The Next Queen of Heaven: A Novel

by Gregory Maguire

  Having collected their rags and supplies and returned them to a rolling cart in the hallway, the other nuns were already leading Sean toward the refectory, which was at the opposite end of the first floor corridor from the sunroom. Jeremy found himself struggling to remember which nun was which. The oldest seemed to be Sister Perpetua, who looked like a rag doll in her black serge habit. Her eyes were rheumy and her upper lip creased, and she had a weedy little chin like a catfish. For all that, her step was more sprightly than Sister Jeanne d’Arc’s, and her head jerked about to follow what was being said the way a parrot’s head moves, in sharp, offended gestures.

  Mother Clare du Plessix was not large the way Sister Clothilde was large—Sister Clothilde was flabby; Mother Clare more like a Mission-style hutch, broad and square and airy-looking. Mother Clare seemed silent; one eye strayed outward from time to time. She hunched her shoulders up and dropped them regularly; perhaps she was engaged in a Socratic dialogue with herself, or perhaps her camisole straps were binding. She was heavy in the front.

  Sister Felicity, all aborted cartwheels and hesitant bourrées, seemed to have been given the wrong name. She proved to be the worrier among them; she scurried back to make sure they’d turned off the light switches; then she scurried forward as if scared of the dark. “Oh, the milk, the hot water, and so on,” she said, and plowed ahead with her head down, disappearing behind a swinging door. “The kitchen,” said Sister Jeanne d’Arc. “Sister Felicity’s special charge.”

  “Sister Felicity’s penance,” said Sister Perpetua.

  “No, our penance,” said Sister Clothilde, huffing. Her hugeness was sweet, like a puff pastry, and she turned to grin at the visitors. She might just be an airhead, thought Jeremy; with the constitutionally cloistered, it’s so hard to make a judgment about normalcy. As he knew from personal experience.

  In admonition Mother Clare du Plessix said softly, “Sisters,” and they passed the kitchen, from which issued the sounds of a kettle smashing on a stovetop.

  Sister Magdalene came the closest to the kind of nun who inspired holy terror in schoolchildren. She had a backbone like a coatrack, and long skeletal fingers. She was the tallest of the lot. Her bones creaked audibly. Alone of the old nuns, she eschewed the veil; her hair was silvery and sparse, and close-cropped like a crusty old City Desk man in a Fifties newspaper drama.

  Sister Magdalene and Sister Clothilde opened the doors to the refectory and tucked their heads down, tacitly inviting the guys in. After the grandeur of the chapel, the refectory was plain as pudding. Extra tables were piled two deep, tops together, so half the room seemed a forest of table legs. At the other end, the walls were kitted out with long aluminum counters bare of anything but boxes of dried cereal. The effect was a little clinical.

  On one table the nuns had laid out a repast. Some white plates thick as dinnerware, some heavy, well-polished silver knives and spoons. Cups and saucers, a little wicker basket of Celestial Seasonings teas, and a pound cake squatting unceremoniously on a platter too big for it.

  “Bless us, Jesus, and in Your Holy Name may we be nourished so that we may nourish others,” intoned Mother Clare, at a clip. Even before the perfunctory “Amens” the boys were being pushed to take sections of yellow cake with marmalade spooned on the side. Sister Felicity came barreling through with another metal tray on wheels—not unlike a hospital cart—and provided hot water and milk for the tea. The noise of stirring teaspoons echoing about the high-ceilinged space made Jeremy feel he was a thug in a warehouse conspiring with hit men.

  “If we could sell it as a retreat center or a retirement home and move ourselves into a little ranch house without all these stairs, we’d be a lot better off,” said Mother Clare, regarding the bowl of her spoon with some dismay. “I fear the tarnish has caught up with us again.”

  “We are none of us what we once were, alas,” proposed Sister Clothilde.

  Mother Clare looked a bit chagrined, but she turned and said to Jeremy, “Please tell us something about yourselves. Let me get your names straight. I know you’re Jeremy, Sister Alice Coyne does nothing but sing your praises. Jeremy Carr, is it? And the others—if you would be so kind?”

  “My short-term memory’s so unreliable, I sometimes can’t even remember what …” said Sister Clothilde. Her voice trailed off and she stared into the middle distance.

  “Sister!” said Mother Clare. Sister Clothilde jumped. So did the guys, but then they realized Sister Clothilde wasn’t being startled out of vagueness, she was being chastised for being flip.

  “Well, my apologies,” she said, in an unrepentant tone, “but in fact I can’t remember their names.”

  Jeremy said, “Jeremy Carr. Sean Riley here, and this is Marty Rothbard.”

  “That’s a mouthful,” said Sister Perpetua. She glowered warmly at Marty Rothbard. “Were you named after Saint Martin of Tours?”

  “I was named after Herman Martin Lefkowicz of Flatbush.”

  “I never heard of that saint, but they’re letting anyone in these days. You used to have to suffer to be a saint. Now it’s good works, good works, good works till the cows come home.”

  “He’s my uncle, and a devout Orthodox Jew.”

  “I don’t hold with Orthodoxy,” said Sister Perpetua. “All that chanting and incense, and black-robed ladies ironing in the back of the basilica. The things they get up to. You can’t fool me.”

  “Sister Perpetua,” said Mother Clare, “our young friend isn’t Catholic.”

  “Oh well,” said Sister Perpetua, “neither was Saul till he got a yen to see Damascus. I guess there’s time.”

  “I’m actually not shopping for a religion,” said Marty.

  “Tell us something about the Order,” said Jeremy. “Sister Alice Coyne told us the name and the address, not much more. You’re not the hermit kind of nuns, I take it.”

  “We are cloistered only by circumstances,” said Mother Clare du Plessix.

  “Come again?” said Marty.

  “I don’t mean to confuse. There are several types of religious orders. The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries are an active order; we work largely in teaching. It’s only in this extended old age that we verge, willy-nilly, on the contemplative. By which I mean that, by the default of our age, we confine ourselves to prayer and meditation and silence, as some sisters in other orders do from the moment they enter as young postulants. Aiming for the Grand, or Profound Silence.”

  “Not us. We were active. So we’re not freaks,” said Sister Clothilde, helping herself to another slice of pound cake. “We know the world in all its modern ways. Though we reserve the right to disapprove.”

  “In actual fact,” said Mother Clare—it was as if she were speaking to herself; that wandering eye gave her an even more ethereal aspect—“the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries, though an active order, were never as well integrated into the modern world as many other orders. Though we weren’t cloistered, our missions tended to be boarding schools for girls, and our Superiors General usually chose to locate us remotely. Hence this upstate plantation out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But was there a school you taught at around here?” said Jeremy. “I grew up in Utica; I don’t know the history of Thebes well—”

  “This was the New York Motherhouse,” said Mother Clare, “and it still is, though the Montreal house has superseded it in worldly vigor. Which is to say that young girls came and studied here as postulants and novices before taking their final vows. They were then assigned to one of five schools we maintained in New York and Pennsylvania. Since the closing of the last school a decade ago, we’ve had no place to send new sisters. But then, we have no new sisters to send. It’s been twelve years since we welcomed a sister into our community.”

  “That’s why Sister Alice is allowed to work at Our Lady’s?” said Jeremy. “There’s nothing for her to do here?”

  “Oh,” said Sister Clothilde, pointing to the tarnished spoon that Mother Clare du Plessix had cr
iticized, “there’s plenty for her to do. But Vatican II encouraged individual preferences and professional callings among the members of the community, and then, I can’t tell you—”

  “—all hell broke loose?” That was Marty; he couldn’t help it. But the sisters smiled.

  Mother Clare du Plessix finished Sister Clothilde’s remark for her. “Some of us took to the new liberties with aplomb. Some did not.”

  “I’ll never forget my first cup of decaf coffee,” said Sister Perpetua. “I’d never been able to manage caffeine—it gives me the jumps—but if you couldn’t manage caffeine you did without, and were grateful for the opportunity for humility. As far as I’m concerned, the best thing Vatican II did was decaf. All the rest of it, those fashionable veils and attractive skirts, and doing away with the serre-tête, it seemed dubious to me then and dubious to me it continues to seem, thirty years later.”

  “Then there was The Nun in the World, by Cardinal Suenens, that groundbreaking book.” Mother Clare looked with raised eyebrows, clearly expecting recognition in the faces of her visitors.

  “Perhaps,” said Sister Felicity, overturning the sugar bowl as she reached to dab some crumbs off the Formica tabletop, “perhaps our young friends still think that The Nun in the World is a contradiction in terms.”

  “Of course not,” said Jeremy. “Sister Alice is a wonderful example. She zips about in her own little car; she knows a lot of people in the parish. She has a good sense of humor. She can balance the books better than Father Mike. She’s good with kids. She’s not too holier-than-thou—”

  “Not by quite a long shot,” said Sister Clothilde.

  “She is a fine example of the nun in the modern world,” said Mother Clare du Plessix with a firmness of tone, as if this were the vestige of an old argument. “We are all proud of her.”

  “But really,” said Marty, “the stuff of being a nun is pretty archaic, you got to admit it. I mean, I’m not Catholic, but all those vows. It isn’t what you’d call natural.”

  “Vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,” said Mother Clare. “The easiest vows to take. What could be more natural than to focus your attention on overcoming—”

  “Vows of poverty and chastity?” said Sean. “This is really beyond the pale, don’t you think? Guys? Though vows of obedience could be fun. Depending.”

  “We’re going on,” said Mother Clare suddenly. She turned and smiled at Sean; at least they guessed she was directing her smile at him. “We have so few people to talk to. It’s why we’re so pleased you’ve come. Tell us about yourself, dear boy.”

  Jeremy could see what was coming; Jeremy could see Sean itching to erupt with an in-your-face routine like some outtake of The Birdcage. He was chewing the corner of his lip for a cigarette, though he’d given them up after the first pneumonia scare. And this is my cross to bear, thought Jeremy, that I can’t stand to see this collision about to happen.

  But Sean only said, “If you want to hear confessions, let’s start with Jeremy, shall we. Something’s going on with him. He thinks we don’t notice. Maybe you can ferret it out of him.”

  Damn Sean, damn him. Eyes like a hawk, like Joan Rivers. Jeremy bounded to his feet. “We will sing for you; we need to warm up,” he declared. “Tea’s done, and many thanks. Then we’re off down the hall for our rehearsal. This has been great. Will you tell the others we missed them? Come on, guys. Something a cappella—” But he wasn’t about to suggest one of his own pieces. Even as dry cuttings of the full people they might once have been, the nuns were too attentive. And his songs were too, well, confessional. “That Haydn round,” he decided. They’d heard it at an AIDS memorial service in Little Falls a few months earlier, and it was easy to pick up. “The words are by Galileo, or reputed to be,” he told the sisters.

  “Well, he’s been forgiven by Rome, so go on,” said Mother Clare.

  Sean was looking at him with curiosity, contempt, weariness. “Jeremy. I hate to bring up dementia, but the deal was we weren’t going to sing. Can you possibly have forgotten?”

  “We forget things all the time,” said Sister Perpetua. “More tea?”

  “I just thought,” said Jeremy.

  Sean was livid. “What’s up with you today? You can keep to your half of the bargain, Jeremy. We’re doing this whole thing for you. The music thing, the convent thing, the whole shit-and-shebang of it.”

  “Now there’s a phrase I never saw in my breviary,” said Sister Clothilde, as Sean glared at Jeremy and he shrugged. Sister Clothilde went on. “We know a Haydn round. Is it the same one? Do you mean the Star Carol? We can sing it to you. And then you can be dismissed to rehearse.”

  “I’ll go tune up,” said Sean, “on my own,” and he stood to leave.

  Sister Clothilde, on a watery little note, began. “Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light.”

  “I definitely don’t need this. Deal-breaker, Jeremy,” said Sean.

  “Chill, Sean,” said Marty.

  Jeremy closed his eyes and started in at the third repeat, as Sisters Felicity and Perpetua joined their voices to Sister Clothilde. “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night—fearful of the night.”

  “You owe me,” said Sean, as the nuns began the round again. The sisters sat with their hands in their laps and their eyes cast down at first, as if they were hostages testifying to their abductors. Mother Clare du Plessix looked up, her wild eye gleaming. Members of one flock, the other nuns allowed themselves to lift their eyes as well. Sister Perpetua ticked her forefinger back and forth like a metronome. Sister Clothilde grinned. Sister Felicity pursed her lips and her eyes teared. Sister Magdalene, who had not spoken all evening, was the only one not singing. Sister Jeanne d’Arc folded her arms about her habit and mouthed the words, though no sound came out. When the round had dribbled to a close, there was silence in the refectory for a moment.

  Then Mother Clare du Plessix said, “Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music, you must be looking down on us tonight.”

  “That wasn’t so bad,” said Sister Perpetua, “given that I wandered off pitch in 1966 and I’ve never found my way back.”

  “Good night, ladies,” said Sean. He was paler than he’d been, and Jeremy thought the vast icy room with its yards and yards of stainless steel counters had taken on the feel of a mortuary. “I hardly have to say I don’t believe in anything like ‘perfect light,’ and I find it offensive.”

  “Mr. Riley,” said Sister Jeanne d’Arc, “you’re a singer, I’m told. And what we were singing, or pretending to sing, was a song.”

  “Souls setting in darkness,” said Sean. “Puh-lease.”

  “We’re closer to that particular darkness that you are, actuarially speaking,” posited Sister Jeanne d’Arc. “Cut us some slack, brother.”

  Sean didn’t bother to argue with them, but a fermata of unsaid ripostes hung in the air among them all, until Sister Clothilde said, “Isn’t it nice to have a good look at some men?

  “Well, you know what I mean,” she continued, when all the sisters gaped at her.

  17

  PASTOR JAKOB HUYCK studied the house on Papermill Road for a moment from his safe haven in the sad little Volkswagen Rabbit from which, at this stage in his life and in its, he would have preferred to be parted. The passenger door was kept closed with a bungee cord. The thoughtful brethren who had donated it for his use had been more kind than tidy. Something powerfully dairy had spilled into the upholstery once upon a time. Huyck had shampooed the carpet and the backseat, to no avail.

  No crying over spilt milk. For his own spiritual integrity Pastor Jakob Huyck demanded that he consider this proverb whenever eyeing a comely young maiden out and about in the streets of Thebes, or any other streets or rest stops on the highways and byways of the Empire State, for that matter. He hadn’t taken a vow of chastity himself, as it wasn’t a condition of ordination for the Cliffs of Zion Radical Radiant Pentecostals; but he was expected to comport
himself with dignity as befitting his station. Meaning—to spell it out, as he did frequently—that the sins of the flesh were forbidden him outside the bounds of holy matrimony, in which case presumably they were no longer sins and therefore, paradoxically, no longer quite as interesting.

  He had been afraid to be married to check out his theory, for marriage was everlasting in this business, and that was a risk he wasn’t prepared to take. Not that he didn’t indulge in the odd fantasy from time to time. He wasn’t perfect, and that was why Christ had died on the cross, for the forgiveness of his sins. And Huyck was a red-blooded man who knew the difference between satisfying a biological urge in the privacy of his own home and a crime against femininity and God and, quite likely, the laws of the State of New York.

  But he did require of himself honesty. He admitted that it wasn’t concern for Mrs. Scales but the allure of Tabitha Scales that had brought him to this curb of a Friday morning. He would know this and guard against it, and concentrate on the matter at hand. In the name of the great Eighteenth-Century German Pietists. In the name of all that was true and upright and free of idolatry. In Jesus’s name.

  The house was hardly more than a bungalow. It crouched behind overgrown arborvitae with a self-loathing air. Leaf-clogged gutters, rain stains on the siding, which was that rippled, ridged kind of prefabricated shingle, once painted a caboose red though now sadly faded to bloodstain. A TV antenna tilted against the cement-block chimney. Trees in the backyard—white pines—rose ominously, separating the house from the line of Adirondack foothills he suspected would otherwise be apparent.

  The trees seemed to crowd the house even lower, divorcing it from its context of neighborhood; not unlike a stage set, actually. What play was about to unfold? A salvation play, he told himself, trying to avoid the thought of a shaming little farce featuring himself as the silly and unfulfilled gentleman caller. Oh yes, he knew pastors were figures of fun, even in this largely devout rural outback in the luff of the Tug Hill Plateau. Such was the curse of television, demoting and defrocking and defiling every last vestige of authority left to America. He only tried, and prayed, to be good despite it, a blameless example of Radical Radiant Pentecostal charity and steadfastness for the heathen, which he was always tempted to call the heathren.