The Pirate Queen (30 page)

“Tobias, you surely didn’t expect to make friends here, did you? We pick and choose our friends here, don’t you know?” said Saphora.

The woman from the motel pool pushed her way through the
crowd, an obvious move to slip quietly away. She was muttering something to her spouse and was nearly out the door when Saphora called out to her.

“Just a moment, ma’am,” Saphora said to the woman. “Yes, you, ma’am. Before you leave, I think you need to know something about this little boy you stigmatize under your misguided fear.”

The woman froze as if Saphora had cast a spell of paralysis over her.

“Tobias is smart and fun to be around. He’s a darned good fisherman and, around here, that means he’s in the club.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd. A big man Saphora recognized from the fish stand downtown gave Tobias a hearty pat on the back. Saphora continued to speak about Tobias and how meaningful his friendship was to her and her grandson Eddie. As she spoke, the countenances around the dance floor changed from confusion and fear to kindness and understanding.

“Could it be,” Saphora asked, “that we’ve been given a treasure in the Tobiases placed here among us? What will we tell God we did with his treasure at the end of our lives?”

A girl who had been sitting with her father next to Saphora’s table came out of the crowd. She walked up to Tobias and held out her hand. “Want to dance?” she asked.

Tobias wiped his eyes. The girl handed him a tissue. She was blond, slightly taller than him. But he looked into her eyes as if he were twenty-one and would live forever.

The band leader started a song a cappella. Saphora’s mind was awash in a strange euphoric memory. To her surprise, it was the first song to which Saphora and Bender had danced the night of their first real date. It was, of all things, a Joni Mitchell song, “You’re My
Thrill.” Somehow the song had wound around the injuries and the assaults that pocked her past and found its way back to her. The keyboardist picked it up on the next stanza, and the brass players came to their feet while the rest of the musicians joined in. Other couples joined Tobias and his pretty young partner in the dance.

Saphora was overwhelmed with the strangest sensation pulsing up from the past. She remembered why she had fallen in love with Bender, of all things.

16

“Louisiana? What’s in Louisiana?” Gwennie sounded like she had a cold, but the Manhattan connection was not always clear.

“Louisiana as in New Orleans or wherever it is Luke’s gone for the art show,” said Saphora. It was Metairie, but that was nearly New Orleans. Her feet were soaking in a tub, still sore from the rash of dances that followed her talk-of-the-town speech last night.

“That doesn’t make sense, Mama. He was expecting me in town.”

“He said he didn’t have to tell you that he wasn’t going to be here after all. You canceled first.”

“If that’s true, then why wouldn’t he just tell me?” she asked. “Not that I care, Mama, I’m just saying it’s strange that you’re delivering the news.”

“I’m guessing, Gwennie, but it could be he didn’t want to tell you in the first place. You made it easier. Luke knows, like you know, it’s not going to work between the two of you.” The salt water stung the tops of her blistered toes.

“He told you that?”

“Not in so many words. Luke’s a very private man, Gwennie. Why would he tell me? Besides, he had so many dance partners last
night, I only saw him that first go-around on the floor. I did hear him asking a twenty-something lifeguard to watch his cat for him.” She paused for the length of time it took Gwennie to hold her breath. “After that, we spoke only in passing. I caught a ride home early with Tobias’s mother and left him to stay up late with his friends down at the marina.”

Gwennie was stewing so much that the crackling noise coming over the phone sounded like it was coming out of her.

“Gwennie, can I call back? My feet are in a world of hurt.”

“Who cares about feet at a time like this?”

“Like what?”

“Luke’s gone off and not even told me, Mama.”

“Does that matter?”

“It’s just a courtesy. He should have paid me the consideration of telling me that he was leaving.”

“I told him I’d let you know. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Obviously he thought so.”

“If I’m going to make it to Raleigh this afternoon, Gwennie, I’ve got some things to do,” said Saphora. “Want me to call you from Duke after I check in on your daddy?”

Gwennie was so quiet Saphora thought she had hung up.

“Call me,” she said, and hung up.

Daisy had left on a morning flight. The kitchen was reorganized to the point that Saphora had to rummage to find the oatmeal. But finally there it was behind the olives. Daisy had alphabetized the pantry, bless her heart.

The whole house seemed to sigh with her gone. Saphora took breakfast out on the patio. The tree between her house and Luke’s was full of birds. The Outer Banks had over six hundred species.
They all seemed to land at once in a sort of communal morning song, irritating Saphora. Luke’s gate was ajar. She took another bite of oatmeal. Then she got up and crossed the dew-soaked backyard, wetting her once-white scuffies. She was about to close the gate. But she had never walked up to Luke’s gate without going inside. He had not asked, but maybe he had left the gate open on purpose. Maybe he wanted her to check on his place in his absence.

The lifeguard had not yet come for the cat. The old yellow tabby, Johnson, lazed under the drooping evergreen.

“Are you being looked after, Johnson?” she asked. She walked across the backyard, past a koi pond. The koi were all gone. Birds of prey could not resist the sight of a beautiful, exotic koi supper. Luke had not possessed either the strength or the vision to restore the pond to its former splendor. She walked around the fountain, a likeness of a young girl that had stopped burbling some time ago. Water had stained the child’s cheeks like tears.

Saphora walked past the door that led into the garage where Luke holed up night and day pouring his grief into his work. She looked through the small garage window. It was too dark to see anything. She walked past the arsenal of garden tools Luke used every night looking for an elusive treasure. The shovel handle was worn smooth from use. The spade stuck to the handle only because it was rusted on tightly.

Saphora carried the shovel back across the yard. She would replace it with a new shovel at least. Not everything in Luke’s yard had to be wasting away.

Patches of newly sown grass sprang up from the circles now filled with soil. She counted them on her way out. Ten, fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-eight. Plus two more under the tree. If he had dug a hole per night, Luke had been digging holes for a month.

Gwennie had come along at just the right time, just before Luke slipped down forever into one of his holes.

Daisy had cleaned the house so thoroughly there were no chores left to be done. By noon Saphora battled restless thoughts. A storm moved across the state right down the interstate between the Outer Banks and Raleigh. She put off driving to Duke until after lunch.

She pulled out Bender’s fishing albums, poring over photographs of him standing next to a mako shark he had snagged in the mid-Atlantic. He was so full of himself that he was flexing an arm muscle as if he had conquered the poor beast alone. Jim and two other surgeons had assisted with bringing it in. It was only eight feet in length. He had talked about the fight the fish had given him and how, upon hooking it, the mako had jumped out of the air just feet from the boat.

Lightning undulated, threading through the clouds above the river. The water was churning like it had the day she had navigated the Neuse alone. Saphora closed the drapes.

The den was dark, so she turned on the table lamps. She left the album open next to a cup of black coffee. There it sat as if poured for Bender. Next to it were two cookies, his favorites. She took the coffee and cookies to the sink and put it all into the garbage disposal.

Today was her first day fully alone in the house. She had imagined how she would eat what she liked, read without interruption. She would listen to Wagner—Bender thought Wagner was overplayed and often turned it off as if Saphora was not in the car.

Saphora got out a juicer and made a drink of fruit and soy milk. Then she made a waffle for lunch. She topped it with fruit, no syrup. She opened the curtains fully and watched the storm moving over
the Neuse as she listened to the London Symphony Orchestra. She remembered the tickets Bender had won at the silent auction, tickets they could not share. Had he predicted his own health crisis, yet lavishly spent money on the gesture?

A couple of tears clouded her eyes. She wiped them and then stuffed a bite of waffle into her mouth. Her lips were salty. The taste was berry and tears. Thunder rattled the window glass. She worried that Luke’s cat had not been picked up by the lifeguard. She hoped the cat had found the crawl space under Luke’s house a dry refuge. The lawn chair Eddie had used for fishing lifted like a kite and was pitched into the roiling water.

Saphora put the dishes in the dishwasher. She had discouraged Sherry from driving back since none of the kids were coming for the weekend. Now she wished she’d let Sherry join her anyway, Sherry who inserted herself into every conversation, filling the air with laughing and silly storytelling. But it was pleasant noise and better than the deadness of the empty house. The storm outside only made the quiet of the house more explicit.

She had wanted nothing more than the house to herself. But now that every detail was perfectly ordered as she first imagined, it was not what she had predicted.

The rain was driving sideways, pelting the house. She looked out across the deck. The sky was entirely black now. Saphora closed up Bender’s fishing album. She opened his diary. Then she took the Bible that Pastor Mims had given to him as if somehow she would magically open it and something important would fly out and comfort her. She felt like an old woman with her knitting and her Bible. She opened it anyway. No one would know.