The Stranger in the Lifeboat(12)

He turned to the Lord. “But you did say she was good.”

“She is,” the Lord replied.

“She’s gone.”

“Someplace better.”

“You smug bastard,” Lambert said. “What did you do?”

“Please, stop,” Jean Philippe whispered. He put his forehead in his hands. “She was speaking to me. She said it was time to trust God. I said, ‘Yes, cherie, I will.’ Then she smiled, and her eyes closed.” His voice quivered. “Didn’t she have the most beautiful smile?”

Mrs. Laghari leaned forward. “Did anyone else see this?”

“Alice,” Jean Philippe said. “The poor child. I told her Bernadette was sleeping. Just sleeping. Beautiful … sleep.”

He broke down. Most of us were crying, too, not just for Bernadette but for ourselves. An invisible shield had been shattered. Death had paid its first visit.

“Where’s her body?” Lambert said.

I don’t know why he asked that. It was obvious.

“The Lord told me her soul was gone,” Jean Philippe rasped.

“Wait. He told you to throw her over the side? Your own wife?”

“Stop it, Jason!” Mrs. Laghari barked.

“You dumped her in the ocean?”

“Shut up, Jason!” Yannis snapped.

Lambert sat back, smirking.

“Some God,” he cracked.



This evening, when the sun went down, a group of us were sitting outside the canopy. Nightfall brings fear. It also brings us closest together, as if we are huddled against an invader none of us can see. Tonight, with Bernadette’s absence, we seemed particularly vulnerable. A long time passed without a peep from any of us.

Finally, out of the blue, Yannis began to sing.

Hoist up the John B’s sails

See how the main sail sets …



He stopped and looked around. The rest of us exchanged glances but said nothing. Nina offered a feeble smile. Yannis let it go. His voice is high-pitched and warbly, not something you want to listen to for long anyhow.

But then Nevin shifted to his elbows. He coughed once and said, “If you’re gonna sing it, lad, sing it correctly.”

He lifted his neck. I could see his protruding Adam’s apple. He cleared his throat and sang.

Hoist up the John B’s sails

See how the main sail sets …



Mrs. Laghari took the next line.

Call for the captain ashore

Let me go home …



The rest of us began to mumble along.

Let me go home,

I want to go home,

Well, I feel so broke up, I want to go home



“It’s break up,” Nevin interrupted. “Not broke up.”

“It’s broke up,” Yannis said.

“Not in the original lyrics.”

“How do you feel so ‘break up’?” Lambert said.

“Broke!” Mrs. Laghari declared. “Now do it again.”

And we did. Three or four times.

Let me go home, let me go home, I want to go home, yeah, yeah …



Even the Lord joined in, although he didn’t seem to know the words. Little Alice watched as if she’d never seen such a thing before. Our voices dissipated into the empty ocean night, and at that moment it was possible to believe we were the only people left on Earth.



News

ANCHOR: As stunned families around the globe hold memorial services for their loved ones, we begin a series of tributes to those who were lost in the sinking of the Galaxy yacht last month. Tonight, Tyler Brewer profiles a remarkable woman who rose from abject poverty to one of the most powerful positions in her industry.

REPORTER: Thank you, Jim. Latha Laghari was born in the Basanti slums of Calcutta, India. She lived her early years in a cramped shack made of wood and tin. There was no electricity and no running water. She ate once a day.

When her parents died in a cyclone, Latha was taken in by a relative who sent her to boarding school. She excelled at chemistry and upon graduation was hoping to study medicine, but no scholarships were available to a woman of her background. Instead, she worked for two years at a meat-packing factory to save enough money to travel to Australia, where she found a job in cosmetics production.

Latha’s chemistry background and tireless work ethic saw her rise from a product tester to chief development officer at Tovlor, Australia’s largest cosmetics company. In 1989, she left to start her own business back in India, which grew into one of the top twenty cosmetics firms in the world, and which now makes the popular Smackers lipstick line.

Interestingly, Latha Laghari wore very little makeup herself. Known as an elegant, no-nonsense businesswoman, she raised two sons with her husband, Dev Bhatt, who made his fortune in the cell phone communications field.

DEV BHATT: “Latha was the rock of our family. As firm as she could be in business, she was gentle and loving to our children. She always made time for them, and for me. She said our family was the gift she was given for the family she lost as a child.”

REPORTER: Latha Laghari was seventy-one years old when she was invited onto Jason Lambert’s yacht for the star-crossed Grand Idea voyage. She leaves behind a grieving family, a Fortune 500 company, and a Center for Women’s Education that she created in Calcutta. In an interview, Laghari once said that, for all the schooling she experienced later in life, her first six years in the Basanti slums taught her the most important life lesson. When asked what that was, she said: “Survive until tomorrow.”