Free The Next Queen of Heaven-SA by Gregory Maguire Page A

successive weeks, the Cub Scout planning sessions. Then in early December the ladies come in and do that flurry of potholders for the jumble sale. That already knocks out four weeks, and there will be emergency meetings of the Parish Council when the boiler bursts, or there’s some heated reaction to the next Letter of the Bishop or something. The odd spiritual crisis. The church has to serve the whole community. If we had more space—” Jeremy tried to sound disgusted. “I could be the one with AIDS, you know.”

    “I never assumed you weren’t. It’s a matter of space and need.”

    “It’s a matter of priorities.”

    “Church work comes first in a church, actually. But I’ve shared all this with Sister Alice—you did yourself—and so she’s got the floor now.”

    Sister Alice said, “Jeremy, do you know the Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries? Out on Slopemeadow Road?”

    “No. Is it the place beyond the Kmart?”

    “No, that’s an old waterworks. The Motherhouse is this side of Kmart—in that uphill wooded stretch, on the left as you’re going east. Two stone pillars and an old wrought-iron sign arching overhead.”

    “Oh right. I thought that was some kind of private cemetery or something.”

    “Too near the truth.” Sister Alice sighed. “That’s why I’m here talking to you with Father Mike. I was discussing my religious order the other day, wasn’t I? The headquarters are still in Canada, but with real estate prices what they are up there—I mean out of this world—the Order has put some of its Montreal property on the market. Retrenching, I think the word is.
    Downsizing.”

    “What, they’re firing nuns?” said Jeremy.

    “There aren’t any nuns to fire. Though believe me in my day I would have been glad of the blessed opportunity in the case of Sister … but never mind that. Listen, the Order still maintains, at considerable cost, this behemoth of a convent out on Slopemeadow Road. It was built in a faux-Gothic style in the 1920s, when vocations were up. Can’t unload the property; there’s no demand for a seventy-room complex eight miles out of Thebes, New York.”

    “A ghost convent,” said Jeremy.

    “Almost. The thing is this. Though the presence of Sisters of the Sorrowful Mysteries has dwindled in this part of New York, the Order maintains the property as a kind of retirement home for the elderly nuns. There are seventeen women out there now. Sisters between the ages of seventy and ninety-eight. Their health is not universally good, but they are in a lot better shape, physically, than most of their peers who are not in the religious life.”

    “Oh? How do they deserve that?”

    “Think about it. They all lived lives of hard work and prayer, some of them for most of the century. Back before the craze for fresh fruits and vegetables, the Sisters were eating lean cuisine because that was all they could afford. Back before the days of the Exercycle, the Sisters walked everywhere they needed to go, and got better exercise than most. More than you.”

    “No doubt about that. I’m allergic to exercise.”

    “The Sisters never smoked. We ate low-fat before it became popular. We were always good at penitence.”

    “Did you do those ‘Buns of Steel’ videos?”

    “Jeremy,” intoned Father Mike, leafing through a catalog of vestments.

    Sister Alice plunged on. “The old nuns are built like powerhouses and they take forever to die. I do mean forever. I am the only member of the Order in this Province under the age of seventy. My contemporaries—the women I entered with—are either serving in Montreal or, regrettably, have left the religious life.”

    “These nuns have a piano?” Jeremy began to get the point.

    “They have a piano. The whole place is heated like a greenhouse because, of course, they’re old women with poor circulation. You might be able to go there once a week for ten weeks or so, and have a place to practice. I