The Next Queen of Heaven: A Novel

by Gregory Maguire

  “Could hitting her do it?” asked Tabitha, sullen but eager to know.

  “Could quite possibly do it. A blow to the head can change everything.”

  So there was the answer. For sure. It was now merely a question of how and when. But the nun wouldn’t let go; gosh, the Catholics really did love their guilt, just like everyone said. “You must not hold onto this,” said Sister Alice. “You must tell me, or tell someone. You’ve taken on far more than you need to, and you’re just a young thing. Believe me, I know.”

  “Get off my case.” Tabitha suddenly had to wipe her face on the dishcloth. Onions and steam and salty condensation. “Enough of this stupid Bible reading, it’s time for the parade.” Sister Alice, her mitts in the oven rearranging the turkey because it was smoking, just clucked her tongue. Kirk was giggling in the dining room, and Jeremy had sat down on a dining room chair and was telling some story with both his hands in the air. The doorbell rang. Kirk was too wound up to get it, and Father Mike was in the middle of a psalm. The doorbell rang again, drawing Hogan from his room at last to answer it.

  “Well, what have we here.” The newcomer’s voice was frosty and familiar.

  “A convocation of ministers,” said Father Mike, allowing himself to be interrupted.

  “And Sister Alice in the kitchen?” said Pastor Huyck. “You’re going ecumenical by stealth, Mike?”

  “Feel free to mash the potatoes, Jakob.”

  Tabitha came to the door of the dining room, sneaking a peak at the religious men bunched uneasily together on the sofa. Pastor Huyck didn’t ask after Tabitha. Hogan hulked back to his room and cranked up the stereo; “Burn the Priest” blared through the thin walls. Mrs. Scales seemed to come around for a minute, and she blinked at the pair of preachers in her living room.

  “Happy Turkey Day,” said Pastor Huyck.

  “Praise God to whom all turkeys go,” said Mrs. Scales, and waved back and forth in a big fanning gesture. Tabitha gritted her teeth and went back to stand next to Sister Alice at the stove. They worked quietly, listening to the big boys duke it out.

  “Doing a little missionary work, Father Mike?” said Pastor Huyck. “Horning in on my territory?”

  “Charity begins at home,” replied Father Mike. “Since Mrs. Scales seems to find it homey in the basement of Our Lady’s, I can but oblige.”

  “I suspect she’s possessed.”

  “I suspect she’s converting.”

  “Same thing.” Pastor Huyck’s joke didn’t provoke so much as a chuckle from Father Mike.

  “I suspect she’s in a post-traumatic waking coma,” called Sister Alice from the kitchen, “and my experience says that she’ll come around.”

  “She needs some sense knocked into her,” said Pastor Huyck.

  Tabitha picked up the cast-iron skillet with the onions and weighed it in her hand. Not now, of course. But it was nice to know everyone seemed to agree on the right corrective measure. It made her feel a little less alone.

  She put it down and went and said, “Anyone want some water with real ice in it?”

  “Ah, there you are,” said Pastor Huyck, all brightly brightly like a kindergarten teacher. Father Mike raised his eyebrows across the room at Sister Alice standing in the doorway behind Tabitha. From the dining room, Kirk launched into yet another flutter of story, something about some fool in a Shakespeare play. His voice fluted, even more highly pitched than before.

  Hogan came to the kitchen door from the bathroom hall. “Gobble gobble,” he said, rolling a finger in Kirk’s direction.

  “Eating any available Hardy boy,” said Tabitha in a sing-song voice.

  “For what he is about to receive, may the Lord make him truly grateful,” said Hog, the most religious thing Tabitha had ever heard him say.

  20

  ON THE SUNDAY after Thanksgiving, Polly Osterhaus helped Jeremy Carr gather up the choir’s photocopied sheet music. A few parishioners, passing the musicians on their way to the side door, felt free to comment. “Great music, Jer,” said one. “Too loud,” said another. “Cocktail lounge music,” hissed an old woman. Can’t please everyone. When Jeremy had first started at this job seven years ago, some parishioner had sent Father Mike an unsigned check made out for a thousand dollars. Attached was a Post-It note saying, “You get the signature when you fire the choirmaster.” Father Mike had never told Jeremy which parishioner it was.

  Polly, straightening a stack of doxologies, said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, Germy. I’m getting married in the New Year.”

  “I wasn’t going to believe it until you told me,” he replied. “Was that the guy in the pew on Thursday? I guess it better have been. Hey, congratulations.”

  “I should’ve introduced you but I was embarrassed I hadn’t told you yet. It’s all been so fast. I mean, what if we broke off before it, like, gelled, and I had told everyone. Total shamefest. But so far so good.”

  “He’s the Briggs guy, whose dad owned that barbershop—?”

  “Um-hmm. Caleb Briggs. The thing is, I’ve asked my friend Irene Menengest to sing. Caleb doesn’t like choirs and stuff, and I don’t want to offend”—she looked around her shoulder but Peggy Mueller, the chief soprano, had already cut out—“anyone in our group. Better to use someone from outside than hurt anyone’s feelings, don’t you think?”

  “You could’ve asked me.”

  “Caleb’s the jealous type. He’d think I had a crush on you.” Her unspoken as if hung between them; Jeremy had to duck his head to pick up a guitar pick.

  “Actually, I know Irene. I met her at a party last year.”

  “Right. She said she thought she had met you. Her sister is Francesca Handelaers, and she tells me you’re friends with Francesca’s husband—”

  “—I’m friends with all of them—”

  “—was hoping you could accompany Irene at the wedding—piano music mostly, with an organ prelude and processional.”

  “Yeah, I heard about it already. I’d be happy to pitch in if the dates work. But I have to go out of town shortly after New Year’s myself, and I’m taking a couple of weeks off following the Christmas rush.”

  “Well, if you can’t make the actual wedding, can you help her rehearse once or twice? Irene is quite good but she’s a sack of jitters over this.”

  “Rehearsals I can do. Is the wedding here?”

  “Of course. Caleb’s pretty vague about church, but he’s willing to give in and convert. Not that he’s converting from anything special. I think maybe the Church of the Rod and Gun Club.” She couldn’t suppress a tell-tale grin about sex that Jeremy had never seen on her face before, and that he was both embarrassed by and slightly jealous of. “But I know the drill.”

  “I hope we’ll do a whole lot of pop music during the service,” said Jeremy, and they both laughed. The number of weddings he’d played that the brides had wanted to walk down the aisle to Carly Simon’s “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.” To expedite things Jeremy had finally printed up a statement that said no Billy Joel, no Paul McCartney, no Whitney Houston or Celine Dion, no love themes from any Barbra Streisand movies. Save that stuff for the first dance at the wedding reception. If it was nothing else, church was the last bastion of church music, and needed to be protected as such.

  WHEN JEREMY PULLED up in front of the rectory on Tuesday night, he saw Willem’s car there. Willem sat hunched over the steering column, arms laced around the wheel, head turned to address his sister-in-law with that kind of easy intensity for which Jeremy had no natural immunity. A Thirties aviator scarf of ivory linen was tucked into his University of Albany hooded sweatshirt. He saw Jeremy and waved, and he and Irene got out of the car.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Jeremy. “You should’ve gone in. Chilly as hell.” Oh, how wilting his inner butch could be.

  Willem hunched his shoulders several times at Jeremy and grinned like a buffoon. His greenish Gaultier glasses glinted in the streetlight, so his eyes di
sappeared. “We did, but the priest seemed to think there wasn’t any rehearsal there tonight, and I didn’t want to leave Irene stranded in case you didn’t show up. Her car’s in the shop.”

  “Hi, Jeremy, nice of you to do this.” Irene. She was a sour-sass soul with a rubbery face. None of her sister’s zeal or compulsiveness, none of Francesca’s watercolor blushes, either. Irene was just this side of stout, solid as a mailbox, and her hands dug deep into the pockets of her loden-green cape. “Your man in there said there was a conflict tonight and he tried to reach you but you were gone.”

  “Oh, great. Well, let me go see.”

  He let himself in the rectory and, hearing a noise in the kitchen, called out, “Hi, Father Mike, it’s me,” but it was Peggy Mueller who stuck her head out of the kitchen doorway. “He’s upstairs, be right down, he said.” Her eyes looked red-rimmed, and Jeremy’s heart sank. Clearly Father Mike was needing the consultation room tonight for some emergency. “The kettle,” mumbled Peggy, and disappeared with a little flutter of downcast lashes, as if she wanted Jeremy to follow her and ask her what was wrong. But he just waited for Father Mike to come heaving himself down the stairs.

  “Oh, Jeremy, there you are. Some client of yours showed up, some music thing, but something’s come up and I’m afraid—”

  “I heard. I’ll change my plans.”

  “A bit of counseling,” said Father Mike, in the sanctity-of-the-confessional voice he had that, Jeremy always thought, was a trifle wistful, as if it was a burden not to be able to complain about Peggy Mueller just a little. Jeremy patted him on the shoulder and said, “Better you than me. See you later.”

  “Will we call it off?” asked Irene. “I hate to miss the opportunity. With Christmas coming everything will get so crazy.”

  “It’s all piano stuff, isn’t it,” said Jeremy. “Sheez. Now that it’s getting on to winter, it’s too cold to hang out in the church except on Sunday when the heat’s on. Look, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you jump into my car and we’ll go see if we can barge in to this other rehearsal space I’ve been using lately. I can run you back to Monroe afterward, or wherever.”

  “I can hang around and wait,” said Willem. “I don’t mind.”

  “You have little kids you need to read Dr. Seuss to.” Jeremy’s voice was firmer than he expected. What a jolt, to be the one calling quits to an unanticipated rendezvous. He watched Willem shrug and touch a pair of fingers to his heart as if crushed.

  “Suit yourself. See you later, Irene.” Was it only Jeremy’s imagination that Willem drove away looking the tiniest bit chagrined?

  Probably. But Irene chattered, banal and personable, so Jeremy was spared the chance to obsess about it.

  They pulled up in the drive of the convent of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries. “Ghoul Central,” said Irene. “Are we going to practice wedding marches or wedding dirges?”

  “Hold your fire,” said Jeremy. He should have called first, but an acid light seethed in the kitchen and since it was only 7:15 he decided to risk a little wrath and ring the bell. The small window in the vestibule door opened only after a considerable pause, and anxious Sister Felicity stood there, peering over the bottom of the window. “Mercy, is that you?” Jeremy doubted she recognized him.

  “Jeremy Carr, from the church. I know I said we weren’t coming because Sean is under the weather, but it’s our regular night and I had another thought, so I thought—”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” muttered Sister Felicity, and went to work on the bolts. “What’s all this about, then?” she said, when the door swung open.

  Jeremy introduced Irene Menengest and explained the situation. Sister Felicity looked dubious. “I’m just burning a little toast and scalding a little milk for the insomniacs among us,” she said, implying that the nuns had been abed for hours already. “I hardly think I have the liberty to admit you, Jeremy, without Mother Clare du Plessix’s permission.”

  “I could call Sister Alice, perhaps?—”

  “Sister Alice would be too busy to answer the phone. And she may have a lot of responsibility for us decaying old things, but she doesn’t have much authority, I’m afraid. That’s her cross.” She looked as if she thought Sister Alice’s cross not quite crushing enough. “Oh come in, it’s just us chickens and if you kill us all in our beds, we’re one night closer to Jesus, that’s all I can say.”

  “Did you have a good Thanksgiving, Sister Felicity?” said Jeremy.

  “Are you talking spiritual nourishment or corporal cuisine? I don’t do the holidays well, I get a string of migraines from the strain. Sister Alice might have seen fit to join her community on that day of gratitude, but she apparently had commitments elsewhere.” Jeremy didn’t let on that he’d seen Sister Alice cook for the needy; he guessed that Sister Felicity wouldn’t know how to interpret his favorite bumper sticker, “Put the fun back in dysfunctional.”

  “There was some light meat and dark,” said the nun, “there was squash and a pie and some real half-and-half for our decaf, and we considered ourselves lucky for it.”

  Irene Menengest gave Jeremy a look that said, Oooh, what a bitter little ferret. Jeremy pretended not to comprehend. “We need maybe forty minutes or an hour, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I won’t make a practice of this, but we’ve a kind of emergency. Irene is a soprano—”

  “—mezzo—” supplied Irene.

  “I see,” said Sister Felicity. Was the old nun irritated about Irene’s being a woman instead of one of the guys? Maybe Sister Felicity felt upstaged by a fat strawberry blond in a thick coat with peasant stitching and buttons made out of hack-sawed slices of deer antlers. Jeremy supposed even old nuns could succumb to the temptation of regret about their lost looks. Everyone else did.

  “Sing away, don’t mind if I ignore you,” continued Sister Felicity. “I’ll have to go up to tell Mother Clare so that nobody thinks they’re hallucinating Joan-of-Arc voices. But frankly there’s enough rampant loss of hearing among us that people will probably assume you’re the radiator clanking. Let’s try it and see.” She allowed herself a wintry smirk as she closed them into the sunroom.

  “Wow, that’s some welcome,” said Irene.

  “Shall we get started? What have you got?”

  They had gone through several hymns, with Jeremy transposing everything into B flat as Irene’s pleasant voice had a limited register, when Sister Felicity reappeared with the rolling cart and a small treat laid out on a paper towel. She’d folded the edges of the towel and cut it with a scissors to make a design, as if Jeremy and Irene were second grade children having a party to celebrate making it through the primer. “Oh, you needn’t have done this,” said Irene. “My figure.”

  “I can see you don’t worry much about that. Just a little shortbread and some of that zinger tea. Mother Clare said to.” Sister Felicity looked as if she doubted Mother Clare’s mental competence, but obedience was obedience. “I can’t stay and chat, I’m afraid; I’m behind in my evening devotions. Jeremy, Mother Clare said I may allow you this once to let yourself out when you’re done. She hopes you will conclude by nine.”

  “Oh, for sure,” said Jeremy. “I’ve got to pick up Marty Rothbard at the Craftique at nine, and get Irene home before that. No problem.”

  When Sister Felicity had gone, Irene said, “She looks like Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein. Who are these strange creatures? Where do they come from? What do they want?”

  “They want company. She’s secretly devoted to me, I’m guessing. She’s just skilled at not showing it after so many decades of denial.”

  “Oh, her too?” said Irene.

  Jeremy stifled a fake yawn. He hoped it wasn’t common knowledge in the Handelaers’ extended family that he was Willem’s cast-off everybody-tries-it-once-in-college gay fling. “I don’t know much about Polly’s boyfriend, have you met him? Caleb Briggs?”

  “He’s a bit backwoods, I think. I met him once or twice. It’s a little
sudden and I hope Polly doesn’t regret it, but she is such a Catholic, you know. Don’t you find being religious a tremendous liability? I mean, it’s almost 2000. We have civil liberties these days.”

  He shuffled some music. “Frankly, the worst part of being a church musician is you have to talk about it all the time. Everybody treats you like you’re some sort of pariah. For me being Catholic is just like being—well—an upstate New Yorker, or a college graduate, or a musician. It’s just one of those things.”

  “And all these women here buying into the patriarchal hog-wash.” Irene made a motion with her hand. “Talk about the snow job of the millennium.”

  “Well now, that’s a little harsh. You going to dismiss all the lives of all these women, and all the women in their communities in all those different countries over all those different centuries, just because you don’t happen to like the pope? How many of them over the centuries had much in the way of choices? When really, think about it—proto-feminists, kind of—living in community, sharing everything they had, living simply and off the land—”

  Irene was looking at him dubiously. “You really belong in the Nineteenth century,” she said. “Can we take that from the top, or do you feel the need to do some more defending of the faith?”

  “You brought it up. I get tired of my own personal beliefs being everybody’s business,” he snapped.

  “You’re in the business,” she reminded him. “They pay you.”

  “You object so much, you could refuse to sing in a church wedding.”

  “And you’re accompanying me—how cheerful would the Church have been if anything had ever come of you and W—”

  He slammed the lid to the piano keys down and counted to ten, then opened it again. “I’m at measure 18. One and two and breathe and—”

  “Don’t take it personally,” she said in outrageous calm.

  “Yeah, religion’s not personal at all. Remember to breathe. We modulate at measure forty-two.” His hands capered. The F above C2 rang sharp as tarnish. The tang of red zinger tea was being subsumed into an older, resentful smell of cabbage. Willem hadn’t needed to cave so easily when Jeremy told him to leave. He could’ve insisted on coming along. I could have shown him off to Sister Felicity. I hadn’t gotten to show him off to anyone except my father, that one time, by accident, and that gay waiter at the Polish café in Watertown who insisted on snapping our picture.