All three canvases were drying, the first one probably finished, when Ella returned to the studio. With Ella by herself, Kayla felt bold to pursue what Jesus had been saying earlier. Standing in front of the painting of the two dancers, she intrigued Ella with her intense focus.
“You like it?” Ella asked, in a way that implied more force of habit than hunger for approval. Perhaps, it was more of a question about Kayla, than about the value of the painting. Ella had little need of Kayla’s affirmation of her art.
Kayla stood with her arms across her chest. She shrugged just slightly. “It evokes feelings, so much feeling that it’s hard to say I like it. I feel drawn to it, but it feels like there’s pain in it. Maybe I’m even drawn by the pain.” This all came from Kayla and the painting. All Jesus had offered was encouragement to express those feelings, and to connect with the feelings that prompted Ella to paint it.
Ella looked at Kayla now, instead of at the two inert girls in the painting. “You see all of that?” She didn’t sound doubtful or even surprised, just impressed. Ella nodded, offering her own approval to Kayla’s analysis. But she remained slightly aloof from all of those feelings Kayla had described.
Kayla lifted a hand to brush a wayward curl off of her forehead. She was distracted by Jesus next to her, smiling at that gesture, like it was his child’s first step or something. But she was on a mission to discover more about this woman that she admired and hoped to emulate to some extent.
“What prompted you to paint it, do you think?”
Now Ella shrugged, tipping her head to match the bend of the woman on the left side of the painting. “It seemed poignant, just as you described. I was trying to capture those emotions. When I saw these two at the dance studio, I knew they would give me that.”
“You know them?”
“Not really, just met them and hired them for a sitting.”
Kayla was looking for the deeper explanation, the one that Jesus told her about, the one Ella wanted her to know.
“So it was just seeing the two dancers? Did they remind you of something?” Kayla was starting to become self-conscious that she was pressing so hard to open the door for Ella.
Jesus offered her assurance. “You’re fine. She really does want you to know, but she’s been holding it in for a long time.”
That didn’t tell Kayla what to do next, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet.
Ella answered the question. “I suppose it did call something to mind, maybe stirred some personal feelings.” And she left it there.
Kayla resisted a fleeting urge to kick Ella, to break loose what she was refusing to reveal.
Jesus offered a lifeline. “Ask her if she was a dancer?”
Kayla asked the question as soon as Jesus suggested it, which sounded awkward to her, but Ella wasn’t hearing that other conversation in the room.
“I was a dancer, when I was young,” Ella said, with a big sigh. “My sister and I used to dance together.” She fell silent, but it was the kind of silence people call “pregnant,” though Kayla never would have used that odd metaphor. Clearly, that silence invited further investigation.
“Why did you give it up?”
That was the key question. Ella had allowed herself to be led right up to it, reluctantly perhaps, but by her own words and actions. “I had to choose. Or, at least, I thought I did. The thing is, it ended up being like I was choosing between what I wanted and what my sister wanted.”
Frank entered the room, carrying a cup of coffee. He was the sort of person who drank two whole pots of coffee through the course of the day. Though she could never even hint at noticing, Kayla felt like this left a cloud of coffee aroma aging around him, as the day wore on. She assumed Ella tolerated it the same way she tolerated everything else about Frank.
That coffee cup, and the smell drifting her direction, recalled a delinquent thought that skated across Kayla’s mind as she watched Frank walk to his latest canvas. She was thinking that, if she were ever attracted to him, and Frank made a pass at her, that coffee smell would kill the deal.
Jesus had started walking toward Frank and his canvas. He answered Kayla’s thought. “Oh, he won’t ever make a pass at you.”
Kayla blushed deep red and turned toward some imaginary task on the opposite side of the room. Ella was still lost in the picture of her and her sister that had become superimposed over her painting of the two dancers. And Frank was preoccupied by his painting, his wits dulled by wine at lunch. It’s a good thing, because Kayla’s blush was so profound, that they could have seen it from behind, as her ears and neck flared red.
For the first time, Kayla felt resentment at Jesus and his ready replies to her thoughts. And it wasn’t even what he said that bothered her, it was that he had heard her jangling that unholy thought like a toy ball that a baby picks up just to hear it ring, before tossing it away and turning to something more permanently engaging. Part of her mind registered a reminder that Jesus had always been conscious of her thoughts, perverse or profound, and his appearance that day didn’t represent the first time he had listened to her meandering mind. Kayla was not the kind of young woman who fantasized about winning a married man away from his wife, or of winning the ultimate approval of her boss by attracting romantic interest from him. Yet she had responded to that bullying demand to seek his approval that Frank emanated to so many people. It was a logical leap to more profoundly winning his approval than just for her paintings.
Kayla suddenly felt tired, her mental gymnastics sapping her strength. She started to scold herself for this dip in energy and mood.
Jesus spoke to that internal conflict. “It’s just your little lunch collapsing under some extra emotional strain. Your blood sugar is a bit low. No need to beat yourself up about it.”
As quickly as that, Kayla was back to appreciating Jesus’s presence, even in the tense environs of her job. She did mark that place in her imagination that allowed the embarrassing thought about Frank in the door, hoping to guard that door better in the future, at least while Jesus was smiling at her like he was just then.
Turning back toward Frank, Jesus kept up his smile. As far as Kayla could tell, this prompted a response from Frank.
“You know, we usually don’t talk about things like this,” he began, only glancing at Kayla for a second, before returning to mixing a new color. “But I think there really are times when we get a feeling that God is close by, more than others.” Again he let his eyes shift to Kayla, just briefly, before sheltering them again in his work.
Ella was pulling her eyes free from her own painting. She looked to Kayla like she was about to cry. Kayla was restraining a cackle at the irony of Frank’s unexpected words, as Jesus hovered next to him, looking over his shoulder. But Jesus turned toward her and held a finger up to his lips, his face as serious as it had been since they first met face-to-face. She absorbed sobriety from that look, without feeling scolded. It seemed Jesus was trying to help her say what she really wanted to say.
“Well,” she started, “I am having an extraordinary day today, feeling that Jesus was right next to me the whole time. I know I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
Turning to look at her, as if she had just walked into the room, and then softening her eyes the way a sick child does when her mother arrives, Ella nodded gently and smiled. “I envy you that. I’m sure I could use a day like that.”
This gave Kayla a very odd idea. At the beginning of their experience with Jesus, he had warned Jason and Kayla that others would not be able to see and hear him. Therefore, it seemed out of bounds for what followed to enter her mind, until she looked at Jesus grinning at her from over by Frank. She decided to test the waters, waters on which it felt as if she was trying to walk across the surface.
“I didn’t expect it at all,” Kayla said. “Neither did Jason, but I know he’s seeing and hearing Jesus today too.”
Frank turned his full attention to Kayla now. “Seeing and hearing?”
&nbs
p; Part of Kayla worried that Frank’s skeptical tone might disqualify him from what Jesus wanted to do. But Jesus didn’t show any of that kind of worry on his face. Kayla nodded slowly, floundering for how much to tell her employers, now that she had begun to explain Frank’s apparent perception of Jesus’s presence in the room.
“You can tell them as much as you want to. The only thing holding you back is worry about how they will respond,” Jesus said. “You have my permission. Now all you need is your own permission.”
Kayla started with an answer to Frank’s question. She nodded. “I know it’s hard to believe. I’m still having a hard time believing it myself.”
“Believing what, exactly?” Ella said. She had shaken off the cloud of feelings behind that painting of the dancers, alerted that Kayla was saying something unusual.
Having puttered out midway into a real answer to Frank’s skepticism, Kayla felt as if Ella had caught her faking something, perhaps faking full disclosure. She locked eyes on Jesus and started her next reply, without looking away. Kayla had always been a visual person, and the sight of Frank would surely discourage what she was about to do. The sight of Jesus, on the other hand, was thumbs up, and a gentle push in the back.
“I literally see Jesus standing here in the studio. Over there by you, Frank. And he’s been talking to me about everything. I can hear him in my head, and even with my ears when he wants me to.”
Later, Kayla would look back on this as the bravest thing she had ever done. While she maintained eye contact with Jesus, it felt crazy and reckless. When she turned to see Frank’s reaction, “stupid” was the only word Kayla could find to describe what she had just done.
“Literally, visibly seeing him, right now?” Frank looked at Kayla, and then redirected his gaze to the space next to him that she had indicated. From fifteen feet away, Kayla could see the shiver convulse Frank’s spine. He looked at Ella with the eyes of a sleepwalker who had just been awakened.
“You said you felt something,” Ella said to those searching eyes. Her voice was hushed and haunted, an unfamiliar tone to Kayla.
Jesus came to Kayla’s aid. “Tell Frank, that I’m remembering the time he was in college, walking in the woods, when he felt me so close to him, that he actually turned around to see if I was there.”
Kayla tried to repeat what Jesus said, prefacing it with, “Jesus wants me to tell you something.”
She felt confident that the words she was relaying were true. What she didn’t know was how Frank would respond. If he did remember that moment, would he feel violated, as if Kayla had rummaged in his private memories? What if he didn’t remember? Unused to this whole experience, she didn’t know well enough to believe that Jesus would only refer to an incident that Frank did remember.
Ella was standing just six feet from Kayla now. Kayla was pretty sure Ella had stopped breathing. Frank looked at Kayla, looked at Ella, and then regarded that empty space next to him, before allowing his eyes to wander toward that distant memory. His face flushed at this point, though not as dramatically as Kayla’s had a minute before.
Frank shook his head, his face turning toward the floor more with each rotation of his head. “I remember that,” he said, as if retrieving the memory was the point. But he raised his head and confronted the two women staring at him. “She couldn’t know anything about that, could she?” He was searching Ella’s mannequin-like face when he asked her this.
“You told Ella about it on your second date, and surprised both of you when you did,” Jesus said, addressing Frank directly.
The way Frank’s face flicked toward Jesus, Kayla thought for a moment that he had actually heard Jesus speaking, but the tandem of Jesus and Frank both turned toward her, and she knew she was supposed to transmit Jesus’s message.
“Jesus is reminding you that you told Ella about that time in the woods on your second date. And you were both surprised that you told her such a thing so early.” Kayla felt as if she were embellishing too much, and allowed her voice to fade toward the end.
Ella was nodding. She stepped over to Kayla and put her arm around the younger woman’s waist. It was a gesture she had done many times before, when they were both looking at a painting, or when Frank had escalated tension, and Ella felt the need to reassure Kayla. This time, however, it struck Kayla that Ella was clinging to her for support. Her hand seemed to be shaking there on Kayla’s hip.
“He’s really here,” Ella said, her voice low and her gaze sweeping from Kayla to Frank.
Not only had Jesus chosen a memory that Frank could easily access, he had chosen one that meant something to Ella, as well, even though she had not even known Frank on that day in college, when Jesus seemed to be sidling up next to him, to accompany him on his prayer walk. Once again, Jesus had snuck up on Frank. But this time, Kayla could see it, and was there to interpret.
Chapter 14
Sharing Jesus
When Jesus showed up before breakfast that morning, Kayla and Jason could not believe their good fortune. They had groped around for reasons that justified such a generous blessing. Before the day was even halfway through, they had both discovered that they were not only sharing this experience of seeing and hearing Jesus with each other, they were sharing it with the people they worked with and played with. And who else?
Though Jason and the band never got around to playing any of their songs, they did noodle around on guitars and talk, trekking through the whole afternoon, later than they planned. Jesus seemed content to smile and laugh along with them, adding a bit of information, or encouragement, for Jason to relay to his friends.
Jason excused himself before the others were ready to split up for the evening, not even starting the conversation about ordering pizza, until Jason and his entourage of one made the move to exit. Jesus prompted Jason to leave one last word with his friends, Steve in particular.
“Tell him that I don’t mind that he just hums along. I know he’s with me, and I know all the lyrics.”
Jason stared at Jesus for a few seconds, feeling this message was way too mystical for him. But the expectant look on Jesus’s face was irresistible.
When Jason had relayed the message to Steve, the latter just stared at Jason. “Jesus told you to say that to me?”
Jason nodded.
Steve began a sort of bobble head nodding and shaking that was hard for Jason to interpret. Not until Steve sniffled and rubbed something away from his eye, did Jason know that he had connected.
In response to the inquisitive look on Jason’s face, Steve explained. “I find myself humming church songs all the time, and I kick myself for being brain-washed. But then I’m back at it, like I can’t help myself. That’s what that’s about.”
Pedro and Donnie, backing up Steve at the bottom of the stairs, each looked impressed that Jason’s cryptic message had not only made sense to Steve, but had cracked the cover on his hard-sealed emotions.
In spite of the good vibes, Jason was determined to get out the door, to get home and see Kayla, if not to finish the essay he was supposed to have proof read before supper.
When he did leave, it felt like he was leaving the house with one of his band mates. Jason creaked up the stairs and Jesus creaked right along with him.
Jason joked. “You get yourself some more respectable clothes, and you could fit right in with those guys.”
Jesus laughed loud and long, all the way down to the car.
Jason snickered at the good humor of his companion. “You are easily amused.”
Still laughing as he opened the car door, Jesus said, “I’m glad you noticed.”
What Jason noticed next, after sliding his guitar into the back seat, was two boys on bicycles slamming on their brakes a couple of houses up. They had seen the passenger door open and close itself. Jason just looked at them, not sure how to explain what they had obviously seen. He shrugged and walked around the front of the car. He wasn’t prepared to account for much of what had happened that day.
The only stutter in the stream of back and forth storytelling about their individual experiences with Jesus that day, was Jesus’s continued presence with them. Though it took both of them a while to name it, they were feeling odd about spending their miraculous time with Jesus talking to each other about what they each had missed.
“Don’t worry about me, I’m sticking around for a while,” Jesus said. “Besides, I invented remembering, and recounting, my father’s blessings.”
Jason and Kayla sat close on the couch, turned toward each other, hands held and released, shoulders stroked and quick kisses exchanged. Jesus sat in Jason’s favorite chair and watched them, like a pleased parent being visited by his long-absent children. He seemed unable to stop smiling. His reassurance notwithstanding, they both turned toward him. In that moment of turning from each other to look at Jesus, they each experienced an electrical discovery: that they enjoyed looking at Jesus as much as they enjoyed each other. And these were newlyweds.
Jason asked the obvious question. “What should we be doing with you? This seems like such an important opportunity. I wanna get everything out of it that we can.”
Jesus rocked forward and stood up. He looked at Jason with glistening eyes that spoke admiration, and seemed to drink Kayla in with the briefest glance. “Well, maybe I better tell you some parables, or something. What do you think?”
This was obviously a tease, but both Kayla and Jason would have taken him seriously, if Jesus had let them. Instead, he made motions with his hands to insinuate himself in between them. Few people are bold enough to presume on the place between newlyweds. Jesus was obviously not intimidated. He rounded the oval coffee table, which held an array of art books and theological volumes, and he settle down into the slim space they offered on the couch.
Sharing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 3) Page 13
