The Pirate Queen

by Patricia Hickman

  Gwennie looked at Saphora. “Sandwiches and funerals. My mother is the one to ask.” She let Fang jump into her lap. “I’ll look after the dog.”

  Saphora thought about making a Gwennie-sized gag.

  Marcy turned the page on her list and dialed another number. “We’re all doing our thing, Saphora. You go and do yours.” Her back was to Mel, so he could not see her bat her eyes at Saphora.

  Mel said, “Sure, you’d be the best one to do it.” He asked Saphora to ride with him to Mickelson’s Funeral Home.

  The weather had turned hotter than all the rest of the days that summer. Saphora stood out on the driveway while Mel cooled down the Audi. Finally he waved her inside.

  “You like your Lexus?” he asked.

  “It’s one of Bender’s cars. I drive a different car,” she said.

  “I guess a surgeon can drive anything he wants.” He put a cigarette to his lips.

  “Can you help me out? I can’t tolerate smoking in a car.”

  “I’m sorry.” He brought down the cigarette.

  A box of tissues was on the floorboard, the box decorated with little boys playing baseball. Saphora pulled out a tissue. The radio station was turned to a light pop station. Mel turned it off.

  “Everything will remind you of her,” said Saphora.

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “Tobias has a lot going on. You think you’ll be able to keep up with him?”

  “He’s always been hers. We couldn’t have kids. Tobias satisfied a lot of feminine urges for her.”

  “Feminine urges?”

  “Women have a need to look after others.”

  “We do?”

  “You know you do. I know what women think, that they’re like men, want to work like men, talk like men. But you’re made to raise kids. Me, I could never keep up with Tobias like Jamie. She was born to do it. Matter of fact, she lived to chase after Tobias.”

  “I think it’s been hard on her.”

  “My work is hard, but I love it.”

  “You have it all categorized.”

  “It’s not rocket science.”

  “What will happen to Tobias then?”

  “Dora, she’s got lots of kids. Tobias likes his cousins. It’d be like instant siblings.”

  “You don’t mean to send Tobias back with Dora?”

  “I can’t deny I’ve been thinking about it, what time I’ve had to think, that is.”

  “Dora wants Tobias?”

  “I haven’t asked her. But she loved Jamie.”

  “Dora’s nothing like Jamie.” Jamie barely tolerated Dora, of that she was certain.

  “I’m not saying the deal’s set in stone. I’m in shock. You know?” He coughed into one hand, holding the unlit cigarette in the other.

  “Yes, but you could find support and rear him on your own.”

  He did not answer but just stared out the front windshield.

  “Mel, you can’t mean you’d do that to Tobias. Jamie’s provided him a good life. You can’t send him into Dora’s world. It’d be cruel.”

  “Dora’s not a bad person. She’s just got low expectations. But Tobias, he’s disabled. He can’t do much better anyway.”

  “Dora’s not a good mother, Mel. You can’t say she is.”

  “Aren’t you judgmental?”

  “It is what it is,” said Saphora.

  The remaining mile to Mickelson’s Funeral Home was quiet, the sun bearing down on the black car.

  Mel turned the radio back on.

  Casket shopping was the last thing Saphora had counted on doing that day.

  Mickelson’s chauffeur smoked outside the main entry under the overhang where guests were dropped off. He opened the door for Saphora and said to Mel, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Linker.”

  “Tommy, you still here after all these years?”

  “Work’s steady,” said Tommy. “How’s the software biz?”

  “Up and down,” said Mel.

  “Mr. Mickelson’s asked me to walk you to the Agatha room,” said Tommy. He dropped the cigarette into the ashtray. A rock song played in a viewing room as they passed.

  “Teenager,” said Tommy. “His mother wanted the kid’s favorite band playing when she comes to approve the deceased.”

  Saphora fell behind Mel a couple of steps.

  “Funny. I don’t think Jamie had a favorite song,” said Mel.

  “‘Both Sides Now,’” said Saphora.

  “She told you that?” he asked. He stopped in the middle of the reception area.

  “She liked Joni Mitchell,” said Saphora.

  “Joni Mitchell we got,” said Tommy. “Everyone picks her.”

  “It’s all people our age who are dying,” said Saphora.

  “‘Both Sides Now.’ She never said that to me,” said Mel. “It’s one of those feel-good songs.”

  “Joni Mitchell? Not likely,” said Tommy.

  “It’s about the uncertainty of life,” said Saphora. “You look at it one way when you’re young. But another way when you get older.”

  “That’s the song then,” said Mel. “She’d want it.”

  The Mickelson brothers had staged a big, expensive display inside a glass case. A polished wood casket was covered with silk irises. A woman’s painting hung suspended over the casket. A nameplate read “In Memory of Our Mother, Agatha Mickelson.” The remaining caskets lined the walls and inner walkway of the selection room.

  “I’ll leave you to decide. Gerry Mickelson will be in to help you with your arrangements,” said Tommy.

  Saphora stared too long at the polished wood caskets. Mel called her down to the blue and pink colored metal models. “Saphora, you’re going to have to do this. I’m feeling dizzy. I think I’m getting hives.”

  “What’s your budget?”

  “There’s some insurance. And I’m coming into some money. We can do it right.”

  “Do you have a preference?” she asked.

  “Women like pink.”

  “Not all women.”

  “Like I said, you pick it,” said Mel.

  She was torn between a mahogany or an oak stain.

  “The mahogany, I think,” said Mel. “The angel on the inside, she’d like it.”

  “That’s good.” She was feeling the need to go out for air but reconsidered since it was best to help Mel bring these matters to a close.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  “They’ll want to know about the vault and all.”

  “I had to bury my dad. He wanted a vault. He was scared to death of floating away,” said Mel.

  “It’s up to you,” she said. “Not everyone buys them.”

  The door opened at the opposite end of the sales floor. A man dressed in a brown suit poked his head into the casket room. “Mr. Linker, do you need more time?” asked Gerry Mickelson. He forced the door open a little wider. The door was sticking on a plush red carpet runner.

  “He’s decided,” said Saphora. “The mahogany one with the angel embroidery.”

  “Such a beautiful choice, Mr. Linker. If you’ll come down this way, I’ve got a room where you can rest your feet and finish up,” said Mickelson.

  Saphora lingered over the mahogany casket. Mel nearly made it to the door left open by Gerry Mickelson when he staggered and then fainted onto the plush carpet.

  19

  My island selects for me people who are very different from me—the stranger who turns out to be, in the frame of sufficient time and space, invariably interesting and enriching.

  ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH, Gift from the Sea

  Gwennie sat scribbling in a legal document the size of a phone book. She was lying on her stomach on the antique bed. She had checked them into an inn. “Tell me again. When Mel passed out, did the undertaker yell?”

  Saphora slipped into a pair of yoga pants and walked on her knees across the other bed, carefully so as not to cause Marcy to spill her tea. But Marcy was laughing anyway, so tea dripped d
own her chin. Marcy put down the drink and fell over laughing.

  “I’m not telling it again. That poor man is suffering more than he wants to let on.”

  “He’s just such a big man and kind of a chauvinist. I’m trying to see it all like you did,” said Marcy. “I hope his head is healed up before the funeral.”

  Gwennie was shaking as she held in laughter. She leaned over the transcript, holding her eyeglasses on her face.

  “I’m glad the two of you weren’t there,” said Saphora. “Mr. Mickelson was yelling for an ambulance. I just knelt down and talked until Mel opened his eyes. He kept saying a name over and over,” said Saphora.

  “What name?” asked Marcy.

  “It sounded like Francis. I don’t remember Jamie mentioning a Francis,” said Saphora. “But then he got hold of himself and asked me where we had parked.”

  “He was ready to get out of there, I guess,” said Marcy.

  “He still had not finished up with the funeral home director. But that’s not the worst of it,” said Saphora. “The doctor in the emergency room said he was experiencing anxiety. He told Mel he needed to take some time off and then went to have him discharged. That was when Mel told me for certain he was not equipped to take care of Tobias.”

  “I knew it,” said Marcy.

  “He’s Tobias’s legal father,” said Gwennie. “He’ll be all right in a day or so. It’s just the stress of losing Jamie so quickly. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Gwennie, he wanted me to ask you if you could help with the legality of giving him up,” said Saphora.

  “Don’t tell me that,” said Marcy.

  “Who would take him? Not that crazy Dora?” asked Gwennie.

  “He’s already talked to her, I’ll bet,” said Marcy.

  “What makes you think that?” asked Saphora. She knew; she just wondered how Marcy knew.

  “I heard her griping over the phone to some trash friend up the coast about taking in another mouth to feed,” said Marcy.

  “Tobias would not do well with that woman,” said Gwennie. “Mel needs to give himself some time. He’ll start taking him to ball games and school. They’ll figure it out as they go.”

  “He seemed to believe that Tobias and Jamie were destined for each other. To hear him tell it, this was his way of exiting the relationship,” said Saphora.

  “He’s got a child, and he’ll have to deal with him now,” said Gwennie. “Surely he knows Dora can’t deal with her own kids. They live in a tiny trailer in an RV park. It’s not even a real home. I heard her daughter complaining about it.”

  “From the looks of their house here and the one you said they own in Oriental,” said Marcy, “Mel’s got all kinds of money. He can hire someone to help cart that boy around to his games and such. Anything is better than dumping him off on Dora.”

  “He just can’t picture himself rearing Tobias,” said Saphora.

  “I’ll give him until the funeral to come around,” said Marcy. “Then I’m having a talk with that man.”

  Finally Wednesday rolled around, and Saphora woke up with the dread of paying her last respects to her beautiful friend.

  She called Turner. “Please take tomorrow off and go see your daddy. The nurse says there’s no change, but I can’t stand the thought of him lying there without one of us nearby.” Truth be told, she wanted to chase off that Evelyn. She would be surprised if she showed her face again but did not want to risk her returning.

  “Mama, it’s time to go,” said Gwennie, opening the bedroom door of the inn they had been staying in so they could keep an eye on Tobias. Gwennie had dressed in the black top and pants she had bought yesterday when Marcy had marshaled them into a local retail shop to buy clothes for the service.

  Saphora imagined Dora and her children piling into the family limousine, sandwiching Tobias into the middle of her brood, while Mel ducked into the front seat so as not to have to look at Tobias.

  Half of Wilmington must have known Jamie Linker. The large donated church sanctuary was crowded, full nearly to the last row of seats.

  Mel had saved a row of chairs for Jamie’s friends. Just as Saphora was leading Gwennie and Marcy down a row in the back, Tobias ran to fetch them. “You’re supposed to sit behind me,” he said to Saphora. Bluish circles under his eyes hinted that he had not slept. Saphora followed him up the church aisle, stepping into the line of Jamie’s friends in the row behind the family. Saphora sat square behind Tobias. She leaned forward and said to him, “You’re supposed to come in the door from the side with your daddy. Did they not tell you?”

  “I didn’t want to,” said Tobias. He never turned around but faced forward, sitting between his young cousins Mary and Little Paul.

  Marcy cut eyes at Saphora and mouthed, “He knows.”

  Just as an usher was leading Mel from the side waiting room, a minister walked briskly at his side holding a Bible in one hand and a small box in the other. “That’s Pastor Mims,” said Saphora to Marcy. “How appropriate. He’s Jamie’s pastor. He’s our pastor too.”

  “I didn’t know you had a pastor,” Marcy replied. She seemed pleased to know.

  Gwennie whispered to Saphora, “Look, Luke’s across the aisle.”

  Saphora turned and saw that Luke was one aisle away from the family seating. “That’s so sweet of him to come. He was tender toward Tobias.”

  Every so often Gwennie would turn and glance toward Luke. But he kept his eyes forward, fixated, it seemed, on Pastor John.

  Gwennie pulled out her phone. Saphora assumed it was to see if Luke had left her a message. But only messages with New York area codes filled up the screen.

  “Go and talk to him after church, for goodness’ sake,” Saphora whispered.

  Gwennie had not taken off her black sunglasses. She kept them on even after John Mims made the opening statement and prayed. So New York of her.

  Pastor John was wearing the same dark blue suit he wore when Bender collapsed.

  Three women climbed the blue carpeted steps to the platform. Each of them read handwritten stories about how Jamie had affected them. One lady started sobbing, unable to be consoled. Her son had played baseball with Tobias. The other two had worked alongside Jamie in a children’s AIDS charity called the Secret Angels.

  After they had finished, John read Jamie’s eulogy. He was luminescent in the gleam of the stained glass behind him, like angels were waiting in the windows for him to talk. He said, “There was a man who brought his bride to a little house along the Neuse River. The bride loved the house so much that she buried a possession in the backyard, she said, to bless her marriage to her one true love. But she contracted cancer and died two years later. That husband loved her so much that he went back to the house, bought it, and spent his evenings digging up the backyard until he found this.” John held up the small wooden box. He took off the top and then held up the object.

  Gwennie was frozen. She could not take her eyes off Luke.

  “I know this story,” said Saphora.

  “Listen,” said Marcy. “I want to hear.”

  “It’s Luke’s story,” said Gwennie.

  “This is a simple wooden cross,” said John. “The bride was given this trinket as a young girl. She had come to my church with her mother, who was vacationing in Oriental. I remember the morning that I invited the children forward for a children’s story. I told them the story from Matthew 13:44. It’s a simple one-verse story. A man discovered some treasure buried on a piece of land. It was so valuable that he reburied the treasure. Overjoyed at his find, he sold everything he had to return and buy that land. It was a simple story, but it made an impression on young Mabel Anne Birch, the child who grew up to marry her true love, Luke Weston.”

  “He loved her so much,” said Marcy.

  “Hush, hush,” said Gwennie.

  John continued, “As we honor a life well lived today, the life of Jamie Sheree Sondheim Linker, it seems fitting to talk about the things in life she taught us ab
out treasure.”

  Saphora felt Gwennie’s hand come around hers.

  John laid the wooden cross on the lectern. “Jamie Linker was a special woman. She married Mel Linker and prayed every night for God to give her a child. When she was unable to have children, fate, it seemed, brought a boy to her threshold. Would she take him?”

  Tobias sat on the edge of his chair.

  “Tobias has given me permission to tell you that he was born HIV-positive. A virus embedded in his frail body at birth mutated and took over his DNA so that it could duplicate and make more virus cells. But Jamie saw past Tobias’s attacked DNA. She saw instead the treasure she had been looking for her whole life, a boy to call her own. She told me a few Sundays ago that when her eyes fell on Tobias, she knew instantly that he was hers. She said, ‘It was like his soul was inviting me to participate in his journey.’” John paused for a moment, maybe to contemplate or else to swallow the lump in his throat. “She said, ‘How could I turn down such an invitation?’”

  Saphora could not hold back the tears that she had not allowed herself in the stress and clamor of looking after Jamie’s funeral arrangements.

  “I’m in need of tissues, sisters,” said Marcy.

  Gwennie dug a pack of tissues from her handbag and handed the whole thing to Marcy, who took two and passed them to Saphora.

  John closed his Bible. “There is a place in the gospels where a woman sits at Christ’s feet. She is so involved in expressing her love for him that she can’t stop washing his feet with her tears and hair. She is criticized for such outlandish worship. Jamie Linker’s life has been like both of these characters—the treasure seeker and the woman crying onto Christ’s feet. We understand her and yet are confused by her mode of worship—that of loving what life has overlooked.

  “Jesus was himself both adored and misunderstood. He offers a continual invitation to us to follow him. He loved us enough to allow our DNA to become embedded in his. He took on our disease of sin. But like Jamie, who accepted Tobias’s invitation to join him on his journey, Jesus invites you. He knows your life is going to be difficult, that you’ll stumble, that you’ll know shame, dishonor, abuse. But God also knows that, with a little help, you’ll learn to love. That’s the part he highly anticipates for you, that moment when, like Jamie, you say yes to the journey.”