The Pirate Queen

by Patricia Hickman

  “I’m making Saphora a wall hanging.” Emerald got up and awkwardly hugged her mother. She started to look into her eyes about the same time Daisy looked past her.

  As much as Saphora had wished for Emerald to leave, she was now glad, for she filled up the silence with her endless supply of words. Daisy was, at her core, as reticent as Saphora. Saphora imagined the two of them running out of things to say after the first hour of catching up.

  “Bender’s bought you a beautiful house on the water,” said Daisy.

  “Two,” said Emerald.

  “I’ve seen the Lake Norman place, Emerald. I was with Saphora when she decided to buy it.” Daisy left the den and joined Saphora in the kitchen. “Do you have any broccoli, Saphora? At my age I’m putting it in everything now.”

  Saphora opened the refrigerator and checked inside the crisper. “There’s no broccoli. I can pick some up later today though.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I can do it. Emerald,” she said as if she was irritated, as if her daughter’s knitting was in the way of more important things, “why don’t you make the drinks?” Next she inspected inside Saphora’s refrigerator herself. She checked for fresh lemons and asked if she had a jar of lemon curds. Saphora had not seen lemon curd in the pantry since the Southern Living shoot. Daisy said, “How about I do the shopping for us?”

  By nightfall, Daisy marshaled Saphora out of the kitchen. “I’ll take care of dinner. You get some rest,” she told Saphora.

  Emerald moved her knitting out onto the deck. Saphora joined her outside, saying she wanted to watch the sun go down. Emerald said, “Mother takes over my place too when she comes over. Although I haven’t seen her in years. She thinks my house is too small for stay-over guests.”

  “I’m glad to give up kitchen duties,” said Saphora. She was feeling out of energy, running back and forth between the house and Duke. “She’s not so bad.”

  “First you’ll think that. Then it goes to her head. You’ll see.”

  “I’ll admit I get put out with her too,” said Saphora. But the day before she was beginning to feel put out with Emerald. She tried to imagine herself knocking about in the house all by herself. “Do you like living alone, Emerald? Is the quiet deafening?”

  “I keep the tube on, you know, hospital shows and the like.”

  “But what do you do with your time? You can do anything you want, right?”

  “My son’s never been a good decision maker. It seems I’m always bailing him out.” She started a long story about her son and his tendency to move from job to job.

  Saphora decided that Emerald never really understood what Saphora meant when she asked her a question. She had heard it said that it was easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. But in trying to do that—live for herself—she had gotten a whole houseful of people who needed her attention. Emerald had been given the opportunity to become whoever she could be, and yet all she did was enable her son. Saphora felt bad for continuously judging her sister. Maybe she explained herself so poorly that Emerald only heard part of what was said. “Emerald, I’m just curious is all. I’m not talking about your son. I’m asking what you do with your life now. What is the meaning of life for you?”

  “He’s really needy, Saphora. He is my life.”

  “But if you keep getting him out of his problems, then he’ll never learn to do things on his own,” said Saphora. “Are you saying that you don’t have a purpose if your son doesn’t need you to fix his life?”

  Emerald put down her knitting. “Are you getting mad at me again?”

  “I’m not. But don’t you wonder if there’s something more for us than bailing out our kids?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Look at Mother. She’s going to set the table, put out the food. Then she’ll pout because no one lifted a hand to help. Of course, we could try to help and she’d run us out.”

  “She’s not going to change,” said Emerald.

  “That is what I’m trying to say.” She finally had it in her mind how to say it to Emerald. “I don’t want my life to stay like this. I’m afraid of turning into her.”

  “Is that what you meant? You don’t have to worry. You’re not going to turn into her.”

  “You don’t know. I might.”

  “Saphora, this is the way women talk when they’re under stress. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you and Bender were back in Lake Norman living life as normal.”

  “It wasn’t normal, Emerald. I’d never go back to how things used to be.”

  “You are such a goof! I’d give my eyeteeth to have your life.”

  “Bender’s not an easy man to live with. I was just a fixture in his well-ordered world.” She was taking a chance, spilling her guts to flighty Emerald.

  “He loves you. He told me.”

  “When did he tell you?”

  “The night before he went into the hospital. He’s in love with you, Saphora. You mean everything to him.”

  “Bender said that?”

  “I wouldn’t make it up.”

  Emerald would make it up though. If she thought she could make Saphora happier with a twist of her words, she would do it. Words meant nothing to her, true or not. They were just words. Emerald would take something as small as a nod of approval from Bender and stretch it into whatever she thought would improve what was said. It was her way of feeling included.

  “You missed a stitch, Emerald. Look, there’s a gap in your row.”

  She held up her knitting. There was the hole. “Oh, what’s the use?” Emerald laid it aside.

  Gwennie called at bedtime to tell Saphora that she was finally making headway for the sake of her client. Saphora told her Luke had asked her to the town dance. “I turned him down. It wouldn’t be right.”

  But Gwennie already knew. “You should go, Mama. Daddy would like to know you’re not holed up brooding over him.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go. It makes me feel less guilty because I can’t be there.”

  “Should I?”

  “Yes, go.”

  “How many times has Luke called?” asked Saphora.

  “Once. But we’ve texted back and forth every day.”

  She hoped Gwennie was really coming back on Friday.

  Saphora helped her mother settle into the guest room where Eddie and Tobias had pitched a sheet tent as they spied on Luke digging in the backyard. The house took on a different music with them gone and Mother pacing up and down the hallway and brushing her teeth as she made a to-do list for the next day.

  In spite of Mother’s finicky habits, she had gone to bed and left the kitchen light on. Saphora went down the stairs and across the den. She was reaching for the kitchen light switch when she noticed the library door left open. She had not invited her mother into the room. But she knew she had a love of reading and would help herself to a book or two. She turned on the library light as she walked in. She found the room just as it had been the morning Bender had gotten dressed for church. There were his medical journals in a stack on the nightstand. He had left a magnifying glass out on the desk. But the middle drawer of the desk was ajar. She was about to close it when she opened it instead. She had never remembered Bender as one to keep a journal. But there, bound in green leather, was a journal. She pulled it out to examine it. It was slightly worn at the corners. That was a surprise.

  She settled into the upholstered chair next to the desk where Bender had read before bed the few weeks they had stayed in the house. She held it closed next to her, her mind exploring their shared past.

  She opened it to the first page, half expecting to find a story about one of his lovers. But it was a passage about Turner.

  Saphora has been in labor for twenty hours. She is so pale that I can hardly stand to look at her. I found this journal in the hospital gift shop. I’m writing in it to keep from losing my mind. She’s not in any danger. But there is something so fragile about
her, seeing her laboring to bring our first child into the world. Even that scares me to death. The world is not a place for children.

  The staircase creaked. Mother was coming downstairs, probably for her nightly glass of baking soda and water. Saphora closed the journal although she wanted to finish reading it. She grabbed a book from Bender’s nightstand and put it on top of the journal to carry it out. She shut off the light and met her mother in the kitchen.

  “Saphora. I thought I saw a light on downstairs. Oh, you’re reading.”

  Saphora said, “Might as well use the library.”

  “A Bible,” she said.

  Saphora looked down at the book she had grabbed off Bender’s nightstand. She managed to not look surprised that she had picked up a Bible. “Oh, this. Pastor Mims gave it to Bender, I guess. Never know when you might need a little help from above, Mama.”

  “Sure, sure. Well, good night then.”

  “I’ll see you at breakfast and then we’ll head for Duke,” said Saphora.

  She got herself back upstairs. She locked her door and climbed straight into bed. The room was a pale blue in the glow of nothing but her reading lamp, like the night was all around her. She laid the Bible beside her and it fell open. Out slid a bookmark, meaning that Bender must have marked it. Or else Mims had done it for him. Ministers were sneaky like that, leaving things around for people to find, like those annoying people who leave little tracts on the sinks in public bathrooms. She did not know how many she had dropped into the trash can out of sheer willfulness.

  A scripture was underlined in green, though, as if Bender had found something he liked and then grabbed the only pen he could find—a marker left behind by one of his grandsons. Saphora read it out of curiosity but also partly comfort. Just imagining Bender propped up in bed marking up a Bible comforted her. He was a man who had kept distance between himself and anyone who might try to look somehow beyond Bender the plastic surgeon. It was like finding an unlocked door.

  He had marked a place in the book of Psalms:

  You have taken account of my wanderings;

  Put my tears in Your bottle

  Are they not in Your book?

  It was a mystery the way he had marked it. There were lines beneath it and then an arrow pointing toward the bottom of the page. Saphora held the page under the reading lamp to make out his notations. He wrote:

  Is this literal or a metaphor? Would He keep vigil over my pain so meticulously that he would preserve my tears? And what book?

  And then in bold lettering, Ask Mims!

  Saphora turned page after page and found more markings and notations. Bender had been reading it, apparently for hours on end. When he would find himself at the end of his own human reasoning, again he would write, Ask Mims!

  Saphora put the Bible beside her pocketbook and turned out the light. She lay in the dark listening to nothing at all. Even Luke was not digging. The river creatures had fallen quiet as if the earth were taking a big pause. As if waiting for her to notice that all these years, in spite of her occasional prayers, she’d neglected a part of herself—a connection to God. Maybe the soul needed to be tended the same as the mind or the body. Or else what was real crowded out what could be. Those matters seemed real to Mims. And while facing cancer, real to Bender. She must admit, cancer does make the heart look above earth for answers.

  She closed her eyes and a phrase fluttered through her thoughts like a note dropped into her mind by Bender—Ask Mims! After she returned home from the hospital, she would pay the minister a visit.

  The smell of her mother’s Good Morning muffins came up the stairs Wednesday and awoke Saphora from a dream about Bender. He was young again and paddling a small boat across Lake Norman. Only there were no houses anywhere along the banks, just a mist rolling down the slopes and surrounding him. He stopped the boat in the middle of the lake and then looked straight up at Saphora as if she were a disembodied spirit looking down on him. Then the scent of muffins came at her senses and she sat straight up in bed.

  She did not make an effort to dress but went down in her sleep shirt and slippers. Emerald and her mother sat buttering and eating muffins. It was a quiet circle, the three of them eating breakfast without the need to jump up and fill a coffee cup or leave with breakfast half eaten to drive a child off to school.

  The morning was like a gift to all three of them, at least in Saphora’s estimation. But Emerald stared sadly through the patio doors and out across the Neuse, unable or unwilling to allow a moment of joy to seep in. Her mother sat tabulating her checkbook balance. Neither of them seemed aware of the miracle of eating muffins without interruption.

  “Mama, will you drive us to Duke? I’ve got some reading to do,” said Saphora.

  “Of course,” said Daisy. “Emerald, will you go too?”

  “I’ll stay behind,” said Emerald. “I don’t know why I’m so weepy this morning. Saphora, why do you think?”

  Saphora knew it was a loaded question. One misstep and Emerald’s sensitive comportment would topple into pity. “You’re merciful, I guess,” said Saphora.

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, Saphora. Don’t coddle your sister. Emerald, you know you’ve got no reason to cry. It’s Saphora going through a crisis, but you’ve got to take it and make it yours.”

  “You’re horrible,” said Emerald, so quietly that she surprised even Daisy.

  “Emerald, you should take the small boat out a ways,” Saphora said, inviting her to look through the window at the boat that Eddie had been using. “Borrow my rod and reel. The fish have been biting even late morning. Whatever you catch I’ll fix along with dinner.”

  “Be productive, is what your sister means,” said Daisy.

  “I just mean go and have some time to yourself,” said Saphora. “Mother, can you be ready in a half hour?”

  “Five minutes,” said Daisy.

  Saphora dressed quickly and took Bender’s Bible off the nightstand. Daisy waited at the bottom of the staircase. Beyond the deck, Emerald got the rod and reel out of the storage shed. She pulled the line out a ways and stared at it as if she was not exactly sure what to do next.

  “She’ll work it out, Mother,” said Saphora. “When we get back, will you please try not to be so hard on her?” Saphora asked as kindly as she knew how. “Her plane leaves early tomorrow. Let’s find good in Emerald.” She gave the keys to Daisy and led her out to the garage.

  Only two cars passed them on the road out of Oriental and into New Bern. Saphora played Beethoven in the player. Daisy was completely enthralled with the tracking device. “At least I won’t get us lost.”

  “I won’t let you, Mother.” Saphora opened Bender’s Bible. She wrote down some of his notes in a notepad.

  “I’ve tried reading it. My friend Jan, she loves her Bible group,” said Daisy. “They’re all the rage now. I don’t see the attraction.”

  “Bender left some notes behind for a minister friend. He must have been on a quest.”

  “If it gives him answers in the midst of cancer, I’m all for it,” said Daisy.

  “It’s not answers. He’s asking questions,” said Saphora.

  “Like what?”

  “Like this one. The scripture says, ‘Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials.’ Then Bender’s note says, ‘Is that kind of joy possible? How can I know it?’”

  Daisy was strangely without comment.

  Saphora took down his question in her notebook. “Then on the next page is the scripture about loving your neighbor. Bender asks, ‘How will I know when I have that kind of love? Can I cause it to be true by something I do? Or does God put it in me?’”

  “He’s on a journey,” said Daisy.

  Parking decks surrounded the sprawling Duke campus. “Let’s park below and then we’ll be closer to the basement tube,” said Saphora. She helped her mother find a single space open at the farthest end of the deck. They walked into the hospital and down the tube. A small t
ram zipped back and forth for those who did not want to walk. Saphora led her onto the elevator.

  The cancer wing buzzed with activity. A high-profile senator had checked in for operable cancer. The paparazzi press corps were not allowed past the lobby just outside the elevator. When the elevator door opened, the journalists were attentive only long enough to see if some celebrity was stepping out from the elevator.

  An attendant stopped Saphora and asked for her identification. When she finally got clearance for herself and her mother, the nurse told her, “Your husband’s room is right next to the senator’s.”

  Guards were stationed next to the senator’s door. Daisy was goggle-eyed over the press corps and the security. “How is the senator?” she asked the guard. He did not answer. A caterer pushed a cart around them, and the guard allowed her to pass.

  “Did you see all of that?” asked Daisy. “Fruit, belgian waffles, and jams. Brunch for a king. That’s our tax dollars at work, thank you very much.”

  The door to Bender’s room opened. A nurse recognized Saphora. “Mrs. Warren. Sorry for all the noise. Senator Weberman’s just checked in and brought his entourage with him.”

  “How is Bender?” asked Saphora.

  “No change. Have you met yet with a neuropsychologist?” asked the nurse. “He can give you answers.”

  “Jim is scheduling one,” said Saphora. “Dr. Pennington, I mean.”

  Daisy asked, “How about I go for coffee, and we’ll sit with Bender for as long as you want?”

  “Vanilla latte, skim,” said Saphora.

  Bender’s room was dark. She opened the blinds and let in the noonday sun. But it woke the patient in the bed next to Bender. He let out a yawning sigh and then brought his bed up. His head was bandaged from surgery. He said, “Who’s there?”

  “Mrs. Warren. I’m visiting my husband,” said Saphora. “Is the light too bright?”

  “The light’s all I can see,” he said. “My tumor’s affected my eyesight. I’m Mort.”

  “Saphora.”

  Bender’s eyes were swollen closed, dark around his lids and under his eyes.