The Next Queen of Heaven

by Gregory Maguire

  And Tabitha Scales as the heathen sacrifice. Or, better yet, the pagan princess ripe for conversion. Downright moistened for conversion.

  No doubt about it, he had to toss out those Bill Moyers tapes on Joseph Campbell; it was clouding his thinking. He threw open the door of the car and marched up to the house and rang the doorbell.

  “Pastor Huyck, here to see your mother,” he said to the shadowy figure who answered. Huyck smiled against temptation and despair.

  “Lucky you.” An unreliable teenage voice trying to be growly. “Just a mo.”

  The door closed and it reopened a moment later. Tabitha, pouty and perfect.

  “Oh, it is you,” she said. “I thought Hog was pulling my chain.”

  “Hog. Your brother,” he ventured. If that was her boyfriend he feared the worst.

  “Yeah, till I can figure out how you can divorce a brother. Come on in.”

  “Call me Pastor Huyck.” He sucked in a breath and his stomach, too, as he had to brush past her in the doorway. She didn’t move to make room for me; she let my belly graze her forearm.

  “It’s an interesting day for you to come,” said Tabitha. “She’s up and out of her chair today, in and out of every room, like a cat in heat. She’s down in the basement now. I don’t know what she’s looking for down there. She’s into all the old boxes and stuff. Photos, maybe, or her divorce decrees.”

  “Will you tell her I’ve come to call?”

  “Well yeah, sure. Hogan? Hog. Go get Ma.”

  The boy who’d growled at him emerged from the kitchen doorway where, Huyck suspected, he’d been standing just out of view, listening. Hogan was one of those kids who look middle-aged before they finish adolescence, as much in the lost, unexpectant look in their faces as in the way they’ve already let their bodies go. Hogan Scales; Huyck remembered him now, though like his older sister he rarely darkened the door of Cliffs of Zion. He had a gas station attendant’s shirt on with the red letters of his name picked out on the blue cotton. His stomach bulged sloppily. What a brooding, bitten-off expression under those simian eyebrows! “You won’t remember me,” began Huyck, holding out his hand.

  “No, I probably won’t.” Hogan turned back into the kitchen and disappeared down a flight of steps to the basement, saying, “Ma, pull your clothes on, the minister’s here.”

  “Kirk isn’t home,” said Tabitha. “He’s at school. He’s usually back by now, though; any minute, I guess.”

  “Shouldn’t Hogan be at school too?”

  “Another month and he’s old enough to be a legal dropout. I think he’s practicing.”

  “I’m sure he’s helping take care of Mother.”

  “Well, duh. I can’t hang around here all the time. I got things to do. Saturday mornings I got Linda Pearl’s House of Beauty to open up. Mom is a basket case but Linda Pearl needs help, too. Act of charity, Pastor Huyck.”

  So she remembered his name; that was good.

  “While we’re waiting for Mother, can I ask you if you are all right?” He pitched his voice soft so she would have to lean in to him to hear.

  She put her hair in her mouth and twined one leg around the other like an eight-year-old. Since she was wearing running shorts, it gave Huyck an impression of female calf and thigh more intensely athletic and—particular—than he’d experienced in some time. He almost lost his faith right then and there. Why didn’t anyone ever talk about the bright night of the soul? Cheap strawberry shampoo.

  “If you mean have I managed to find forgiveness in my soul for Caleb Shit-hole Briggs, the answer is no. But I have to admit I keep forgetting to look for it.”

  “Have you seen the lad?” The lad? The lad? Mercy, he was talking more and more like a Merchant-Ivory film. Thebes might be a bit out of the loop but this wasn’t a time warp, for crying out loud. Beauty was doing it, beauty was turning him into an archetype. Only he wasn’t sure which one. He hoped it wasn’t the trickster, the minotaur, the fool. He couldn’t remember the others. Except for the hero. He was pretty sure he wasn’t the hero. “Have you seen your boyfriend?”

  “I haven’t had the time,” said Tabitha, with a little spark of something that Pastor Huyck admired—was it maybe pride? Stubbornness? “When Mom gets up here you’ll see; she’s not herself, but figuring out who else she might be, and where her real self is—well, maybe you can. You’re the God guy.”

  For an instant Huyck only heard her say “You’re the god—” and he felt his vocation crumble in flames; then he took the whole thing in and behaved himself accordingly. “You must face your demons down,” he reminded her. “Don’t carry around your love for this man; it’ll fester and metastasize and make you crazy. Go to him, dismiss him from your life, give him room to grow and change. It’s not just a kindness to him, you know. It’s what you need, too.”

  “So you said, but how the hell do you know what I need?”

  “The charism of discernment,” he replied, but she seemed to dismiss that as a topic beyond her ken or her interest, and anyway here was Mrs. Scales, clutching the arm of that homely bear-son of hers.

  “Leontina. My word. How are you.” He went forward to give her a pastoral embrace. She recoiled so fast that she knocked the toaster off the metal folding table.

  It was a shock; Tabitha’s words of warning hadn’t been sufficient. Mrs. S. looked—well, grotesque. It wasn’t the muscle-slackening that attended a stroke, was it?—no—and it wasn’t that she looked as if she’d been groomed by a gorilla, her hair all on end like a fright wig. It had something to do with the hollows behind her eyes, as if—though Huyck prided himself at trying to avoid distracting poetic metaphors. So never mind.

  But that foul and brilliant light in Mrs. Scales’s eyes. That, and why didn’t her children see to her clothing better. The striped trousers and flowered blouse and free-ranging goosey hair made her look like a circus clown on crack.

  “I ought to have come to see you sooner,” said Huyck. “I have been remiss. How are you doing, Leontina?”

  “Ooo are you?” she said. “Ooh is this?” she asked her children.

  “God,” said Tabitha in disgust, “see what we mean?”

  “Odd?” said Mrs. Scales. “In this house?” She curtseyed at Huyck in a mocking way.

  “Ooh, she’s on a roll today,” said Hogan. “She thinks you’re God. Want to work some miracle and make her better, God?”

  “Shall we sit down?” said Huyck. This was far worse than he had expected. “May I?” He moved aside a pile of newspapers and some paper plates with pizza crusts stuck on them, and sat down. Tabitha laid a strong hand on her mother’s shoulder and pushed her into the Colonial-style rocker-recliner with field and stream upholstery. There was a noise from the kitchen, and the other child came in, home from school, apparently.

  “We have company,” called Tabitha. “The pastor.”

  “The exorcist,” said Hogan.

  “I don’t think so,” said Pastor Huyck.

  The returning student came in and kissed his mother, who received his peck without acknowledgment. Kirk. Yes, a bit of a wuss, as Huyck had remembered him, but now that he saw his brother Hogan at close range, he understood Kirk a little better and forgave him his lisp.

  “I can see that things are in a state,” said Huyck. “Perhaps I should talk to your mother alone for a few moments.”

  “Ooh has the time?” said Mrs. Scales. “Eave me be. Too busy to flap my lips at you.” She clawed her hands over a Bible standing on the metal tray; it was covered in toast crumbs. “Eating the Bible, that’s the only nourishment I get.”

  “Eating the Bible?” said Huyck.

  “I told you, aren’t you listening?” said Tabitha. “She’s lost the front part of her sentences. She doesn’t mean eating the Bible, she means reading it.”

  “Oh.” Then he laughed. “Well, but that’s a good sign! Man does not live by toast alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God! She knows where sustenance lies.”

>   “That’s not much help when she won’t go out of the house any more,” said Tabitha. “I’ve tried to get her to go back to the doctor but she won’t budge.”

  “If you’ve got a doctor who’s not being helpful, we can get Joanie Buselle in here,” said Huyck. “She’s not a Radical Radiant Pentecostal but she’s a good solid nurse. She’s the only one that Herm Mendoza allows to take the stitches out of his toes when he sews them up to make webbed feet. She’s good with people. And with ducks.” Suddenly he felt there was some room to be hopeful. “I like the idea of eating the Bible. Something so good, something so rich and rewarding, why wouldn’t you want to eat it all up?”

  “I used to eat the Hardy Boys,” said Kirk helpfully.

  They all stared at him. Leontina Scales went, “Pfffff,” like a balloon venting.

  “Daddy Wally gave us a whole set of Hardy Boys from way long ago, like World War II days,” Kirk explained. “In a box, about thirty of them. Printed on this rich, creamy, thick cheap paper that had gone all yellow, and the edges didn’t line up neatly like in modern books. Every page was a different width. When I used to read them at night—since Hogan doesn’t like to read, and Tabitha doesn’t either—”

  “Tabitha can’t read,” said Hogan.

  Behind her mother’s back she gave Hogan the finger. “Oh, my,” said Huyck, but it came out sounding admiring.

  Kirk was oblivious. “Well, I used to rip a strip off the margin of the paper and wad it up like a piece of gum and chew it while I was reading. When the paper had lost its taste I’d flick it out onto the wall behind the radiator. There’s still a huge clump of dried spitballs, clutching like a coral reef. I ate my way through the entire Hardy Boys.”

  “You would,” snickered Hogan. “Who’d you enjoy more, Frank or Joe? Or could you manage to take them together?”

  “You’re so lame,” sputtered Kirk, but the presence of a minister in the house apparently aborted any other response. The boy turned scarlet.

  “At least if I was going to eat books, I’d eat Nancy Drew. I’d eat her and eat her—”

  “You perv.” Tabitha landed a backhand slap on Hogan’s crown. “You’re sick.”

  “Hey Kirk, did you ever try eating Tom Sawyer? How about, um, Hamlet. Since you’re into meat. Or, no, I know, I know: I know what I’ll get you for Christmas! A copy of Moby Dick! I’d like to see you try to swallow—” He howled with dry fake laughter. Kirk got up and—well, Huyck would have liked to think that he stalked out of the room, but the pastor was afraid that, technically, it was a flounce. The boy needed someone to slip him a copy of Playboy before it was too late, but this was outside the arena in which Huyck could sensibly work. He sighed, and thought: Mother married three times and no husband around now; the daughter has a reputation that verges on slutdom, the older son is a bully, the younger son a sissy. What a holy little family.

  “I do think I should talk to your mother alone,” said Huyck. He had allowed himself to neglect his duties and to abandon his authority in the face of Tabitha’s biscuity appeal. It was time to do his work. “Tabitha, Hogan—”

  But Mrs. Scales seemed to have had enough, too, even before they’d started. She dumped the Bible onto the folding table and wheeled her arms about, signaling that she wanted to be pulled to her feet. “Air is the house of God!” she cried. “Air! Air!”

  The others looked around themselves. Did she want the front door open? It was a bit stuffy, but that was the heady strawberry lotion.

  She lurched across the braided rug to the bedrooms that opened off the other end of the room. “Air is it!” she wailed. She pushed open a door. Tabitha and Hogan stayed still, looking defeated.

  “Now she’s back to stalking, great,” said Hogan. “What, we gotta get a leash?”

  Huyck told himself to be the adult these children sorely needed, and he followed Mrs. Scales. “Air is the house of the Lord!” she said, through clenched teeth, standing in the middle of a bedroom. Huyck guessed it was Hogan’s room. A bank of black-sheathed stereo equipment flashed more colored lights than the cockpit of a 747. Posters showing some pretty athletic-looking women alternated with posters of Megadeth. A mound of clean laundry was dumped on the unmade bed, and a pile of paperbacks was topped with a pamphlet that said “So You Want to Join the Army.” Half hidden under the pillow was a dog-eared copy of one of the Narnia books. The Last Battle, it looked like.

  Mrs. Scales turned and passed by Huyck as if he were part of the ugly furnishings of the room. He felt cheapened. He followed her.

  “Air is the house of the Lord!” she said again, only more to herself, and shoved through the second bedroom door.

  “Mom,” said Kirk, and turned his head to the wall. He’d been having a little cry for himself. Jesus, in your infinite mercy help these people, said Huyck to himself. Kirk’s room was Spartan compared to the mess in the rest of the place. There was a Save the Whales poster showing a whale arcing through outer space. Shoes were lined up punctiliously on the closet floor, and on the radiator cover, clusters of plastic ivy leaves surrounded an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven color photocopy of one of those Renaissance paintings of Saint Sebastian looking just a hair-trigger short of sexual ecstasy—oh, the handwriting was on the wall here.

  “Do you mind?” said Kirk in a fawningly polite voice. At least the kid was capable of sarcasm, that primary tool of adolescents everywhere.

  “Air is the house of God!” Mrs. Scales pointed her index finger upward.

  “Do you mean there it is?” said Kirk matter-of-factly. “Up there, there it is? Or do you mean where is it?”

  “Air is it?” she jabbered, excited.

  At once Huyck was able to recognize the challenge of the moment. This was the skill that made him such an effective minister. “I shall take you there; that’s why I’ve come,” he said. “I shall take you home. You are looking for your true home, not your earthly home; and I shall show it to you. Come with me.”

  “Actually, she was looking for something in the basement,” said Hogan loudly, from the other room.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” said Kirk, sighing. “We’ll go with you.”

  “I’m not going nowhere,” called Hogan.

  “Go to hell,” said Tabitha.

  “Not there either.”

  “Get your mother her coat,” said Huyck. “Tabitha, will you join us? We’re off to the church. Your mother is looking for her beginning, for where she starts; she wants to eat the Bible, she needs to be where it’s baked. Come on. Her true home is in the house of God. Isn’t she saying so? Come on.”

  “God, another boss,” muttered Tabitha. “Three daddies aren’t enough, we gotta have Daddy Pastor too?”

  They had to tilt Mrs. Scales into the backseat of Huyck’s Rabbit, because he was afraid she would forget about having to hold the bungee cord and then she might go bouncing out onto the road. Kirk climbed into the back with her and held her hand when she would let him. Tabitha got in front and folded her beautiful bare legs—they must be icy cold!—into the space as best she could. The knees angled toward the shift, and every time Huyck went into fourth his knuckles grazed her knees. “It’s November, you’re crazy to go out like that,” he told her.

  “Put on the heat, why don’t you.”

  He put on the heat and the speed, and they were pulling into the parking lot in less than twenty minutes.

  Leontina Scales swiveled her head around with a wary look. “You know where you are now, Mom, don’t you?” said Kirk. “Look, Cliffs of Zion. You want to go in?” Her children scrambled out of the car and tugged her out of the backseat. She seemed uncertain again. A cold wind arose, ripping the brown leaves from around the roots of the lilac hedge, tossing them over the parking lot.

  “We’ll enter God’s house, and pray for mercy,” said Huyck. He was back on home turf now. Even Tabitha’s leggy splendor seemed muted here. In fact, he should probably advise her that she was not properly attired for the circumstances, but in the light of the n
eeds of her mother perhaps he would let it go. Huyck put an arm around Leontina’s waist, and pivoted her toward Cliffs of Zion. Just as neatly she slipped her waist out from beneath his arm, somehow, and she hurried in a determined, animal-like way in the other direction, across to the side door of Our Lady’s.

  “Oh Lordy,” said Huyck. “Don’t tell me we’ve lost her to Rome.”

  She flung the door open and hurtled herself inside. The Scales children and Huyck followed a few steps behind. Mrs. Scales stood poised on the landing for a moment, then plunged down the stairs. Huyck prayed that Father Mike Sheehy had locked the door to the kitchen, but his prayers apparently didn’t have much currency in a Catholic church, for the door to the kitchen was easily flung wide, and Mrs. Scales barreled through.

  Following, they found her on the floor beside the refrigerator, lying like a corpse, hands folded over her breast, eyes open. She was training her gaze on the top of the Kelvinator where, if Huyck had the story straight, a crappy old statue of Our Lady had been lurking, waiting for its victim. “Other of God, pray for us sinners,” said Mrs. Scales.

  18

  CLOUDS FROM ONTARIO dredged the lake, dragging meat-locker air across apple orchards and gravel pits and spurs of abandoned railroad lines, up the sloping plain to Thebes. On his way from the grade school—Jeremy took a half-day’s sick leave so he could pick Sean up at the mill—he passed three buggies, their bearded drivers and bonneted wives looking as if they’d been driving toward a funeral since the Nineteenth century. Amish from up near Morristown, probably; you rarely saw them down this far. Jeremy decided not to mention them to Sean.

  “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?”