The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (41 page)

Past Polly and Caleb, Polly clapping with surprise and glee, Caleb looking as if he had died. Past Caleb’s drunken friends hooting up a storm, Hogan Scales among them now. Past Kirk, his eyes wide with surprise or delight or dismay, it was hard to tell. Past Old Lady Scarcese and Mrs.

Chanarinjee, whispering. Past Linda Pearl Wasserman in a Hairdo of Beauty. Past Father Mike looking the other way diplomatically. Past Pastor Jakob Huyck, who stood like a man surprised by sensing a gun in the small of his back, as Leontina Scales cabled her arm through his and tilted into the icebox of his chest.

Past Irene Menengest, looking wary, hauling Bartholomew; past Francesca Handelaers coming along behind, grinning and nodding her head in time to the music and bouncing Charlotte against her, who spotted her dad, and laughed to see such sport. Round to Jack Reeves one last time, round home to Willem, who by now was flushed lobster red under sunrise wheat-sheaf hair, taking his partner, taking him home, no more need to ramble ‘n’ roam.

THE MUSIC WAS still in Jeremy’s head several hours later, when he reached out the car window to grab a ticket from the Thruway attendant. He hated country music as much as Tabitha had said she did, though for different reasons; yet there had seemed little so wonderful, ever, as that crazy kindergarten rhythm, and Willem—for a moment of reprieve—willing to be in full swim. With him.

Did he know? Had he seen it in Jeremy’s eyes? That a wedding was an ending as well as a beginning, that Jeremy was on his way?

Stars out there beyond the windshield. It was late, the traffic thin, and the country was only farmland on either side of the Mohawk River. Not much light pollution. He’d headed out of Thebes under the speed-trap camera, barreled along the ridge road to the entrance for I-81

southbound, and now continued coursing along the Thruway east toward Little Falls, Amsterdam, Schenectady, Albany. The snow under the stars looked like Styrofoam. Diamonds in the headlights. It was almost as if it was
his
honeymoon, driving away from a wedding reception so late, and heading so far.

To clear the froth of pleasure from his head, he sang part of an old song he’d written, years earlier. It was another Willem song. I’m singing it to deliver myself of it, he told himself.

He let the last note hold out, but it wobbled at the end—a bad sign, would he wobble at the competition? A problem for another day. There was something about words and music together that allowed humans to get nearest to honest truth about what was most difficult to say.

Paradoxically, only through the essential instantaneity of music could you approach its eternal pertinence.

“It’s a weird song,” said Tabitha. She’d been thinking about it then. First thing she’d said in a half an hour. He thought she’d been dozing. “I can’t tell if it’s about God or about someone you care about.”

“Neither can I,” he answered. “Or both.”

“Isn’t that super-sincere kind of music kind of, uh, old-fashioned?” Everyone’s a critic. “Maybe,” he said.

She sighed. Jeremy guessed she didn’t really care about music. She just wanted the ride, and she had to put up with it. “You know what song I like?” she said. “That Frank Sinatra one.” She began to hum in a painfully tuneless way. “Da da, da-da da, da da, da-da da …” She patted her stomach. “What I like about that song is that it seems like you count. You go to New York to count. To be counted. To add up.”

“You don’t go to New York to sleep on the street, I hope.”

“We’ll find something.”

“You’ll
find something. I’m only doing this as a favor, you know. We can stop tonight at my friends who live outside Albany. Then tomorrow night in New York City I have a place to stay, but only briefly. You can crash there one night, I bet, but you have to find someplace else after that.”

“We’ll find something,” she said again. “We’ll get counted. You, me, and the baby.”

“I’m glad you called home and left a message so they wouldn’t worry.”

“I talked to Kirk. I didn’t tell him who I was traveling with.” Kirk would figure it out. Jeremy had been pulling himself together behind the Dumpster—trying to resist those few threatening tears—when Tabitha cornered him and asked him for a ride. Kicked Jeremy into the new millennium. As they were backing out of the parking space, Jeremy had caught sight of Hogan Scales coming to the door and taking it all in. His face registered something dark—Jeremy had seen it as threatening, and split. But thinking back on it now, maybe Hogan was sharper than he seemed. Knowing his sister so well, maybe he’d imagined what Jeremy hadn’t yet deciphered: no way that Tabitha would exit the vehicle until they’d cleared the Thebes town limits by several hours.

So that menace on Hogan’s face perhaps was really a sharply rising ache. He was her little brother, after all. “Did you tell Kirk when you’d be home?”

“It’s my turn to be the mother,” she said, in answer to some question he hadn’t asked. “I didn’t mean to, but there you are. What’s going to happen to the church?”

“It’ll muddle through. Won’t take long to fix, provided the insurance money comes through. Meanwhile, the parish will have their services out at the Motherhouse. It’s not such a bad deal. The sisters out there aren’t attached to any parish, but this gives them a big family who needs them. At least for the time being.” He grinned. “Turk Schaeffer is heading out there this week to fix the roof properly, for once and for all. Mother Clare du Plessix is thrilled.” She didn’t seem to be listening. She didn’t care about ancient nuns. She was very, very young. A novice at everything, though perhaps stronger than he was. She’d refused to let him go on sniffling. In her old-fashioned white dress that rustled like drapery in the snowbanks, she’d announced, “It’s time to get out of here.”

She rubbed the condensation on the passenger window and looked out over the hills. “I can see the lights of Manhattan.”

“Manhattan is at least a hundred fifty miles to the south. You’re seeing starlight, that’s all.”

“Must be a big star up there.” She squinted and then fell back against the headrest. Her hand dropped to her lap. “Sing to the baby.”

“I don’t know any lullabies.”

“Make one up.”

He couldn’t, not on request, not now. “How about a verse of ‘O Holy Night’?”

“Maybe we should call him Jesus, too.” Or had she said Jesus Two?

The car filled with a profound, even a great silence.

AUTHOR’S N OTE

Thank you to early readers of
The Next Queen of Heaven
—Betty Levin, Andy Newman, William Reiss, and Maggie Stern Terris.

Special thanks are due to the heavenly beings behind Concord Free Press, a nonprofit publishing venture founded by Ann and Stona Fitch. (Check it out at www.concordfreepress.com.) Early editorial advice from Ann Fitch shaped the Concord Free Press edition, which is almost exactly reproduced in this HarperCollins edition but for some adjustments due to a few different house-style conventions and to even fewer second thoughts.

Thanks to Concord Free Press for bringing this baby into the world, and to Cassie Jones and HarperCollins for providing it shelter and a permanent home once it had arrived.

For readers who know me primarily as a writer of fantasy, the setting and subject matter (and the vernacular spoken by characters herein) may come as a surprise. Forgive me my trespasses. It’s my suspicion that heaven may be both more disguised and more accessible than any other fantastic locale I might choose to write about.

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