The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (32 page)

“Bringing him home?” Hogan began to swell, his arm to wind up. “You’re not getting your mitts on him, you cocksucking bastard—”

“Don’t, Hogan, you’re ruining everything,” shouted Kirk, “as per usual!” He headed for his brother but slid in the snow and landed on one knee. “Ow, that’s—I said major OW.”

“Let’s calm down—” said Jeremy.

“You sniff around for boy pussy, you come right into our house to hunt for an innocent kid, pretending to be kind—”

“That’ll do now,” said Father Mike Sheehy, in the bright light of the open door to the rectory. He was wearing a bathrobe and he had a baseball bat in his hand. “We can’t have language like this in the church parking lot, fellows. Just won’t do. Anyone want to come in here and sort this out like gentlemen?” He advanced, and cracked his bat hard on the top of the concrete steps. “Or not?”

BY THE TIME Jeremy got there, Marty was already home. He met Jeremy at the door.

“Sean’s asleep, first time in twenty-four hours, so let’s go sit in your car and chat.”

“It’s freezing out there, no way,” said Jeremy, as Marty pushed him down the stairs.

“You won’t believe the evening I just had. A night of temptations and punishments and humiliations. I don’t deserve any of it.”

“You’re that kind of sick individual that life likes to abuse. It’s your own fault for never saying
Fuck you
to anyone. Can we manage not to talk about you for just this once?”

“Nothing would give me greater joy.”

“The thing is,” said Marty, when they settled in the front seat, “I think Sean is going downhill. The last twenty-four hours have been really bad. You don’t want to see the gunk he’s bringing up.”

“No and I don’t want to hear about it either. You shouldn’t be dealing with this, Marty.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t know what the hell to do. Mrs. Riley has called several times wanting to talk to Sean. He won’t get on the phone with her. Everyone’s getting jittery, and Sean’s got us in this bind. But the time has come to get unstuck, because he needs medical treatment. He’s not well enough for you to bring him back to Syracuse, Germy.”

“And you’re thinking we should just bundle him into my car and dump him home?”

“Or to the clinic on Morse Hill Road.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Jeremy at last. “If he’s finally sleeping now, he might feel more himself when he wakes up. And anyway, even if he doesn’t, morning’s a better time to show up at the clinic. Less scary. Also his parents won’t be so frantic.”

“They’ll be frantic enough.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake. That’s not our fault, is it?”

“Keep your hairshirt on. I’m sure it’s your fault one way or the other, you just aren’t concentrating. You want to go get a beer while Sleeping Beauty tosses in her bed of pain up there?”

“I’m going home, I’ll come back in the morning. Call me if there’s a crisis.”

“I don’t know why you’re mad at me all of a sudden,” said Marty, without rancor. “But knowing you, there must be some odd twisted rationale behind it. It’s so comforting to have you as a friend, even when you’ve got PMS.”

On the phone next morning, Marty sounded a lot less jocular. “I’m hauling Sean down the stairs and into the car whether he wants to go or not. Why don’t you just meet us at the clinic in an hour? Can you do that?”

“I guess,” said Jeremy.

“Here’s the hard part. Would you call his folks?”

“Does he know I’m going to do that?”

“He’s not knowing a whole lot this morning. High fever or something.” Jeremy futzed around with a cup of instant coffee and, trying to stall, he remembered he had an appointment about plans for decorating the church at Christmas. He called to postpone the meeting. “Taking one of my friends to the clinic on Morse Hill Road,” he told Sister Alice.

“Oh. I see. Is it one of the singers?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s serious. Is it Sean Riley?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know how serious it is. I think very. How should I know?”

“You’ll keep me posted this afternoon?”

“I will.”

He hung up, said an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, and another Our Father. When he started in on “Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts,” he knew he was stalling. So he took a deep breath and dialed Sean’s home.

“Hi, Mrs. Riley? This is Jeremy Carr. The choir director from Our Lady’s. Hi. Look, I have some news for you—kind of serious. Sean isn’t feeling so hot and so we’re taking him over to the clinic on Morse Hill Road.” He was talking as fast as he could to keep Sean’s mother from having a chance to explode, but there was only an editorial silence on the other end of the line.

“Mrs. Riley? You there?”

“This is Colum Riley,” said a new voice after a moment. “What is it?” The dad. Jeremy drew in a breath and began again. “He doesn’t know I’m telling you this, but I thought you should know.”

“Well, run that by me again.” Mr. Riley’s voice sounded as if he’d been following something on the TV while Jeremy had been speaking. Jeremy obliged. “I don’t like the look of it, actually,” he finished.

“He’s been poorly this year, we noticed. Well, we’ll get ourselves down there and see what’s what. Thanks a lot, young man.” Mr. Riley didn’t sound exercised over the whole thing.

As he was hanging up the phone, though, Jeremy heard him saying to his wife, “Don’t break a hip, Deirdre, he’ll keep—”

The air was fine, choked with a dusty sort of snow that the wind kept beating off the tops of the paper-thin drifts. Cloudy bright. The combed fields on either side of Morse Hill Road stood suddenly yellow, gold, like something from Breughel, and then went back to being brown, like something from Sears. The road was busy, all that northbound traffic still being diverted due to the stalled construction. At East Tupham, a school bus had stopped, perhaps engine trouble, and a flock of children in candy-colored snowsuits and hats and red plastic boots were making of some dark ravaged cornfield a cheery board game.

He had only been to the clinic on Morse Hill Road once, though he had heard Tabitha Scales talk about it with a great deal of scorn. It didn’t seem so terrible to him. The Oswego County Clinic was a couple of prefab buildings joined by an airy elbow corridor, glass on both sides and rangy geraniums perched on spray-painted overturned milk crates. More like an animal hospital than anything else; he expected to hear yipping.

He found Marty in the waiting room. “Told me to stay out here. I’m not family.” Jeremy stood near the double doors. A sign said NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

BEYOND THIS POINT. Every time the doors opened, he glared at the nurse behind the desk just beyond, but she was gifted at ignoring visitors. Once he entered anyway, and she said, without looking up, “Out. Out.” She pointed back the way he’d come.

“But you don’t even know who I’ve come to find out about.”

“It’s Sean Riley, and someone will be out when there’s something to say. He’s still in examination, and it’ll be a while yet. You might go get some lunch.”

“It’s only eleven o’clock.”

“Have a long lunch and come back at two,” she said. “Cafeteria downstairs, or you can go get the regrettable coffee at the International House of Pancakes.” Her name was Nurse Gompers, Marilee Gompers. Jeremy thought she looked as if she chewed on thermometers to relieve her sexual tension. Marty and Jeremy took her advice, though, and went and ordered pancakes and lingered over the endless cup of coffee until the lunch rush was done. It was ten after two when they returned.

Nurse Gompers pointed them upstairs. The Riley parents stood in the hallway, several yards apart from each other. “Look who’s here,” said Marty. “Us.” Deirdre Riley was a small woman with a bird-like pelvis; her thighs seemed bowed to the front somehow. She wore a blue Windbreaker that said OUR LADY’S SODALITY in white shadow-box letters, and she carried a canvas satchel of needles and yarn. She looked prepared for a stay. Colum Riley was bald and silent.

“Hi,” said Jeremy. Mrs. Riley looked suspicious, but since she also had this expression as she approached the altar for communion Jeremy wasn’t alarmed. “You know me from church.”

“I realize that,” said Mrs. Riley.

“Does he know you’re here?” asked Jeremy.

They didn’t answer.

“When can we go in?” asked Marty.

“In good time. They’re taking care of some business just now,” said Mr. Riley. A muffled sound behind the door, and Sean’s voice, distinctly:
“Fuck.”
Mrs. Riley pursed her lips and Mr.

Riley’s face registered no particular expression. He might have been waiting for an elevator.

Jeremy recognized the strategy from his own dad.

When a couple of blue-clad male orderlies left the room, one pointed to the parents and said, “You. Only the two of you. Fifteen minutes. Nurse Gompers will come up and check.

Watch it.” The parents pushed in without evidence of having heard, but the door shut in Jeremy’s face as he tried to follow them.

“I like the Puerto Rican,” Marty said. “A bedside manner to stiffen my—resolve. He can take my rectal temperature any time.”

“How about you shut up.”

“God, his folks are just like he said. I always thought he must be exaggerating.”

“They didn’t seem so bad. They aren’t in a good mood.”

“Well, they were a matched pair of grouches. They’re like, like Ernest Borgnine and that little Exorcist kid. Linda Hunt.”

“It was Linda Blair.”

“Right. Linda Hunt is what happened to Linda Blair after she was possessed. That explains a lot.”

“Let’s not talk about being possessed in the company of a virus.” Marty ignored Jeremy. “What’re we doing, leaving him alone with them? They don’t get to make the rules. We must be crazy.” Marty pushed past Jeremy, threw open the door, and sang out, “Honey, we’re home.”

“This is not a farce. This is a nightmare,” said Jeremy, following.

Sean was sitting up in bed halfway, with a paper mask hanging from one ear. “Thrush,” he said in a croaky voice. “On top of everything else. You can’t believe the sore throat.”

“We want some privacy here,” said Mrs. Riley, turning on the boys.

“Don’t mind me mam,” Sean said to them, an Irish softness in his voice they’d rarely heard. “Mam, don’t get your knickers in a twist. It’s too late for privacy. Come on.” It was a patois to calm them down, Jeremy thought.

“Don’t talk,” said Mr. Riley.

“You better talk,” said Mrs. Riley. “You’ve got some explaining to do.” She wrestled a crucifix out of the knitting and looked around the room. There was a faded print of some daisies, 1970s style, in a frame without glass; she took it down and slapped the crucifix in its place against the wall.

“Saints and begorrah, is this the wee magic portable confessional? I never dreamed I’d catch sight of one,” said Marty.

Sean’s head fell back on the pillow as if unable to imagine he was present, at last, at a meeting of his parents and his gay compañeros. His face looked bluish-gray. Worse than last night.

“This is a hell of a way to learn about this,” said Mrs. Riley, though it wasn’t clear if she meant her son’s homosexuality or his illness, or if she had quite yet put the two together. “I would like to know what you actually thought you were up to?” Was she talking to her son or to all of them?

“Sweet Jaysus of Nazareth, Deirdre,” said her husband, “‘tis neither the time nor the place.” They were all turning into parodies of Frank McCourt, thought Jeremy. Anxiety does weird things to a family. Pretty soon they’re going to start singing “Danny Boy.”

“Coughing up blood for several days and nobody thinks to call his mither? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you all?” She answered her own question. “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re bloody selfish.”

“Mam,” said Sean. “Don’t do the Mam thing with quite such accuracy—”

“Don’t talk. Save your breath. You’ll be needing it. I know what we’re talking about here. I’m not stupid. You’re not lying here because of—of—an ingrown toenail, for the love of Pete!”

“That’s just about the size of it,” said Marty. He turned to Sean. “You dog, you never told me about Pete. Pete who? Is he cute? Taken? Well, let’s not be fussy. Is he free for an hour?”

“Oh Christ,” said Sean. “Oh Jesus McGillicuddy Christ. Oh Christ. Christ on a crutch in the foothills.”

Mrs. Riley’s tears were hasty and plenty. “And the mercy of God be on you, you selfish boys, keeping yourselves for yourselves, and the unnamable sins you suffer for now.”

“Little Bird,” said Mr. Riley, reaching out his hand and moving it in the air as if patting an invisible deer somewhere between his wife and the bed. “Little Bird, don’t.” Jeremy, catching Sean’s eye, handed over the shiny aluminum spit pan and they all averted their eyes. Mrs. Riley closed her eyes and her shoulders shook. “Bad enough you should turn your back on your faith, and the tabernacle light was burning for you all those years and you never looked in on your Friend; but that you should be so aloof and engage in the sin of selfishness—”

“I’ve never heard it called that before,” said Marty.

“I’ll rinse that out,” said Sean’s father.

The door opened. “Get her some Kleenex,” said Jeremy. “Come on, Marty, I think we better go—”

“—just when you need the faith of your fathers the most!” she said. “And you don’t turn to your parents, you can’t turn to your church, you have none to take you in but your so-called
buddies
—”