The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (18 page)

“Nuns rent videos?” Marty put his hand on his chest as if suffering a touch of angina.

The sarcophagus stood on a stone dais directly beneath the foremost grille. The spiky remains of some wildflowers littered a nearby plinth, and soft damp dust felted the horizontals.

The sisters upstairs had resumed their prayers, and Jeremy guessed it was the rosary in Latin.

Through one of the grilles he could hear Sean clear his throat and cough ostentatiously and get up to leave.

“It’s almost an ossuary,” said Sister Jeanne d’Arc. “A chapel of bones. A charnel house.

Isn’t it wonderful?”

Marty said, “You have black Masses down here?”

She shot him a look. “That’s not even funny, young man.”

“This place is seriously clammy. You’ve got some standing water over here,” Jeremy pointed out.

“Even sanctuaries require maintenance,” said Sister Jeanne d’Arc, “more’s the pity. Alas, thanks to the lake effect, lots of rain and snow dumps on the chapel roof above those precious angels. We’ve never been entirely watertight. Sister Maria Goretti had to squirm out the window from the side of the choir loft and climb up there recently with another stretch of tarpaulin we got from the Army-Navy shop.”

From his childhood Jeremy recalled reruns of
The Flying Nun,
that paper airplane of a religious woman, but if he remembered correctly, Sister Maria Goretti was shaped more like a giraffe. “Sister Maria Goretti goes out on the chapel roof? No way.”

“Not till there’s no other choice,” admitted Sister Jeanne d’Arc. “But we can’t let the angels get water-damaged; they’re irreplaceable.”

“So, I assume, is Sister Maria Goretti.”

“She caught a tickle; it was a blowy day.” Sister Jeanne d’Arc made a dismissive motion with her hand. “She’s offering it up. She’s in bed tonight, feeling lowly. Anyway, we’ve done what we can for the time being. I’ll have to come down here with a mop and bucket and get this puddle. Keeps you hopping. Shall we?” Suddenly she seemed tired of the tour guide business and she genuflected at the edge of the crypt as if considering just staying behind and saving herself the trip up the stairs.

Having collected their rags and supplies and returned them to a rolling cart in the hallway, the other nuns were already leading Sean toward the refectory, which was at the opposite end of the first floor corridor from the sunroom. Jeremy found himself struggling to remember which nun was which. The oldest seemed to be Sister Perpetua, who looked like a rag doll in her black serge habit. Her eyes were rheumy and her upper lip creased, and she had a weedy little chin like a catfish. For all that, her step was more sprightly than Sister Jeanne d’Arc’s, and her head jerked about to follow what was being said the way a parrot’s head moves, in sharp, offended gestures.

Mother Clare du Plessix was not large the way Sister Clothilde was large—Sister Clothilde was flabby; Mother Clare more like a Mission-style hutch, broad and square and airy-looking. Mother Clare seemed silent; one eye strayed outward from time to time. She hunched her shoulders up and dropped them regularly; perhaps she was engaged in a Socratic dialogue with herself, or perhaps her camisole straps were binding. She was heavy in the front.

Sister Felicity, all aborted cartwheels and hesitant
bourrées,
seemed to have been given the wrong name. She proved to be the worrier among them; she scurried back to make sure they’d turned off the light switches; then she scurried forward as if scared of the dark. “Oh, the milk, the hot water, and so on,” she said, and plowed ahead with her head down, disappearing behind a swinging door. “The kitchen,” said Sister Jeanne d’Arc. “Sister Felicity’s special charge.”

“Sister Felicity’s penance,” said Sister Perpetua.

“No, our penance,” said Sister Clothilde, huffing. Her hugeness was sweet, like a puff pastry, and she turned to grin at the visitors. She might just be an airhead, thought Jeremy; with the constitutionally cloistered, it’s so hard to make a judgment about normalcy. As he knew from personal experience.

In admonition Mother Clare du Plessix said softly, “Sisters,” and they passed the kitchen, from which issued the sounds of a kettle smashing on a stovetop.

Sister Magdalene came the closest to the kind of nun who inspired holy terror in schoolchildren. She had a backbone like a coatrack, and long skeletal fingers. She was the tallest of the lot. Her bones creaked audibly. Alone of the old nuns, she eschewed the veil; her hair was silvery and sparse, and close-cropped like a crusty old City Desk man in a Fifties newspaper drama.

Sister Magdalene and Sister Clothilde opened the doors to the refectory and tucked their heads down, tacitly inviting the guys in. After the grandeur of the chapel, the refectory was plain as pudding. Extra tables were piled two deep, tops together, so half the room seemed a forest of table legs. At the other end, the walls were kitted out with long aluminum counters bare of anything but boxes of dried cereal. The effect was a little clinical.

On one table the nuns had laid out a repast. Some white plates thick as dinnerware, some heavy, well-polished silver knives and spoons. Cups and saucers, a little wicker basket of Celestial Seasonings teas, and a pound cake squatting unceremoniously on a platter too big for it.

“Bless us, Jesus, and in Your Holy Name may we be nourished so that we may nourish others,” intoned Mother Clare, at a clip. Even before the perfunctory “Amens” the boys were being pushed to take sections of yellow cake with marmalade spooned on the side. Sister Felicity came barreling through with another metal tray on wheels—not unlike a hospital cart—and provided hot water and milk for the tea. The noise of stirring teaspoons echoing about the high-ceilinged space made Jeremy feel he was a thug in a warehouse conspiring with hit men.

“If we could sell it as a retreat center or a retirement home and move ourselves into a little ranch house without all these stairs, we’d be a lot better off,” said Mother Clare, regarding the bowl of her spoon with some dismay. “I fear the tarnish has caught up with us again.”

“We are none of us what we once were, alas,” proposed Sister Clothilde.

Mother Clare looked a bit chagrined, but she turned and said to Jeremy, “Please tell us something about yourselves. Let me get your names straight. I know you’re Jeremy, Sister Alice Coyne does nothing but sing your praises. Jeremy Carr, is it? And the others—if you would be so kind?”

“My short-term memory’s so unreliable, I sometimes can’t even remember what …” said Sister Clothilde. Her voice trailed off and she stared into the middle distance.

“Sister!” said Mother Clare. Sister Clothilde jumped. So did the guys, but then they realized Sister Clothilde wasn’t being startled out of vagueness, she was being chastised for being flip.

“Well, my apologies,” she said, in an unrepentant tone, “but in fact I
can’t
remember their names.”

Jeremy said, “Jeremy Carr. Sean Riley here, and this is Marty Rothbard.”

“That’s a mouthful,” said Sister Perpetua. She glowered warmly at Marty Rothbard.

“Were you named after Saint Martin of Tours?”

“I was named after Herman Martin Lefkowicz of Flatbush.”

“I never heard of that saint, but they’re letting anyone in these days. You used to have to suffer to be a saint. Now it’s good works, good works, good works till the cows come home.”

“He’s my uncle, and a devout Orthodox Jew.”

“I don’t hold with Orthodoxy,” said Sister Perpetua. “All that chanting and incense, and black-robed ladies ironing in the back of the basilica. The things they get up to. You can’t fool me.”

“Sister Perpetua,” said Mother Clare, “our young friend isn’t Catholic.”

“Oh well,” said Sister Perpetua, “neither was Saul till he got a yen to see Damascus. I guess there’s time.”

“I’m actually not shopping for a religion,” said Marty.

“Tell us something about the Order,” said Jeremy. “Sister Alice Coyne told us the name and the address, not much more. You’re not the hermit kind of nuns, I take it.”

“We are cloistered only by circumstances,” said Mother Clare du Plessix.

“Come again?” said Marty.

“I don’t mean to confuse. There are several types of religious orders. The Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries are an active order; we work largely in teaching. It’s only in this extended old age that we verge, willy-nilly, on the contemplative. By which I mean that, by the default of our age, we confine ourselves to prayer and meditation and silence, as some sisters in other orders do from the moment they enter as young postulants. Aiming for the Grand, or Profound Silence.”

“Not us. We were active. So we’re not freaks,” said Sister Clothilde, helping herself to another slice of pound cake. “We know the world in all its modern ways. Though we reserve the right to disapprove.”

“In actual fact,” said Mother Clare—it was as if she were speaking to herself; that wandering eye gave her an even more ethereal aspect—“the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries, though an active order, were never as well integrated into the modern world as many other orders. Though we weren’t cloistered, our missions tended to be boarding schools for girls, and our Superiors General usually chose to locate us remotely. Hence this upstate plantation out in the middle of nowhere.”

“But was there a school you taught at around here?” said Jeremy. “I grew up in Utica; I don’t know the history of Thebes well—”

“This was the New York Motherhouse,” said Mother Clare, “and it still is, though the Montreal house has superseded it in worldly vigor. Which is to say that young girls came and studied here as postulants and novices before taking their final vows. They were then assigned to one of five schools we maintained in New York and Pennsylvania. Since the closing of the last school a decade ago, we’ve had no place to send new sisters. But then, we have no new sisters to send. It’s been twelve years since we welcomed a sister into our community.”

“That’s why Sister Alice is allowed to work at Our Lady’s?” said Jeremy. “There’s nothing for her to do here?”

“Oh,” said Sister Clothilde, pointing to the tarnished spoon that Mother Clare du Plessix had criticized, “there’s plenty for her to do. But Vatican II encouraged individual preferences and professional callings among the members of the community, and then, I can’t tell you—”

“—all hell broke loose?” That was Marty; he couldn’t help it. But the sisters smiled.

Mother Clare du Plessix finished Sister Clothilde’s remark for her. “Some of us took to the new liberties with aplomb. Some did not.”

“I’ll never forget my first cup of decaf coffee,” said Sister Perpetua. “I’d never been able to manage caffeine—it gives me the jumps—but if you couldn’t manage caffeine you did without, and were grateful for the opportunity for humility. As far as I’m concerned, the best thing Vatican II did was decaf. All the rest of it, those fashionable veils and attractive skirts, and doing away with the
serre-tête,
it seemed dubious to me then and dubious to me it continues to seem, thirty years later.”

“Then there was
The Nun in the World,
by Cardinal Suenens, that groundbreaking book.” Mother Clare looked with raised eyebrows, clearly expecting recognition in the faces of her visitors.

“Perhaps,” said Sister Felicity, overturning the sugar bowl as she reached to dab some crumbs off the Formica tabletop, “perhaps our young friends still think that The Nun in the World is a contradiction in terms.”

“Of course not,” said Jeremy. “Sister Alice is a wonderful example. She zips about in her own little car; she knows a lot of people in the parish. She has a good sense of humor. She can balance the books better than Father Mike. She’s good with kids. She’s not too holier-than-thou—”

“Not by quite a long shot,” said Sister Clothilde.

“She is a fine example of the nun in the modern world,” said Mother Clare du Plessix with a firmness of tone, as if this were the vestige of an old argument. “We are all proud of her.”

“But really,” said Marty, “the stuff of being a nun is pretty archaic, you got to admit it. I mean, I’m not Catholic, but all those vows. It isn’t what you’d call natural.”

“Vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,” said Mother Clare. “The easiest vows to take. What could be more natural than to focus your attention on overcoming—”

“Vows of
poverty
and
chastity?”
said Sean. “This is really beyond the pale, don’t you think? Guys? Though vows of obedience could be fun. Depending.”

“We’re going on,” said Mother Clare suddenly. She turned and smiled at Sean; at least they guessed she was directing her smile at him. “We have so few people to talk to. It’s why we’re so pleased you’ve come. Tell us about yourself, dear boy.” Jeremy could see what was coming; Jeremy could see Sean itching to erupt with an in-your-face routine like some outtake of
The Birdcage.
He was chewing the corner of his lip for a cigarette, though he’d given them up after the first pneumonia scare. And this is my cross to bear, thought Jeremy, that I can’t stand to see this collision about to happen.

But Sean only said, “If you want to hear confessions, let’s start with Jeremy, shall we.

Something’s going on with him. He thinks we don’t notice. Maybe you can ferret it out of him.” Damn Sean, damn him. Eyes like a hawk, like Joan Rivers. Jeremy bounded to his feet.

“We
will
sing for you; we need to warm up,” he declared. “Tea’s done, and many thanks. Then we’re off down the hall for our rehearsal. This has been great. Will you tell the others we missed them? Come on, guys. Something
a cappella
—” But he wasn’t about to suggest one of his own pieces. Even as dry cuttings of the full people they might once have been, the nuns were too attentive. And his songs were too, well, confessional. “That Haydn round,” he decided. They’d heard it at an AIDS memorial service in Little Falls a few months earlier, and it was easy to pick up. “The words are by Galileo, or reputed to be,” he told the sisters.

“Well, he’s been forgiven by Rome, so go on,” said Mother Clare.

Sean was looking at him with curiosity, contempt, weariness. “Jeremy. I hate to bring up dementia, but the deal was we weren’t going to sing. Can you possibly have forgotten?”