The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (23 page)

Mrs. Scales, settled in her own chair, frowned at the newcomers and nibbled at her rosary. Sister Alice and Jeremy bustled into the kitchen, and Tabitha followed. “I never heard of such a thing,” said Sister Alice. “You with your poor mother still recovering, and your brothers, and no one to help you out! The idea!” She flung open cabinets like she lived there and piled up spoons and spices. That the turkey was too large for the oven didn’t perturb her; she hacked it in half with a cleaver and arranged the sides in the pan to splay efficiently about each other. It looked as if it had exploded.

Jeremy was setting the table with Kirk. Kirk looked all bright and fizzy, like the time she’d surprised him standing up naked in the bathtub, shaping a kind of loincloth made out of bath bubbles around his groin. At least that’s what it looked like. Maybe since Jeremy seemed soft-spoken for a guy, Kirk was lathering up with instant devotion. That kind of sucks, Tabitha thought, but I can’t manage Kirk’s and Hog’s disasters while I’m trying to oversee the old bitch.

So she only went through the dining room and said, “Don’t fuss so, Kirk, you’re like that little old lady who owns Tweetie Pie,” and she hit him on the wrist with the gravy ladle. He made a dismissive little pout at her and kept yammering at Jeremy about some goop on Masterpiece Theatre, trying to impress the guy. She escaped into the living room.

Father Mike was reading the Bible out loud. Her mother had her eyes closed and her head back. Tabitha dropped onto the sofa for a minute, letting her eyes slide around the room, checking to make sure that she had already jettisoned into the bedrooms anything horrible.

When Father Mike paused for breath, Tabitha began to speak, but Father Mike held up one finger, silencing her. He kept reading. So Tabitha went back to the kitchen, where Sister Alice was boiling up the neck and innards of the turkey and slicing an onion and melting some butter in a pan and running some water over some yams, all at once.

“He’s got a very good bedside manner,” said Sister Alice confidentially. “He brings comfort to the afflicted. What I want to know is, what do they say the affliction is?”

“The clinic says she’s fine,” said Tabitha. “But she’s gone downhill since she got home.”

“Someone should bring that clinic to task. I look in on a dozen and a half old sisters every week. I’ve spent my time doing infirmary work. Trust me. What’s the therapy?”

“No therapy. Are you kidding? She won’t let us bring her back.”

“She should go back.”

“You try it. Your funeral. I wouldn’t touch it.”

Sister Alice clucked as she rooted through the grocery bags. “Clearly your mother’s suffering the aftereffects of some trauma. It’s a kind of aphasia, isn’t it? That biting off of words? And she can’t seem to focus on where she is?”

“She doesn’t say much except in holy language or swearing. There’s not a whole lot of middle ground.”

“Unusual case. Look, you fry these onions in this butter till they’re transparent, but don’t let them brown. No, stir them, don’t you know how to sauté onions? Dear Lord. I thought some things were innate. Let me just spice up this … with a little of this … ooh, this is old, no flavor at all …” She dumped the dill weed into the trash can without asking if she could. “One suspects a stroke, of course.”

“They tested for a stroke. No stroke.”

“Well, they can’t always tell so definitely—”

“No stroke. That’s what they said.”

“A blow to the head. I hardly think that statue could have picked up enough speed or momentum to do this much damage. Was there a prior cause?”

“What do you mean?”

“Had she had some sort of shock that morning? Was she in distress? In anxiety?”

“Oh. Oh.”

“Good child,” said Sister Alice in a soft voice, “whatever is it? What happened?”

“The onions. They’re browning.”

“Something happened and you blame yourself.”

“Not till you started talking.”

“It’s sheer biology, it’s mechanics in the brain, it’s blood vessels and tension, nothing more. Whatever it is, you’re not to blame. What happened? Did you hit her?”

“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.

ON THE S UNDAY 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 J EREMY 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 disappeared. “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.