Seeing Jesus

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Jesus smiled and shook his head slightly, “No, not a ghost, or even very much like a ghost. You see, the lightness of my step comes from being fully alive, not from the weightlessness of being dead.”

  Having never taken any kind of theology class, and barely passing the freshman philosophy course in college, Philly missed the nuances of this answer, but Jesus didn’t seem discouraged by the blank stare he elicited from the man holding his junk mail on the landing.

  Philly broke from his paralysis and fished his keys from his jacket pocket, looking forward to getting into some dry clothes. Jesus waited patiently, unperturbed by Philly’s delay and totally dry, in spite of the rain outside. Finally, Philly slipped the correct key into the correct lock and cracked the front door open. Absent-mindedly he left the door open for Jesus to enter, so Jesus closed it, but didn’t lock it. Walking to his bedroom and tugging at his damp jacket, Philly wondered what that would have looked like to someone else; the door closing itself, perhaps?

  Looking back at Jesus, Philly was pleased to see his guest respecting his privacy and staying outside the bedroom while he changed clothes. The distraction of knowing that the supernatural visitor awaited him, however, repeatedly derailed Philly’s attempts to change. He forgot what he was doing several times and twice started to leave the room less than fully dressed, before noticing and returning to the prolonged struggle for fresh, dry clothes.

  “Sorry, I kept getting distracted,” Philly said to Jesus, when he emerged from the bedroom.

  “I know,” Jesus said reassuringly.

  “You know? Oh, you know. Of course, you know. I suppose you could see through the door and saw every bit of it,” he said, dodging Irving, who stood staring at Jesus.

  “I didn’t need to see through the door to know everything you did in there. I’ve always seen everything you’ve ever done, without having to use my X-ray vision.” Jesus’s voice took on a teasing tone.

  Philly stopped in the kitchen door, trying to take all that in, even as he puzzled over Irving’s strange behavior. Obviously, the cat could see the, otherwise invisible, man standing there. How was that? He felt as if he hadn’t been adequately introduced to the rules of this whole experience.

  Jesus looked at Philly, looking at the cat, looking at Jesus. Then he said to the cat, “C’mere Irving.” The, usually suspicious, cat took two steps and jumped up into Jesus’s arms.

  Philly stared and reran the scenario in his head. “What if I filmed this with my camera?” he said. “Would I get video of my cat floating in thin air?”

  “I wouldn’t let you do that,” Jesus said simply, intent on scratching Irving, who purred louder than Philly had ever heard in all of their five years together.

  Philly decided not to even try that video experiment, at least not now. Instead, he switched to the comment about X-ray vision, or rather about always seeing everything. He cringed at several embarrassing things he had done in private, in recent weeks.

  Clearing his throat, Philly asked, “Ah, you said you’ve always been able to see everything I do, but you generally aren’t watching, are you?”

  Jesus let Irving down to the floor, where the cat began purring in a tight circle around his ankles. “You need to understand that the way you’re experiencing me right now is unusual,” Jesus said, like a tolerant instructor. “You see me as if I were a regular human being in one place at one time. I do that for your benefit, a sort of optical illusion to make it easier for you to feel that I’m right here with you. It’s not possible for you to see me as I truly am, present everywhere in time and space. All that to say: I’m not limited to one pair of human eyes, or even a finite bank of security cameras, for watching over my loved ones.”

  The reference to security cameras connected with Philly immediately, since one of his responsibilities on the network at work was archiving digital recordings from the seven security cameras around the office. He smiled at the notion that Jesus had his own, much larger, set of security cameras. Then he bounced off of the implication that Jesus had indeed seen him do all of those very embarrassing things he was remembering, not to mention the ones he was not remembering. Repulsed by that idea, he veered toward the question of his own sanity.

  “How can this be real?” he said. He actually said this not as a question, but as a protest. He planned to fight the insanity and not give in.

  “Why do you doubt that I’m really here with you?” Jesus said, with the perfect patience of the perfect teacher.

  Philly stood with his eyes fixed on his delusion, but his mind fixed on finding a finger hold somewhere in all his catalog of life experiences, an impossible task, given his mundane life, during which he had successfully passed as sane. “People don’t literally see you standing next to them.” Philly continued his protest. “I’ve never heard of anybody that did, anyway,” he said, his belligerence fading. He couldn’t maintain any kind of aggression for long.

  “Have you ever had such a persistent delusion before?” Jesus said. “Besides the Cubs, I mean.”

  The Cubs? What did Jesus know about the Cubs? This very non-religious poke deflated Philly’s rebellion. He laughed when he tried to bypass this indictment of his baseball loyalty.

  Jesus answered Philly’s internal question about the Cubs. “You think I can ignore all of those frustrated prayers through all these years?” He smiled. Then he turned more serious. “I see everything and everyone, Philly.”

  Again this tweaked Philly’s guilt levels, grinding like the grit of the totalitarian shadow of Big Brother, or the Matrix being plugged in all around him. But he kept looking at Jesus.

  The look on that flawlessly loving face completely flipped being under surveillance to being watched over and cared for. “Wait,” he said to himself. “This man standing here in front of me is the one who’s constantly watching me? This is the all-seeing God? He doesn’t seem ticked off at me. He doesn’t seem to hate me. He is watching me?”

  Jesus just smiled in answer to the unspoken questions, his active eyes penetrating Philly’s soul.

  Philly did something next that he had not done since high school. He began to sob like a child. He clasped his face with both hands and simply erupted into tears. His breath lurched in cramping heaves, his sobs vocal and unhinged. He wept a purging river of tears that drained all available liquids from his body, until the tears smelled like ammonia and his nose stung like when he tried jogging outside in the winter. After a minute, he was seated on the floor with Jesus holding his shoulders, another minute and he was on his face, wetting the dusty wood, feeling Jesus hands on his back. Those hands comforted him, but didn’t stop his tears, rather taking part in them. Philly could hear weeping above him. He was not the only one sobbing in that apartment and this broke his heart more.

  Ten minutes of hard crying is more than most people can take. Being out of practice, Philly’s ribs hurt and his throat felt inflamed when he ran out of strength to continue. It took him another fifteen minutes to clean up his face and the floor; blowing his nose and drinking water, gasping spasmodically to catch his breath and to calm himself.

  During this whole breakdown and recovery, Jesus stayed close to Philly, knowing exactly how close he could stand, where he could place his hands to comfort and not interfere, and even exactly how loudly he could cry along with Philly, so that his friend would not be distracted, but only encouraged.

  As Philly began to recover his composure, he sat on his old couch, sunken into the soft cushions. His hair shot in eight directions, dark circles had formed under his eyes and those eyes appeared pink and red where they used to be white. After the last sniffle, he felt like going to sleep, but Jesus, sitting at the other end of the couch, kept him focused enough to fight off the core weariness that weighed him down.

  Philly inventoried the possibility that this emotional breakdown might further prove that he was losing his mind. The need to call his sister about her trip to Chicago nagged at him, but he didn’t want to call her in an unstable
emotional condition.

  “You should call her now,” Jesus said. “She’s not doing anything and you could reach her right away. It’ll be harder to get hold of her tomorrow.”

  This self-assured advice from his hallucination fell into the nexus of curiosity and discovery twirling around Philly’s mind. He decided to test the information that this Jesus image was offering so confidently.

  Pulling out his cell phone, Philly unlocked it and found Eileen in his list of frequently called contacts. Her number, with its suburban New York area code, displayed on the screen of his smart phone, along with a picture of Eileen from the last time she came to visit, at Christmas. Currently single and not seeing anyone, his sister would often be out in the evening, at a bar or restaurant; so Philly saw Jesus’s account of her availability as a good test of his sanity.

  As usual, her voicemail kicked in after a few rings. Philly decided to wait and leave a message, giving Jesus a chance here, in case she was simply indisposed for a moment. But, in the middle of Eileen’s rote message about leaving a name and number, Philly heard a click and a more spontaneous version of her voice.

  “Philly?” she said, based on caller I.D..

  Philly was stunned for a moment, looking to his right at Jesus watching him.

  “Hello?” Eileen said.

  “Oh, I really didn’t think I’d catch you at home,” Philly said, finally.

  “Yeah, I’m surprised myself,” she said. “Karen suddenly had something to do with her mother and Rachel was kept late at work, so my plans for the night fell through.”

  “Oh,” Philly replied, wondering whether Jesus manipulated things in New York to make Eileen available for him to call.

  “Have you seen Grandma?” Eileen seized the agenda, pushing into the gaps in Philly’s response.

  “Not tonight. Ma’s there. I saw her last night, though,” he said.

  “Well, how did she look?” From her voice, Philly could tell that she had just lain down, either on her bed or her couch.

  “Oh, I don’t know. She was like asleep, you know, just still. I mean there wasn’t much light and she was in a coma. So I guess she looked the way you’d expect,” Philly said, fumbling through.

  “I’m coming out Friday after work,” Eileen said.

  Philly replied, “O’Hare? What time does your flight get in?”

  “Yeah, O’Hare. At 9:35 p.m.,” she said, her answer accompanied by the sound of a sheet of paper slipping against another.

  “I’ll come get you,” Philly said.

  “Good, so I won’t have to blow a fortune on a cab.”

  Philly had a sporty, two-door car that he kept in the fenced lot behind his apartment building. Given his public transit commute and the relative proximity of most shopping options, owning a car in the city was a marginal proposition. He strove to justify it with favors like picking his sister up at the airport. It also made a trip out to his parent’s house in the suburbs less of an ordeal.

  Jesus had a suggestion. “Ask her if there’s anything new at her work.”

  Philly looked at Jesus and mechanically parroted his question. “Anything new at work for you?” He tried to sound nonchalant.

  “I’ll say. How did you know?” Eileen hooted. “My boss got fired for falsifying his expense reports and I got promoted to his job!” She nearly shouted. “I wasn’t gonna say anything, ‘cause of Grandma, ya’ know.”

  Philly stared at Jesus, his eyebrows at maximum height.

  Jesus smiled.

  “Funny that you would ask me about that,” Eileen said introspectively.

  “Ah, yeah,” Philly said. “Well, congratulations then. That’s good news for you, right? A promotion and a raise?”

  “Yes, they gave me a big raise too, of course. But I don’t think I’ve really let it soak in completely, with Grandma in the hospital.”

  “Umhm,” said Philly. He hesitated and then said, “So I’ll see you Friday, at O’Hare.”

  “Thanks Philly. Thanks for calling and for picking me up at the airport,” Eileen said, perhaps not as anxious to end the conversation as her little brother.

  But Philly didn’t know what to say, distracted by the psychic tricks Jesus had done.

  “Bye, Eileen.”

  “Bye, Philly.”

  He did notice a hint of disappointment in Eileen’s voice, but didn’t take the next step to figure out why. His brain had begun to catalog the questions he would not ask Jesus, such as, “How did you do that?” He groped, instead, toward the meaning behind that little demonstration. Philly looked at Jesus, who seemed to be waiting patiently for him to say something.

  “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Philly. It is.”

  “Wow.”

  Jesus chuckled.

  “Who can I tell?”

  Jesus looked thoughtful. “You can tell anyone you want. But, of course, most people won’t believe you at first.”

  “Is my mother still at the hospital?”

  “She’s just getting ready to leave,” Jesus said.

  Philly considered going to tell Grandma, the one person he knew would believe him. But that would not be nearly as satisfying with Grandma in a coma. He decided to tell her the next time he visited her alone, but chose to stay home that evening to think some more about what to do with his discovery that this Jesus was more than a delusional projection from his mind. His mind couldn’t have supplied the sort of accurate information he had been receiving from this walking and talking apparition.

  “I wonder if I can tell Eileen,” Philly said aloud.

  Irving sat in the recliner across the living room, attentive to the conversation.

  Jesus said, “Do you expect her to believe you?”

  Philly considered. “I could remind her about the question I asked her on the phone. I don’t usually ask her about work. She just tells me when she has some story. I can tell her I asked because you told me to.”

  Jesus nodded.

  “How will she react?” Philly wanted more than a nod.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Jesus said. “You’re not responsible for the way people react, only for doing what you know to be right. Not to be rude about it, but really it’s not your business how she’ll react. I’ll only tell you things that I think you should know.”

  Philly nodded, glad to hear more of the rules to this game. “So you’ll tell me things if it’ll help me out?”

  “Yes,” Jesus said, getting up and walking across the room to scoop up Irving. The cat meowed when Jesus reached for him and began to purr when the Creator lifted him off the chair. “I’ll also tell you things that will help other people.”

  Philly looked impressed and intrigued by this possibility, but couldn’t actually imagine what it would entail. During the silence that followed, he decided to call Brenda, after he ate some supper.

  A half hour later, the remnants of his frozen dinner cleaned up, and feeling better physically, Philly sat in the recliner with his cell phone. Jesus sat on the couch across the room. Irving, who had been sleeping on the couch, woke up, stretched and slowly walked across two cushions and onto Jesus’s lap.

  Though he had not said it aloud, both Philly and Jesus knew that he was considering telling Brenda about his surprising visitor. Philly thought of her sympathetic eyes and hoped to find a niche in the conversation into which he could insert the leading edge of his most startling news.

  Philly tapped Brenda’s picture in his contact list, a photo taken by him—using a previous phone—one sunny, summer day, at Navy Pier. He didn’t follow that memory anywhere, however, simply listening to the phone ring and waiting for his opportunity to bring someone into his mind-rocking experience.

  Brenda picked up. “Hello, you!” She sounded chipper, a promising sign for Philly.

  Between chipper and sympathetic, he imagined that she wouldn’t be able to reject his news outright, but a seeping fear made an appearance at the edge of his consciousness, fear that
his story might conjure up the gloomy Brenda.

  “Hi, Brenda. You busy?”

  “No, just doing my toe nails.”

  “Oh,” Philly said, thinking that sounded sort of busy. But he could tell that she wanted to talk and expected she could do so with wet toe nails.

  “I’m glad you called me,” Benda said, in case her tone had not already delivered that message. Then she remembered his grandma. “So how is your grandma?”

  “I didn’t go see her tonight. My ma was there and I’d rather see Grandma by herself. I’d feel funny talking to her with Ma listening,” Philly said.

  “You do talk to her, though?” Brenda said. “’Cause I heard that people in comas don’t really hear anything people say to them. But maybe that’s wrong.”

  “I think she can hear,” Philly said, without hesitation.

  “Yeah, who knows, anyway?” Brenda retreated. Then she tried to recover. “So, what kind of things do you say to her?”

  Philly thought for a moment, about how much to reveal to Brenda. “Well, my grandma is the best listener, so I tend to tell her lots of stuff,” he said. “Mostly, last night, I told her how much I missed her.” He paused here and then took one more step. “And I asked her to pray for me, ‘cause I know she’s always praying for me.”

  “Hmmm, who knows, maybe she can do that in a coma,” Brenda said agreeably. “I never did much praying myself.”

  “Me neither,” Philly said. “It always seemed okay for Grandma, but I just didn’t believe it made a difference.” He stopped there, leaving that past tense verb hanging, without a follow up about his recent change of heart.

  And then he chickened out, letting Brenda take the lead.

  “Hmmm, so are you going to visit her every night? ‘Cause I was hopin’ we could go out this weekend, like you said.”

  “Oh, I won’t see her every night. But I am picking up my sister on Friday, from the airport. You remember, Eileen?”

  “Oh,” Brenda said, weighing her chances for Saturday night. “Yeah, I remember her. She had that trendy hair cut, all New York style.”