The Next Queen of Heaven: A Novel

by Gregory Maguire

  “The saintly Jeremy doing his duty of charity again.” Only Sean could sound put out at being catered to. He all but fell into the front seat. “Fuck, it’s icy. Is your thermostat broken or what?”

  Sean kept cranking the heat up, but every time he closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest, Jeremy twiddled the knob back down. He was afraid he’d doze in the coziness and crash on 1-81.

  He trotted out a couple of limp remarks—“Can’t believe they’ve still got those north-bound lanes closed; it’s gonna take us hours to get home” and “Don’t suppose you’ve managed to hook up with your Hector at some salad bar”—to which Sean only grunted in reply. They lapsed into silence; this had become part of the routine. On the way to the outpatient clinic at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, Jeremy had learned not to probe about Sean’s blood profile. They pretended they were going to some concert out of town. Right in step with Sean’s knee-jerk denial instincts: Jeremy knew that Sean hauled his ass off to Syracuse instead of to the clinic on Morse Hill Road so no one in any blood lab there might recognize him and blab to his folks about it. “In my own time,” he’d once barked at Jeremy. But would the time still be his own when, at last, Sean had to let them know?

  Sometimes they sang, and that was useful as well as fun. Sean’s Irish tenor could improvise complementary harmonies and counterpoints to lend character to Jeremy’s melody. Later, Jeremy often found himself rewriting lyrics to reflect Sean’s more oblique take on the straightforward sentiments he tended to produce on his own. The numbers still essentially Jeremy’s, but as fed through Sean’s more wily sensibility.

  But though Jeremy began to hum some of the pieces they had worked on at the convent last week, after the nunaholic love-fest, Sean didn’t rise to the bait today. Jeremy hoped this didn’t mean Sean had even weightier concerns. He could be so contemptuous when you asked a question that sounded too Miss Manners. Yet if you treated the thing openly—T-cell counts, bogs of depression, breathing problems, the protease inhibitor cocktail still not quite taking?—that tetchy streak of Sean’s kicked in too. Though Jeremy hated to think of it in these terms, it was as if Sean were saying, You avoided being intimate with me in any of the ways that were attractive, Jeremy, so you’ve forfeited the right to be intimate with my dying.

  Fifteen minutes before they reached the Syracuse city lines, Sean roused himself a little. “What kind of plans do you have for Thursday, by the way?”

  “The usual somewhat chill invitation from Dad to come home. I told him I can’t. It would be a kindness, but he gets in this weepy limbo of missing Mom and I can’t deal.”

  “I don’t follow. They got divorced, and he goes to pieces when she dies?”

  “It’s called the mystery of human misery. But he’s got his brother and ninety thousand nieces and nephews, every one of them straight and functioning. He can focus on them. I just remind him of Mom. I look like her too much.”

  “So what are you doing by way of our annual feast of gluttony?”

  “Church in the morning, then I don’t know what. Father Mike invited me to join him and Sister Alice. Going out. Olive Garden maybe.”

  “You haven’t said yes?” Sean cracked his knuckles. “You’re waiting to see if sweet Willem calls?”

  But Jeremy had been expecting this and he blatted out a Phyllis Diller horseshit laugh. Unconvincing, but useful as a segue to his own question about Sean’s plans.

  In brogue. “Oh, laddie, it’s the purgat’ry of home agin, for me sins don’t you know. Sure and doesn’t himself deserve it.” Sigh. “It’ll be Thanksgiving by the numbers. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Super Bowl, Norman Rockwell’s recipe for stuffing, the whole nine yards. I’ll put myself on autopilot and aim for the post-turkey L-tryptophan slump.”

  “Big crowd of relatives coming?”

  “Connie, Maura, Mike and Siobhan, Uncle Finny and Aunt Chieko. Uncle Francis and Aunt Mary Pat, Uncle Pat and Aunt Mary Frances. Dad will be half crocked by halftime and Mam will burn at least one hand and probably two by forgetting the potholders. If we’re lucky the dog won’t throw up on the sofa before the scorched pies are served.”

  Jeremy’s laughing was a little forced. “Why do you go? You could come to my place and have spaghetti and tuna fish with me. Or you could join Sister Alice and Father—”

  “I’m not that prodigal. The convent life once a week is enough for this little lapsi-daisy, thank you for asking.”

  “Well, offer’s open if, in the next coupla days, you happen to have a conversion experience and want to dine with the professed—”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. Some conversion experience waiting up ahead to ambush me when my defenses are down. I’m trying to make it out of this life alive, if you know what I mean.” But that was too direct, so Sean muted it, blunted it, by beginning to warble a troublesome bridge they’d been working on, and Jeremy joined in.

  When the song faltered, Sean looked out the window at trash blowing out of wire baskets and said, “And don’t think you’re going to sit on my deathbed and pray me into submission, either.”

  “Moi? I’m the soul of probity. I do my best to keep my faith in the closet along with my red satin pumps.”

  “Hah. The original exhibitionist, more like it. I never saw anyone wear their convictions more ostentatiously. You might as well have a scapula over your sweatshirt and a rope of rosary beads swishing from your belt loop.”

  “I did that in grade school, don’t remind me. In fourth grade when we had to write essays about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wrote that it was a cross between a fireman and a saint.”

  “You just wanted to sleep in a room with a bunch of guys and get to slide down that pole in a state of excitement—”

  “I wanted to be martyred by the Iroquois like Saint Isaac Jogues, assuming that there must be some Iroquois left here somewhere, like dinosaurs in the lost valley or fairies at the bottom of the garden.”

  “Yeah, fairies at the bottom of the garden, I’ll bet. How your dad must’ve loved you. Did you envision being tortured for your faith first?”

  “You mean by the fairies or the Iroquois? Well, a little. But not very painfully. I thought they would admire the strength of my faith.”

  “You’ll never make it in this world, Jeremy. They talk about recovering Catholics, but you’re beyond recovery.”

  But beyond recovery was a phrase too near. They both shut up as Jeremy hunted for parking. All too soon: the antiseptic air of Saint Joe’s, the whoosh of the door as they pushed through, the ping of secret codes sounding over the public address system, the air of muted courage and desperation, the breezy way the nurses avoided too close contact, and who could blame them?

  It was a ninety-minute process, and they were used to it. Jeremy got a coffee down the street at Trini’s Taco Palace—the coffee tasted of cumin powder, which was surprising since the tacos never did. He sipped slowly, to make it last. Funny thing about avoidance: everyone indulges in it one way or the other. Sean doesn’t tell his family about the virus, but he manages to live at home and put up with his parents’ own domestic brand of homophobia.

  But why should Jeremy berate Sean for avoidance? Isn’t that what I’m working my ass off to overcome, too? It’s a long shot, sure, this competition in New York City. But there is never going to be an easy way out of Thebes. Away from Willem. Toward something fresh and vital and—and nutritious.

  Jeremy had a thousand images of what could go wrong. Like L.A. only worse, now that he had applied for a slot and been accepted. Their instruments could sag out of tune, their voices slip out of pitch. The jaded Manhattan audience might sit there stunned at the earnestness of these rubes from upstate. What if Stephen Sondheim stands up in the front row to hunt for earplugs in his pockets?

  What could go wrong. His imagination far too clever and tireless. But what happens after the competition—the next day, and the day after that? With luck, the days will unfold, horribly empty or horribly fu
ll, on a city stage too crowded to admit thoughts of Willem. Well, thoughts, maybe, but in time those thoughts might lose their strength, their frequency. Jeremy would be reborn. Smaller, perhaps, more cagey, more cautious. He’d kind of like that. Or maybe not; maybe he’d be reborn free, released, exhilarated. Either way it would be something other, he’d have successfully escaped from this dead-end zone.

  Please God.

  When Jeremy made his way back to the clinic, Sean was already in the waiting room, a few minutes ahead of schedule. He sat as if, slip of a thing though he already was, he’d been further deflated. His eyes were closed and his head back, and a Newsweek had slid onto the floor between his feet.

  “Hey,” said Jeremy softly. Sean’s eyes were moist and unfocussed at first. He stood quickly, with a deliberate jolt; it reminded Jeremy of some old District Commissioner in a men’s club in Dar es Salaam or somewhere, jumping to attention to prove he wasn’t beyond it. Jeremy knew enough not to ask for the blood profile till they were in the car. But when they had settled in, and Jeremy had maneuvered to the ramp heading up for the first reach of I-81 North, the stretch not closed for construction, Sean was diddling with the dial of the radio. “Where the fuck is your reception?”

  “That radio has been on the fritz for a hundred years now.”

  Sean knew this, but he slapped at the dial as if he could make it behave. “At the least you should get the stupid thing fixed.”

  “I take it things aren’t great.”

  “Oh, things are just fine, swimmingly normal, what do you expect?”

  “T-cells?”

  Jeremy could tell that Sean was struggling to keep from throttling him verbally. “The T-cells,” Sean said, “are back down in the low single digits. What is the point of talking about this? Are you expecting perhaps a miracle cure? Why do you make me plow through this stuff for you?”

  “You shouldn’t have to keep it all—”

  “That’s my business—”

  “—well, then, because I want to know, that’s all.”

  “Call my hematologist if you’re so fucking curious.”

  They drove in silence for a while. Jeremy wasn’t above being pissed at this, even though he guessed Sean couldn’t help it.

  Look at the world outside Sean, not in him. The sprawl around Syracuse was bright in the sun; prefabricated warehouses, halfhearted little strip malls with Laundromats and CVS’s. Without talking, they barreled past an IGA-Plus, and a couple of mobile home encampments. Parka-stout kids let out of school early were shrieking after a beach ball bouncing around in the frigid gale. When Jeremy got to the detour where all the lanes of the northbound section of the highway were closed, it was a relief if for no other reason than the view slowed down, became more rural and particular, took them further from hospital realities.

  The county road was congested. Thanksgiving traffic on Tuesday evening already? Maybe. Jeremy decided to cut across through Colosse and head west on Route 69, which was windswept but largely untraveled this afternoon.

  Falsely casual, Jeremy ventured, “The landscape’s arresting as always but don’t you want to say anything?”

  “They told me to save my breath.”

  “—meaning?—”

  “They said I should stop singing, for one thing.”

  Jeremy could sense Sean’s head turning to look at him at last, but just at that moment he couldn’t return the glance, as a farm truck was swinging wide into a dirt drive up ahead where the road swerved left. “They said,” Sean continued, “that’s too much effort for my lungs in the shape they’re in.”

  “Oh.” He wasn’t sure how to say “Oh hell” or “Oh damn” without it sounding like he was mostly disgruntled about losing a good tenor. Sean would know what he meant but in this mood he’d take it the wrong way on purpose.

  “They also said I should avoid telling long stories or getting in heated arguments. I told them, with Thanksgiving coming up, are they crazy? Don’t they know of Mr. and Mrs. Riley, undisputed champions of Couples Confrontation? Some Catholic couples do Marriage Renewal; my folks do Marriage Revenge—” He began to wheeze, which he hadn’t done on the way down. Power of suggestion, or was he worn out from the physical exam?

  “All the more reason you should come to my place for Thanksgiving. We can rent a video or think of something.”

  “The something I can think of requires too much panting, even if I had the strength to catch you, pluck you, and truss you like a turkey. They say I’m beyond that, too. As if I couldn’t tell.”

  “What about the T-cells. If you’re going to talk. I’d rather know. Sean.”

  “Here’s the order of business on Thursday. Up around seven when me mam starts clattering around in the kitchen, trying to multiply the number of pounds of turkey by twenty minutes per pound and then figure out how that translates into hours. She’ll have the whole family up by seven-thirty doing extremely creative math, and in the end she’ll shove the bird in around noontime and say, ‘Bejazus, we’ll eat when the blessed thing sees fit to finish cooking itself.’ The kitchen will look like an Ulster Constabulary reprisal on the Shankill Road. Four pies with collapsed crusts and the extra filling dumped in the dog’s dish, where it will be ignored for several days until it begins to smell, when the dog will eat it and throw up—”

  Jeremy was laughing. “No long stories, they said—”

  “I’m just getting started. I haven’t told you about Connie’s clairvoyant parlor games, in which she’ll try to name who I’m going to marry. Or about Maura’s anorexic sulks, and how she’ll dump her plate of food in the toilet without even bothering to close the door. Or Mike and Siobhan’s mind games, trying to figure out who is the ripest to be touched for a small loan, or Aunt Mary Frances’s barbaric curried mango dip, or Uncle Frank’s Indefatigable Flatulence, or Uncle Pat’s raving republicanism—the Irish kind, not the GOP kind—nor, best of all, Aunt Bridget’s holiday prayer, where she reminds God to touch each one of us in His special way, which always makes my Aunt Mary Ellen look as if she’s going to cream on command, and makes Mam try to appear humble as if she doesn’t really believe she’s the only one in the room who’s already been touched by God in His own special way—”

  “Stop,” said Jeremy, “stop—”

  “And where am I in all this? Dying of AIDS, waiting for lesions to announce themselves—Connie would think they were hickeys—waiting for the lungs to deflate and not reinflate, as little saclet by saclet they give up the ghost.”

  “And there’s not air, can’t they give you air?”

  “Air, that’s all I need, sure!” cried Sean, smacking the window. He rolled it down and the air rushed in, filled with the smell of mowed wet fields, full of the cinnamon chill of the grave.

  “You want pneumonia before we even get home? Stop—”

  “No, you stop. Look, there. Where we did before. Look.”

  It was a farm stand on Route 3. They’d come this way the last time, just before Halloween, and they’d pulled up to buy a couple of pumpkins.

  The stand was closed now. The windows that in season hung open, latching to hooks in the ceiling, were dropped and padlocked. Jeremy drew up anyway, not sure what Sean wanted, or why. The lake, stretching west as far as they could see, was an uneven silver color, showing streaks of tarnish where the wind ran firmly atop it. Trees thrashed their empty fingers in the sunlight; leaves eddied and flicked off the slope, and settled again. Sean threw the door open and said, “Wind, and air, if there was enough of it, there’d be enough time—” He pitched out of the car and galloped away as if trying to protect some injury inside that he couldn’t feel. He was stiff and loose all at once.

  “This is the perfect way to take care of yourself, of course it is, you asshole,” shouted Jeremy, but turned the car off and went after him.

  Sean wheeled, with his hands over his ears and his head up. His eyes were squinched, his heels thudding on the gravelly patch in front of the stand. A paper sign, flat agains
t the boarded-up windows, Said, CLOSED TILL IMMAC. CONCEPSION DAY, (DEC 8), X-MAS TREES SOLD THAN. Beyond the farm shed a crop of Christmas trees stood, five feet high in even ranks, uniformly shuddering in the wind.

  Below the shed loitered a row of pumpkins left over from Halloween. Instead of being uniform like the Christmas trees, each one had been individuated by scars and time. A knife had sliced the scalp open, scooped the brains out, dug a leering expression into each bulbous canoodle, but age and weather had done the rest. The heads sank in on themselves, were overrun with ants; the eye sockets caved, the gums fell, the nostrils closed. The faces were in the act of giving up the ghost. It was impossible to tell if some of the mouths had been smiles, some of the eyes huge with surprise and delight; in decay all the countenances maintained a mutual close-lipped secrecy.

  Sean whirled his hands at them as if they were a crucial part of his argument, but he didn’t speak. From behind the farm stand protruded the edge of a ladder lying on its side. He went to that and kicked it, then hauled it off the ground. “What, what?” said Jeremy, grabbing the other side of it, “what are you up to?” The ladder clattered against the side of the stand, and Sean bolted up, Jeremy hoisting himself after him.

  The roof, one plane, raked shallowly to follow the slope of the hill. They looked down the deteriorating tarpaper and saw the backs of the heads of pumpkins, the car in the pull-off, the gray-red tarmac, the pitch of two fields, one after the other, and the skidding surface of Lake Ontario aiming toward invisible Toronto. The wind was stronger up here, the air even colder, Alaska colder, the sunlight more obviously an attachable effect, draped from above and, at this time of day in late November, from the west. The shadows puddled eastward of everything; Sean and Jeremy huddled on their blue bases like plastic cowboy figures in perpetual crouch.

  Jeremy put his arm around Sean, which was a comfort Sean rarely accepted, or maybe was no comfort at all, Jeremy realized. He waited to see if Sean would cry, or would say something more precise about his condition, but Sean merely drank the air deeply and chewed on his lip. Then, giving Jeremy a quizzical look, squinting his close-set eyes, he said, “As if I could stop singing with you, when that’s all I have.”