The Pirate Queen Page 3

  She took so long at the sink, half hoping to be left alone to stormily finish Bender’s packing, that when she came fully upright to dry her face, she yelled, “What in blazes?” finding Turner grinning at her from the open door.

  “You’re dressed, aren’t you?” he asked, half covering his eyes, typical of Turner since he was always the one to come bounding in unexpectedly without a thought for privacy.

  “Turner,” she said, not fuming, as she might have done in the past. She had a strange craving for the comfort of his silly need for her indulgences. He kissed her like he had always done when greeting his mama. To hide her swarming fears at this point was hopeless.

  “What has he done now?” he asked, not a hint of surprise about him. He had found her upstairs crying more times than could be counted.

  Saphora allowed Turner to help her to the chair next to her bed.

  “Is that Dad clanging around in the garage,” he asked, “in the middle of the morning?”

  “Turner, sit here next to me,” she said, the empty chair next to hers still neatly covered with the new chair cover she had pulled over it to match the matelassé.

  He took the seat but said, “You’re scaring me, Mama.” Turner’s normally deep mellow voice was rising.

  “Don’t think you know, Turner. You don’t.” He was assuming, she realized, that his daddy had wounded her in that covert way of his. She dried her eyes and composed herself as soberly as she did when he was five and begging her not to make him attend kindergarten. “Your daddy’s gone and gotten medical testing.”

  “Is that it? He looks fine,” said Turner.

  “He’s not fine. Cancer’s not fine.” She knew he’d be stunned. “Can you believe it?”

  Turner stared across the room through the open drapes, his never-quite-blue eyes fixed upon a sailboat that crossed the lake without any wavering of the mast, the water smooth and void of ripples. “Now Dad’s got his rods lined up along the drive, tackle laid out,” he said, not looking at her. “Is he selling his stuff?”

  “He’s going fishing, Turner,” Saphora said, waiting for Turner to turn and look at her.

  He finally did and then laughed, short and dry as if he could not laugh or cry.

  “Fishing! Can you believe it?” She laughed with him, incredulous.

  “He’s going to be all right then?”

  Saphora could not look at Turner anymore. She looked out the window. The sailboat had already passed.

  “Why is your luggage out, Mama?”

  “We’re going to Oriental.”

  “He’ll need treatments, won’t he? What kind of cancer?”

  “He’s setting it all up at Duke to find out for certain. You know how he takes charge. Bender Warren will get the best of the best.” The cocktail of emotions left her feeling inwardly emptied out. Resenting Bender had been a guilty pleasure. But she did not know what to make of her feelings right now.

  “His prognosis is good then?”

  “Not at all.”

  “He’ll fight.”

  Saphora got up to fasten the lid on Bender’s suitcase. “Will you call Gwennie? I left a short message but couldn’t bring myself to leave that kind of news on her phone.”

  “You’ll tell Ramsey then?”

  “That’s not an even swap,” said Saphora. Ramsey was emotional. Nothing like his daddy.

  “Gwennie will feel responsible, as if she’s to blame.” Turner sat with his face in his hands. He was always so open, not afraid to say whatever came into that head of his. “Maybe Daddy should tell Gwennie.”

  Saphora imagined Bender manipulating Gwennie’s emotions all the way up in New York. “Never mind. I’ll call Gwennie. You call Ramsey.”

  There was a racket coming up the stairs. “Who do I hear?” asked Saphora. The television blared downstairs, and Bender was in the garage.

  Turner sat up. “I nearly forgot. That’s why I came by. My sitter quit last minute. I’ve got Eddie for eight weeks. I was hoping you’d help.” He looked apologetic. “That’s before I knew about Daddy.”

  “Eddie’s downstairs?” The television rumbled like a race car. Turner’s son was addicted to electronic games. He spent most of his time with his hands glued to some controller or another, a lot to manage for a boy who wouldn’t make his own bed. “Turner, we’re leaving today. Can’t you take him to one of those drop-off places?”

  She knew why the sitter had quit after only a day. Eddie went through sitters like a gambler going through tokens. She imagined it was tough to get sitters for rambunctious eight-year-old boys.

  “I tried. They’re all filled up.”

  “That Presbyterian church downtown. They’ve got a child-care service. I’ll find the number.”

  “He’s too old for child-care service, Mama.”

  Bender came into the room. “Turner, I’m glad you’re here,” he said in a voice uncharacteristically gentle. Turner was without words.

  “I told him,” said Saphora.

  Turner extended his hand politely to his daddy. “You’ll beat it.”

  “I will. You know it,” said Bender.

  Eddie came bounding up the stairs, ramming into his grandfather. Bender grabbed him around the shoulder and pulled him tight. It was unusual to see Bender giving him any kind of affection.

  “Eddie says his sitter quit, Saphora,” said Bender. “Turner, how about you let the boy come with Saphora and me to the Outer Banks? You could always come up over the weekend and get him.”

  Eddie’s head popped up, his body twitching with excitement. “Can I, Dad?” Eddie asked. “Please? Please? Please?”

  Saphora was surprised he offered without consulting her. She would have enough on her hands just dealing with Bender and cancer treatments. She watched helplessly as Eddie’s endless energy, amped up with anticipation, turned him into a human bottle rocket aimed at her well-adorned furnishings.

  “Saphora, you don’t mind. We’ve been saying we need to take more time with our grandkids,” said Bender.

  She had said that Bender needed to take more time with his grandkids. “Bender, I don’t know. You’re not feeling well. We’re stopping first at Duke Medical.” She looked apologetically at Turner. “I wish we could help.”

  “Eddie will be fine with us,” said Bender. “Saphora, you’re good with Eddie.”

  “I’m not really.” She hoped she wasn’t making Turner mad.

  “I need this.” Bender was not himself. He had never felt comfortable around children. He wasn’t thinking clearly about convalescence or anything practical.

  “What a relief, Daddy!” said Turner. “I’ll be up on the weekend to join you and pick up Eddie.”

  Eddie set himself free from Bender’s side embrace. In two leaps and a hop he was somersaulting over the bed, his sneakers planted momentarily on the matelassé coverlet. Turner nabbed him before he could go back the other way. “Not on the furniture, Eddie. Want to go fishing with Grandpa?” he asked.

  “I doubt that once Bender starts his treatments he’ll be fishing.” Saphora was slowly realizing she was the only clearheaded Warren in the room.

  “I will,” Bender said, looking into Eddie’s eyes. “I should have taken you out in my boat a long time ago.”

  Eddie’s mouth came open. He was lapping up Bender’s attention.

  Saphora stopped thinking about her luggage, packed since yesterday. She also stopped thinking about Bender’s suitcase now parked expectantly next to hers. She needed to stop Turner from dropping his life in her lap as he had done in the past.

  Eddie bolted out of the room, shouting as he went, “Fishing with Grandpa! Fishing, fishing!” They heard his feet thundering down the stairs. “I’ll get—” was the last they heard before the back door slammed behind him.

  “Turner, I still think you’re going to need a good sitter of some sort. Want me to call the Presbyterians for you?” she asked. “They might have referrals for older kids.”

  “I’ll do that this wee
k while you keep Eddie in Oriental. This is such a treat for him. I’ll be down Saturday. I won’t have to be back at work until Tuesday, so we’ll all have plenty of time together.” His eyes emoted a passing thought. He said to his father, “If we manage this right, I won’t need a sitter at all.”

  “We’ll work it out,” said Bender.

  “I have to finish up for the trip,” said Saphora. She went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

  Turner had conveniently put Eddie’s clothes into a grocery store bag. Saphora repacked them in one of Gwennie’s college duffels. As she stowed it under the car seat, Eddie bounced a ball off the garage, calling out, “Score!” each time the ball smacked the gate, causing it to shudder and the latch to rattle. She tried to remember if slipping cold medicine into a soda was child abuse. Nothing to worry about. Once would not hurt. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Bender.

  She went inside the house and ransacked the refrigerator. She found a Diet Coke wedged between a hunk of Brie and leftover shrimp. She made a mental note to have Sherry come clean it out before an unholy stench had a chance to form.

  When she got back holding the spiked Diet Coke, Eddie said, “I’m not allowed soda pop.”

  “Just this once,” she said. “Nana allows it every now and then.”

  Eddie drank it down as if he might never be allowed soda pop again.

  “We’re all packed,” said Saphora.

  Before Bender left behind Highway 73 for Interstate 85, Eddie fell into such a deep slumber that Saphora climbed out of her seat to check his pulse. The little blue vein in his right wrist pounded rapidly, the caffeine from the cola fighting the alcohol in the cold medicine. Saphora sat back in the front passenger seat. “I didn’t intend on Eddie joining us. At least not until we had settled in. You know the house is going to be covered in dust and cobwebs. Eddie’s allergic to mold.”

  “You called Sherry, didn’t you?”

  “She’s off until Thursday.”

  “Saphora, she needs to come back to work. She’ll like staying at the house in Oriental. It’ll give her a sense of purpose to open it up for us.”

  “Bender, not everyone finds purpose in catering to your every whim.” Almost as quickly as the words came out of her mouth, Saphora looked away from him to act like she had an interest in the passing cars.

  “I don’t like to talk on the phone while I’m driving, Saphora. Call her and let her know I need her.”

  He said it so nicely that peacefulness settled over her. It wasn’t like him not to snap back at her when she was on a tear. “I’d rather open up the house myself,” she said. “I might as well tell you that I’d been thinking of spending time there myself. I was going to open up the house anyway.”

  “You’re lost without Sherry.”

  “I can cook if I put my thoughts into it.”

  “As of when?”

  “I don’t mind my own cooking, Bender.”

  “It’s not like you to argue. You know you like having Sherry around.”

  “It’s my mood lately.” He was making her mad again. But with Bender’s cancer between them, she chose her words.

  “I always win, Saphora.” He laughed.

  The first time Bender said that was when she had decided to take classes at the local community college. She had learned to point and shoot a high-powered camera. She only needed a few more courses to build confidence and then start taking on clients. She photographed the outdoors very well. She mostly liked catching people with interesting faces in candid moments. She took trips into the city and out to the country to catch people living life, unaware. But Bender felt that Ramsey, being only a first grader, needed her at home for support. She had argued with him, and Bender had said, “I always win.”

  He never laid a finger on her. He didn’t have to.

  “Good grief, Bender. I’ll call Sherry. Will you pull over and let me get some coffee? It’s still early.”

  When Bender took the next exit and pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, he handed her a five dollar bill. “Get some crackers for Eddie and sunflower seeds for me.” His phone rang; another plastic surgeon calling. The news of Bender’s cancer spread through the hospital system like a national emergency.

  Saphora visited the coffee center to the right of the checkout stand. She waited her turn behind a truck driver. He talked to a friend through an earphone. He had driven all the way from Houston and was on his way to Charleston with a load of food for a pizza chain. She experienced a strange envy for his freedom. He passed Saphora and then, surprised to find her standing so close, excused himself.

  “May I ask you something?” she said to him.

  “Sure, go ahead,” he said.

  “What’s it like traveling up and down the highway, being in a different city every night?”

  “Like a gypsy.”

  “Is it lonely?”

  “I’m not allowed to take on riders.”

  “I didn’t ask that.” At least, she did not mean to ask that.

  He looked around as if someone might hear and then said, “I’d take you, doll, that’s for certain.”

  Saphora could smell the faint whiff of man sweat that infuses cotton shirts when slept in. “I was curious about living like a gypsy, that’s all. If you’re finished pouring your coffee, I should get on with getting some for my husband.” She had not meant she would jump in a truck with him and leave. Men had funny ideas about women, and they were all wrong.

  He was duly put back in his place. He stepped aside as Saphora pulled out a foam cup for Bender’s coffee. “He has cancer,” she said as if she knew he waited for another word from her.

  “Lots of people are getting that. Me, I’ll take a good old-fashioned heart attack,” he said. He went off, he said aloud, in search of barbecue chips and beef jerky.

  When Saphora climbed back into the car, handing Bender a coffee and sunflower seeds, she said, “We should buy groceries outside Oriental. Except for produce. The farmer’s market has plenty of local vegetables.” Sherry handpicked locally grown vegetables. Not that he noticed. “Raleigh has a nice supermarket right off one of the exits.”

  Bender had reclined the driver’s seat so far back he could fall asleep. “Sherry will take care of the food, like always. What did she say about me? Did you tell her yet? Maybe it’s best to tell her about me in person.” His eyes were still on the car ceiling. A ribbon of sweat above his upper lip made him look nervous. “The top of the car needs cleaning.”

  “Maybe I should drive,” said Saphora. She had completely forgotten to call Sherry. But it was at that instant the phone rang and it was Sherry. “Here she is, calling me back.” She stepped out of the car and walked around. Sherry had gone to the mall to add another set of piercings to her ears. She was thanking Saphora for the bag of costume jewelry when Saphora said, “There’s an emergency.”

  Sherry was so upset that she began spilling guilty confessions for leaving too early.

  “It’s Dr. Warren, Sherry. He’s come down with something. I’m taking him to Duke for tests and then he’s going to recuperate at the house in Oriental,” said Saphora. She finally gave in to Bender’s anxious stare. “He needs you, Sherry.”

  “I’m leaving now for Oriental. How many days will you be there?” she asked.

  “Plan for a couple of weeks.” Bender had never taken that much time off from his practice. “It might be serious.” Saphora felt dishonest for having said Bender had “come down with something.”

  “I’ll throw together a few things and get on the road within the hour.”

  A relief came over Saphora. “After you set up the house, maybe you could take time for yourself down on the beach.”

  “That’s how you are, Miss Saphora, worrying about others when you need help,” said Sherry.

  Saphora named a few things for Sherry’s grocery list. “Riesling from Shelton Vineyards. They have it in the stores now.” Oh, what was the use? She had intended on livin
g simply for once when she had planned her escape to Oriental. “Keep it simple,” she said and ended the call. She looked through Bender’s open window. He had closed his eyes and fallen asleep behind the steering wheel. “Bender, I’ll drive.” She shook him awake, enough to get him out of the car and into the passenger’s seat.

  She climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted it for shorter legs. Before she could tell him that Sherry was coming to open up the house, he had fallen back to sleep. Since she had to take Bender to Duke first anyway, Sherry would have the house opened up and aired out a day ahead.

  A card of pills was in his shirt pocket. He had taken sleeping pills for as long as he had been taking surgical shifts. But the small yellow pills did not look familiar to her. She would look them up later. Whatever they were had the same effect on Bender as cold medicine on Eddie. She took a deep, cleansing breath and aimed the car for Raleigh.

  She found a country music station but turned it down low so as not to ruffle Bender’s intellectual sensibilities. Bender was pale. Beads of sweat formed just above the bridge of his nose between his brows. It was the first time she noticed that he truly appeared sick. She felt a sinking responsibility for what had happened to him. If she had noticed sooner, he might have gotten tested sooner. She had friends who confessed that they fantasized about what they would do if their husbands died. Saphora had not wished death on Bender. She had just imagined him far away, as if she could erase the place between the day she had met him and now.

  The way he was acting was so not like him. Bender lived life happily on the perimeters of danger. Twice each summer he and other surgeons met in the gulf to tarpon fish. His last fishing excursion, he was the only man on the expedition to reel in a marlin. Then he started raft fishing, a sport that some of the twenty-something fishermen had sold him on. He caught a swordfish that might have pulled him under if his buddies had not rescued him.

  Years ago he booked a wild game hunt, insisting that Ramsey and Turner accompany him. But Turner, loudly demonstrative, had gotten so afraid of the unfamiliar sights and sounds of the Serengeti that the guide had ordered them back to the compound. Before dawn, Turner had said, the sound of the Jeep’s engine gunning woke them up. Turner worried all day when Bender had stayed long past the allotted time. But in he came at sundown, the cicadas screaming and Turner pacing. Ramsey cried so hard Bender yelled at him to act like a man. Bender and the guides hauled a dead lion out of the Jeep. Bender sent it off to his friend who did taxidermy as a hobby. Then he hung the head in his office at home. Saphora never liked going in there after that.