Turning Idolater (34 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.”