The Pirate Queen (32 page)

While Gwennie had Mario on the phone, Saphora said, “The two of you should go into business together. You work your will like two CEOs.”

“Us?” said Gwennie. “You should see the senior partners working us through their slick little schemes,” said Gwennie. She laughed
at Mario on the phone. She told her mother, “He says, ‘Don’t let us fool you. We’re still just the office flunkies.’”

By the time they pulled into the drive, Gwennie had tilted her seat back and fallen asleep. Saphora had to wake her up.

Gwennie sat up, rubbing her eyes and smoothing her hair. “I feel like I took a sleeping pill,” she said. She finally got awake enough to walk around the back of the car and pull out her luggage. It was about then that Luke’s cat started howling from next door as if it were caught in a trap. Gwennie left her suitcase inside the garage and a few moments later came back holding Johnson close to her. “Poor soaked kitty. He’s been left out in the rain. I thought you said Luke had left someone to care for him, Mama.”

Mario walked up, his belongings in a single backpack. “Him? Gwennie, Johnson’s a she,” he said. “Look. She’s had kittens.” He pulled back the cat’s belly fur to show her two rows of swollen teats.

“Johnson, you’re a mommy,” said Gwennie. She patted the feline’s sagging tummy.

It was about that time a car drove into Luke’s driveway. The lifeguard Luke had asked to see to his cat jumped out and ran all the way around the back of his house, disappearing behind his gate.

“You’d best go and let her know she’s got a lot of pet sitting on her hands,” said Saphora.

“I’ll give her a piece of my mind,” said Gwennie. “Johnson could have been swept out to sea, for all she cares.”

“Go and give her the cat,” said Saphora. “Then help her hunt down Johnson’s kittens.”

“I can do that, Gwennie,” said Mario.

“I’ll do it,” said Gwennie. “I know my way around his place.”

By the time Saphora put Gwennie’s suitcase in the downstairs
guest room, Gwennie was back inside pacing in front of the patio doors. “She’s awfully young. What is she, some high schooler?”

“She’s not much younger than you. Working on her MBA,” said Saphora. “Why? Does that matter?”

“Who is Luke?” asked Mario. He joined Saphora in the kitchen.

“Luke and Gwennie have dated,” said Saphora. “Didn’t she mention Luke?”

“Mama, Mario doesn’t care about my private life,” said Gwennie. “Did you say Luke danced with that lifeguard? She’s a cute girl for her age. How would you know about her MBA?”

“I overheard it said, is all,” said Saphora.

“Gwennie, is this the artist you mentioned over the copy machine?” asked Mario.

“We’re just friends,” said Gwennie. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a liter of club soda and a tub of hummus. “Are we cooking?”

“Gwennie, why do you care if Luke danced with her?” asked Saphora.

“I don’t care. I’m just curious.”

Mario leaned against the island, crossing his arms. “Gwennie, bringing me here was the last thing you needed, wasn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Gwennie.

“It was your idea to bring me here. Is this why? You wanted to use me to guard your feelings against Luke?” he asked.

“Mama, are you putting these thoughts in Mario’s head? You have a strange habit of working your will over me in ways even I can’t understand.”

“Gwennie, your mother didn’t say anything at all,” said Mario. His Brooklyn accent was getting more pronounced along with his growing irritation.

Saphora noticed that Gwennie’s knit top was spotted with cat footprints. “You should change out of your clothes and then stop complaining about Luke’s lifeguard girlfriend,” she said.

“Girlfriend?” Gwennie walked out and left Saphora and Mario in the kitchen. She locked herself in the guest room.

“Has she ever been in love before?” Mario asked.

“You think she’s in love with Luke?”

“She’s been floating around the office with that glazed-over look all week. Now I know why,” said Mario.

“Good to know,” said Saphora.

“Stop talking about me,” Gwennie yelled from the guest room.

“She’ll be miserable to be around all weekend,” said Saphora to Mario. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“It’ll give me someone else’s misery to worry about instead of my own,” said Mario.

He’s a smart Italian boy
, Saphora thought.

17

Mario said his mother taught him to cook because his father was so helpless when she married him that she could not bear to see her son standing like his daddy, staring into the refrigerator, not knowing what to do next. Mario picked through Saphora’s refrigerator crisper and her spice cabinet. He told Saphora she had the makings for a somewhat Italian meal. He would make dinner for them.

Gwennie had changed and was washing out her top in the kitchen sink. She held it up in front of the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. Pin lights sifted through tiny claw marks around the arm holes. Johnson had pawed it into oblivion. She threw the mangled top into the garbage.

Mario pulled out an orange bell pepper and a red one, laying them on the cutting board. He sliced them into long, skinny strips and then cooked the peppers in olive oil. He got Gwennie to mince a garlic clove, seemingly to get her mind off the cat-sitting lifeguard.

Saphora poured one-half cup of white wine into the skillet over
the peppers and garlic. Next she added some chicken stock. Mario’s peppers and garlic gathered up around the wine and chicken stock like the vegetables were dancing in an undulating circle.

“How is Tobias, Mama?” asked Gwennie.

“I think he’s looking for new friends. But that’s the way of it for him,” said Saphora. “I don’t know if Jamie is going to want to bring him back to this town again or not.”

Gwennie told Mario, “He’s the boy I told you about.”

“I remember,” said Mario. He was beating a chicken breast half to death with a mallet.

“Have they gone back to Wilmington?” asked Gwennie. “I was hoping to see him one last time.”

“They’re here for at least this weekend. I invited them to the dance Thursday night. But when Tobias walked in, you would have thought the bubonic plague had walked into the room,” said Saphora.

“I don’t get it,” said Mario.

“Is there any way to get Jamie to stay?” asked Gwennie.

“It’s a summer home for them, like us,” said Saphora. “Plus, Tobias has school.” She thought about how people came and went, to and from the Outer Banks, never taking root in each other’s lives. “I wonder how many kids like Tobias are expected to stay in hiding during the years they’d otherwise be out living life.”

“I’d like to know,” said Gwennie. To satisfy her curiosity, she printed facts off the Internet after dinner while Saphora explained to Mario how to make mint juleps. Gwennie laid the printout on the kitchen bar. “Why is it so secret if so many kids have it?”

Saphora got a call right then from Turner. After updating him on his father’s condition, she got off the phone and told Gwennie, “Turner’s wrangled time with Eddie for the weekend. He’s bringing him tomorrow.”

“Eddie’s my nephew,” Gwennie told Mario. “He’s friends with Tobias.”

“I’ll invite Tobias,” said Saphora. “He’s been missing Eddie something fierce.” Besides, she thought, she was missing Jamie and Tobias just as badly.

Eddie had gotten taller in just the short time away. He wore a thin-striped, red and white T-shirt that Turner had bought for him, he said, because it was a pirate shirt. Eddie threw down pancakes like all he had eaten since he was back at his mother’s were frozen breakfasts. “Nana, is Tobias coming?” he asked.

“The last thing Jamie told me was that he would be over this morning. Please stop fidgeting and eat,” said Saphora.

The doorbell rang and it was Tobias. Jamie came in too. She was glad to see Gwennie and Turner back. Mario took over as the pancake flipper. He made smiling pancakes. Then he took on Eddie’s challenge of making one like a penguin. That one he scraped into the garbage disposal.

“I’ll have one, Mario,” said Jamie. “Might as well. I haven’t cooked breakfast since Mel went back to Wilmington. Tobias eats like a bird.”

“Did you tell me when you were going back to Wilmington?” asked Saphora.

“Tomorrow,” said Jamie. “We’re packing up now.”

“I’m heading out too,” said Mario. “Tonight, the red-eye to New York.”

“You didn’t tell me,” said Gwennie.

“My ex-girlfriend called. She couldn’t get me at home. It was good for her to find me gone,” said Mario. He gave Tobias a hot cake.

“We’re all leaving you,” said Jamie.

“I wish you could stay,” said Saphora. “Eddie just got here, and he’s so lonely with no other kids around.”

“Tobias has clinic Friday. He hates it, but they’ve got to check his levels,” said Jamie.

“Are there a lot of children there?” asked Saphora.

“A hundred kids,” said Jamie.

Saphora sat, mouth open.

Eddie followed Tobias up the tree. Tobias had nearly made the fort his own in Eddie’s absence.

“Is this the rest of his life? Really? He has to live like this?” asked Gwennie.

“What else is there for him?” asked Jamie.

“I guess I thought he’d do better with modern medicine and all,” said Gwennie.

“It keeps him alive. I’m grateful for that,” said Jamie.

“He’s supposed to go around hiding his face. That’s not right,” said Saphora.

“I’m sorry he’s had some misunderstandings here this summer,” said Gwennie.

“He tries to takes it in stride,” said Jamie. “But, Saphora, you were wonderful the other night. Gwennie, you would have been proud of your mother.”

“What did you do?” asked Gwennie.

“Nothing that spectacular. At least, not compared to you, Jamie. I’m glad he’s got you.”

Jamie gave Gwennie and Mario a summary of all that transpired at the dance.

Saphora was uncomfortable with taking accolades considering what she had done was something anyone could have done. So she
turned her back to the party and opened the curtains to watch the boys. Tobias was hanging his head out of the tree house opening. He was laughing while Eddie pulled on him from above. Tobias’s baseball dropped out of the tree like a fig.

That was when an idea came to Saphora. She was mulling it over when Jamie jolted her back into the present. “Earth to Saphora.”

She turned facing Jamie, clasping her hands in front of her, and said, “I was just thinking, I’d sure like to do something for Tobias. Something he’d like.”

“Tell her no way,” said Gwennie. “My mother can scheme like no one’s business.”

“I’m too intrigued,” said Jamie. “Give it to me, full throttle.”