The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (36 page)

“You’re sick. Of course not.”

“Well, but the idea occurred to you later, and you cursed yourself for the lost opportunity—”

“You don’t know who I am. Even after all this time.”

“You are one sick puppy, if even your fantasy life is circumscribed by morals.”

“We have stuff to do. With Sean out of commission, we have to reduce all these trios to duets. I can’t talk about this now.”

“I should give you a going-away present. Assuming you’re really going to go through with this New York gambit, which I doubt. How about I just sort of hijack Willem for a night?

There’s two of us and only one of him. Hire a van, hustle him inside, rent a motel room, tie him up a little—just for fun—give you both a bottle of bourbon and a boombox with something romantic on it. Maybe I could find some amyl nitrate for old time’s sake. I’d leave you alone, and I wouldn’t peek. He owes you. You saved his wife.”

“Stop. I don’t even like this kind of kidding.
Stop it.”

“Well, what do you want? What the hell do you
want?”

Sister Clothilde came to the door, ushering a seriously frailer Mother Clare du Plessix. As they made their way across the sunroom, the guys fell silent. But Jeremy wouldn’t have said aloud, even to his friends, what he really wanted. He wanted Willem, who was one of the lucky ones bisexual enough to have a choice—he wanted Willem to have wanted him. And since Willem hadn’t—or not enough—there was no going forward.

Since possessing him is impossible, I want to love Willem without possessing him. I want to have him without holding him, or to hold him without having him, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, with our other partners and lovers and parents and children in tow, till—till whenever.

And since that’s not likely, not now, not yet, what I want, thought Jeremy, is a life free of him.

Mother Clare du Plessix sat down and said, “Let me catch my breath. Sing for me.” Jeremy picked up the guitar and began; Marty joined at the bridge.

They were missing Sean’s nasal, pitch-perfect high A on the end. But the sound was good, anyway; the rehearsals had been paying off. Mother Clare du Plessix smiled distractedly, and Jeremy waited for a benediction. “An awful lot of words, aren’t there?” she said.

“Well,” said Jeremy. “It’s supposed to build.”

“Oh, that it does,” said Mother Clare. “I suppose I should hear it again. Not just now—” she protested. “I have come along to get your opinion on something. I just had a phone call from Father Sheehy at your parish. Sweet man. Distraught—Sister Alice and the church in the same week. Horrible, really. It makes you wonder.”

“The chapel,” said Sister Clothilde, nudging Mother Clare gently.

“Father Sheehy called and we discussed the possibility of having your midnight mass Christmas service at our chapel,” she continued. “The only other option that seems viable is some gymnasium at the local secondary school, he said. You know the chapel better than he does, having seen it several times this fall. He asked you to make the decision and for me to call him back with it.”

“Well, the chapel is small,” replied Jeremy. “I mean, smaller than Our Lady’s. But I suspect a fair number of parishioners wouldn’t come this far for midnight mass if it wasn’t what they were used to. Does he propose having all the Sunday services here, too?”

“No, no. I believe the Pastor from that start-up next door to Our Lady’s is being very generous. But of course Christmas Eve is special and the other church requires their space, too.

Apparently there needs to be some decorating and so on. Father Sheehy is going to rely on you to help set things up.”

“Rig them up,” said Jeremy. “I hope he’s not going to bring the Magical Flying Baby Jesus here.”

Mother Clare’s face folded, like an old-fashioned accordion camera. There were things she did not have the reserves to consider, and she looked as if she hoped she hadn’t heard Jeremy correctly. “If you approve, then, I shall have Sister Clothilde place a telephone call to the Rectory of Our Lady’s,” she said, rising. “I do hope he’s not doing this just to make us old nuns feel—included.”

“Well, what if he is?” said Jeremy, thinking of his need to be included in Willem’s life.

“The whole notion of the cloister still escapes you, doesn’t it? At least one of the many reasons one enters is not to escape the world because it is too painful, but because it is too beautiful to bear.”

Marty said, “Hey, sister, there’s the answer to your problem of attrition. You should start accepting men. I nominate Jeremy. He’s, like, totally qualified. Can’t deal with the beauty of the world. The first male nun. It’s a win-win, don’t you think?”

“I believe my being hard-of-hearing is serving me very well just now,” said Mother Clare, “for which be praised Jesus and all the saints. Saint Marty of Flatbush among them.”

THE NURSE’S STATION, strung round with hard-boiled colored lights, was empty except for Marilee Gompers, an alien on the command deck of an enemy spacecraft. Jeremy flashed her a smile as she glanced up from the folded strips of paper candy canes she’d been snipping out of gift wrap. “Season’s greetings,” he offered, nondenominationally.

“Hey you,” she said. “Come here.” He did. “His folks had to step out to do some last-minute shopping. They must be caught in traffic. They don’t want you left alone with him but I figure, now’s your chance.”

“You want me to—kidnap him?”

She wasn’t amused.

He shrugged. “They won’t tell me anything.”

“I put it at six weeks.”

“Six
weeks?
Till he gets out?”

“Six weeks, honey.” Her voice was cool and soft and her eyes followed her scissors, which angled more slowly, deliberately. “Six weeks. You know what I’m saying to you?” He nodded, more surprised than aghast. “Is he comfortable?”

“I know how this happens. At a certain point it can get kind of peaceful.” She looked up from under her horrible bangs. Her eyes had the glint of scissors in them. “You can take it on faith. He’s not that peaceful yet, but he’s on his way.”

Jeremy dropped his gaze to the pleated candy canes.

“I believe it comes down to something simple. It’s pretty basic. It’s not that he’s happy to leave you. He just wants to go home. It’s the same for everyone.”

“What
are
you saying to me?”

“He’s sleeping a lot. Here. Make some decorations for me, will you? Brighten up that room with some nice stars.” She handed him the supplies. “Say what you need to. This might be your last chance before the ogres return.”

Sean was too doped up to talk. His eyes were open, though. “Hey there, big boy,” said Jeremy. “Anything special you want for Christmas?”

The radiators clanked. Antiseptic holiday ditties from the hallway corrupted the evening.

A new roommate in the next bed wheezed, courtesy of an oxygen machine. Sean raised his left arm and gestured toward the roommate, the window, the falling dark. Jeremy wondered.

Oxygen?

Sean’s arm fell against the copy of
Redbook
boasting
Christmas Plum Pudding Even a
Scrooge Could Love!
The pulmonary appliance made a sound as of faraway raveling, like a train on a horizon.

ON THE DAY before Christmas Eve, Peggy Mueller arrived to help Jeremy and Father Mike set up the chapel at the convent of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries. She brandished new-cut branches, decorations and tools, and a can of spray-on pine scent in case the balsam gave up the ghost too quickly. The sap was redolent enough; Sister Perpetua got to sneezing and had to abandon her devotions and run for cover.

Jeremy thought: Peggy’s throwing herself into the service of the Church with more fervor than usual; she hadn’t approved of Sister Alice’s managerial clout, so Father Mike’s need provides her an occasion to ambush him with her efficiency. Rushing in where angels fear to tread. I might take lessons.

Father Mike and Jeremy carted in the crèche, a good-size set turned out of plaster molds sometime in the early part of the century. The Virgin and Joseph knelt a good three feet high.

The shepherds and wise men stood smaller—a tautological distinction, wondered Jeremy, or had they come from a smaller set to save some money? A cute lamb looked somewhat devilish due to an extra flourish of dark eyebrows, though do lambs actually have eyebrows? The lone cow, any way they turned it, appeared about to belch. The camel had lost most of its nose, perhaps to syphilis. The wise men were bracingly multiracial. One of them glared with ovoid eyes, a cross between Krishna and Dracula; another was black and shiny as a Steinway; the third resembled an anthropomorphized aubergine. The shepherds were dressed in bathrobes like grade school boys at Christmas pageants; Jeremy got the feeling that beneath the robes, the shepherds were wearing ceramic pajamas printed all over with Bart Simpson.

He had no desire to stand again on that wobbly grate over the crypt while he was leading the congregation in Christmas music. The world was shaky enough. Instead, he staked out the left side of the chapel for the music ministry. (What he called privately “altar right,” as in “stage right”—the altar being the proper point of coordinates from which to determine the room’s orientation. But only privately.) So Father Mike and Peggy set up the manger on the church right (altar left). The plaster crèche came with removable plaster straw, so they removed it, and Peggy arranged some extra balsam boughs there. “Tomorrow night I’ll give them a good spritz of Pine Fresh to remind them of their duty,” she said, apparently to Jesus on the cross above the altar, as Jeremy and Father Mike were heading to the choir loft.

“I hate the Incredible Flying Baby Jesus,” said Jeremy. “Do we have to?”

“Jeremy, don’t be a wet blanket. Father Orsini brought this local custom from Sicily home when he was returned from his wartime posting. It’s remained a staple of the Christmas Eve service of Our Lady’s ever since. We’re not giving up on it at this point. Please.” In the vestibule of Our Lady’s, and therefore saved from fire and smoke damage, the crèche had been set up since the First Sunday of Advent. The whole kit and caboodle except the Holy Family. “It’s parish tradition to introduce Joseph and Mary on the fourth Sunday of Advent, and leave the crèche gaping empty as they kneel, staring expectantly into it. I love that porcelain expectation,” said Father Mike, going a little teary on him. “And you just watch the tithing drop if we were to retire this bit. They wait all year for it.”

“I know, never mind,” said Jeremy. He knew the drill. On Christmas Eve his program of music would kick off at 11:15 p.m. Partly a concert, partly a community sing to entertain hearty souls who came early to midnight mass to get seats and avoid having to stand in the back. At 11:55, the lights would dim, and the soprano on call would launch into “O Holy Night.” At the minor key bridge—”Fall on your knees, oh hear the angels singing”—the sacristan, waiting in the choir loft, would hook the Incredible Flying Baby Jesus onto the guy cable with a twist of copper wiring. A little nudge—the cords were lightly greased—and the Baby Jesus would come sailing slantways through the incredible darkness. The other end of the cable hooked precisely to the head of the crib, where the Baby Jesus arrived by the close of the verse. Some years at a zippy speed, so the pine boughs on the receiving end needed to be arranged carefully to cushion the landing.

“It’s just that it’s so obvious,” said Jeremy.

“What’s wrong with obvious?” asked Father Mike. “Obvious is consoling. It’s bad enough that our own space is off-limits until we can schedule the county inspectors and get the insurance papers filed. Something Sister Alice could have done with her hands tied behind her back. But the death of Sister Alice, her funeral, the whole nine yards—everyone will think of that when they come back to this chapel. So we need these figures, we need this arrival. It’s a different moment. We need this child more than ever.”

“The millennial Christ.”

“Don’t be snarky.”

They worked for seventy minutes tightening the guy wire, loosening it, sending the Baby for a couple of trial runs. The angle was steeper here than in Our Lady’s, so Father Mike had to catch the child headfirst, as if it had been evacuated out of a heavenly womb like a projectile missile. “Gotta slow this Baby down. Any suggestions?”

“We could go to the IGA-Plus and get some of those twisties they put around the base of lettuces,” suggested Jeremy. “We could fray the paper and fringe it, and wrap it around the connecting wire. The friction should provide some drag.”

“Black yarn,” called Peggy, washing the face of the donkey lovingly. “If the nuns don’t have black yarn around this place, I’ll convert to Buddhism. Doesn’t this donkey look as if it has put on a little weight since last year? I wonder if she’s pregnant.”

TABITHA WAS STUCK. She couldn’t carry out her vague plan of clonking her mother now, not with the police having shown up several times to talk to her about Hogan and Kirk. Her mother dying the same week as the Catholic church catching on fire wouldn’t look like an accident. Pity the goddamn church hadn’t burned to the ground; everybody said it was mostly cosmetic damage, which made Linda Pearl snort and say, “Honey, you ain’t
seen
cosmetic damage till you get a load of what I’m going to do to Polly Osterhaus on the day before her wedding.”

“Oh, Linda Pearl,” said Tabitha, “grow up.”

Linda Pearl looked at Tabitha sullenly. “You’re giving up? Is that it? You’re letting your man walk out of your life? You’re not going to put up a fight?”

“You’re not making this any easier,” said Tabitha. She was majorly flipping out. She’d rather be home, but she was trying to duck the police. She didn’t know anything about the church fire. Maybe Kirk had set it, pissed off at Jeremy for some sicko reason or other. Maybe Hog had set it. She wasn’t asking because she didn’t want to know. She needed to be blameless in all things from now on, and sometimes that meant keeping your eyes closed. An act of willpower.

Willpower was an old-fashioned mom-whip that Tabitha was thinking about a lot these days. Maybe there was something to it. If Tabitha had a son, maybe she should name him Will.