The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (4 page)

“What’s the group?”

“Some guys. Not a church group. Only three of us. We’re rehearsing for a sort of show just after New Year’s in New York. We need a piano.”

“What sort of show?”

“It’s an AIDS benefit.” Jeremy’s jaw worked back and forth; a tooth-grinder, noted Sister Alice. She bet he wore a retainer at night.

“You want to use Our Lady’s rectory to practice for an AIDS charity?”

“One night a week? None of us have a piano. The church isn’t heated during the week, and we need a warm place. So I thought, you know, the rectory.”

“I see.” Sister Alice put her file folders on Father Mike’s desk with an airy flop. “This isn’t a liturgical group, I take it?”

“Not exactly.” Jeremy seemed to be reviewing the group’s members in his mind. “In fact, not at all. I’m the only one who goes to church, and I get paid for it.”

“Not very much,” said Sister Alice. “Enough,” she added, protective of the parish budget.

“I don’t know what Father Mike would think. I was kind of hoping to talk to him about it.”

“Can I take it that some of the members of your group have friends or relatives who are suffering with AIDS?”

Jeremy’s hands played a scale on the arms of his chair. “Take it that way.” The late October light intensified as the wind moved the trees outside the study. It poured in more yellowly—special effects courtesy of the beeches, which were losing their leaves late this year.

“And your intention would be charity, I suppose,” said Sister Alice.

“I don’t want to misrepresent myself. There’s a complexity of reasons.” He didn’t look at her.

Sister Alice saw that she was now on terrain over which she was not licensed to navigate.

“Why don’t you approach Father Mike with this yourself, once he’s settled that Leontina Scales.

He’s a man of the world, Jeremy; there’s no reason to be shy around him.”

“Can you tell me whether or not you’ll recommend it?” he said, as Sister Alice began to collect her files again and cram them into her briefcase.

“You credit me with influence. Thank you for the frisson. But really, I’m not authorized to recommend for or against a scheduling matter.” Sister Alice avoided the question while implying that scheduling matters were far beneath her. “Still, I’ll pass your concerns along. I’m sure Father Mike will want to have a heart-to-heart with you. And if that’s that?” She stood up so fast the chair came an inch off the floor with her.

They left the rectory together. Jeremy was silent. He didn’t think he’d done very well.

Though he liked Sister Alice Coyne, he wished he’d just waited until Father Mike was available.

But Our Lady’s was a zoo this morning, and Jeremy wanted to get back to the boys with an answer as soon as possible. It seemed important—every minute was important.

Ahead, Sister Alice paused on the rectory sidewalk and Jeremy nearly bumped into her.

An orderly was fussing at the open doors of an ambulance. They were getting that woman out of harm’s way. She was half sitting up on the stretcher, waving her arms about, barking orders, and her kids looked fussed and flustered.

The parking lot was partially cleared of cars by now, so the ambulance could maneuver, but Sister Alice wanted to beat it to the driveway. She dug for her keys in the colorful peasant rucksack she carried, a souvenir of that summer holiday spent in Managua with Witness for Peace. “You celebrating Halloween night with your buddies?” she asked Jeremy.

He shrugged. “Not going out on the town. I’m not one for disguises. They give me the creeps.”

“Well, look the other way, then. I’m about to become Sister Mary Leadfoot, scourge of the New York State Thruway.” She jammed dark glasses on and jumped in her car.

That didn’t go too poorly, thought Jeremy. Inconclusive, but nothing ruled out.

As he turned back to the church, to straighten up the sheet music and lock up the AV

system, he pictured the night ahead. Halloween was for kids. He hated grown-ups in masks and always had.

He imagined himself tonight, upstairs in his flat, a back room on a dead-end street blunted by a hill beginning three lots on. Maybe with the guys, maybe not. Avoiding the monstrous crowds. Halloween seemed like Epiphany, the apostles all closeted away from the callous crowds and from the fear of the risen Jesus, too, about whom they’d been starting to hear.

And He appeared to them in their midst. Through a locked door. Talk about your Stephen King scenario: they must have been scared witless. And then they devoted their lives to the church and died as martyrs, every last one of them as far as he knew. A haunting of sorts.

IF DYING WAS moving through a dark tunnel to the light, what happened if you got stuck? What did that do to you? How about to the people in the tunnel behind you who were trying to die? How come the study circles had never talked about
this?

Leontina Scales couldn’t quite identify the smeared landscape beyond the windows, nor could she pull into focus the face hovering above her. She suspected it to be that vengeful Virgin Mary, thundering down. “Point oh two five cc’s,” said the voice. “Relax your fists, Mrs. Scales. I only want to do this once.”

Haven’t you already done enough, thought Mrs. Scales. And what about that thing under the stairs, which you were in cahoots with and no denying? Like Claudette Colbert in
It
Happened One Night:
the Virgin stops the traffic and then who-the-hell-knows-who jumps out.

Surprise.
It sure wasn’t Clark Gable. Though didn’t Clark Gable have a kind of Satanic perkiness to his eyebrows, come to think of it? Could it have been Salman Rushdie? Or did she have this straight?

Then a nip, a sting in her arm somewhere. A stitch, a spindle’s prick. She struggled and cried out, and hit out; even endless vigilance wasn’t enough.

“Is she normally agitated like this?” asked Our Lady.

“Is she normal, better question,” said a voice that sounded like Tabitha.

“All will be well,” said Our Lady, taking Leontina’s pulse with a manner more practiced than motherly. Though perhaps that amounted to the same thing. “Jesus, she’s strong. She’s a pisser, she is.” She looked over the horizon. “Takes all kinds to make a world.” Tabitha’s voice said, “I don’t suppose she’s like, you know, dying or anything.”

“Tabby!” Kirk poked her, hard.

“She’s out,” said the orderly, and sat back on a jump-seat. “Look, kids, I’m going to have to write up a report. Can you tell me if your mom has been acting strange in the past twenty-four hours or so?”

Tabitha felt Kirk glance at her. She wired her advice: Pin this on me and just wait to see what I’ll do to you.

“Mom has an active emotional life,” ventured Kirk.

“Any sign of increased stress? Or, um, mental breakdown?”

“She’s raising three teenagers on her own. Does that count?”

“Fair enough.”

“She always says we aggravate the hell out of her.”

Tabitha winced. Oh God, Kirk taking it on himself. Here it comes, watch for it, people: the sniffle. The world’s only living fifteen-year-old crybaby.

Damn. Tabitha wasn’t going to let Mom do in an afternoon coma what she hadn’t managed to do in her morning screech-a-thon: ruffle out of Tabitha that rich sense of well-being conferred upon her by sex with Caleb Briggs. The deeper Mom wanted to wipe it away, the more Tabitha would cling to that sense of invading glee. Caleb was tawny and twenty. He was a bolt in

the belt region, tender as kittens in his nipples—who knew about that before last night? Just touching them had been like electroshock therapy and his voice had gone falsetto in a keen—and his thighs could bring down oak trees, or stampeding cattle, or her. Just seeing what she could do to him with a halt, a pulse, persistence, and a little dab of Crisco. I’ve become a living catalog of turn-ons.

“Who is the next of kin adult?”

“I’m almost eighteen,” said Tabitha. “Keep her a week or two and I’m your gal.”

“Yes, but next to you, I mean.”

“There’s three former husbands,” said Kirk.

Tabitha yawned. “The was-bands, we call ’em. As in, you know. I saw your husband last night out with a blonde. Oh, you’re so wrong: Phil isn’t my husband any more, he’s my was-band.”

“None of them live nearby, anyway.” Kirk leaned forward and put his male-model cuticles on display, softly touching their mother’s wrist. “And Mom was an only child.”

“Well, hmm. Her parents, then?”

Tabitha snorted. “Escaped through death.”

The woman seemed either mollified or beaten, but had the gumption to add, “Don’t worry about your mom following their example. She’s going to be just fine.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

AT THE HOSPITAL, Mrs. Scales was rolled into the depths, and the double doors whooshed closed behind the stretcher. “It’ll be at least an hour,” said the intake nurse, apparently to her computer monitor. “But we gotta figure out this next of kin thing.”

“How about Pastor Jakob?” Kirk said to Tabitha.

“How about Caleb Briggs?” said Tabitha. “He’s twenty.”

“Caleb? Mom’s never even met him.”

“She’s out, what does she care?”

“We’ll do your pastor, that sounds fine enough,” said Nurse Typo, pecking away. “How do you spell Huyck?”

“He’s her pastor, not ours,” said Kirk. “Tabitha doesn’t go and I only go sometimes. I haven’t been Centered.”

The nurse looked over the tops of her glasses at them, finally.

“That’s like being caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, except the crosshairs are the crucifix.”

“Are they now. How does h-i-k-e sound to you?”

“Close enough.”

“We’ll call it a wrap then. Café on the ground floor by the rear elevators. Someone will come find you in the waiting room in about an hour.”

Kirk went to the men’s room, probably to have a pretty little cry and admire himself in the mirror, and Tabitha headed for the cafeteria, but the gift shop appeared first, so she nipped inside to see if she could snag a pack of gum or something. She sidled around the shelving and just in time caught sight of Solange Lefebvre and Hannah Brewster from Math Reinforcement.

Solange was an import from Paris, France, where they did math the French way, which is why she needed remedial, and Hannah’s family was so old and highbrow that they hadn’t had to produce a working brain cell in generations. Both girls sucked big time.

Their heads were snared in lunchroom lady hairnets. Their candy-striper aprons didn’t close in the back and they must have made sure to wear their tightest fitting jeans so old men left in wheelchairs could sharpen their noses between blue-denimed cheeks.

“It is such a bore, it sweeps me with ennui,” said Solange. Only it sounded like
Eet ees
sush a bore, eet sweeps me with ennui.

“Je suis
pretty
fatigué
myself,” said Hannah. “I hope we don’t get Pediatrics. Last time one of those little cancer kids almost broke my arm trying to make me drag him out of there. I nearly had to kick him.”

“I prefer ze department of ze elderly madames. It is more easier there, because they never want to converse with any young and lovely girl.”

You can’t be talking about yourself, thought Tabitha. You could freeze-dry a croissant just by looking at it.

They wandered up the aisle. Tabitha didn’t want to run into them, but they did provide a distraction of sorts. So she found herself following them one aisle over. She could always snub them in person if they turned a corner and caught her.

When she was within earshot again, she got an earful. “I do think Mr. Finn will give you a passing grade,” Solange was saying. “He knows you will need ze maths in order to select a decent college. And he likes you. I see that he likes you.”

“You’re
dreadful.”
Hannah was blushing. As if Hannah could even imagine what having someone like you could do to you, turning your spine to jelly, making of your vagina a sixth sense. She’d probably never kissed a boy. You could kind of tell.

“Anyway,” continued Hannah, “Mom’s family wanted me to go to Radcliffe only it’s part of Harvard now, so we don’t know about that.”

Harvard? Fat chance. You get lost doing laps in the county pool, Hannah.

“I believe every scholar in Mr. Finn’s class will achieve many diplomas and proceed toward university,” said Solange. “Except for only one.”

Here it comes, thought Tabitha.

Hannah grimaced. “Tabby’s special.”

“Special?” Solange didn’t know the lingo.

“Special. Special needs, to start with. She’ll be lucky if she graduates. And special because she sure acts like she thinks she’s a hot ticket. Anyway I doubt she’s doing college prep.

She’ll be married and pregnant before next year.”

“Well, she can keep her special eyes off my little brioche.”

“She’s probably already taken a big bite out of your little brioche. Better check the goods before you buy.” They laughed wickedly.

I hate them, thought Tabitha. What’s a brioche?

“You’re joking, though,” said Solange. “Is she that bad?”

“She’s so good, is the locker-room news, she’s extra bad. She’s done the whole football team in alphabetical order.”