Turning Idolater

by Edward C. Patterson

  Another rotating red light. No siren this time as the patrol car took Philip away from East 108th Street. He slouched in the back seat, sleep gnawing at his eyelids. There was no taximeter this time, but the cost felt higher. He imagined himself in a dream, somewhere at dawn in Provincetown, watching the early gulls stream to the clam beds for breakfast. He heard the whale song beckoning him to join them in the plunge. Old Charlotte, however, was dead and buried. The Maine Coon was gone, no longer hiding in the tall grass awaiting a mouse toy. Peace was fading also, but beyond the crest of the waves, he sensed serenity. How he wished to swim out and gather this bath into his arms and soak there for eternity.

  The police cruiser stopped short. Philip wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. The officer in the front passenger seat slid the partition open and nudged him with a kindly son. In Philip’s mind he heard Sonny Jim. He opened his eyes, the cop’s face peering through the aperture.

  “We’re here.”

  Here. Where was here?

  Philip blinked. He grasped his backpack and slid across the vinyl seat, unlatching the door.

  “Did you want us to wait?”

  Philip smiled. He thought of the cabby, only these men-in-blue were paid already to do his biding.

  “If you would. This won’t take long.”

  The driver switched off the alarm lights and went about some business on the radio. Procedures. Routines.

  “Take as much time as you need.”

  Philip managed a smile, and then gained the sidewalk.

  The street hadn’t changed, only at this hour it was all shadow, even with the El looming overhead. He didn’t expect the train to rattle much at this hour of the morning. He gazed up at the closed window and wondered why he dared to come here again. He had the police with him, didn’t he? No chance of domestic violence now . . . at least, if it erupted, it would be easily quelled. He climbed the low stoop into the foyer. It was a short flight now, nothing like Sprakie’s or Dennis’. Still, there was a familiar feel about all apartment houses. They patently sealed its inhabitants in small crates — each denizen to prescribed units. It was a regulation like thirteen inches is enough space for a hammock or three watches makes for more room below.

  Philip hoisted himself up the stairs, pulling himself along the banister. He had second thoughts, but his feet moved anyway — upward. As he neared the portal, he heard Detective Kusslow’s words. Go home, Mr. Flaxen. You need your rest. Philip didn’t think he would get rest here. Sterling, Kusslow would have said. Sterling. Another voice echoed now with the others. Love your mother. You only get one and you never know how it will all end. Mrs. Waters’ words had haunted him ever since he heard them. A mandate, and now that all business but one was complete, it was paramount.

  Philip buzzed the door, and then waited.

  2

  It was three in the morning. Philip didn’t expect a welcome, especially at this hour. He waited for the door to open, and then his father to slam it closed. However, Philip decided he wouldn’t let his father close the door. His foot would be old scrappy and prevent it. He tensed as he waited. Suddenly, the locks clicked and the door pulled open.

  “My baby,” gasped Lydia Flaxen.

  “Mom.”

  Philip’s foot relaxed as his mother draped herself over his shoulders. Her hug eased his pain. Her touch drew out the venom — the horrid sights he had witnessed. He rocked her in his arms until they were both inside the kitchen.

  Lydia wiped his tears, and then attended to her own.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Out.”

  Philip noted the wall clock. Past 3 am. Gregor Flaxen was already at work, the deli business having provided the perfect safe haven for this visit. Philip had forgotten this. He embraced his mother again.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he blubbered. She was exactly as he remembered, her hair in curlers, her quilted nightgown like a suit of armor fluttering over fuzzy green slippers.

  “You’ve come home to stay,” Lydia said. “Tell me that you’re here for good.”

  Philip sighed. “I can’t. He’d never . . .”

  “But he has no choice.”

  Philip was puzzled. Gregor was the master of this shit-hole. It was always so. He shrugged.

  Lydia stiffened, placing her hands on her hips, crimping her nightgown. “The night you left, I threw your father out.”

  “What?” Philip smiled. He draped the backpack over the kitchen chair. “How did you manage that?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “You must be hungry.” He was. “Let me make you some eggs . . . like you like them.” Bird’s-eyes on thick pumpernickel, fresh from the deli.

  “I can’t stay, Mom.”

  Lydia’s face collapsed. “Don’t worry about that man. He stole you from me and I swore he would never take anything away from me again. A few nights in the belly of that crummy delicatessen showed him my meaning. I changed the locks, I did.”

  “But he hates me.”

  “No. Who could hate you?” She stroked his cheek, and then ran her hand through his hair. “He hates only because he knows no better. I’ll teach him to keep his mouth shut.”

  Philip caught her hand. “And you, Mom? Could you love a Gay son?” He remembered her hysterics the night he was exiled. “Could you?”

  “I love my son. The rest is none of my business.”

  Love your mother. You only get one and you never know how it will all end.

  Philip would not argue with her. “I have a home now, Mom.”

  “This is your home.”

  “This is the place of my birth. My home is where my heart is.”

  “And your heart’s not here.”

  “I love you, Mom. You’ll always have my heart . . . be in my heart.”

  Lydia sighed. “You like them on pumpernickel, eh?”

  “No, Mom. I can’t stay.”

  His mother gripped the kitchen chair. She trembled, but it soon passed.

  “It’s a man, isn’t it?” I swore he would never take anything away from me again, that man.

  “Yes.”

  She turned, her eyes searching her son’s face. “Is he good to you, Philip? Is he really good to you?”

  “He loves me, Mom and . . . I love him.” His chin quivered. It may have been the first time these words had crossed his lips. He realized this was not the audience for it.

  “Bring him here,” Lydia said. “I will meet him. Will that help?”

  Philip embraced her again. “It will help, and you’ll see . . .”

  “You’ll come first without your Dad home. I can rope in his temper now, but I won’t meddle with his beliefs. He’ll never come ‘round, but he’ll never threaten you again. Not if I can help it.”

  And she had. Philip was proud of her. Something good came from his expulsion. His mother had grown a pair. He hitched his backpack over his shoulder. Suddenly, he had a romantic notion. He fished around the bag finding his Penguin Edition of the book.

  “I want you to have this.”

  Lydia perused it. “Moby Dick. This isn’t one of those . . . well, you know books.”

  “No, Mom.” He kissed her forehead. “Just read it. When you do, I’ll come to you across the tide.”

  “Across the tide?” She opened the work. “Call me Ishmael,” she read. She looked down at the page. “Some years ago — never mind how long precisely —”

  Philip touched her hand. “Never mind the meaning. Listen to the rhythm of the words — the lilt.”

  “Lilt?”

  “I live there, between the lilt and the sunlight.” He smiled and kissed her again. Mrs. Waters would have been proud of him, if she could ever recall his name, lost as it was between the lilt and the sunlight.

  Chapter Eight

  Life-Buoy

  1

  Philip left the elevator on the fifth floor, because the attendant at the admissions desk told him that Mr. Thomas Dye was in Post-Operative Care Room 512. He was in stable,
but guarded, condition. Although visiting hours didn’t start for another four hours, Philip was allowed up. There’s been another gentleman up there this whole time. Said someone else might be coming.

  Philip scanned the corridor, the plaque with room number directions steering him true. He reached the nurse’s station.

  “Visitor hours are not until 8 o’clock,” a chubby nurse said.

  Philip’s heart sunk. “I’m here to see Thomas Dye.”

  The nurse glanced at her monitor. “He’s asleep. Come back . . .”

  “Please,” he said.

  The chubby nurse pouted, but a pretty nurse, who had been studying a thick manila folder stirred. “Thomas Dye, did you say?” She stood. She conferred with her colleague.

  “Down there — third room on your right,” said the chubby one, who immediately returned to her duties. The other nurse winked at Philip as he scurried down the corridor.

  The room was dark, the blinds closed. The splutter of monitors and pumps created a nervous symphony that Philip did not like. It sent shivers down his back. He could see a lump in the bed, but didn’t recognize the man in the dark. However, he sensed him. It could be no other. Huddled in a chair at the end of the bed was another lump, slumped in slumber.

  Philip hovered over Tee. He spied those features he loved and longed for, now filled with tubes and attached to the monitor symphony. Tee was breathing. Philip watched the blankets as they rose and fell. There was comfort in that.

  “Just arrive?” Dean Cardoza asked.

  “You’re awake?”

  “Barely.” He straightened his back, lurching forward on his cane. “I’d better stand or I’ll be finding a bed of my own.”

  “How is he?”

  “Come.”

  Philip didn’t like the tone of Uncle Dean’s voice. The old man wrapped his arm around Philip’s shoulder and walked him into the corridor. A short distance away was a bench.

  “I need to sit again.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “What do you think? It’s been an ordeal, Philip.”

  “But Tee?”

  Dean shifted onto the bench. “The operation was a success.”

  “Thank God.” Philip sat also. “I prayed and prayed.”

  Dean raised a finger to his lips. “So did I, dear boy. So did I. I prayed that you had flown away, never to return again.”

  Philip stood abruptly. “Why would you want that? Why?”

  Uncle Dean pressed his finger to his lip again. “Hospital, dear boy. Sit.”

  Philip refused. He couldn’t imagine why this man, who knew what was at stake, would want him separated from Tee. It was much the same as Sprakie and Flo wanted, wasn’t it?

  “I wished for your sake that you went your way, Philip. You’re a free spirit, full of life and promise. I wanted and still want for you to be happy.”

  Philip sat again, sullen and stressed. “Everyone wants me to be happy. Everyone manages to fuck up my happiness.” He rounded on Uncle Dean. “What haven’t you told me, old man?”

  “God has spared Thomas’ life, but the injury is bad. Permanent.”

  “How bad?”

  “He’s paralyzed from the waist down. He may never walk again.”

  “Shit.” Philip buried his face in his hands. “And why did you think that I wouldn’t want him? I love the man, not his legs.”

  Dean Cardoza’s eyes widened. A dim smile raised beneath his satiny beard. “Then, you are the Rachel,” he said.

  Philip shrugged.

  “The Rachel.” Dean looked askance, his eyes focused into air:

  “Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”

  Philip’s lips trembled. He placed his hand on Dean Cardoza’s shoulder. Philip remembered. Ishmael was the only survivor of the Pequod. They’re all gone. He would have drowned also had it not been for the life-buoy that bounded up from the bottom — the precious totem of Queequeg’s obsession; his caulked and repurposed coffin that bobbed upon the tide. For two days, the mariner clung to this idolater’s folly and floated to the Rachel atop old Queequeg’s coffin.

  “Does he know?”

  “He does. He’s not fit company when awake. He’s not to be faulted. He needs time now, Philip.”

  “He needs hope.”

  “Time, and then hope.”

  “Hope, old man.”

  Philip returned to Room 512.

  2

  Philip hovered over the tubing. His thoughts were dark, darker than the room. Suddenly, Tee stirred. He didn’t turn about, constrained as he was. He seemed lost in even darker thoughts, as if the dream that released him was abysmal at best.

  “Who is there? Uncle Dean?”

  “No.” Philip opened the blinds, the dim light revealing his features.

  Tee closed his eyes. “You are still here?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  Thomas shuddered. Tears bled from beneath clenched lids. Philip leaned over and kissed his forehead.

  “I’ll not be pitied,” Tee whimpered. “I’m useless now. I’m . . .”

  “You’re Thomas Dye,” Philip said holding his hand. “You’re a famous author with many works to come. The best, I’m sure. You are my guide.”

  “Some guide. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Hush, now. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.” Philip popped out his little teddy bear. “Remember this?”

  “Ahab.”

  Philip danced the bear on Tee’s chest. “Now, give us a smile.”

  Thomas sniffed, but he did manage a small smile. It was good. Philip clutched Ahab to his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Tee asked.

  Philip maneuvered through the tubes and wires as if they were rigging. He lowered the bed guard and sidled beside the man, his legs kept close to Tee’s dead ones, his arms entwining him. He embraced him, kissing him square upon the lips, Ahab crushed between them.

  “I am your Rachel.” Philip clutched onto Thomas with heaven’s hold. “I love you and will never leave you again.”

  A quiver tingled through Thomas’ heart, his smile broadening beneath the child’s embrace. He could feel it down his back and even to his legs. Struggle there would be. Pain and grief would be their companions, but with Philip Flaxen safely aboard and floating with him toward the horizon, another day dawned on yet another home.