The White Tulip of the Prodigal Son

This story is by Philip J Palmieri and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

The call came in the middle of the night. Colleen’s voice trembled through the receiver. “Uncle Chris, Grandma’s in the hospital. They think she’s dying.”

I wrote down the room number and dressed in my cleanest khakis, a flannel shirt and black overcoat, forgoing my clerical garb. Before my Rambler’s engine could warm up, I placed the car in drive and headed east for the three-hour ride to Boston.

For years, she knew she was dying. She had been denied a liver transplant. Her craving for alcohol was stronger than her desire to live. My parents’ lawyer made her intentions very clear. Their estate would be left entirely to my elder brother, Roland. As I had no heir and never would, she didn’t see fit to leave me a single possession of theirs. She understood I would have had to sell anything of value and donate it to my order.

We both knew that was all an excuse. She adored my brother. He is so like her, embodying all her strength and her desire for wealth and respectability. I failed her on both counts. Even as a child, she derided me for my inability to aim a gun at the birds in the sky and for my revulsion at skinning dead animals. Roland could do that. He even exceeded my father’s career, becoming a prominent Boston surgeon and marrying a girl that I could not.

 

 

When I arrived, the room had a sickly yellow glow emanating from dim lights under her bed. My mother appeared shrunken and far frailer than when I had last seen her four years ago. My niece sat quietly by her side.

Colleen jumped up and embraced me, saying, “I’m so glad you’re here. Grandma’s all confused.”

I approached my mother’s bed. Her face was drawn, and her skin was the color of burnt clay. I placed my hand in hers and bent over to kiss her cheek. Her flesh was ice cold, and her breath rancid.

“Mother, it’s me, Christian. How are you feeling?” I asked.

She turned toward me with a vacant expression and said in a raspy voice, “Christian? I thought you were dead—in the war.”

“No, Mother, not your brother. It’s me—your son.” I said, wanting to turn away from her gaze. The whites of her eyes yellowed with jaundice, and her cracked lips stained red.

“Oh yes, I suppose you are. You’ve finally come to see me.”

“I want to make things right between us.”

“That time has passed,” she said, rising up before sinking back into her bed.

An old anger agitated me. My voice became sharp. “No, Mother, I need—”

Before I could continue, we were interrupted by a knock at the door as it swung open. Roland entered, brushing past me. Standing between my mother and me, he leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

My mother appeared to be searching his face and finally reached up to caress it. “Roland?” she asked, reaching out her arms to draw him closer to her.

“Yes, I’m here. Now rest,” he said.

My brother signaled for me to follow him out into the hall. We walked to the far end, away from the nurse’s station, where we wouldn’t be scrutinized by the hospital staff. With his looming muscular frame and dark auburn hair next to me, fair and slight, they would have never suspected we were brothers.

Immediately his posture turned aggressive, and he spoke in a low, savage voice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Colleen called me. You left her alone here with Mother dying.”

“And you think you could comfort her—either of them? You have no right to be here. If you so much as—”

“I want to set things right between us. Tell her I forgive her.”

Pointing his index finger into my chest, he said, “Forgive her? You’re one pompous asshole. After all you have done—”

Matching the intensity of his voice, I said, “I paid for my past, but you two never gave me a chance. I only wanted her love—and yours.”

He shot back, “You wanted everything and paid for nothing.” With that, the conversation ended.

We returned to the room to find my niece sobbing. My mother had passed.

After the guests left the funeral home, Roland’s wife hovered over my mother’s casket like a raven pecking an animal’s corpse. She tugged the diamond engagement ring off my mother’s stiff finger and snatched her amethyst bracelet along with the thick gold rope chain from around her neck. She placed the jewelry, along with the crystal rosary I had given my mother, into a black pouch and handed them to my niece.

I knelt before my mother one last time. She would have been appalled at her appearance. The mortician had dyed her hair an unnatural honey color that did not match the red of her youth. Through the sheer sleeve of her favorite gown, I could see a Band-Aid left on her forearm by the hospice nurse. Her hands, positioned as if in prayer, appeared ludicrous. My mother had never said a single prayer in her life.

Mother’s disdain for organized religion was bred into her the same way she had been taught to have tea at midday, to hunt grouse in Scotland and to maintain a social superiority. With the war, however, her world had crumbled. Desperate, she manipulated a marriage to my father, a wealthy Irish American Catholic. He pulled her from the rubble of London into the comfort of New York, and ironically, she never forgave him. His rescue only highlighted her vulnerability.

To him and, by extension, to me as I so closely resembled him, she could be brutal with her tongue and neglectful with her heart. She despised weakness, and I suspected that is why she hated his quiet, unassuming, gentle manner. He was content to be a small-town surgeon, while she wanted luxury and grandeur. Whenever we received a postcard from exotic locales visited by my uncle and his family, she would tear apart the correspondence and hurl her drunken insults, shouting that she had married the wrong brother.

When I was quite young, I accompanied my father to Sunday services at a cathedral in Schenectady. The dome was so vast I couldn’t see beyond the sculpted cherubs adorning the ornate ceiling and would think the voices from the choir were actually coming from these marble faces. At home, when I asked her to accompany us to hear the angels sing, she would ridicule, saying I was as much a fool as my father.

Now, looking down at my mother’s remains, I attempted to replace my anger with sadness. I told myself that I had come from this body of hers. That I had once inhabited it. But I could not give up my quiet rage. For years I had preached the power of forgiveness, so why could I not forgive her now?

Maybe I was more like her than I wanted to believe. Self-righteous and self-centered, thinking it was all about me. Maybe I needed to see myself from her side. Surely she saw me as overly sensitive, and spoiled, demanding affection she was incapable of giving. She had to know our shared weakness—the love of booze and pills, medicating our inadequacies and loneliness. At my lowest, I had taken everything my parents had given me and more. I’d have stolen their last dime for a quick fix. Who could blame her for hating me? I loathed my younger self—her drug-addicted second son who turned to God after descending into a hell no human hand could lift me out of. Long ago, I had forgiven myself for my behavior. But hadn’t I denied her the opportunity to forgive me? Before I could rid my anger, I needed to give her that chance.

 

At the cemetery, an ostentatious floral arrangement stood next to Mother’s coffin. Roland stepped forward and recited a eulogy I found meaningless. My attention turned toward the flutter from a nearby tree. A single sparrow emerged, taking flight against the cold blue sky. I closed my eyes, clenched my hands together and prayed, asking her for forgiveness. After my brother finished, he invited each of us to place a flower from the arrangement on the coffin. I went last. My eyes searched the sea of white chrysanthemums. Hidden behind the sash that said Mother was a single white tulip. I brought it to my face, inhaling its scent and touching its leaves for what felt like a lifetime. Ever so gently, I laid it on the casket among the other flowers and walked away.

Before I got to my car, I heard Colleen’s footsteps approaching on the gravel path. She stopped and placed a velvet pouch in my hand. “I’ll never wear these. Take them for your halfway house. I only want this,” she said, pulling the crystal rosary from her pocket.