The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (19 page)

“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.

PASTOR J AKOB H UYCK 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.

And Tabitha Scales as the heathen sacrifice. Or, better yet, the pagan princess ripe for conversion. Downright moistened for conversion.

No doubt about it, he had to toss out those Bill Moyers tapes on Joseph Campbell; it was clouding his thinking. He threw open the door of the car and marched up to the house and rang the doorbell.

“Pastor Huyck, here to see your mother,” he said to the shadowy figure who answered.

Huyck smiled against temptation and despair.

“Lucky you.” An unreliable teenage voice trying to be growly. “Just a mo.” The door closed and it reopened a moment later. Tabitha, pouty and perfect.

“Oh, it is you,” she said. “I thought Hog was pulling my chain.”

“Hog. Your brother,” he ventured. If that was her boyfriend he feared the worst.

“Yeah, till I can figure out how you can divorce a brother. Come on in.”

“Call me Pastor Huyck.” He sucked in a breath and his stomach, too, as he had to brush past her in the doorway.
She didn’t move to make room for me; she let my belly graze her
forearm.

“It’s an interesting day for you to come,” said Tabitha. “She’s up and out of her chair today, in and out of every room, like a cat in heat. She’s down in the basement now. I don’t know what she’s looking for down there. She’s into all the old boxes and stuff. Photos, maybe, or her divorce decrees.”

“Will you tell her I’ve come to call?”

“Well yeah, sure. Hogan?
Hog.
Go get Ma.”

The boy who’d growled at him emerged from the kitchen doorway where, Huyck suspected, he’d been standing just out of view, listening. Hogan was one of those kids who look middle-aged before they finish adolescence, as much in the lost, unexpectant look in their faces as in the way they’ve already let their bodies go. Hogan Scales; Huyck remembered him now, though like his older sister he rarely darkened the door of Cliffs of Zion. He had a gas station attendant’s shirt on with the red letters of his name picked out on the blue cotton. His stomach bulged sloppily. What a brooding, bitten-off expression under those simian eyebrows! “You won’t remember me,” began Huyck, holding out his hand.

“No, I probably won’t.” Hogan turned back into the kitchen and disappeared down a flight of steps to the basement, saying, “Ma, pull your clothes on, the minister’s here.”

“Kirk isn’t home,” said Tabitha. “He’s at school. He’s usually back by now, though; any minute, I guess.”

“Shouldn’t Hogan be at school too?”

“Another month and he’s old enough to be a legal dropout. I think he’s practicing.”

“I’m sure he’s helping take care of Mother.”

“Well, duh. I can’t hang around here all the time. I got things to do. Saturday mornings I got Linda Pearl’s House of Beauty to open up. Mom is a basket case but Linda Pearl needs help, too. Act of charity, Pastor Huyck.”

So she remembered his name; that was good.

“While we’re waiting for Mother, can I ask you if you are all right?” He pitched his voice soft so she would have to lean in to him to hear.

She put her hair in her mouth and twined one leg around the other like an eight-year-old.

Since she was wearing running shorts, it gave Huyck an impression of female calf and thigh more intensely athletic and—
particular
—than he’d experienced in some time. He almost lost his faith right then and there. Why didn’t anyone ever talk about the bright night of the soul?

Cheap strawberry shampoo.

“If you mean have I managed to find forgiveness in my soul for Caleb Shit-hole Briggs, the answer is
no.
But I have to admit I keep forgetting to look for it.”

“Have you seen the lad?” The lad? The
lad?
Mercy, he was talking more and more like a Merchant-Ivory film. Thebes might be a bit out of the loop but this wasn’t a time warp, for crying out loud. Beauty was doing it, beauty was turning him into an archetype. Only he wasn’t sure which one. He hoped it wasn’t the trickster, the minotaur, the fool. He couldn’t remember the others. Except for the hero. He was pretty sure he wasn’t the hero. “Have you seen your boyfriend?”

“I haven’t had the time,” said Tabitha, with a little spark of something that Pastor Huyck admired—was it maybe pride? Stubbornness? “When Mom gets up here you’ll see; she’s not herself, but figuring out who else she might be, and where her real self is—well, maybe you can.

You’re the God guy.”

For an instant Huyck only heard her say “You’re the god—” and he felt his vocation crumble in flames; then he took the whole thing in and behaved himself accordingly. “You must face your demons down,” he reminded her. “Don’t carry around your love for this man; it’ll fester and metastasize and make you crazy. Go to him, dismiss him from your life, give him room to grow and change. It’s not just a kindness to him, you know. It’s what you need, too.”

“So you said, but how the hell do you know what I need?”

“The charism of discernment,” he replied, but she seemed to dismiss that as a topic beyond her ken or her interest, and anyway here was Mrs. Scales, clutching the arm of that homely bear-son of hers.

“Leontina. My word. How are you.” He went forward to give her a pastoral embrace. She recoiled so fast that she knocked the toaster off the metal folding table.

It was a shock; Tabitha’s words of warning hadn’t been sufficient. Mrs. S. looked—well, grotesque. It wasn’t the muscle-slackening that attended a stroke, was it?—no—and it wasn’t that she looked as if she’d been groomed by a gorilla, her hair all on end like a fright wig. It had something to do with the hollows behind her eyes, as if—though Huyck prided himself at trying to avoid distracting poetic metaphors. So never mind.

But that foul and brilliant light in Mrs. Scales’s eyes. That, and why didn’t her children see to her clothing better. The striped trousers and flowered blouse and free-ranging goosey hair made her look like a circus clown on crack.

“I ought to have come to see you sooner,” said Huyck. “I have been remiss. How are you doing, Leontina?”

“Ooo are you?” she said. “Ooh is this?” she asked her children.

“God,” said Tabitha in disgust, “see what we mean?”

“Odd?” said Mrs. Scales. “In this house?” She curtseyed at Huyck in a mocking way.

“Ooh, she’s on a roll today,” said Hogan. “She thinks you’re God. Want to work some miracle and make her better, God?”

“Shall we sit down?” said Huyck. This was far worse than he had expected. “May I?” He moved aside a pile of newspapers and some paper plates with pizza crusts stuck on them, and sat down. Tabitha laid a strong hand on her mother’s shoulder and pushed her into the Colonial-style rocker-recliner with field and stream upholstery. There was a noise from the kitchen, and the other child came in, home from school, apparently.

“We have company,” called Tabitha. “The pastor.”

“The exorcist,” said Hogan.

“I don’t think so,” said Pastor Huyck.

The returning student came in and kissed his mother, who received his peck without acknowledgment. Kirk. Yes, a bit of a wuss, as Huyck had remembered him, but now that he saw his brother Hogan at close range, he understood Kirk a little better and forgave him his lisp.

“I can see that things are in a state,” said Huyck. “Perhaps I should talk to your mother alone for a few moments.”

“Ooh has the time?” said Mrs. Scales. “Eave me be. Too busy to flap my lips at you.” She clawed her hands over a Bible standing on the metal tray; it was covered in toast crumbs. “Eating the Bible, that’s the only nourishment I get.”

“Eating the Bible?” said Huyck.

“I told you, aren’t you listening?” said Tabitha. “She’s lost the front part of her sentences.

She doesn’t mean eating the Bible, she means reading it.”

“Oh.” Then he laughed. “Well, but that’s a good sign! Man does not live by toast alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God! She knows where sustenance lies.”