SEEING JESUS | Book 2
A Novel
By
Jeffrey McClain Jones
hearing JESUS
Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey McClain Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the author.
John 14:12 Publications
www.john1412.com
Cover photos from Shutterstock.com
Cover Design by Gabriel W. Jones
For Terri and Kelly: Wonderful sisters and faithful fans of my writing. Thanks for all the encouragement.
Chapter 1
ALONE
Gladys Hight stopped peeling the potato, the last sliver of skin adhering to the side of the white enamel sink. She looked closer at the flower garden along her back fence. Through the big square picture window above the sink, she could see the whole yard, from her garage on the right to the Johnson's fence on the left, and all the way up the Maxwell's yard to their house, across the back fence. Right now, her focus lay on the tiny asparagus-green shoots grinning like a row of pointy teeth. Her crocuses arose to announce the coming end of winter.
“Harry,” she said, calling her husband's name loudly enough to be heard anywhere in the little two-bedroom ranch house. “The crocuses are up. I see the sprouts as plain as the nose on your face, old man.” Her voice cracked slightly on the word “face,” as excitement pushed her beyond the subdued silence she so often knew, and beyond the level for which her voice was sufficiently limbered up.
Gladys laughed at herself and the teasing tone she used to provoke a response from her husband of over fifty years.
But Harry didn't respond.
“It's about time, too,” Gladys said, her voice vacillating a little. “I was beginning to think we were gonna be stuck in winter all year ‘round.” Again she chuckled, but not from the great humor of her words. Rather, the hope of spring irrigated her heart, where it had grown dry with the weariness of waiting. And all it took was the first sight of the crocuses in her garden.
“Feel like a school girl when I see those,” she said, her tone muted now, her words barely reaching out into the small dining room outside her kitchen. “I guess I can remember what it was like on the farm, when the crocuses came up around the porch. Seems like I can still feel my father’s anxiousness to get to plowing, to get to planting.”
Gladys shuffled over to the cutting board between her sink and her stove, her bedroom slippers scuffing on the linoleum tiles. She carried three naked potatoes with her, set them in a row on the old wooden cutting board. Little gaps widening between the pieces from which it had been assembled two decades ago, Gladys could remember where she bought that cutting board, and maybe even how much she paid. Somehow, those things stuck to her mind, like the potato peels on the side of the sink.
She could still remember small details from long ago. But she often forgot to stop talking to her husband, Harry. Gladys pursed her full lips as she sliced the potatoes into quarters and then the quarters each in half, and reached her right hand toward the big pot on the front left burner. Even for three potatoes, she pulled out the big Dutch oven, as if she were still cooking for four, including her husband and two kids. In recent years, she cooked for a crowd only on holidays. Once or twice a year, she followed the example of her mother, back on the farm, cooking for Gladys’s father, six kids and a farm hand or two. At least these days, she remembered not to fill the big aluminum pot half way. Just a few inches in the bottom was enough to boil those pale slices until they were soft for mashing.
The roast in the oven would be tender, cooked to the point where the strands of meat each leaned away from the next, sagging toward the salty juice accumulating in the bottom of the roasting pan. The modest roast looked lost in the middle of even her smallest dark blue and white flecked roaster. But Gladys had cooked the same way for almost sixty years and felt no compunction to change now, at least not to change everything.
The four-pointed crystal star hanging from fishing line along the edge of the kitchen picture window twisted gently to catch the first of the sunbeams that day, a dampening cloud cover holding onto the sky from dawn that morning until early in the Wisconsin evening. The beam of light snuck into Gladys’s house not long before it would have to roll to the west. Just in time, it offered an added spark to her uplift at the discovery of the crocuses. Tiny rainbows of color skittered across the ceiling as the crystal spun, jostled by the blast from the heating vent near the refrigerator.
But, like a stranger in a crowded room, the sunny sight of those radiant colors infused Gladys’s lonely heart with a deeper sense of loss, regret at not having anyone with whom to share those little rainbows. Gladys tightened down her emotional vents and let her hands think for her. Her hands knew what to do with potatoes and pots and pans and plates, and all of it. They could think on their own and leave her mind to sleep undisturbed, to forget the loss of that exchange of smiles that should have followed her first symptoms of Spring fever.
Even as Gladys turned away from the stove to clean up the sink, her phone jangled on the wall in front of her. She passed the sink and its layer of potato peels and reached for the pale tan phone.
“Ye-es?” she said into the receiver, using the same two syllable greeting she had always used on the phone.
“Hi, Mom,” said the alto voice over the phone line.
“Well, hello Dear. How are you doing?” Gladys reached with her left hand behind her and pulled her kitchen stool toward her, so she could sit as she talked. The old white metal stool doubled as a stepladder for reaching cupboard shelves. Three small steps folded in two parts inside the four legs of the stool, when not needed for climbing.
“I’m good. How are you? You over that cold yet?”
“Oh, yes. That’s been gone for days now. I don’t even feel the least bit of it anymore.” Gladys subtly tested her throat for a remnant of congestion, now that her daughter, Patty, had reminded her.
“Well, that’s good. You cooking supper?”
“Yes, of course. The maid’s day off, ya know.” Gladys said with a smile.
“Yeah, of course. Always seems to be the maid’s day off when I call. Hope you’re not paying her too much,” Patty said, joking right back.
“Oh, she gets a percentage, just like the rest of us.” This old joke came from the days when Harry was a salesman, and they lived down in Skokie, Illinois. Gladys used to tease him that she should get a percentage of all the income, just like he did at work. That humor had been applied subsequently to any number of fictitious financial arrangements over the years.
Patty breathed a long sigh at the end of their usual repartee. “Seriously, how are you doing, Ma?”
Gladys grinned with the part of her face away from the phone receiver at the echo of a Chicago accent in her daughter’s voice. Patty, and her husband Derek, lived down in Naperville, Illinois, about two hours south of Gladys. Though Naperville certainly housed its share of people from diverse geographies, leveling out the accents into the generic suburban voice one would hear around cities from Oregon to Ohio, Chicagoans and their turns of speech still influenced people like her daughter and grandchildren. To Gladys, being called “Ma,” as opposed to “Mom,” recalled the old days, of a family under one roof, rooms and halls full of voices and footfalls, sneakers on hardwood and record players on maximum volume.
The distraction into that tunnel of memories delayed Gladys’s response a bit too long for her daughter.
“Ma?”
Thinking it was worth the wait to h
ear it again, nonetheless Gladys yielded to the obligation to answer. “Oh, I’m fine, Dear. I’m joining one of those on-line dating sites and looking for a hot younger man to keep me company.”
This too was old humor from when someone first explained to Gladys what online dating was, ten years ago. She was relieved, back then, to discover that it didn’t involve people standing on lines in hopes of meeting members of the opposite sex, like the crowd at a post-Thanksgiving Day sale.
In spite of her sincere effort to check on her mother’s wellbeing, and the age of that joke, Patty snickered into her cell phone, resulting in a sound on Gladys’s landline that implied the need for a tire repair, or for bleeding the radiators in their old house north of Chicago. Gladys smiled when she recognized Patty’s phone laugh.
“So when am I gonna see my granddaughter again?” Gladys said. At a level hidden beneath this conversation, she and Patty both knew this question stood in proxy for a request for her family to come visit. The web of expectations and allowances between Gladys and her children included asking about a visit from her youngest grandchild, but not from their parents or the grown kids.
“Katie has soccer in the spring, you know,” Patty said, a dash of sympathy lowering her tone. Past the sympathy ran a river of guilt that was much too big to cross, and which had been removed from all maps, as a result. Moving to Naperville had been a purely professional decision involving Derek’s commercial real-estate business. But Patty had promoted the move as a way of getting closer to her mother in southeastern Wisconsin. That the reality of highway miles and cluttered family calendars had fallen well short of the promise of the move from St. Louis, depressed Patty. This explained, in part, why Gladys had to keep her inquiries on that covert level, only admitting that she wanted to see Katie, her almost-twelve-year-old granddaughter.
Gladys answered Patty’s reminder about soccer. “Oh, yes, I remember. But don’t they get some time off now and then?” She was remembering a visit over Spring break the previous year, when school and soccer both stepped aside for a wonderful time of reconnecting with her best little friend.
“Sure, they get some time off, but I don’t think it’s for a few weeks yet,” Patty said, apologizing in tone, if not in words. “We’ll look at our schedules for April and see which weekend we can come up. Maybe Katie can stay over a couple of nights.” She offered this latter helping of hope with an almost audible wince. Knowing that the chances were slim-to-uncertain that a visit could be arranged twisted Patty’s conscience. She often surrendered to a sort of downhill momentum when it came to empty promises and building hopes.
“Well, just let me know as soon as you figure something out, and I’ll have my people clear my calendar,” Gladys said, resorting to more old humor to tenderize the tension between Patty’s promises and her daughter’s record of disappointing.
Patty didn’t laugh this time, only saying, “Umhm,” to keep her hand in the conversation.
“I gotta get the green beans ready,” Gladys said, seizing the initiative in ending the conversation.
“Oh, sure. Okay,” said Patty. “I knew you were probably cooking. I won’t keep you. Good to hear you’re doing okay.”
“Sure, sure, don’t worry about me. You take care of yourselves,” Gladys said.
“We will,” said Patty. “Talk to you soon.”
“Okay, Dear. I’ll tell your father you called. Goodbye.” And Gladys hung up, not noticing the silence on Patty’s end of the line.
“That was Patty . . .” Gladys started to say, and then remembered something.
She checked on the potatoes and turned down the gas flame, settling for a steady simmer instead of a rolling boil. Then she shuffled to the fridge and pulled out the bag of fresh green beans, which she would clean, cut and simmer in a sauce pan. The rich roast beef aroma accelerated her effort to add the finishing touches to the meal.
“Sure smells good,” she said aloud.
As she sorted through the two large handfuls of green beans, she slowed down again, distracted by a feeling that she had said something wrong on the phone. But she assured herself that she had only thought it, and hadn’t actually said it.
Down in Naperville, Patty had called her son, her eldest child. He was attending the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, the only other family member living north of the border.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” Danny said, his voice fluctuating amidst a steady wind, flapping at the phone.
“How are you, Dear?” Patty said.
“I’m good. I aced that physics test. No problem.”
“Oh, that’s good. All that studying paid off, of course.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Patty could hear voices cutting in and out with the wind, as her son walked somewhere on campus, or perhaps on his way to his job. She drove directly to her reason for calling.
“I’m worried about your grandma.”
“Oh, yeah. Is she sick or something?”
Patty could tell Danny had stopped and sheltered the phone to hear more clearly.
“She said something about telling your grandpa I called, when I just talked to her.”
Danny paused. “You think she’s gonna do a séance or something?” Danny said, trying to tame his mother’s obvious tension.
“Danny! That’s not funny,” Patty said, allowing the same scolding sizzle to fill her throat as when her son used to tease his sister, just two years younger than him. He never teased Katie, really, with nearly ten years between them.
“Sorry, Mom. Maybe she just forgot for a minute. Or maybe it was just a habit, what she’s used to saying.”
“He’s been dead for over four years,” Patty said.
Danny nodded silently, still feeling the rebuke for his tease.
Knowing that she hadn’t left her son much room with that last remonstration, Patty softened her approach. “It may not be a big deal, but I sure wish you could look in on her sometime soon.”
Danny hadn’t visited his grandma for a couple of months, New Year’s being the last time he saw her, and that was with the rest of the family. He had inherited his mother’s guilt gene, so the answer to her appeal was obvious.
“Okay, I think I can actually drive over there on Sunday. I’ll give her a call.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Patty said, with a sigh.
“You think she would mind if I brought Rachel?” Danny was thinking the trip would be a lot easier if he didn’t have to do it alone. Having Rachel there would make it less than half as hard to think of things to talk about.
“Oh, I’m sure your grandma would love to meet Rachel. She’s lonely, she’ll be happy for the company.”
“Okay. Yeah, I’ll call her about coming over on Sunday.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” Patty said, oblivious to any possibility that her hyperbole might annoy her eldest child.
“Okay, Mom. I gotta go into work now.”
“Sure. You go ahead. Thanks so much, Danny. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
When Gladys received a call, later that evening, from Danny, she connected it to her conversation with Danny’s mother before supper. What she didn’t realize, was the measure of anxiety that motivated Patty to urge her son to contact his grandma. By the time Danny called, Gladys had forgotten that feeling that she had said something wrong during the call from her daughter. She focused, instead, on the unmitigated joy of the promise of a visit.
Chapter 2
VISITING
Gladys shifted her wooden cane to her left hand and pulled the storm door open with her right. To save searching for the correct key, and wrestling with the sticky old lock, she had left the front door of her house unlocked. In Union City, Wisconsin, this was not nearly as risky as it would have been in Skokie, when she was a young mother, or in Chicago any day. The biggest risk for Gladys, as she saw it, was that one of her children would find out about this lazy habit.
In a particular hurry that Sunday,
just arriving home from church, Gladys ignored the memory of the scolding she received from her son, Bill, the time he found out she had left the house unlocked. All engines on full, anticipating the visit from her grandson and his girlfriend, Gladys blew past the residual guilt. Besides, the opinion that mattered the most on any given day was that of the person that she was actually going to see. She wanted to make everything perfect for Danny and his girl.
Muttering all of the girls names that started with “R,” as she turned slowly from the front door, Gladys struggled to remember the girlfriend’s name. “Rebecca, Rhonda, Roxanne, Rachel . . . yes, Rachel. That’s it. See, I haven’t lost all my marbles.” She leaned her cane against the wall next to the coat closet, twisted the brass knob and reached in to retrieve a wooden hanger of sufficient strength for her winter coat. Against the evidence offered by the crocuses, which persisted in their push toward sunshine, the temperature had stayed in the twenties all day. Gladys’s cheeks shown red, like the dash of color on a ripe peach.
She had begun preparations for Danny’s visit the night before. A French silk pie waited in the fridge. She had made it in spite of her shame over the last time she tried, when she somehow managed to get horseradish into the whipped cream topping. She imagined Danny approaching his favorite dessert more cautiously this year, but knew she had to get back on that bike, to overcome the scandal of the horseradish. This time, she also remembered to make the pie in a disposable aluminum dish, so Danny could more easily take the leftovers home with him at the end of the visit.
In addition to the pie, Gladys had made both tuna salad and egg salad, favorites of her grandchildren, at least the grandchildren that she knew. She imagined that Bethany also liked the way she made those tasty sandwich spreads. That was her son’s daughter, whom she had never met, due to a nasty divorce, and some other acrimony between Bill and his former wife. Gladys literally could not imagine what could so thoroughly rend a family and so completely disqualify her from seeing her own granddaughter, a girl of fourteen by now.
Hearing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 2) Page 1
