The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (33 page)

They all turned, expecting Nurse Marilee Gompers. “Here we are, right as rain,” said Mother Clare du Plessix. “Goodness, a little family party already?” Mrs. Riley’s jaw couldn’t quite drop, as it was already opened ajar as it could go, but it wobbled on its hinge a bit. Mr. Riley stood up a little straighter.

Mother Clare was followed by Sister Jeanne d’Arc, Sister Felicity, Sister Perpetua, and Sister Clothilde, who was having a hard time squeezing through the doorway with everyone else already there. “How are you, dear boy?” said Mother Clare.

She approached the bedside in the quiet caesura of implacable intention, broken by Sister Clothilde’s stage whisper to the room at large. “Sister Alice called us to tell us, and it sounded serious enough to hire a cab. Sister Maria Goretti is still down with pneumonia, poor thing, and we thought her germs in this instance would be a real no-no.”

The old nuns stood on one side of the bed, taking little notice of Mr. and Mrs. Riley, and nodding only perfunctorily to the boys. “Sister Alice will be along a bit later,” said Mother Clare du Plessix. “Don’t worry, dear child, we’re not going to stay long.”

“I have no idea who you are,” said Mrs. Riley at last.

“We are the friends of Sean,” said Mother Clare du Plessix. “Shall we take a moment of silence?” They all closed their eyes. Sean did as well.

“This is a private family matter. I don’t believe I know you—” said Mrs. Riley.

“Silence,” Mother Clare du Plessix reminded her, gently. “Silence.”

THE NUNS IN their hired car and Jeremy in his were both caught in a slowdown beyond the I-81 traffic diversion. The pulsing ruby light of emergency vehicles had a weird Christmassy aspect, but by the time Jeremy breasted the wreck the rescue squads had left the scene. When he got home, the crummy old phone machine showed twelve calls. Sean, he thought. A turn for the worse this soon? Or hate phone mail from Mrs. Riley? Anonymous heavy breathing from his stalker, Kirk Scales? Before he could press the button to retrieve the messages, the phone rang again.

Peggy Mueller in high weepy mode. He couldn’t make it out at first. “Sister Alice what?” he said.

THE FUNERAL HAD the feel of a dress rehearsal, a quick run-through before the actual eminences would arrive to make witness to Sister Alice’s life. But, thought Jeremy, what eminences would that be? The shivering Theban souls in their winter garb were it. If something like the Holy Spirit—the Holy Ghost, he was enough of a romantic to prefer that outdated terminology—were to arrive, who would notice? Would the balsawood angels in the ceiling begin to sing in reedy voices? In their skeletal leading, would the figures in the stained glass windows add their hosannas through throats of sanguine pink glass?

Jeremy had been asked to lead the congregation in a couple of anthems and some hymns.

His choir sat on folding chairs in front of the right side altar. Peggy Mueller, her face contorted with desolation. Polly Osterhaus, who must be thinking of her own wedding in three weeks’

time. Marty, who had asked to join the singers, was the most skeptical among them, but he wore the most devout expression, and he kept his head bowed during the entire ceremony.

Jeremy’s small chair perched on the grating above the crypt. He couldn’t overcome a feeling that the grille was loose in its marble framework, and it shifted incrementally as he rose from his seat or sat down again. Or was it just the world that was unsteady? Coming loose from its moorings at the millennium, ready to split its husk, convert, evolve, metastasize? He looked out over the faces of familiar people, faces rosy with grief or blank with grief, or faces that betrayed the exhaustion of the Christmas season, and the inconvenience of a funeral five days before the holiday. For most of the parishioners of Our Lady’s this must be their first visit to the chapel of the Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries. Even finding it would have been a pain.

Facing out from the dais, Jeremy turned to look at the other side of the chapel. The Sisters seemed arrested in demonstrations of palsy. A hobbled band of ancient tuberculars. So many of them were too old to be alive. They couldn’t even sit up straight in the pews, but leaned and tilted like untended gravestones. It was the most of them he had seen at one time—he counted fifteen, and could name six of them. Sister Clothilde and Sister Jeanne d’Arc flanked Mother Clare du Plessix in the front row, and other familiar faces were slotted in among the new ones. Sister Maria Goretti apparently was still too sick with pneumonia to be released from the infirmary. Still, the representation was impressive. Impressive, and upsetting: Everyone knew this should be a funeral for an antique nun, one who had been letting go, or trying to let go, for decades now.

Father Mike Sheehy was the principal celebrant, and a couple of priests from Syracuse and one from Montreal had come to crowd the altar with their communal effort to attract the attention of God and to thank Him for the life of Sister Alice Coyne. Why it was thanks and not recrimination was one of the central mysteries of the faith, as far as Jeremy was concerned.

Thank you, Forces of the Almighty, for giving Sister Alice Coyne to us all; You give and You take away; it is not ours to question why You allowed the truck of Christmas trees heading into the intersection to skid sideways into the driver’s side of Sister Alice’s Nissan. If Sean Casey hadn’t been in the clinic, Sister Alice wouldn’t have been heading west on Morse Hill Road at exactly that moment. If the repairs on I-81 had been finished as scheduled the Christmas tree truck would have been on the interstate, not on Morse Hill Road. If the German immigrants hadn’t deeply rooted the notion of Christmas trees onto the American celebration of Your Nativity, mirabile dictu, there might have been no truck there that particular moment. Amen.

Your kingdom come. Your rotten kingdom come.

The nuns looked rheumy and disgruntled at the choir’s efforts. Only when he heard the noses being blown did Jeremy realize that they were affected. Next to Mother Clare du Plessix was a woman with blond hair, most likely a sibling of Sister Alice; she resembled her enough maybe even to be a twin. She looked grim, and as if her life had been hard; Mother Clare reached over and pressed her old claw over the woman’s clenched hands. Maybe at a time like this the call wasn’t for music, but silence.

They sat with the prospects of their own funerals in their laps. They would be back in church again before long for Sean’s funeral, and for Mother Clare du Plessix’s, and maybe some of them would be at the Cliffs of Zion Radical Radiant Pentecostal Church for the funeral of Mrs. Scales. Jeremy could see Tabitha Scales in the back of the chapel, squeezed in between her brother Kirk and Old Lady Scarcese. Tabitha looked pale, and Kirk was ruddy and bleary beneath his to-die perfect coif.

They had hardly known Sister Alice at all.

The procession to the graveyard was brief; a sanctified spot waited behind the chapel where other sisters were already at rest. The entire congregation squeezed out the side door of the chapel and stood amid the stones, and Father Mike led them in the final round of prayers.

Some of the more infirm nuns did not come out, for the wind was high and the temperature dropping. More snow expected before the week was out. The sound of the wind in the arborvitae blocked out the few words that Mother Clare du Plessix was trying to say about Sister Alice; Jeremy had to move forward to hear. He didn’t catch much, though there was a moment when the wind rested, and he heard Mother Clare’s voice reach out, “It used to be said that when a nun died, God put another in her place, much as you replace a pane of glass—” Jeremy shifted to see how Mother Clare would update this thought, since Sister Alice had already been the last replacement pane. But suddenly Mother Clare had no more words, and bowed her head. Her veil wavered in the strengthening wind and hid her face.

TABITHA AND K IRK drove home from the funeral in silence. Tabitha was thinking about God’s plan: Number One, was there such a thing, and Number Two, who cares, if it’s so full of pitfalls and potholes?

However thick God might have made her, was it possible that fate was infested with meaning whether or not she was clever enough to notice it?

She had resented Sister Alice Coyne, but now that she was gone, Tabitha missed her. The last conversation they had had was about historical pregnancies, by which Tabitha had thought Sister Alice was referring to Mary the Mother of God until she realized she was misunderstanding and the pregnancies were
hysterical.
“Hardly hysterical,” said Tabitha, “I haven’t had a good laugh all month. Do you know what I feel like in the morning? I can’t keep anything down.” Sister Alice Coyne had talked about the cleverness of the womb and the secrets of the human heart, and the possibility of imagining symptoms of pregnancy. Tabitha had had to excuse herself to go imagine some morning sickness, even though it was already two p.m.

And then Sister Alice had been creamed by a truck full of Christmas trees, so was Tabitha to take it that the notion of a hysterical pregnancy was thereby obliterated? Would God speak to her in such crude language? Perhaps He would need to, especially if she wasn’t listening closely enough. What was it exactly that He was trying to say? “Spit it out,” she mumbled out loud without realizing it, and it sounded in her own ears as if she were talking to her Goddamned earthly mother instead of her heavenly father.

“I can’t stand all that Catholic crap,” said Kirk, apparently thinking that she’d been talking to him. As if.

“What did you expect? Sister Alice was a nun. You didn’t have to come. You should have your seat belt on, by the way.”

“And I hate that guy.”

“Father Mike?”

“No, the music leader.”

“Jeremy Carr? Like hell you do.”

“I do. He makes me sick.”

Tabitha felt the baby kick. Or something. Did babies have feet by seven weeks? It made her feel mean. Kick me, will you, she thought. You too? Already? “Hog says you have a crush on Jeremy.”

“I don’t have a crush on him or any other guy. You make me sick.”

“Oh, grow up,” said Tabitha. “I’m not blind, you know. You’re not exactly watching reruns of
Baywatch
for the babes. You wouldn’t recognize a tit if it popped out of a bikini and bit you.”

“What is wrong with you? Just what have I done in this family to make you and Hogan so contemptuous? You act like some martyr, as if Hogan isn’t doing what he can, as if I’m not. I help with Mom too, you know.”

“Change the subject. It’s your favorite strategy. Okay by me. I don’t care if I have a faggot for a baby brother. You’re the one who brought up Jeremy Carr.”

“I said he made me sick.”

“Yeah. Hog told me he caught him making a pass at you. He said you were not exactly resisting. He said he threatened to beat the shit out of him.” Kirk took in several deep breaths.

“I think you’re scared of the whole business,” said Tabitha. “You’re having a hysterical reaction to the truth.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye, and wondered—briefly—if she was enjoying how he crumpled up against the door. “The truth shall set you free.” It was a quote from somewhere.
Star Trek?

“I know what’ll set me free. For one thing, you can drop me off at the corner.”

“You have to go to school.”

“The hell I do. Everybody else gets to be a juvenile offender. Let me try.” She was so surprised at his language that she did what he asked, and turned the car around to go home to relieve Hogan, who had to get ready for work. She guessed Kirk wasn’t about to hire out as a guy whore, but would only go to the library. Still, this was a start. She was almost proud of him.

THE AFTERNOON WAS endless. Mrs. Scales was curled up like a baby on the braided rug. She had her thumb in her mouth and her dentures beside her, set upon a piece of toast.

Tabitha sat down and watched
One Life to Live
over her, and during the commercials wondered if she would have a chance to try another nonk-nonk on her mother’s head after Hogan went to work. But someone called from the station and Hogan talked for a while, and when he hung up he told Tabitha that he had switched shifts and was going in later. So they watched Maury Povich for an hour while Mrs. Scales stared, unblinkingly, at the dust under the sofa. “Do you think we should call someone?” said Hogan.

“About what?” Tabitha wondered if he was going to suggest electro-jolt antigay therapy for Kirk.

“About Mom.” They checked to see if she was perking up at the sound of her name. She wasn’t. She showed no sign of apprehending their presence or, indeed, her own. “She said
no
fucking doctors.
But at this point she can’t tell a doctor from a tow truck. I mean, how much does our promise mean if she’s going to die?”

Tabitha had an uneasy feeling that Hogan knew that she had a padded wrench hidden between the sofa cushions. “She’s resting, she’s not dying.” She resisted an urge to prod her mother with the toe of her sneaker, like poking a fish on a dock to see if it could be goaded into flapping around some more.

“I mean, is she still our mother if she’s dead?”