in spite of everything I stilled loved her. "Why didn't you talk to me first. No partnership was worth what you did to yourself and to us."

"I know you can't understand. You're a moral person. What I did was meaningless to me, but I knew that it would hurt you to know. I saw no harm in what I did as long as you didn't find out. If I thought for a minute, you would discover it. I would have backed out. You were in Chicago. I thought I was safe, but in truth, I was blind to the consequences. I thought I will do this, and we will live happily ever after. Please, please understand."

"Ok, but it is hard to believe you when you are still lying to me."

"What do you mean?" she asked searching my face.

"Why are you really here, and what is wrong with you."

She buried her face on my shoulder and began to weep softly, and her whole body shook to the point I had to wrap my arms around her to keep her from falling off my lap.

After a moment, she regained her composure and said, "When Carol Lamb returned from her spring break, she said that she saw you. She said that you looked lonely and that the rumor was you were pining for a lost love. I thought there might be a chance. By then, I desperately needed a chance."

She pulled her head back to look me in the eyes, "you see I have a tumor, not cancerous, but in the wrong place, my heart. I need an operation. It's scheduled for the Cleveland clinic on the twenty-ninth."

"That's the in case that Kat spoke of," I said.

"Yes, she knows I need an operation, and that she may need a place to stay after. I haven't actually told her what might happen."

"So, tell me what might happen."

"The tumor is extensive and will require them to rebuild my heart. The odds of death are very high. I'm going to the best place with the best odds, but death is a more than just a possible outcome. I won't have her grow up in Allentown with my parents. I need you to take her. I trust you. Please say yes. I intended on telling you when you had gotten to know her better, but I hope you are already a little fond of her."

What she had told me gave me pause. Oddly, I was no longer angry at her, and I realized that perhaps I had been angry at myself for running away. Maybe, I needed to forgive both of us.

"Kat will stay with me. I guess I started loving her the moment, I first saw her. I couldn't give her up now," with these words; Leslie hugged me, and we sat just holding each other for a long time. We shared a glass of wine and then another.

"You're leaving from Porto Rico?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm told it should be no problem if we make first-class reservations."

As always, even in a crisis mode, Leslie was able to formulate a workable plan. She had given Kat and me two full weeks to bond before we had to face the crisis of her surgery. She had thought of everything, or so we thought.

*****

Ever cautious I topped off Annabelle's fuel tanks before leaving Martinique. By Noon, the windward islands were astern of us, and we were moving north a little further west of the leeward islands than I wanted.

"What's that island over there," Leslie asked having come up on deck with Kat. She was pointing to the land mass to the northeast.

"Dominica, an independent republic and part of the British Commonwealth, population about Seventy Thousand. It's the northernmost of the windward islands or the southernmost of the leeward depending on who you ask."

"Is it nice."

"Depends, not a lot of beaches. However, they have a lot of jungle, a hot spring, and plenty of friendly if poor people."

Leslie holding Kat's hand in her right cupped her left over her eyes and stared at the green mass we were overtaking very slowly.

"Why do we keep changing direction?" Kat asked.

"It's called tacking, and we do it because the wind is not with us."

"But you're using the motor," Leslie said.

"Yes, when we tack because the wind is too light for Annabelle," I said.

We were making slow progress not a problem we had plenty of time, but there was a storm gathering out in the Atlantic.

By evening, the storm had a name, Maria. She was no great concern at that time, but worth keeping an eye on until we got further away.

At sunset, Diane asked me if I wanted to set the sea anchor as she dropped the sails.

"No, I'm going to keep her moving on the engine, but at a slow speed. I'll stay safely to the west by going due North."

Annabelle with her shallow keel will drift to the side if you let her. In this case, she was drifting west away from the island chain and the storm.

"Fine, I'll relieve you at two.

It was late when Leslie came up to the cockpit. She was still wearing her bikini but had pulled on a light robe in deference to the cooling night air.

"What you are doing sailor?" she said.

"Steering the boat."

"Don't you have an automatic pilot or something."

"Yes, but I like to see where I'm going, and Annabelle has a habit of drifting when left to her own."

Leslie didn't speak further but took a position behind me hugging me and pressing her cheek close to mine. We stayed that way for a while, and then she spoke, "isn't the sky beautiful. All the stars so clear."

I knew what she was seeing and feeling. The vault of heaven was miraculous on a clear night in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. It feels like time itself has stopped. The slow motion of Annabelle left you feeling suspended between heaven and earth.

"Can I sit on your lap? She asked.

I made room for her, and she settled in between me and the wheel. We must have ridden that way until near midnight when she changed positions to face me and began kissing me.

"Did you ever love me?" she asked.

"Don't talk nonsense. I loved you from the day we met."

"But how could you. I was ugly then and later you knew I was a slut and a whore."

"Love doesn't work that way. You don't choose to fall in love. It happens to you."

"I know, but you deserve better."

"You were a wonderful wife."

"But I was also a whore, and I so wanted to make that up to you."

"Look let's put the past behind us," I said.

"Please make love to me," she said.

"Here?"

"Yes, it's been too long, and there may not be much time left."

"What about your heart."

"I'm fine. Just be sweet and nice. Like we use to be with each other."

Before I could really think about it, my shorts were down, and her bikini top and bottom were on the deck. She rode me slow with frequent stops not wanting the moment to end. It had been a long five-plus year, but it felt right. We had just finished when I heard Diane on the ladder. I hurriedly pulled up my pants, and Leslie retrieved her discarded suit from the deck. She had wrapped her robe around herself and was bending to give me a kiss when Diane entered the cockpit.

As Leslie hurried down, Diane said with a wink, "Glad you two are on better terms."

"Well things are better, but we'll have to see," I replied.

Diane took over, and in spite of the light winds, the morning found us well on our way. However, by late afternoon it was official the hurricane was headed for the Windward Islands to our south. It was a class five. It was unclear, but it looked like it might hit St. Lucia.

"We got lucky," Orian told me over coffee as I manned the cockpit.

"Yes, but I wish the wind would pick up, so we could get out of here," I said.

"Relax she's way behind us."

I had never seen a storm get so powerful so fast. By that evening of the seventeenth, she was a category five like no other I had seen. She was headed straight for Dominica. She destroyed that Island on the morning of September 18th. Where Irma had been broad, and slow Maria was compact and fast. After crossing Dominica, she lost some strength but quickly regained it and then some with winds of a hundred-seventy-five miles an hour she turned north. Then She settled in, right behind us on the same course.

The news from Dominica frightened me. Even if we made land, we were not safe.

"She's too powerful," I told Diane.

"But she's well behind us. We can make Puerto Rico or St. Croix."

"And then what, she's right behind us. Is any place safe? What if she picks up speed?"

"She'll probably turn east, the upper air currents."

"Bull shit, she's too strong."

"So, what are you going to do?"

The words from long ago came back to me, "the sea will test you."

"We'll make for the Island of Saba and The Bottom. The town is protected by the mountains."

"Maria will gain on us if we go east, and if she turns that way even if you make it. You'll lose the boat."

Like all the Lessor Antilles, Saba was a volcanic island, but the town, called simply The Bottom, was up in the volcanic peaks set in a kind of protective bowl of rock. The name came from the Dutch word Botte which means bowl. The English corrupted the name to Bottom. It was a small, unremarkable place, but it was the closest land that had any chance of surviving this storm. The problem was Saba barely had a harbor. If the storm hit even a sideways glance, no boat would survive. A week ago, Annabelle was my whole life, and now I was probably going to wreck her to save my family.

Now I had to tell Leslie our plans had changed.

Leslie and Kat were in the stern cabin. They had their bathing suits on planning to sun on the deck.

"Sorry," I said, "I need you to stay below today. There's a storm coming."

"Is it a bad storm?" Leslie asked.

I hesitated afraid of scaring them, but they would know the truth soon enough.

"The worst there can be, and she's right behind us."

"Can we make Puerto Rico?"

"I'm not sure that would do us any good," I said honestly.

Leslie wrapped her arms around Kat as if to protect her.

"What will we do?" she asked.

"I believe I know someplace we can be safe. I'm going to take us there, but we will have to race to get there before the storm hits."

"Can I steer the boat, daddy?" Kat asked. It was the first time she had called me daddy.

"Not today. I need you to stay here with your mom and take care of her."

Back on deck, Diane had Annabelle on the new course and the engine running on full.

"This is going to be tight. You know," Diane said.

"Yes, ask Orian to call ahead and set up transportation from the pier to the town,"

"Ok," Diane said and then added, "She's a good boat. I always liked her."

The sea had already started to swell as Annabelle began her race. Good, she likes a bit of a swell I thought. Tomorrow Annabelle would probably be just scrap, but today she was in the race of her life with all our lives depending on her. The swells increased as the wind from the southeast began to pick up. Annabelle's sails filled, and she raced along. However, Maria was fast behind her.

Fifteen-foot waves became twenty, and the storm came on. Diane went forward as the seas hit the bow and shortened the sails. Annabelle was flying across the seas as if she knew what depended on her. I was steering her as far as possible to the east knowing I was being pushed before the storm to the north, and then we saw the peak before us to the northeast.

"She's a good twenty maybe twenty-five miles to the north and east," Diane shouted over the roar of the wind.

The waves were thirty feet or more, and our speed had slowed accordingly. Thirty feet a long way up a wave and an even further distance down. As I began to lose hope, I felt it almost imperceptibly at first. The wind was slowing. The storm and Annabelle were moving in different directions. The satellite showed the tale. Maria was shifting to the west. She was still coming north, but Annabelle was briefly coming into a lull.

"Give me all the sail you got," I called to Diane, "We're going to make a run for it. I turned Annabelle straight for Saba with her sails out and her engine full throttle.

****

"They turned the power back on son. Shutting it off was just a precaution," the old man said. We were standing in his little shack by the water looking at the wreck of Annabelle. He claimed to be a fisherman but was just another refugee from somewhere north. I thought I detected a slight New England accent. He had leathery skin from the sun and probably looked far older than he was. His skin as tan as the dark tea he had poured into large mugs for us as we inspected what was left of Annabelle.

"It was the surge," he said, "tore her bottom out and beached her. Actually, probably saved her from worse."

He was right. Maria had torn boulder loose and sent them into the little harbor. The storm nearly destroyed the pier and had made travel along the road up the mountain difficult but had done little damage to the town or island. Annabelle was beached, her hull stove in and her mast snapped. The reports from Puerto Rico were far worse.

"She looks like she was a fine sloop, but not fast," he said.

"I don't know. She made fifteen knots yesterday. Just takes the right conditions," I said with a grim pride in my boat. I knew if there was a hero in my tale it was Annabelle, she had performed beautifully and gotten us to safety in plenty of time. She had beaten Maria, but at a heavy price. I was under no illusions, she would cost more to fix than she was worth whole. I had lost my boat, but she had saved us. I thanked my host for the tea and went out to walk around the remains of Annabelle. As I reached the bow, I heard someone behind me. It was Leslie, she had walked down the road from the town strewn as it was with rocks and debris.

"She looks pretty bad," she said.

"It's a total loss," I responded as I turned back to look at the remains.

She came up behind me and rested her head on my shoulder. A week ago, she had bitten me there; now as she embraced me with her arms, it felt good. All the anger and pain were gone. Annabelle saved more than my body; she gave me back my life.

"There is a plane that will take us to Aruba. They assure me from there we can get an international flight anywhere in the US. That's if you're still coming?"

"Yes, someone has to take care of Kat while you're in the hospital."

"I could get my parents? They'll be coming anyway," she said.

"Kat should be with her father. I'll get Orian to handle the salvage."

I walked over, placed my hand on the broken hull of Annabelle, and whispered: "goodbye old girl and many thanks."

Epilogue

It wasn't one operation, but three the last was in the first week of February. The cardiologist who gave us the final all-clear missed his calling as a lawyer. There were so many buts and if in his final prognosis that he was fully protected against any future event. Nevertheless, Leslie was out of the hospital and doing reasonably well. She wasn't actually working. Her future as a bank executive was on hold, and that probably was permanent.