The Next Queen of Heaven: A Novel

by Gregory Maguire

  Kirk steered Mrs. Scales into the living room and Tabitha and Hogan, no more than ghost images once Kirk was involved, followed bitterly.

  The house looked pretty good, Tabitha had to admit. She had collected the newspapers and the laundry, the empty glasses and dirty plates. Once she had put the new cat safely in a bedroom closet with the door closed, she had made Hogan vacuum the whole place. Kirk, on his own, had piled some pumpkins and leaves and sheaves of wheat into a kind of Harvest Home assemblage, like a picture on the front of a menu. The TV was on, companionably; everyone’s eyes slid over there to check what was on—as much a way of telling the time as anything else. Commercial break; must be about quarter past four.

  Mrs. Scales detached herself from her younger son and stood in the middle of the Colonial-style braided rug. She looked about her, and turned around with her arms out. “Mom, it’s not that clean that you don’t recognize it!” said Tabitha.

  “See, I told you vacuuming was a waste of time,” muttered Hogan. “You’re such a nag, Tabbers.”

  “You’re home,” said Tabitha, “this is home, your home, and you’re home!”

  Mrs. Scales shook her head and pursed her lips. She began to tap one shoulder as if looking for a pocketbook strap, then she patted her trouser pockets for car keys.

  “Sit down and put your feet up,” said Kirk. “We’ll get some supper on the table. You’re just worn out. Come, here’s your chair.” He rubbed the velour upholstery of the recliner. “You want this or the Shopping Channel?”

  Mrs. Leontina Scales made a gesture like the casting of a fly fisherman. They all understood it: Turn it off with the remote. Hogan did.

  The house seemed quieter with the TV off and Mom home than it had seemed with her gone. Weird, thought Tabitha. “I’m going to start supper,” she said. She had been hoping for a cry of delight from Mom. Tabitha’s not learning to cook had been another cause of friction between them. But Mom was busy scrabbling with the old Parade magazines and the outdated TV Guides on the half-barrel side table. “Suppertime,” said Tabitha, louder.

  “Upper time, don’t bother.”

  “She’s lost the beginning part,” said Kirk. “She’s not saying the start of the sentence. That’s what’s so odd. Mom, what’s going on?”

  She had found the worn out paperback Bible, bound in black faux leather. “Ache me home,” she said to Kirk. “Ache me home this minute, you bastard.”

  Tears stood thickly in Kirk’s eyes. “You are home, Mom.”

  Hogan said, “Fuck this crazy shit,” and disappeared into the garage.

  In the kitchen Tabitha began to smash pots around, maybe to drown out the sound of Kirk’s analysis, his girlie whimpers. “Spaghetti-O’s, frozen green beans, chow mein noodles, how does that sound?” she called. “All I gotta do is find the can opener. Do we have one?” No answer. She came to the door to shrug her question again, louder.

  “Izzy,” said Mrs. Scales in a dismissive voice. She laid her hands on the book and closed her eyes.

  “Dizzy?” said Kirk. “Should I get you something—”

  “Izzy,” said their mother. “Izzy.”

  “Busy?”

  She nodded.

  “Now what are you doing that you’re too busy for supper?” said Tabitha in a false high voice.

  “Eating the Bible,” said Mrs. Leontina Scales. Her well-chewed fingernails began to twist at the book’s cover, as if she had forgotten which way to open a book.

  8

  ON THE WHOLE, Jeremy liked Father Mike Sheehy. Our Lady’s needed someone with common sense, and for that they had Sister Alice Coyne. But Father Mike was a burly sort of ordinary guy. When he wore his short-sleeved black cotton shirts in the summertime, Jeremy half expected to see the holy initials JMJ tattooed on his forearms. He wasn’t doughy, he wasn’t especially bookish. His sermons tended to be powered by scraps of science trivia popularized by Carl Sagan or Lewis Thomas.

  Jeremy suspected that parishioners of a certain age who had been trained actually to listen to sermons couldn’t fathom Father Mike’s streamy bio-faith. By the time he finished, their minds were filled with stars and grains of sand and even the tiniest sparrow and the inside and the outside of the curve of eternity. It was probably the closest many of them came to mystical thought or a good marijuana buzz.

  Jeremy found Father Mike in the food pantry. He and Peggy Mueller were stacking industrial-size drums of no-name chicken stock. “We had an appointment,” said Jeremy.

  Father Mike brushed back the forelock of his thinning, sandy hair, and replied, “Oh, right. I was in the office but then Peggy came by and she had these donations from Job Lot Circus. And they’re awfully heavy.”

  “You need more help?”

  “This is the last of them; I can finish stacking,” said Peggy Mueller. “I’ll type up directions on how to make vegetable soup and divide it for freezing. Our regular clients aren’t going to know what to do with so much chicken stock. I’d hate to see it go to waste.” She blinked at Jeremy and put a finger out desultorily. “Would you, for instance, know what to do with a gallon can of chicken stock? Jeremy?”

  “Is this an essay question or multiple choice?”

  “I don’t know how you get by,” said Peggy Mueller. “Artists. Musicians. The world could blow up and you’d be thinking your thoughts. You need a wife, Jeremy.” She primped a bit as if she weren’t already married. She probably knew that Jeremy was gay. This could be one of those social farces, acted out for the benefit of Father Mike. In fact Jeremy wasn’t much of a cook, though. So point taken.

  Peggy Mueller was well into her forties. She had a bad back. Stacking cans of chicken stock was penance, a nod to the ancient beloved convention of martyrdom. She drew her sweater about her bony shoulders and elevated her chin and said, “Go on, Father Mike; I’ll finish up here.”

  “Don’t forget to enter everything in the green book,” said Father Mike. “The federal regulations are so strict, you can’t even give food to the hungry without filing forms in triplicate.” He finished stamping on the edges of the cardboard boxes, breaking them down for the recycling bin, and nodded to Jeremy. “Come on, Sister Alice is still upstairs, I think.”

  Sister Alice was lambasting someone at the phone company about erroneous charges. Jeremy, who liked Sister Alice too, felt sorry for the person on the other end of the line.

  Father Mike and Jeremy crowded in the doorway ostentatiously. The main office of the rectory was a study in early 1970s office decor. A lime green shag carpet had been tramped into submission by parishioners coming to conduct the business part of being Catholic. Some suspiciously artsy seminarian who had preceded him in parish employment, Jeremy guessed, had color-coordinated the three metal filing cabinets with a shade of green that had aged differently, in splotches, so the cabinets were deteriorating into camouflage. The desk weighed about a thousand pounds and featured rubber molding as if it had been designed for a ride in an executive amusement park. Bumper desks. The top of the desk, covered with paperwork, hadn’t been seen since Father Mike’s investiture as pastor.

  Father Mike tapped his watch crystal. “This is not worth the time it’s taking, good-bye,” said Sister Alice, and hung up.

  “Mrs. Castaneda making calls to her sister in Chiapas again?” asked Father Mike. Mrs. Castaneda was the cleaning lady.

  “Mistake on the Motherhouse bill, I’m afraid,” said Sister Alice. “Four calls to Kuala Lumpur, an obvious mistake. No rest for the weary.”

  She followed Father Mike and Jeremy into the staff room and, unusually, closed the door.

  “It was quite a do last week, wasn’t it?” said Father Mike. “That statue. I still don’t know why it took it into its head to skip off the top of the refrigerator just then. Our Lady had been very happy there for decades.”

  “Perhaps a truck went by,” said Sister Alice. “Vibrations, you know. They better get that speed trap thingy hooked up soon. What with 1-81 northbound down to one lane, a
ll that traffic slipping off and cutting through Thebes is making Union Street into Trampoline Alley.”

  “I called Pastor Huyck about the patient. Her name is Leontina Scales,” said Father Mike. “He hasn’t had the chance to see her yet, but he’s been told by the clinic that she’s recovering nicely, and has gone home. No harm done, thank goodness. So that’s why I was tied up a good part of Sunday afternoon. Jeremy, Sister Alice tells me about your request for rehearsal space in the rectory.”

  “Sister Alice gave you all the particulars?”

  “Your friends—being sick, you mean.”

  “Both of them.” He considered. “Not so bad yet, but I only know what I know by made-for-TV movies on Lifetime. These are the first cases in Thebes.”

  “That we’re aware of,” said Father Mike, but he wouldn’t say more on that.

  “We’re rehearsing for a cabaret spot in Manhattan. In January. That’s what, eight, ten weeks from now. It’s an AIDS benefit, a showcase for singer-songwriters, and somehow I qualified for a slot. We’re doing a short set of my own music. There’s going to be judges. People with connections. Some executives from recording studios. Stephen Sondheim is on the panel.”

  Father Mike looked puzzled. “Father Mike wouldn’t know him,” intoned Sister Alice, “Sondheim’s not Catholic.” She began to hum “Send in the Clowns.”

  “Oh, him,” said Father Mike. “I like that song. Well, isn’t that grand. So, if you win, will you become the next Saint Louis Jesuits? Catholic megastars?”

  “We’re not doing religious music. Sometimes I write other stuff.”

  “Secular? Like the Clancy Brothers?”

  “It’s not very cutting edge, but it’s beyond the Clancy Brothers.”

  Father Mike looked put out. “I still have that eight-track tape of the Carpenters. I love how they sounded. I wish they’d done an album of religious music. Maybe that anorectic one would have gotten faith and trusted God enough to eat a decent breakfast every now and then.”

  “You should get a new tape deck,” said Jeremy. “The eight-track keeps you in the past, Father Mike.”

  “When I get a new car. But so many devout mechanics around here who all want to fix my old car for free—never going to happen. Anyway, cutting to the chase, Jeremy. We can’t give you a room in the rectory for eight weeks. I’m sorry.”

  Jeremy turned his head and looked at Father Mike out of the corner of his eyes. “What’s the problem?” His voice sounded more brittle than he intended.

  “Now, none of that. It’s not the AIDS issue or the gay issue either, Jeremy. True, the Parish Council deludes itself into thinking it has jurisdiction over pastoral decisions, but in fact it’s a matter of simple logistics. As you know, Thursday is choir night. Friday alternates between Legion of Mary and Holy Names. Monday night I do couples counseling, and since the office is right next door to the meeting room, music is out of the question. And we’ve made a commitment for every second Tuesday from now through Easter for adult education of the catechumens. So that leaves us Wednesdays, Jeremy, or Saturdays. And with the vigil mass, Saturdays aren’t workable.”

  “Saturdays are out for us too. Sean is still able to work, and he works a shift and a half on Saturday, because it’s time-and-a-half.”

  “Sean Riley? Not Sean Riley,” said Father Mike. “Oh, Jesus.”

  Shoot. Big mouth big mistake. “I hadn’t meant to say that.”

  “Lips are sealed,” said Father Mike. Sister Alice trained her eyes on the floor.

  “But Wednesdays?” said Jeremy.

  “Not on,” said Father Mike. “Nothing regular, but the room is already booked in mid-November for two successive weeks, the Cub Scout planning sessions. Then in early December the ladies come in and do that flurry of potholders for the jumble sale. That already knocks out four weeks, and there will be emergency meetings of the Parish Council when the boiler bursts, or there’s some heated reaction to the next Letter of the Bishop or something. The odd spiritual crisis. The church has to serve the whole community. If we had more space—”

  Jeremy tried to sound disgusted. “I could be the one with AIDS, you know.”

  “I never assumed you weren’t. It’s a matter of space and need.”

  “It’s a matter of priorities.”

  “Church work comes first in a church, actually. But I’ve shared all this with Sister Alice—you did yourself—and so she’s got the floor now.”

  Sister Alice said, “Jeremy, do you know the Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries? Out on Slopemeadow Road?”

  “No. Is it the place beyond the Kmart?”

  “No, that’s an old waterworks. The Motherhouse is this side of Kmart—in that uphill wooded stretch, on the left as you’re going east. Two stone pillars and an old wrought-iron sign arching overhead.”

  “Oh right. I thought that was some kind of private cemetery or something.”

  “Too near the truth.” Sister Alice sighed. “That’s why I’m here talking to you with Father Mike. I was discussing my religious order the other day, wasn’t I? The headquarters are still in Canada, but with real estate prices what they are up there—I mean out of this world—the Order has put some of its Montreal property on the market. Retrenching, I think the word is. Downsizing.”

  “What, they’re firing nuns?” said Jeremy.

  “There aren’t any nuns to fire. Though believe me in my day I would have been glad of the blessed opportunity in the case of Sister … but never mind that. Listen, the Order still maintains, at considerable cost, this behemoth of a convent out on Slopemeadow Road. It was built in a faux-Gothic style in the 1920s, when vocations were up. Can’t unload the property; there’s no demand for a seventy-room complex eight miles out of Thebes, New York.”

  “A ghost convent,” said Jeremy.

  “Almost. The thing is this. Though the presence of Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries has dwindled in this part of New York, the Order maintains the property as a kind of retirement home for the elderly nuns. There are seventeen women out there now. Sisters between the ages of seventy and ninety-eight. Their health is not universally good, but they are in a lot better shape, physically, than most of their peers who are not in the religious life.”

  “Oh? How do they deserve that?”

  “Think about it. They all lived lives of hard work and prayer, some of them for most of the century. Back before the craze for fresh fruits and vegetables, the Sisters were eating lean cuisine because that was all they could afford. Back before the days of the Exercycle, the Sisters walked everywhere they needed to go, and got better exercise than most. More than you.”

  “No doubt about that. I’m allergic to exercise.”

  “The Sisters never smoked. We ate low-fat before it became popular. We were always good at penitence.”

  “Did you do those ‘Buns of Steel’ videos?”

  “Jeremy,” intoned Father Mike, leafing through a catalog of vestments.

  Sister Alice plunged on. “The old nuns are built like powerhouses and they take forever to die. I do mean forever. I am the only member of the Order in this Province under the age of seventy. My contemporaries—the women I entered with—are either serving in Montreal or, regrettably, have left the religious life.”

  “These nuns have a piano?” Jeremy began to get the point.

  “They have a piano. The whole place is heated like a greenhouse because, of course, they’re old women with poor circulation. You might be able to go there once a week for ten weeks or so, and have a place to practice. I think it could probably be arranged. How are Tuesdays?”

  He didn’t want to sound too eager. It sounded perfect. “I’d have to run it by the guys. But I don’t see why not—”

  “Not so fast. There’s a cost here.”

  “We’re not in a position to rent the space, Sister Alice. We don’t have any money, either singly or as a group—”

  “I’m talking barter. There are seventeen old nuns out there, in
varying degrees of physical health. But their mental health is my concern, too. They are woefully secluded. They are too infirm to get out often, and yet too healthy to die. They are women with a wide variety of interests and also, I might add, a considerable amount of education, in some cases. But they suffer from being isolated out there. Not enough going on for them. The word I’m trying to avoid is …”

  “Lunacy?”

  “Depression. This is a group of seriously depressed older women, able to take care of themselves but not much more than that. They can manage the running of the building, the cooking, the laundry, the nursing of the sick among them—more or less—while I handle the finances and so on. My Abbess in Montreal approves my administrative work here at Our Lady’s, but requires that I look in on the Motherhouse and try to provide what they need. And I feel that what they need is some human contact.”

  “Oh.” Jeremy felt conflicted. “Some say gay men aren’t fully human.”

  “They say that about women who live in community, too,” snapped Sister Alice. “Look, I think I could persuade them to open up their parlor to you boys, if you agreed to spend some time chatting with them each time you went. You would get your rehearsal space and you’d be doing a service to them as well. What do you think?”

  “Sister Alice.” Jeremy rubbed his hands together. It must look like avarice, he thought, and that’s what I feel, but can I make this work? “I don’t want to be rude, but we’re talking about men who don’t all have as easygoing an attitude toward the Church as I do. We’re talking about a couple of gay men with HIV. One of them isn’t Catholic. And the Catholic one hates organized religion with a passion.”

  “There’s a Bechstein.”

  “Oooh, you’re good.” Jeremy turned to Father Mike. “Are you sure that Wednesday nights are out—?”

  “Isn’t she a miracle worker?” Father Mike beamed at Sister Alice.

  “Flattery, flattery; more welcome than accurate. Still, I’ll take what I can get.” Sister Alice picked up a motorcycle helmet from behind the plastic tub of a dying ficus. Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “I did a mischief to the car’s rotator cuff, or whatever it’s called,” she said as they walked out together. “I talked the garage into loaning me a bike for the duration.”