Chapter 2
His Voice
Two days later, a Saturday, the month of May seemed to pause to look back on March, with some nostalgia. The air was damp and cold, penetrating skin and bones. Kayla leaned her head back against the pillow perched on top of the couch, drifting away from the passage of scripture she had just read.
She started to pray, thinking of times during the past few days when she entertained negative thoughts about the people around her. “Lord, forgive me for resenting Frank so much, and for wishing he would just go away, without me losing my income. That’s selfish. Forgive me for that. I don’t want to be like that anymore.” Kayla opened her eyes and stared out the living room window, where the curtains stood open two inches, as they always did, without some serious intervention.
Back to her prayer, Kayla said, “And forgive me for thinking Jason was being lazy this week about all the stuff he says he wants to do with his life. I don’t wanna be judging him all the time, I don’t wanna be that kind of wife.” She followed that thought, like it was a cat wandering away from the prayer, toward a tasty morsel that had something to do with how much she loved being married. “I really do love him,” she said, scooping her thoughts back into the prayer.
“I know you do. And so do I,” said a voice.
Of course, Kayla was used to talking to herself, accustomed to internal arguments, and even inward banter between streams of her own thoughts. But this was not that.
The voice sounded male, so she opened her eyes and looked around for Jason, home from the library much earlier than she expected. But he didn’t do voices. That wasn’t his voice.
A shiver, deeper than the wet cold of the drippy day, crawled up her spine and shook her shoulders slightly. Had she really heard a voice?
She remembered a time in college when she tried to pull back-to-back all-nighters. That was two years ago. She was much less wise then. One effect of that deprivation had been minor hallucinations. Waiting for Jason to come and pick her up, to go to dinner in the cafeteria, she watched for him out her window. When she saw him coming down the path, and turning up the long driveway, she turned to pull her coat from her closet and check her hair in the mirror, a two-handed flip sorting it somewhat. She glanced back out the window and again saw Jason turning the corner from the path onto the driveway. She thought he must have turned back for something and then come around a second time, as strange as that would be. Jason had never been the forgetful genius type. Kayla had then grilled him all the way to dinner that night and again over apple cobbler. He seemed dead serious that he had not turned around, gone back up the path and repeated his approach to the house. She finally had to conclude that her lack of sleep had caused a hallucination. Jason wanted to call it “a wrinkle in time,” but she hadn’t read that book, and missed the reference.
Now, alone in her apartment, Kayla recalled her sleep schedule of late. No all-nighters, of course. She had even been getting to bed before eleven every night, up at seven. That was normal for her. That was enough sleep. Maybe something else was causing audible hallucinations, if that’s even a thing. The idea started to grow more and more disturbing, checking closets in her mind that each contained some fear of paranormal powers.
Reaching a crisis level of concern, Kayla leaned forward and picked up her phone off of the golden oak coffee table on which she rested one sock-clad foot. But, before she opened the phone app on her mobile device, she stopped to think of what she would tell Jason. Briefly, she wondered if one of the missionary pastors at the graduate school could do an exorcism, or maybe chase some poltergeist out of their apartment.
She didn’t even consider praying. Praying was what prompted the temporary insanity, or ghostly visitation. This was a real crisis. But not real enough to call Jason and try to describe it to him. Kayla put her phone back down.
Sitting perfectly still, she softened her breathing, as if playing hide and seek, and waiting for her brother to pass her favorite concealment behind the living room curtains. He never found her there, not even considering it possible for someone the size of his little sister to fit between the wall and the bunch of curtains beside the big picture window. Now, she was trying to hide from that voice.
A strange thought approached, its hands in its pockets, an apologetic tone arriving before and trailing after. Could it have been God talking to her? She was praying, after all.
Kayla obliterated that thought with a Bible verse, though she didn’t know the exact reference. “God is not the author of confusion.” That couldn’t have been God’s voice, because she was definitely confused…and scared.
Her phone chirped and vibrated on the table, startling her nearly as much as her alarm did every morning. Jason had laughed at her often for this brittle response to a normal daily event.
Recovering from her start, she bent forward again and grabbed her phone. It was Ella, the woman she worked for. Kayla tapped the little picture of an old-fashioned phone to pick up the call.
“Hello.”
“Kayla. How are you, dear?”
Ella’s voice reminded Kayla of the sweet milk left after finishing a bowl of her favorite cereal. It tasted good, but she wouldn’t want to have very much of it. Some part of Kayla doubted the sincerity of Ella’s motherly petting and patting, most of which she did with that voice.
“I’m good. What’s up?”
“Well, I was looking at the sketch you did for me, of that cottage over near you. And I was just loving the uniqueness of your style. You know, it’s not so much the way you draw or paint, it’s the way you see, that’s so unique and arresting.”
Kayla was inclined, for a few moments, to accept fully the sincerity of Ella’s words, and was feeling an urge to say, “Do tell me more.” Instead, she just said, “Oh, thank you.”
“So, I was thinking of this friend of ours,” by which she meant her and Frank, “who has a gallery down by Indianapolis. I would like to send him some slides of your work, to see if he’d be interested.” Ella was in her late forties or early fifties. Not inclined toward math, Kayla hadn’t made the exact calculation. Sending slides was what they used to do in the olden days, before digital cameras became as common as house flies. None of that entered Kayla’s head, and neither did any more thoughts about that voice that spoke to her as she prayed.
What Ella was offering, was like the major league call-up for a young baseball player, the concert in their first big venue for a rock band, or the interest of a respectable publisher to a young writer. Voice? What voice? The only voice she heard now was Ella’s, as they arranged for Kayla to send digital photos to Ella, that she would forward then to her friend in Indiana.
“That would be so cool,” said every part of Kayla’s heart and mind, even as she maintained a heaping measure of professional equanimity.
When Jason returned from the library, Kayla threw her good news before him like palm branches, welcoming him into her celebration. He looked stunned at first, but then broke through the clouds into which his wife had drifted, and remembered another occasion when Frank and Ella showed some of Kayla’s work to a prospective buyer. He understood the temptation to give a dream room to run, to frolic and cheer. And he knew the jarring pain of landing on solid earth, when the drop below the clouds suddenly met hard ground, a final “no.”
But he was probably just projecting his own pessimism about his writing into Kayla’s hopeful news. Probably.
Kayla could see the tentative smile, she could hear the unsaid congratulations, and she slowed down to wonder about it. At that slower pace, her mind recalled that there was something else she wanted to talk to Jason about. For a moment, it seemed like it had been something important, and this gave her another dose of endorphins, until she realized that she couldn’t remember what that other thing was.
A car alarm began to sound outside. Jason and Kayla just looked at each other, as if they had agreed to wait for the car owner, half a block away, to get to his or her alarm and shut it off before
they continued their conversation. The alarm persisted, passing into that stage where it seems to multiply into a tight little harmony of beeps. When it finally stopped, the conversation remained stalled a moment longer.
“I really hope this works out for you, Dobbins,” Jason said, his effort to find encouraging words apparent to everyone in the room. “I know your stuff is wonderful. Someone is bound to figure that out soon, someone who can get it out to the rest of the world.”
To Kayla, this deflated version of her wonderful balloon lacked the lift, but maintained the color, and seemed to come with a lot of careful thought. She stepped into hugging range and Jason dropped his backpack on the floor and accommodated the mute request.
“Thanks, dear. It would be really cool, wouldn’t it?”
Jason nodded against the top of Kayla’s head. She buried her nose deeper into his chest and sighed.
Chapter 3
Not Alone
Jason drove their little compact car out of the church parking lot, following another little car, one laden with carless college students. Jason and Kayla were going out to lunch after church with some friends and acquaintances. Kayla chattered about the service, and the topic of the sermon, as she watched the outside world pass by, looking a little like a tourist. She was always observing.
Jason had grown up in a family in which it was traditional, and acceptable, to have roast pastor for Sunday dinner. It usually started very subtly, even positively.
“Pastor was really making an interesting point there, with that part about the loaves and the fishes,” his dad might say. Soon, “interesting” would devolve down to “questionable,” on its way toward “heretical” or “hypocritical,” or both. Jason’s mother often added fashion critiques in a way that seemed to add authority to her husband’s theological deconstruction.
“I think he’s gonna have to do something else with his hair,” she might say, “we all know he’s going bald, no sense in ignoring it, and keeping that little peak of hair in the front, when the back is shiny pink. It just doesn’t look dignified.” This fashion observation would garnish the main course of criticism directed at the content of the sermon.
Kayla and Jason had agreed, long before they were married, that they would not do this, ending that tradition with their generation. Generally, this resolution meant not discussing the sermon, especially as Jason dug deeper into biblical studies in graduate school. Better to avoid the tavern entirely, than to saunter in and order a club soda.
Jason was thinking about all the things he wanted to do that afternoon, not a legalistic keeper of the Sabbath. This preoccupation, kept him from doing more than humming and nodding in response to Kayla’s verbal processing of the sermon on grace. Finally, his surliness turned to reaction, when Jason heard something that really bothered him.
“I think there are just too many rules that Christians think they have to live by, rules that don’t even come from the Bible,” Kayla said, editorializing in the same direction as the pastor’s three points and conclusion.
“It can get really sloppy, though, if we just tell people that there are no more rules,” said Jason. He heard that critical tone oozing out of his own mouth, and stopped there, returning to the shelter of silence.
Kayla noted the abrupt end to Jason’s response, guessing that he had shut himself down, as a matter of preemptive discipline, strict compliance with the moratorium on roast reverend. She knew she should help him keep his resolve, and changed the subject. She knew enough to help with the no-criticism commitment, but she didn’t sense his angst about delaying work, not writing as soon as he left church. Kayla’s improved prospects for a gallery showing added pressure to Jason’s writing output.
They were the first to leave lunch that afternoon, waving and saying their smiley goodbyes to a table of seven people still talking and finishing the last crusts of garlic bread and the last slurp of salad. Jason had been animated in conversation only when provoked by a good topic or an opening for a clever quip, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. Kayla could tell that much.
At home that afternoon, on a warming day that smelled of fresh mown grass for the first time that year, Kayla decided to go for a walk. She took her sketch pad with her, in case she found an inspiration along the path, or in the park where she liked to sit and think.
Saying a kissy goodbye to Jason, who was scowling at his laptop screen in the living room, Kayla headed out the door. She wore pink shorts, baggy enough to meet Jason’s strict standards. Kayla didn’t mind his vigilance. She got no thrill from wearing short shorts or tight skirts in public. Jason’s modesty on her behalf warmed her heart. She wanted him to have a sense of ownership, at least for their marriage, if not in some chattel way.
Without carefully forming the plan in her head, Kayla pointed her feet the opposite direction of her usual solo walks. The shady streets of that college town invited walkers of all ages, those in space-aged black and florescent green walking suits, as well as floppy college students in whatever combination of shirts, pants and footwear they happened to muster. Kayla passed a young man wearing red plaid pajama pants and a bright blue t-shirt from some long-forgotten high school car wash. On his feet, he wore bathroom sandals, the kind men wear around a swimming pool or in a steam bath. College town style on a sunny Sunday.
Kayla headed toward the quadrangle at the center of campus. Late in the year, finals approaching, and Sunday after church, the grass was not perilously crisscrossed with Frisbees, nor the paths overrun with rollerbladers. She decided on a bench under a maple tree, with a view of the duck pond and two girls laying stomach-down on a blanket, their legs tilting into right angles, as they tried to study amidst the breezes and chirping birds. She would try sketching those girls and the budding bushes behind them.
As usually was the case, Kayla’s short fingers could create with charcoal on paper, without much attention from her higher cognitive powers. She was thinking about Jason’s mood, which led her to praying, without any religious intentionality, just wifely concern.
Her prayer wandered away from Jason, as her thoughts strolled past the church service that day, and her feeling that grace was a really important thing for her to grasp.
“I wish I could believe it more.” She spoke aloud, to herself, or to God.
“I can show you,” said a voice so real that she spun her head to see who had approached from under the maple tree, a creepy prospect. She didn’t like the idea of wood trolls any better than strange men skulking up behind young women under the cover of the Spring foliage. A wood troll, however, probably would not have such a friendly voice, a part of her reasoned—if you can call that reasoning.
With her sketch pad slipping off her lap, and her neck strained to study the space behind the bench, a chill ran down Kayla’s back, all the way down to her toes. She was so freaked out that she said, “Who are you? Identify yourself.”
The voice, as if from the tree itself, said, “I am love.”
“What?”
“I am grace.”
“This can’t be happening,” Kayla said, relaxing her tight torso twist.
“Grace has only one rule.”
“What?”
“Love.”
Kayla ignored her sketch pad sliding down her crossed legs to the ground. She gripped the charcoal pencil in one increasingly tense hand. The wind wrapped a tugging tendril of hair directly around her eyes. She shook her head violently, to clear her eyes of the dark obstruction.
“What is this?”
There was no answer. Maybe it wasn’t a good question. Maybe she should have asked, “What is happening to me?” Or perhaps there was another way to approach the identity question, which on her first attempt had only resulted in riddles and evasion, as far as she was concerned.
She sat on the bench, clutching her pencil, trying to decide whether to grab her pad and run, or to wait to see if the voice would return. When she formulated the phrase “the voice,” in her head, she laughed a short, hyst
erical laugh. This all reminded her of the movie Field of Dreams, one of her father’s favorites. He loved baseball, cornfields and Amy Madigan. But he was no particular fan of voices.
Neither was Kayla, so far.
She opted for flight from the scene, when no further words vibrated out of invisible lips, and into her anxious ears. Her feet didn’t slow down until she was off the main campus, as if she was being haunted by the ghosts of education past. If she had been thinking rationally, this wouldn’t have made her feel safe, escaping campus as a way to escape the voice. For, she had heard the invisible person address her first at home, where she was headed now.
Slowing her pace a few blocks from home, feeling sweat beginning to drip down her back, under her light cotton blouse, Kayla played with the idea of telling Jason about the voice. Or was it voices?
How could she tell Jason, when she wasn’t even sure what she had heard? But, then, maybe that was the point. He could help. He was a quick thinker, a deep thinker.
He would think she was crazy.
Over her elevated breathing, Kayla layered a sigh of maximum frustration. But a good measure of that frustration came from a pending sense of excitement. Now she could locate that lost piece of news from the previous day, besides the news of her potential gallery showing in Indiana. The voice had come during prayer both times, she realized. Could it be God trying to communicate with her? It wasn’t a burning bush, perhaps, but a talking maple tree was pretty exciting.
Unless she was really crazy.
Shaking her head at herself, Kayla walked up the back stairs to their apartment. She always took the front stairs the other six days of the week, when returning from a walk. But, on Sunday, there would be no mail to check down by the parking lot. She wasn’t too distracted by her inner doubts to forget what day it was, at least.
When she kicked off her shoes and padded through the kitchen on moist feet, she could hear Jason tapping rhythmically on the laptop keys, words surging out of his hands onto the screen. This was a good sign. Kayla peeked to make sure he was writing. He was. She decided not to interrupt.
Sharing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 3) Page 2
