The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (40 page)

“Ben’s an angel. You’re good for about a week, tops. He works four afternoons at one of those restaurants on the top of the World Trade Center. You know, the twin towers downtown. If you really think you can stick it out and you’re not going to fold on him, he told me he’d be willing to introduce you to Human Resources. Maybe you can get a job waiting tables, or kitchen work. Make ends meet until you find something else. Ben won’t be much company, though.

He’ll be out most nights doing gigs. A good saxophonist gets a lot of work. At least the place will be free if you want to bring some subway saint home for an hour.”

“I’ll send you a telegram the day it happens.”

“Look, but the timing of this has gotten really dicey. What’re you going to do if Sean starts fading the day before the competition?”

He had thought of this. “Sean told me what he wanted me to do. But how about you?”

“Germy, you know the answer. If it comes to that, you’ll have to wing it in Manhattan on your own. Even if this is your once-in-a-lifetime.”

“I get it.” Jeremy dangled the spoon over his coffee. “Maybe he’ll hold on till after the twenty-first.”

Marty started humming “New York, New York.”

“If you begin to croon I will pitch this scalding coffee in your face.”

“You sound as if you’ve been taking correspondence courses in New Yawk courtesy.” Singing. “Start spreading the shit. Fuhgeddaboudit. You’ll make a great big fart of it—hey, don’t take it personally, Jeremy. Come back.”

At least someone’s going to miss me, thought Jeremy, not turning back.

He’d gone home, finished his resignation letters to Father Mike and the school, taken an hour to get up the nerve to post them, and then, Willem in his thoughts, had not been able to sleep and find Willem in his dreams.

He was glad that the reception was in a church basement where the wine wasn’t expected to flow liberally, if at all. Though that punch might be many-colored, none of the colors was spiked. He couldn’t have dared a tipsy farewell. One stray tear and he’d have to kill himself.

At least Polly and Caleb appeared to agree about avoiding the hokeypokey and the tossed bouquet and newlyweds cramming cake into each other’s mouths the way, presumably, they were expected to cram themselves in a matter of hours. None of that seemed in the cards. Still, Jeremy stayed on high alert, poised to escape to the men’s room if all bachelors were conscripted to vie for the honor of catching a flung garter.

He felt rather than saw the lanky electricity of Kirk Scales seated at the other end of the long folding table, but Kirk was making no attempt to come closer. Kirk’s fixation would begin to fizzle out the moment Jeremy’s getaway actually took—if without turning back Jeremy made it to his friends who lived in the Albany area tonight, and to New York City tomorrow. If, if. If, on January 21st, the cabaret showcase went well and there was one, at least one, only one little crumb of encouragement—then last night had been his last night in Thebes, and the wedding marked his divorce from Willem, whether Willem knew it or not. Kirk would just have to deal.

Francesca and Irene came along, laughing, plastic cups of sherbet sludge in their hands; Willem followed. He’d shucked his jacket but wore his daughter Charlotte sitting atop his shoulders, and he carried Bartholomew in his arms. The perfect Handelaers stopped and parked themselves at Jeremy’s end of the table. Irene blocked Kirk out. Kirk shifted to watch. “The man of the hour,” said Willem. “Music sounded great, Jeremy.”

“That’s Irene for you, a pro,” said Jeremy. Irene flashed him a hateful smile. Jeremy knew she hadn’t admired her own middle tone, and was just a good enough singer to find herself wanting.

“Polly liked it, or said she did,” Irene said.

“Trust her. Catholic brides aren’t allowed to lie on their wedding day.”

“Tripe and nonsense. I’m sure even Catholic virgins say, Darling, it was everything I ever dreamed of, while really dreaming of Antonio Banderas a third of the way out of his 2(x)ists.”

“Say hi to Jeremy,” said Willem to Charlotte. “Give him a kiss? Hmmm?” Surely Willem wasn’t going to play this game in front of his wife?

“No,” said sensible Charlotte, and drove her gummy chin into her father’s dirty blond head. In children, thought Jeremy, remain the last hopes of salvation for the world.

“I’ll give you one, Jeremy,” said Francesca, and did. “Like it or not.”

“I do,” he said. “Happy millennium.”

“We made it through Y2K, didn’t we? Bit of a snooze, all that panic. What are your New Year’s resolutions? Hope you’ve broken them all; it’s January 15 already.”

“I hate New Year’s Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven’t yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn’t matter.”

She wasn’t listening. She had taken Bartholomew from Willem and was playing with him. “Well, I’m going to learn to do trapunto stitchery, I think. It’s either that or calligraphy.”

“Me, I’m going to ski more,” said Willem. “Do you ski, Jeremy? They’ve smartened up the runs at Gore Mountain. We could go for an overnight sometime. A good day on the slopes, then kicking back by the fire.” He lifted Charlotte off his back and set her down at a plate.

“And leave me with the kids. You monster. You’re already kicked back,” said Francesca.

“Got that down cold.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

Charlotte was giggling and mashing a sandwich. Jeremy stole a glance at Willem as he bent his head over his daughter’s silver-blond hair. He was so far away, even when he was only four feet over. Willem scent—sweat and soap and laundry powder and a teasing lick of vetiver, a whiff of the past. Willem there and not there, the most heady paradox. Song alone had a chance of presenting The Mystical Body of Desire with any hope of accuracy.

Jeremy blinked and turned away. At the other end of the table Kirk Scales was shaking his head—probably putting two and two together. Even a high school sophomore could find himself appalled by Jeremy.

He excused himself and went to stand by the emergency door that Pastor Huyck had opened for air. Behind him, a fiddle was being tuned, a microphone tapped. Dancing at this do?

They’d have to push the tables back. The late afternoon January sky was glowing royal blue two-thirds along, and the west was red carnation and gold. “I’d like to be alone, if you don’t mind,” said a voice farther out the door—a person partway up the concrete stairwell leading to the parking lot. He hadn’t seen her.

“Oh, Tabitha,” he said. “Sorry.”

She shrugged, but he wasn’t going back in there until he found his bearings. She didn’t own the place. Across the lot, the blue plastic tarps on the roof of Our Lady’s looked like swimming pool liners. A smell of char still lingered, three weeks and several storms regardless.

“Glad to see your mom is better,” he said. “That was some performance she put on.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her to have planned the whole stupid thing,” said Tabitha. “That’s what it was, you know. A big fake-out. She decided to play the baby to teach me something.

Well, it backfired, because she got replaced by a better baby.” She had a smaller voice, more defensive, than he’d heard before. Wasn’t she glad her mom was restored?

“I thought the nuns would have multiple heart attacks. For a moment Mother Clare du Plessix thought it was the Spirit of the Foundress actually coming up from the crypt.”

“Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.”

“You’re shivering, why are you out here?”

“I want a smoke.”

“You’re not smoking though.”

“I want one, I’m not
having
one. This is the next best thing.” He didn’t try to figure her out. “Not a good day, I’m guessing?”

“Good, bad, you lose track what’s what.”

“Yeah, I know about that.”

The band started. A jug band of a sort, Adirondack hillbilly jazz. “You don’t want to dance, I guess?” he said.

“Got that right. I hate this kind of crap. Why at weddings does everybody think they’re the fucking Waltons.”

“Did your brother start the fire?”

“Did you? Just to be able to blame him and get him off your case?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then,” she said, as if that was conclusive.

“You
are
shivering. Come on in. It’s freezing out here.” They peered in. Caleb and Polly were dragging through their first dance. It was that song from
Cats.
“No. They’re right there.”

“Come around. We can stand in the vestibule and watch from a distance.” They tramped through the snow to the front of the Cliffs of Zion Radical Radiant Pentecostal Church. Polly and Caleb must have broken off their dance early. The caller was hooting and stoking the applause, and rousing up folks to come and do a square dance. In the well-heated vestibule, with a doubtful look Francesca Handelaers was sniffing Bartholomew’s diapers. “He’s just got the most perfectly incredible schedule of production,” she said as Tabitha and Jeremy knocked the snow off their shoes. “Am I in your way?”

“No,” said Jeremy. “I’m happy on the margins.”

“Me too,” said Francesca, eyes on her work, then, “but I never really believed that of you, Jeremy.”

“Coming through,” said Tabitha, giving the baby a horrified scowl and wrinkling her nose, and darting for the women’s room.

Jeremy sat on the stairs, inching back into the shadows. Peculiar that, so much of the time, he found Francesca’s company more comfortable than Willem’s. She laid a fresh diaper out on the floor and began to undo Bartholomew’s purple leggings. She talked about a New Year’s party they’d had—why hadn’t Jeremy come to it? He’d been visiting Sean? Reading to him? Oh, Sean. Right.

Irene showed up, a pile of squished sandwiches pinched between her thumb and forefinger, and Charlotte in tow with her other hand. “Anything I can do?” she said to her sister.

“Get your niece to eat
something,
this is supper.” Francesca grabbed Bartholomew’s feet in one hand and lifted his legs like a couple of trout, so his little smeared bottom rose from the messy diaper. “Pee—
ew,
Bartholomew.”

A clatter; Willem came bouncing through the door, all angles and cheer. “It’s a square dance, they’re looking to fill another square, ‘Cesca,” he said.

“Got my hands full just now, honey,” said Francesca. “As you can see.”

“Irene, then. Come on, I’m hot to dance.”

“Not me. I performed once today. I’m done.”

As Irene shifted in the doorway and the light fell further Willem caught sight of Jeremy sitting there. A beat of silence, a fermata, then the yowl of the caller pleading for another pair.

Francesca said, “Maybe Jeremy wants to dance.”

“Oh, I don’t know that he wants it that much,” said Willem.

“Maybe I do,” said Jeremy. The beginning and the end. “Why not ask?”

“Go mad. I’ll be done in a bit,” said Francesca.

“Civil unions passed in Vermont,” said Jeremy. He felt he was channeling an archangel.

Or Sean. “Almost a month ago. In the next door state. It’s the new millennium.” Willem looked at Jeremy with a turned head. Willem’s fabulous family around him like shackles and safety netting both. “Well,” said Willem almost gingerly, “do you want to dance?” Jeremy levitated across the messy baby and Francesca’s deft hands, and Willem caught his elbow and pulled him up the steps. They stood, chests facing, Willem’s head turned one way and Jeremy’s the other. Two meerkats defending their honor, thought Jeremy. Looking for predators. Avoiding looking in the eye, though their chins were seven inches apart.

Willem braved up first. Grabbed Jeremy by the forearm. “Guess we’re about to give this old town a stir.” A blush rose from beneath his loosened shirt collar. “I’m going to be the man, though.”

“Works for me,” said Jeremy. “I’ll sing soprano.”

They took their place in the final square. Jack Reeves with his wife. Turk Schaeffer was paired up with Svetty Boyle—who knew? Old Man Getchen and his daughter Stephanie. A flurry of snickering round the edges of the room. “Men to the left, ladies to the right, let’s walk through these steps first,” said the caller. “Gentlemen, take your lady’s left in your left hand, squeeze it so she’ll understand, Place your right upon her waist, Show her you’ve got excellent—” The guitarist was doing a fret-thump, to mark the beat, no melody yet. The caller fumbled. “Whoa, Nellie, we got a snafu on our hands. What, no pretty lady available to fill out this figure over here?”

The caller’s remark took an interrogative twist into silence; people craned to see. Willem remarked in an uninflected voice, “We’re okay as we are; go on.”

“Well.” The caller was flummoxed. “I’ve seen everything now. I guess. I’ll just call it out. Okay now. Where were we? Swing your gal—I mean swing your
partner,
swing her through

… Holy cripes.” He mopped his brow. “Folks, I can only call this the way I know it. You’re gonna be innovative, you’re just gonna have to follow as you can.” Willem swung his partner, swung him through; Jeremy bowed and held on and flourished. They caught their eyes together, and grinned, which changed the nature of the sidelines tittering; transformed it into applause, at least as Jeremy heard it.

The dance began in earnest, and the partners set out to follow their steps. Twelve measures in, Jeremy remembered that in square dancing you changed partners; you were swept in recurring waves around the edge of your world, until you came home. With a look of pre-cardiac trauma, Jeremy’s landlord, Old Man Getchen, took Jeremy’s hand in his own, and handled him as gingerly as he could manage. Turk Schaeffer was more willing to play, as long as he was caught in the joke—“You’re a vixen in your dancing shoes, you are,” he said, and gave Jeremy a pinch on the cheek. The wedding guests cheered, the room whirled as Jeremy circled.