The Pirate Queen (43 page)

She could live like Marcy, but then Marcy was seldom home. She imagined the quiet was difficult, an enveloping kind of silence that echoed with past conversations that had been taken for granted. She would decide when the thought of it no longer made her feel suffocated.

Tobias had delayed her season of solitude the summer that Bender died. Now he was going away. The tide of those days had beckoned in so welcome a manner, as if she could dance in the elation of escaping her life on the lake. She was holding it out now in front of her, seeing all of it as if her past were a long, mellifluous skein of silk—the night Bender held her, whispering to her while they danced on the street; the first time she told him “we’re pregnant,” the way her
breasts ached and yet gave her such pleasure to feed a baby from her own body; Gwennie standing in a French shop holding up the blue coverlet, now worn, and how her eyes emoted elation at having passed the bar; Turner holding Eddie for the first time and Ramsey marrying the girl who would eventually bear him children. She could see Bender standing in the entry telling her about his cancer, Eddie coming to stay with them that summer in Oriental, Tobias meeting them on the beach, Jamie kissing her good-bye for the last time, Gwennie falling in love with Luke, Mel losing his way.

Last of all, she could see Bender apologizing in a language so affected by wilting neurons that he might have been misunderstood. But she comprehended.

There was no pain capable of erasing the moments that she had lived in the manner she had chosen. Her life was not ruined by Bender’s lapses. Nor was it halted, but the minutes kept unfolding, awakening, disappointing and astonishing.

Turner was dating a woman he had met at the hospital. She had been a patient, and she taught school in Matthews. Over dinner last Friday night, he looked smitten with her. She was as red headed as Gwennie.

Tobias ran across the tiled lobby and slid in his socks. He pulled on his sneakers that had been parked by the door and kissed Saphora. “I’ll be back tonight, Mom.”

“Sherry will have the food ready,” she said.

“You are the best woman in the world,” said Tobias.

“Tobias, you make me feel loved.” She hugged him and then said, “See you later on.”

Sherry came up from the basement into the kitchen. She was leaving some food upstairs for the parent chaperones who would arrive
in two hours. “What are you thinking about, Miss Saphora? You look lost in your thoughts.”

“I’m fine, Sherry,” she said.

“You’re about to have the house all to yourself finally,” she said. “You won’t be needing me around here.”

“I do need you, Sherry. I’ve needed every person the good Lord’s put in my life.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I didn’t want to go looking for a job in this crazy job market. The only skills I have are looking after you. I don’t even know how to explain that in a résumé.” She brought a box of books and magazines for Saphora to go through. “These are from the house in Oriental. You asked me to clean things out before you all headed down there for the summer,” she said. She pulled out a magazine. “Look what I found. You thought it was lost.”

It was the copy of
Southern Living
with her gardens on the cover.

“You are a miracle woman,” said Saphora.

Sherry went back downstairs to put out more food for Tobias’s graduation party.

Saphora went through the box. There were the medical journals that Bender had pored over searching for a cure for brain cancer. Tobias would want those. He had claimed a lot of Bender’s books for his own over the past few years. She had found a good use for the library after all. Tobias swore he could smell the man in the pages who was almost his daddy.

Then she found Mabel’s small wooden cross. She would keep that for sure. Every time she looked at it, she could see Luke digging in the backyard for treasure. The
Southern Living
she would keep to remember what she almost threw away but found along the way.

She dropped the magazine into the rack with the other periodicals.
It would be nice to pull out and remember every now and then, to see the black-eyed Susans open faced when winter set in.

The doorbell sounded.

“I’ll get it, Sherry,” she said. She half expected Marcy to be standing there. But she was surprised.

“Saphora, I’m so sorry. I missed the whole graduation ceremony.” John Mims looked apologetic. He was robust, though, dressed out of church in jeans. Hair the color of snow curled behind his ears. He held a bouquet of flowers in his good hand; a gift bag dangled from his wrist. “I got Tobias’s invitation and had to come. I’ve enjoyed watching him grow over the summers.”

“I didn’t know you were coming.” To her recollection, he had not returned the response card. “His party’s here tonight. You haven’t missed him entirely,” said Saphora.

“I’m glad. I did leave soon enough. But there was an accident on the Interstate.”

“Traffic gets so backed up.”

“I saw it happen. So I sat with the lady until the ambulance showed up.”

“How awful.”

“She’s going to be fine,” he said. “You look good.”

“As do you.” She enjoyed his attention. “Can you come in?”

John came inside. He commented about how he was still wrestling over missing the commencement ceremony. He handed her the bouquet. “I’ll bet Tobias looked good in his cap and gown.”

Saphora led him into the living room. He put the gift bag on the coffee table.

“Your house is beautiful. It looks like you.”

“Thank you, John. Did your charity drive go well?”

“It did. Thank you for the check.” He took a seat on the sofa so Saphora sat across in the overstuffed chair. “Sherry must be cooking,” he said. “Smells familiar.”

“Yes, she’s cooking for the party.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting your plans.”

“You know me.”

“I do know you,” he said. “I just don’t want to get in the way.”

“Tobias will be thrilled to see you. Besides, the other parents will stay upstairs with me. We’ll watch a movie while the kids meet downstairs in the basement.” She felt surprised at how eager she was for his company. “So, will you stay?”

“I’d hoped you would ask.”

She made John hot tea, lemon only. She was able to take a few cookies hot from the pan before Sherry came back upstairs. She realized that she had not asked him how he wanted his tea. At the summer house, he had paid numerous visits, so she had come to know how he liked his tea, his steak, and his salad with spinach leaves and red onion slices.

She looked up from the kitchen bar. He sat facing toward the big picture window, looking out over the lake. Then he picked up a framed photograph of her. He held it in his lap. He looked at it for a good amount of time.

“Hot cookies?” she asked.

He put back the photograph as if he’d been caught. Then she remembered how he had been caught in the act of stealing oysters the first time she met him. It came to her that she had been so busy with Bender and then with grief and then with rearing Tobias that she had not noticed how she had been collecting common details from the life of John Mims. There sat John on the periphery of her memories,
tending to Bender’s soul but never far away and always observant of how she lived.

John got up from his seat. “I’ll have a few,” he said. A sailboat was gliding across the lake.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“Will you come and sit with me?” he asked. “I want to hear all about your life this year. You always catch me up in the summer. But this year I didn’t want to have to wait for you to come back to Oriental.”

“John?”

“Yes, Saphora?”

“It’s so thoughtful that you’ve come to see Tobias.”

“I’ll confess it was more than Tobias,” he said. “I’d hoped you’d agree we cultivated more than the conventional friendship, Saphora.” He took her by the hand and led her back to the sofa.

“I guess that’s true.” She sat next to him.

He helped her set the plate on the table but kept holding her hand. “Tell me everything that I’ve missed this year.”

“First, I’d rather you tell me everything that has happened to you this year,” she said.

“I insist. You first.”

“What’s to tell? I adopted a boy and he loved me and my life is full.”

“Stole him, actually.”

“As you know, I’m a pirate.”

“It’s called finding ‘the better part.’”

“You helped me find fullness, John.” It had taken the passing years to understand what a clergyman meant by abundant living.

“Saphora, you’re the most interesting woman I’ve ever met. I’ve
noticed when you’re around, everyone pulls out all the stops. You make others want to be better people.”

She was drawn to his compliments. He never said anything unless he meant it. “You see me,” she said.

“Even when I’m sleeping.”

“How did I miss that?” Now he was surprising the fool out of her.

“The life you lead is hard to see from inside.”

“Why can’t I see it like you do?”

“What?”

“My life.”

He took her hand in his. “Sometimes even I can’t take you all in.”

“You have been waiting all this time, John Mims, for me to learn these things, haven’t you?”

“You needed time to pass, Saphora.”

“I’ve never met a man like you.” She looked out across the lake. The sailboat had anchored in the greening cove beyond her dock.

Saphora did as John asked. She could have told him about all that had happened since the last time she saw him at the summer house, last summer in Oriental. Tobias’s last year of high school was full of the trials and victories of a young man coming of age, and that meant she stayed busy keeping up with him. But she started back only as far as the few weeks leading up to Tobias’s graduation. She was in a hurry to get on with knowing John Mims. It was time to start saying hello instead of good-bye.

I would like to express my gratitude to Lissa Halls Johnson, my editor, for your tireless attention to our shaping of this story through your skills and wisdom. Thank you also to Pam Shoup, my production editor, who contributed greatly to the things we might have missed, but your keen eye caught. Thank you to Captain Chris Daniels of the Oriental’s School of Sailing. You were very patient and helpful as I gathered sailing facts for this story’s Outer Banks setting. Thank you to adoptive mom Beverly Mitzel for your careful reading of this story regarding the care of a child with HIV/AIDS. You deserve a medal for your commitment and compassion for special needs adoptions. I also want to thank the art department for this gorgeous book jacket. A very special thanks to the Random House/WaterBrook Press staff whose work often goes unnoticed—Shannon Marchese, Allison O’Hara, Steve Herron, the staff assistants, sales team, marketing team, and publicity staff who support your novelists behind-the-scenes. Jessica Barnes, you find answers and hunt people down and are a calming influence in the midst of a harried schedule. Thank you, WB staff, for your tenacity and patience. It takes a small army to put out a high-quality novel, and I’m so honored to have you all in my camp.

I would also like to send encouragement to the brave women and children I’ve come to know through the Secret Angels Project. To help a mom or child affected by HIV, please visit
www.secretangelsproject.com
.

1. A writer friend recently said to me that if she were Bender’s wife she would tell him to go and convalesce alone. But a marriage of three decades has complicated Saphora’s choices. Why do you think she stayed with Bender?
   

2. Saphora’s strongest desire at the outset seems to be to run away from home. But in the end, we discover there were hidden desires realized in Saphora’s story. What other intrinsic desires were driving her?
   

3. The
   Southern Living
   party frames the story. What was different about Saphora from the day of the party to the day the finished
   SL
   issue arrived?
   

4. The women who attend the
   Southern Living
   party make only a brief appearance, but it is evident they have each played a role that causes Saphora great and inexpressible pain. How did time shift her attitude toward these women? Does that mean she was condoning that type of behavior?
   

5. Saphora’s desire to get away from her family obligations was thwarted in more than one way. Suddenly throwing her grandson Eddie into the mix only added to her frustration. But Eddie’s presence drew another person into
   her life. If she had gotten her way, how different would her life have been?
   

6. Saphora’s fantasy about an Outer Banks life was reduced to short ruminations in the midst of the clamor of caring for Bender’s cancer and the guests filing into and out of their house on the Neuse River. What part did these fantasies play in her acceptance of her circumstances?
   

7. Luke is a mysterious part of Saphora’s Outer Banks journey. What qualities did Luke possess that drew Saphora into his strange quest?
   

8. Gwennie is equal parts Saphora and Bender, although Saphora only sees her husband’s qualities in her daughter. How does their alliance affect the story’s outcome? How are these two women strengthened by their relationship?
   

9. What symbolism unfolds through the metaphor of the Pirate Queen?
   

10. Pastor Mims is benevolent, but in what ways does he assert himself into the Warren family? Whether or not you are a person of religious faith, how did you respond to the way he engaged their predicament?
    

11. Tobias has learned to live with survival strengths that benefit him later and in unexpected ways. Bender’s care for him is eventually reciprocated. What bond was formed through these acts of compassion?
    

12. The class distinctions and domestic responses between the Warrens and the Linker family are more fully realized after Jamie’s accident. How did you respond to Saphora’s involvement in this family’s bereavement process? How different was Mel Linker’s response to illness and grief from Saphora’s?
    

13. John Mims makes a surprising move at the end of the story. Why might he have waited so long to respond to Saphora romantically?