The Best of Friends

by Sara James

  We left the Canadian coast on a scruffy tub called the Petrel V, which we nicknamed the African Queen, for a two-day journey to the middle of the North Atlantic. In less than twenty-four hours my carefully blow-dried hair was a mess of sticky, salt-encrusted curls and the Clinique compact showed more freckles than I’d seen in years, but I didn’t care. We were close to our near-mythical destination. The Titanic lies some 1,000 miles due east of Boston, and about 400 miles south of the coast of Newfoundland. Our fleet included three other ships, and we motored between them on dubious dinghies nicknamed Pop and Sinks. One ship, the Nadir, was home to Nautile, one of only five subs in the world capable of diving the 12,500 feet to where the fabled ship lay. And I was about to get the chance of a lifetime.

  On August 10, 1998, I climbed into the hatch of the yellow submarine to become the first network correspondent and one of only a few civilians in the world to travel two and a half miles to the bottom of the ocean. As Nautile’s two-man French crew nonchalantly informed me, fewer people have traveled to the bottom of the ocean than have flown in space. To this day, brawny, hulking men ask me how I did it, tell me they wouldn’t, they couldn’t, how the claustrophobia and the deep would have proved too much. I’m not quite sure how I managed except to say I’d been told another woman had panicked and the sub had to abort the dive. I was determined not to suffer a similar humiliation, not to let anyone suggest that claustrophobia or fear was gender-related. And while Andrew might have been worried about my assignment, he knew how much I’d wanted to make the trip and never said a thing.

  But when the hatch closed and the bobbing divers checked that all was secure and signaled the okay to dive, I picked up the camera—there was no room for a cameraman—and pestered the driver and engineer with questions at an even faster clip than usual to try to forget being in a tiny cabin just seven feet in diameter, sinking to the bottom of the abyss.

  Underneath her jaunty exterior, the Nautile was a utilitarian beauty. Her four-inch-thick hull was titanium, and this inner-space capsule was a perfect sphere—the only metal, and the only shape, capable of withstanding the staggering pressures of the ocean deep. At 12,500 feet below sea level, that pressure was 6,000 pounds per square inch, and the crew’s standard party trick was to descend carrying an eight-ounce styrofoam cup in the sub’s outside basket and return with a styrofoam thimble. To illustrate that another way, no human remains have ever been found at the site of Titanic. Any breach in the Nautile’s hull, even one as invisible as a pinprick, and we would simply implode, disintegrating to dust.

  The dive to the ocean floor took two hours and the trip would last nearly eight hours, but the Nautile had no heat so I wore several layers of clothing. Even worse as far as I was concerned, there was no bathroom. It might have been years since the 1991 Gulf War and I might long since have left Virginia, but southern manners last forever. So I abstained from food and drink, and thankfully didn’t have to rely on the Depends I’d secretly worn just in case.

  The lack of creature comforts and the threat of sudden claustrophobia were no match for curiosity. I was thrilled by this chance to journey to Atlantis, to visit that magical kingdom of fantastic sea creatures equipped with fanciful lanterns and obscene teeth. And I felt humbled to have a chance to glimpse the ship of my imagination, that once-proud and glittering liner which had shivered, gasped, and broken, falling endlessly through those frigid seas, taking more than fifteen hundred people to their grave.

  As we landed gently on the ocean floor and crabbed forward, I held my breath so hard my ears rang, and fumbled to focus, knowing that if we were to get tangled in this rusted carcass, it would become our grave, too. But my fear lifted lightly as a bride’s veil when the Titanic’s mangled flank came into view because now all I felt was the wonder of it all, and I pressed my face against our porthole and peered through it, to the porthole of the Titanic, a window to the past.

  The section of the ship before us was a piece of the portside hull of the first-class C deck, and the historians on our expedition had determined it to be cabin C-86, ocean home of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Douglas from Minneapolis. Walter was an heir to the Quaker Oats fortune, and he and his bride of three years, Mahala, had traveled to Europe to celebrate his retirement.

  There, in that sacred swath of ocean, I almost felt I could see their shadows, and could imagine that elegant, happy couple, him holding her arm, her head resting lightly on his shoulder, as they left this very cabin for a night of dinner and dancing. I pictured the grand staircase, the parade of women in riches and rubies, velvets and brocades, the men formal and austere, before privilege and delight were wrenched apart in a night of horror and chaos, selfishness and chivalry.

  As the boat began to sink, Walter had insisted Mahala take a seat in lifeboat 2, but when she begged her beloved husband to join her, he’d replied, “The only honorable thing to do is stay behind with the men.” Years later, Mahala had written a poem about that terrible April night.

  Darkness comes to her suddenly.

  The huge black bulk stands out in silhouette against the star-lit sky…

  Slowly, slowly, with hardly a ripple

  Of that velvet sea,

  She sinks out of sight…

  Slowly it lost its force,

  Thinned to a tiny wisp of sound,

  Then to a pitiful whisper…

  Silence.

  A silence that had lasted for eighty-six years. But now, as I watched, the crew had painstakingly attached tow ropes connected to enormous lift-bags, each filled with five thousand pounds of diesel fuel, which would soon lift that shard of the Titanic to the surface for the first time since 1912. And suddenly it was mission accomplished, and time to head home.

  As we began our slow ascent, the driver turned off the Nautile’s lights so that I could witness a second glorious show. Our steady climb through myriad phosphorous sea creatures made it appear that we were in the midst of a psychedelic shower, fuchsia and lavender rain shot with gold falling all around us. And then, quite suddenly, there was the genuine golden spangle of sunshine, and we were hoisted back onto the ship. And I found it hard to believe that magical trip had been real.

  JUST FOUR MONTHS later, instead of journeying 12,500 feet beneath the Atlantic, I flew thousands of miles over the Pacific, to an entirely different but equally magical scene. The sheep wandered about, bleating and muttering, thoroughly addled by the bewildering sight of humans rushing about, displaying even less sense than usual.

  It was Boxing Day. Traditionally the day after Christmas in Australia is a day to eat leftovers, watch The Test on the tube—a five-day cricket match that’s mesmerizing or mind-numbing, depending on one’s perspective—or head to the beach. But it was also a long holiday pretty much everywhere, ensuring that Mom, Dad, my sister Elizabeth and her husband, John, and my sister Susan could all attend my wedding to Andrew, as well as several intrepid aunts, uncles, and friends. And while Ginger, Linda, and Fiona weren’t here—either home with brand-new babies or still pregnant—my friends Liz, Andi, and Toni had made the trip, too.

  One great thing about a Christmas wedding in Australia was the reliably excellent weather. You could bank on temperatures in the nineties, with only the rarest sprinkle.

  “So when do you think it will stop?” Mom asked.

  The rain strafed the house, driven by an angry, reckless wind.

  “I don’t know,” Andrew’s sister Christine hedged, then acknowledged, “They’re saying on the news it’s the storm of the century.”

  “Well, doesn’t that just make sense,” I groused under my breath. “I mean, nothing about this relationship has been typical, so why should our wedding day be?” I shivered in my dress, sleeveless so I wouldn’t roast in the heat. The temperature was 45 degrees. Fahrenheit.

  We peered through the streaming glass at lacy white tents where we’d eaten dinner the night before yawing to stern like storm-tossed yachts.

  “It will be memorable,” said my sister Susan, ever
sunny, “and everyone is already having fun. Who cares if it rains?” The rain I could deal with, but the hail seemed excessive. Elizabeth, recovering from vocal surgery and unable to say much of anything, squeezed my hand and indicated her support with a smile and a bright nod.

  “Andrew and Trevor have raided every place they can think of to find heaters,” added Andrew’s sister Kate with her youngest-sister giggle. “And we’ve got heaps of jumpers and blankets so everyone can rug up.”

  “Sara?” It was Andrew’s mum calling from downstairs. “It’s Ginger, calling from Africa.”

  “Gin!”

  “Oh, I hate saying congratulations by phone. I wish I were there!”

  “So do I. I felt the same way when Kimber was born. But we’ll show you plenty of photos. They should be pretty interesting given that there’s a tempest and it’s about five degrees so only the sheep are dressed appropriately, but hey, it’s happening! We’re getting married!”

  “They say in Namibia that rain on your wedding is good luck. So you have good luck, my friend. Kimber and Nad send their love, too.”

  I hung up and looked around. My family. Andrew’s family. Getting along as if they’d Christmased together since we were toddlers instead of meeting a few days ago. Aussies, Americans, my friend Lizzie Sanderson in from Scotland, Toni Wren from London, Andrew’s translator and his family here from Japan, and a handful of New Zealanders, all jumbled together in the rambling, comfortable farmhouse where Andrew had grown up. All here, here for us. I had good luck indeed.

  Later that day, in the rosy crumbling church in a field not far from the house, with the occasional sheep bleating pitifully in the background, we said our vows. I loved the service—my dad, his voice husky with emotion, pronouncing us man and wife as Mom beamed, Andrew smiling and handsome in his tux, my sisters at my side, the security of our unshakable trio. And then there was the slow exit to be bedecked with charms and hugs from the wonderful Butcher clan and our friends. Happy memories, to be sure.

  But what I remember most was the laughter. Giddy laughter as guests donned flannel blankets over spaghetti straps, chunky pullovers and farm coats over satin and silk, to brave the tent, only to abandon its elegant dampness and the hundreds of beautiful native flowers as soon as possible for a noisy, blissfully overheated night of toasting and dancing in the garage turned rumpus room. And as we took off for our honeymoon in a redneck red 1970s monstrosity called a Monaro, an Australian cross between a Camaro and a Chevelle, I knew I felt luckier than the wealthiest society gal on Park Avenue. How simple in the end, how right. The man from ten thousand miles away felt just like the boy next door.

  WHEN WE RETURNED to New York after a leisurely honeymoon, Andrew and I set up house in my apartment. It felt luxurious to be together, yet I was anxious to fill our home with the sound of a child’s laughter, and so far we’d had no luck. Thankfully, a Dateline producer and friend, Roberta Oster, was investigating a human rights travesty that would help me take my mind off myself.

  “These women are going through an ordeal we can’t imagine, Sara.”

  With all that has happened since, it seems impossible to remember a time when we didn’t think of Afghanistan, when we hadn’t heard of the Taliban. But back in 1999, the evils of that regime were just becoming more widely known.

  The dangers of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, however, were clear. As had been the case a few years before when I’d headed to Sudan, there was a security checklist at NBC.

  At home, Andrew gave me a long, strong hug. “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t forget your Discman.”

  “Thanks, Andrew.”

  As I packed for the flight to London, then Islamabad, I still couldn’t get used to it. There would be someone here at home when I returned, someone to think about when I was there so I didn’t do something inordinately foolish or downright dumb. Someone—as well as something—to rely on.

  In Pakistan, Bert and I interviewed an Afghan-born American woman named Zohra Rasekh, a health researcher and author of a groundbreaking report for Physicians for Human Rights which detailed the life-threatening consequences for women of living under the Taliban regime. “They say women are sinful, women are prostitutes. If they go out and show their face in public, if they mingle with men, they are bad,” Rasekh told us. With her, we visited refugee camps just a few miles from the Khyber Pass, that fabled gateway to Afghanistan.

  Huddled in their tents, women and children whispered of their ordeal: being forced to quit jobs as doctors, lawyers, accountants because a bunch of troglodytes said they had to stay home; educating their daughters at home by candlelight because girls couldn’t attend school; living in a land where any infraction, no matter how trivial or arbitrary, could be punished by beatings, public amputations, or even execution. “I’m so afraid, sometimes I think it’s better to die than to live like this,” one woman told us. And for many, the symbol of their shame and oppression was the mandatory burqa which covered them from head to toe, turning women into shapeless wraiths forced to peer at the world through the rectangular window of their powder blue prison. I thought I would weep when one woman told of how her daughter had been beaten with a metal rod by one of the Taliban’s religious enforcers for not wearing the burqa, even though she was only eight years old.

  And as I listened to woman after woman, story after story, something remarkable happened. I felt my guilt and regret and fear bleach in the searing Pakistani sun. With surprising clarity, I suddenly knew I couldn’t have lived my life any other way. As desperately as I wanted a child, there was no way to rewrite the script which had brought me here. I hadn’t been ready to be a mother at twenty-five, even thirty. Only recently had theoretical desire distilled into longing. I was ambitious, certainly. But I also realized that ambition, like claustrophobia and fear, wasn’t gender-specific. I loved my life. I had wanted to learn, to test my limits, to tramp about this rugged world a bit myself. I had wanted more than I could find during my nurturing, wonderful, but sheltered childhood in Richmond. Work had honed me, made me who I was, who I was happy to be, as well as the woman Andrew loved. Those women were every bit my equal in intelligence and drive, but their opportunities were meager and their resources nonexistent. Neanderthals had sacked their nation, ravaged their homes and families, and held their futures hostage. Lucky? I was luckier than I could have dared imagine. As we boarded the plane to come home, I only hoped that in telling their story, I would remind others—as they had reminded me—how fragile freedom is, how fortunate we were.

  AND WHEN I returned to New York, that glorious and unforgettable run, which had taken me through 1998 and now halfway through 1999, seemed as if it might never end.

  “See it? Look how quickly the heart is beating.” The doctor slid her magic wand across my belly and I saw a circle on the screen and, in its center, a pulsing bright bead of light. I almost felt as if I’d been allowed to peer through a secret window, and thought back to my glimpse of the Titanic. But that had been a view of the past and this felt like a porthole to the future. “Everything looks great, Sara,” the doctor continued.

  “Thank God.”

  “You’re eight weeks along and you can see the heartbeat, so that means your risk of miscarriage is less than five percent. Congratulations.”

  All those weeks and months and years of worrying, and there had been no need. Andrew and I were going to have a baby. That night we celebrated with Martinelli’s sparkling apple juice.

  “Do you suppose it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked.

  “Better be a boy,” Andrew said, deadpan. Then, seeing my stricken face, grinned. “What do I care? Here’s to our baby, boy or girl.”

  I told no one. No one except Mom and Dad, my sisters, Linda, Lisa, Andi, Scottie, Sharon, Fiona, Toni, and a few others. And, of course, Ginger.

  “Oh, Sara. How wonderful!”

  “Can you believe it? We’ll be moms at the same time!”

  I was out
of my skin with excitement. The June sunshine was more baskable than usual. The sidewalks looked especially pretty. I had never noticed how cheerful and happy everyone was here in New York. I reveled in that distinctly new-pregnancy habit of stroking my belly. Mostly in the shower, as, in spite of everyone I’d told, it still felt like a delicious secret. I couldn’t feel anything yet, but I knew someone was in there. I was thirty-eight years old and I was going to be a mom, going to join that secret sisterhood in which so many of my dear friends were recent initiates. Once again I’d been able to sneak in the back door. I’d managed to get pregnant in spite of the dire predictions, those you’re-too-old naysayers and worrywarts.

  Two weeks later I had a second, routine scan, and couldn’t wait for my next look through the porthole. As the doctor greased my stomach and began the careful, chilly circles, I propped up on my elbows, craning my neck forward, anxious for my next peek at the baby.

  But suddenly I felt as though I’d slammed into a glacier, and a splinter of ice pierced my heart. Where was it?

  The doctor didn’t say a thing, just continued those circles with increasing speed and urgency. But the fluttering little light had sputtered out.

  “It’s not there,” I said finally, because one of us had to say something. “Where is it?”

  She put down her less-than-magic wand and her cheerful expression had been replaced by the face of a stranger, that mask of a doctor forced to deliver bad news.