The Next Queen of Heaven: A Novel

by Gregory Maguire

  “She was—I don’t know, watching something on TV, I think.”

  “Well, give her my best, and can you put me in the book for a trim at eleven?”

  “I can give you a trim right now.”

  “You think I trust you near my jugular with a razor? Just kidding. No, I have to go check in City Hall and answer the phone emergencies.”

  “Linda Pearl is free at eleven. I’ll put you down.”

  “You seem a little, I don’t know. Everything is okay at home, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, just fine,” said Tabitha. She said it again in a higher voice. “Yes, just fine.”

  “Hogan’s been absent a lot this week. Flu?”

  She wasn’t overly fond of Hogan but she wasn’t going to be used as a stooge against him. “Kirk is shaping up to be a good student, isn’t he?” she said. “You must be surprised after me and Hog.”

  “Kirk’s okay,” said Jack Reeves noncommittally. “But I was asking about Hogan.”

  Suddenly she felt tired, though it was still so early in the day. She couldn’t run interference for her mom and Hogan both; it was too much for her. “Mom needs looking after for a while,” she said, as guardedly as she could manage. “It’s kind of strange,” she found herself saying. “We’re not really sure what she wants.”

  Jack Reeves began to back away as if he suspected Tabitha was about to ask him to come over and give an opinion. “What you should do is go see Jakob Huyck. Pastor Huyck. He knows your mom as well as anyone, doesn’t he? He’d be a good one to talk to.”

  She had almost thought of this herself, but the thought hadn’t quite made it into words yet. She allowed herself to smile at Mr. Reeves for completing her idea.

  When Linda Pearl came in, Tabitha was all ready to ask to be excused the rest of the morning. But Linda Pearl didn’t wait even for the end of the hellos. “I heard the news,” she said, throwing her Windbreaker on a chair and ruffling her hair to allow perspiration on her neck to dry. “You must be a basket case. You must be out of your mind.”

  “What news?” said Tabitha.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know?” Her pause was magnificently timed; her lobstery Bea Arthur voice dropped to a crawl. “Oh Lordy. Don’t let me be the one to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down.”

  “I don’t need to sit down. What?”

  Linda Pearl shook her head. “Do as I say.”

  Tabitha sat down. Linda Pearl drew in a deep breath. “Now don’t blame me, I’m only telling you what I heard.”

  “Linda Pearl, if you milk this any longer it’ll curdle.”

  Linda Pearl made the sign of the cross as if she were about to meet martyrdom face on. “Caleb Briggs is engaged.”

  Tabitha hadn’t heard correctly. Had she? For a moment she thought, Did we get engaged that night? I was too wasted to notice? “Say what?”

  “Your Caleb. Caleb Briggs is going to get married. Right after Christmas. I heard it at Bingo last night. It’s all over town. Oh, Lord, don’t cry, Tabitha.”

  But Tabitha was nowhere near crying, yet. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. He doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t want a wife. He told me that a hundred times. That was fine with me because I don’t want a husband. Half the time I don’t even want a boyfriend.”

  “Well, that’s good, because now—”

  “What are you saying?” Tabitha shook Linda Pearl’s shoulders so hard that her retro flip nearly flipped out.

  “Don’t go postal on me, don’t go nutso, it’s not my fault.” For strength, she unpacked an éclair from a Dunkin’ Donuts sack.

  “Linda Pearl Wasserman, you may be twelve years older than me and maybe you are a little bit overweight and have given up getting married, but if an éclair means more to you right now when my life is like nuclear bombing all around…” She ran out of steam and couldn’t think of a suitable consequence. “Well, you know what you can do with that éclair.”

  Linda Pearl put the pastry carefully back on its square of translucent paper. “Tabitha honey, I’m sorry. I just never did know how to break rotten news to people. When my aunt died by driving off that Thruway bridge that wasn’t there any more, I mean the one that collapsed, I didn’t know what to say to my dad except ‘Female drivers.’ Which was kind of stupid because female drivers are statistically less likely to drive off bridges that aren’t there, I mean if they have a choice. My point is I didn’t know how to be kind and I was nervous. I don’t remember what I said next. I probably went and had an éclair.”

  She approached Tabitha gingerly as if trying to figure out the proper holds for being kind. “Forget it,” said Tabitha, “I don’t need a hug, thank you very much. Will you just tell me what you know? If you don’t mind? If it’s not too much to ask?”

  “Sarcasm. I deserve it. Heap it on.” Tabitha stayed silent. “Well, according to what I heard—Old Lady Scarcese at the Knights of Columbus Bingo night—he’s marrying someone from over by the Glory of God Retirement Home. You know, that failed little set of townhouses that went into receivership and sold for thirty-nine-five each? The bitch lives there. She’s some sort of a freelance attorney or something—”

  “She has a job?” Tabitha was outraged. “You mean it’s not some loser like Stephanie Getchen? You mean it’s some real person? How dare he?”

  “She owns her own home, Tabitha. She must be doing something right.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Now, don’t you get started—”

  “I’m not going to ice her, Linda Pearl, I just want to find out what she looks like. They must know her name.”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you.” Linda Pearl’s eyelids slitted almost shut, which was their natural station; it made Tabitha realize Linda Pearl had been staring wide-eyed at Tabitha since she’d arrived. “Tabby-cat, what if weeks from now Chief Jack Reeves walks in here and says to me, ‘What do you know about Tabitha Scales and a bloody act of vengeance against the woman engaged to that sweetheart, Caleb Briggs?’ It gives me chills thinking about it.”

  “For one thing, if Jack Reeves starts calling Caleb Briggs a sweetheart, you’ll have a lot more to talk about at Knights of Columbus Bingo night than me. For another, Reeves is coming back in at eleven for a trim. I forgot to tell you.”

  “I shouldn’t say. I never should. Polly Osterhaus. And God have mercy on my soul.” She looked around at the razors that Tabitha had laid out on the counter near the men’s side. “I’m going to count those babies every night, Tabitha, and if one is missing I’ll know where to look for it.”

  “You didn’t get enough sleep, Linda Pearl, you’re wacko. And take it from me, I’m an expert on wacko these days.”

  “I was too excited. I couldn’t wait to tell you, but I didn’t want to call. How’s your mom, by the way?”

  “I need to go see—” But Tabitha couldn’t finish. She slumped down on the stool suddenly and threw her head in her arms and began to wail. She knocked the éclair off the counter and since it landed gooey-side up—amazingly—through her cold hot cold tears she watched as Linda Pearl struggled with the temptation to rescue it for later.

  13

  GINNIE PRESLEY, BOTH squint-eyed and dyslexic, needed Jeremy’s full attention, and today he was more than glad to stay after school was released to give it to her. His part-time tutoring job was allowing him to duck the convent debacle for a while. He hoped that Sean would come around—and that the nuns would, too—but Jeremy knew that nudging Sean wouldn’t work. Sean’s loyalty would reassert itself without Jeremy’s needing to go seductive. That he couldn’t do, for the reason that he also had to leave Thebes—the reason that was just now pausing in the doorway of Mrs. Doorneweerd’s room, and now speaking.

  “Jeremy—what do you know. I wondered if you’d be here.”

  Jeremy blinked. Ginnie Presley took advantage of the diversion to shunt herself a bit deeper into his lap. From where Jeremy was sprawled in the antique be
anbag chair, he looked up through the fish tank to see a wavery Willem Handelaers. The fish scrolled back and forth like a screensaver; the bubbles from the aerator stitched silver chains across Willem’s face. Damn him, thought Jeremy, he still looks like a Greek warrior statue in mint condition—a Praxiteles clothed in L.L. Bean millennial fall fashions. The light through the fish tank gave Willem’s blond voltage a kind of oxidized look. He took a step through the door. He was carrying one of his kids.

  “Oh,” said Jeremy. “Hi.”

  Ginnie said, “Hi,” too, in a dubious voice, meaning, Jeremy inferred, Get lost. Willem took no notice and came around the fish tank, and Jeremy had to dump Ginnie off his lap and scramble to his feet. They shook hands as if they were concluding a deal in life insurance.

  “This is Charlotte,” said Willem to Ginnie, who scowled. To Jeremy, Willem said, “Her big brother Bartholomew is going to come to Mildred Cleary next year, and since I was in town I thought I’d stop and pick up the application for kindergarten. Charlotte, do you remember Jeremy?”

  Charlotte Handelaers buried her face in her father’s neck, just as Jeremy would have been inclined to do if Charlotte and Ginnie were suddenly struck blind. Charlotte rubbed her shyness deeper. Ginnie Presley, seeing her chance for escape—younger children always demanded more attention—said, “So I can go now?”

  “You’re going to take Hop on Pop home and read it to your mother tonight, right?” said Jeremy.

  “If my pop lived with us, I could read it to him,” said Ginnie.

  “You read it once to yourself and once to your Mom, and next week you’ll read it to me,” said Jeremy, “and maybe we’ll get to One Fish Two Fish Black Fish Blue Fish.”

  “Red Fish Blue Fish,” said Ginnie witheringly.

  “See, I told you you can read,” said Jeremy. “So long now.”

  Ginnie hulked away like an eight-year-old factory worker after a day on the assembly line: shoulders down, head to one side as if too exhausted to hold it erect. “We know Hop on Pop, don’t we?” said Willem, nuzzling into Charlotte. “Daddy knows it by heart. Didn’t he read it to Bartholomew four thousand times this year?”

  “Barty,” murmured Charlotte, looking around for her brother.

  “It’s a good book,” said Jeremy.

  “But enough is enough,” said Willem. “The simplest Seuss for youngest use now requires a good belt of Jack Daniel’s. I was reading it to Charlotte the other day for the eighth time and got to the page about Red in bed, and found myself improvising. Rob, Rob, he likes his job. He does his job with the knob of Bob.”

  “So how’s Francesca?” said Jeremy.

  “He makes Bob bob, and throb, and sob.”

  “Your wife,” said Jeremy.

  “Before a mob.”

  “Francesca? Though not too much rhymes with Francesca. Except Fresca.”

  “Don’t you remember Jeremy?” said Willem to his daughter. “Don’t be shy, Charlotte. Look, he likes you. He remembers you. He’s Daddy’s old friend. Give Jeremy a kiss.”

  “Don’t make her, it’s okay. She doesn’t have to like me. I generally don’t even like myself the first half hour of every day, either, so no reason she should—”

  But this must be a game that the Handelaers family played, for after Willem kissed his daughter on the beautiful round bulge of her left cheek, she turned with eyes down and pouted her lips incrementally in Jeremy’s direction. “See, she will; she trusts you if I trust you,” said Willem.

  “She shouldn’t, you shouldn’t.” Jeremy moved closer and Charlotte leaned out to graze his face with her lips. Then she arched her neck and turned her right cheek to Jeremy for a return kiss. He put his hand on the back of her corduroy overalls and came in a little nearer again, and kissed her. She wriggled a bit, but returned the kiss to her dad. Willem shifted his stance, flexing that marmoreal thigh under the chinos, closing the distance, and he kissed Charlotte on the lips.

  “Willem, don’t.”

  “This is how the game goes,” said Willem, and Charlotte swiveled to pass the kiss on. Jeremy took in a sweep of breath, and then kissed Charlotte lightly, an airbrushed kiss. More of a graze, really. Charlotte delivered it back to Willem, who by now had circled his free hand around to rest lightly on Jeremy’s hip. Some fingers migrated across Jeremy’s bum, one of them stroking the top of the crease. “Mmm,” said Willem. “Who’s my baby? Who’s my precious sweetheart?”

  Jeremy knew that three seconds of this was about all he could stand. He closed his eyes for one moment, letting Willem and Charlotte both bow their heads into the hollows under his uplifted jaw. Charlotte smelled of the dust of dried cereal. Willem had a distant streak of vetiver laced beneath his toasty smoker’s breath and the Saab-interior smell of his leather jacket. There were the memories of other, richer smells, hidden but implied, but Jeremy pulled away before allowing himself to itemize them and need them. “Really,” he said coldly, “Mrs. Doorneweerd goes off to a staff meeting and look what the classroom aide gets up to.”

  “Gives a whole new set of possibilities to the idea of a Parent-Teacher Association,” said Willem, but he moved away too, and jiggled Charlotte, who wasn’t ready yet to stop this fun, either. “Hey diddle diddle, the girl’s in the middle; Jeremy’s over the moon,” said Willem.

  “Stop,” said Jeremy, laughing. Out of tension. He knew how this went well enough to know that it would stop, just now; and it did. Charlotte let out a spiraling chortle, and kicked her feet to be let down.

  “I hoped I’d find you here, actually,” said Willem. He lowered his rump onto the radiator that ran beneath the windowsill. “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, well. You know me.” Jeremy picked up some papers and shuffled them without glancing at them. “I need to have myself arrested for abusing my own inner child.”

  “You’re looking good. Health still okay?”

  “Believe me, Willem, if the test comes back positive I’m not going to spare you the responsibility to comfort me.” Here it is, right on schedule, always blurting out proof of my continuing need and regret. “I feel better and more guilty with each six-month period that I come away clean from the clinic. Though it’s not as if I’m putting myself at any kind of risk any more. Thebes isn’t exactly the Mecca for hot guys on the prowl for repressed liturgical musicians of the Catholic persuasion.”

  “Oh, Mr. Right, well, who’s he?” said Mr. Right, grinning at his daughter, who had found some building blocks on a shelf.

  “Ask Mrs. Right. How is Francesca?”

  “She’s doing great. Very involved last summer getting a new porch put on the house. She designed a pattern of brick and of ceramic tiles that was a real bitch to lay; they had to rip the whole thing up once because the footing was uneven. We were sorry you didn’t get there for the harvest party we had; it was warm enough to be out on the porch a good part of the evening, even with the lake wind. Her latest obsession has something to do with stenciling the fireplace surrounds on the second floor, in order not to freak out over the coming global computer collapse.”

  “Well, tell her hi.”

  “She says hi. She knew I was going to look for you.”

  Well, of course; she wasn’t an idiot.

  “It’s partly for her that I’ve come, in fact, to ask you a favor.”

  Jeremy sensed an easing of pressure, and an elevating of the usual sadness. Willem hadn’t sought him out because of sentiment or bittersweet memory. Francesca had sent Willem here on a mission. So now I can be colder and more immune to Willem’s charm. Whoopee. “Anything. What’s up?”

  “A friend of Francesca’s sister Irene is getting married in a couple of months.” Jeremy thought, Of course, he could always have just phoned me; and he felt cheap at his instinct to identify the escape clause, but grateful.

  “I lost you,” said Jeremy suddenly, “what’s this?”

  “Francesca and Irene’s friend. I think you know her—Polly Osterhaus.”

  “Right, sh
e’s in my choir. She’s an alto.”

  “Well, Polly’s getting married. Just after New Year’s, I think. And it seems you’re not being invited to do the music.”

  “Why do you say that?” Jeremy was miffed. Polly should have told him her plans. It was embarrassing to hear depressing marriage news through the grapevine.

  “Jeremy, are you listening? Polly is friends with Irene.”

  “Irene?”

  “Irene Menengest, Francesca’s younger sister. Polly has asked Irene to sing something at the wedding, and Irene needs some coaching and maybe an accompanist, and Francesca thought of you.”

  “Polly could have thought of me.”

  “Polly might not know how nervous Irene is about this. Or maybe Polly’s, um, conflicted because she’s not asking you to sing at her wedding.”

  “She should be. I’m her choir director. I intend to sulk the rest of the month.”

  “Will you help Irene? You know her, don’t you?—didn’t you meet her at the house last year? Bartholomew’s birthday party?”

  How touching, how stupid. Did Willem expect Jeremy to remember incidental friends and family members when he was visiting Willem’s beautiful 1840s home, making steady and difficult peace with Willem’s perfect 1990s wife, enjoying and being jealous of Willem’s irreplaceable kids, his hilltop view out over Lake Ontario? Even his Irish setter, Clay, was sexy with that recherché bandanna around his neck.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Jeremy, “Irene. Is she the plump one with the beautiful dimples and the Guatemalan shawls and all? Sort of testy?”

  “She’s got a decent voice, but she’s nervous.”

  “I could probably meet her a couple of times and give her some pointers, but I don’t know about the actual wedding. Depends on when it is. I have some other plans for early January.”

  “She’ll be awfully glad, and so will Francesca. I knew you’d do it; I told Francesca you would.”

  “I can do the rehearsal. I can’t say I can make the wedding,” said Jeremy, more pointedly this time. “Irene might have to get another accompanist, someone down from Watertown maybe, depending on what the piece is. I might not be here.”