Gladys threw her head back as far as it went and cackled a big laugh, her right hand flying up to her forehead and resting there when her head came back down with the waterfall of mirth. “Oh, yes. Oh, that was so funny. And I knew I couldn’t laugh at him then. I knew it would keep him from ever cleaning anything again, if I let out a laugh just then.”
Jesus collected the orange juice glasses but clearly was more focused on the scene from forty years back. “Yep. I let you see that right away and you listened well. You know wisdom when you hear it.”
She scowled at Jesus, still buoyed by the humor of the memory. “You’re taking credit for that bit of motherly insight, are you?” Gladys said, skepticism salting her words.
Walking to the sink, but keeping his eyes on Gladys, Jesus said, “Oh, we both get the credit. You were a wise mother, because you knew well enough to listen to my advice along the way, most of the time.”
“Most of the time?” Gladys was becoming intrigued by this rewriting of her history, losing a little of her skepticism the more she listened.
“Well, you completely ignored me when I told you not to trust that Conners girl to babysit.”
A moment of hesitation awaited access to that memory, then Gladys could see the young lady pulling her blouse back on as quick as she could, when they came home from the movie early, Harry suffering one of his bad headaches. They only heard the footsteps of whatever boy had been there with her as he sprinted out the back door of their house in Skokie.
“Oh, her,” Gladys said, sobering a little. “That one confused me for a second, until I realized she had a boy there with her. I was pretty shocked . . .” Gladys had never aired the fear of what might have happened to the children while their babysitter was preoccupied. “The kids were both just asleep,” she said, “really asleep. I double-checked. They could never fool me on that.”
Jesus came back to the table, this time standing next to Gladys and placing an arm gently around her, resting his hand on her opposite shoulder. “Nothing happened to them, and you can let that one go now,” Jesus said.
Looking up at him, as if startled, Gladys waited before responding, another of those detour signs slowing her mouth. And, in that half beat of hesitation, she felt something lift off her.
“You multiplied that little fear into a bunch of others, over time,” Jesus said, his voice hovering over her like the narrator of a public television documentary.
Gladys knew it was true. She sighed deeply and allowed a sleepy peace to massage her mind. “Thank you,” she said.
For over an hour, Gladys and Jesus sat at the table, and then in the living room, talking about old times and comparing notes. Gladys bumped up against the knowledge that she would have to throw away some of her historical records after Jesus showed his. At times, she felt as if she had missed sections of her own life, by not seeing what was really happening around and inside her. Nevertheless, Jesus kept the conversation moving, whenever she would stop to look a regret full in the face for more than a second or two.
What that left her, instead of regret, was a sense of relief, a sense that she was not responsible for nearly as much of her past as she had assumed, and a sense that her present and future were also beyond her control and could not be blamed on her by anyone, not Patty, not her deceased mother. That was a big relief.
Chapter 6
SHOPPING
Before her unexpected visitor, Gladys had planned on some grocery shopping. She had kept very little of the leftovers from Danny’s visit, and needed some essentials for herself. After a light lunch, which Jesus shared with her at her insistence, she had to decide whether to go ahead with life as usual.
“I can walk next to you or I can be invisible as you go, waiting to reappear back here when you return,” Jesus said, before she even verbalized the question.
Gladys pushed back at the idea of limiting this manifestation of the one who had mostly convinced her that he was indeed Jesus, and she did so in spite of her fear of what would happen if she started talking to him in the grocery store. “They’ll think I’m a bag lady,” she said aloud.
Jesus cleared his throat. “I believe the term is ‘homeless person’ these days,” he said with tight lips that seemed to be hiding one of those grins.
“Uhuh,” Gladys said. “And that’s what I’ll be, only they’ll find me a home, one with locks on the doors and arts and crafts at ten a.m.”
“What’s wrong with arts and crafts?” Jesus said.
“I got nothin’ against macaroni art,” Gladys said, wiping her hands on the dishtowel and then threading it carefully through the oven handle where it usually hung. “But I like my freedom.”
“I’ll show you a trick,” Jesus said. First he laughed at the sour lemon twist this put into Gladys’s face, as she tried to picture what his trick might be. “I’m not talking about pulling a rabbit out of my hat,” Jesus said, without moving his lips. At least, that’s how it seemed to Gladys.
“You’re inside my head,” she said, in both wonder and protest.
“Yes, and a wonderful place it is for me,” he said, a small sigh of satisfaction finishing the thought. That time, it seemed to Gladys that she not only heard the words, but she also felt a pulse of emotions that didn’t seem to come from her alone.
“And what do you call that thing, that tickly sort of happy-sad thing?” She finished with a half grin up the right side of her face and one eyebrow raised. Though she usually had something to say, she seldom felt the need to describe her feelings, whether they originated simply with her or were communicated to her from this Jesus ghost.
The tilt of Jesus’s head and warm smile that encompassed his eyes and mouth embraced her effort before he began the next phase of her training. “If the first one was me inside your head, I guess you could call the second one me being inside your heart, as well, though, strictly speaking, it all comes from your head, both thoughts and emotions.”
Gladys had to page back through the documentary series on the brain that she once watched, to recall what Jesus was talking about, and thought it odd for the man in First Century garb. She paused to wonder whether his mother made him that robe. It looked homemade.
“I’m as modern as you are,” he said, this time with his lips moving and sound waves exciting the air around them. His voice seemed to reverberate and grow and return with new intensity, as if bouncing off the walls.
Gladys touched one of her ears in response to the slight flutter that itched her fine hairs growing there. “What was that?”
“That was the way Mrs. Harris hears things when her hearing aid is acting up,” he said.
Though it struck her first as an odd trick, a second thought realized that she often showed little patience for the older woman in her Bible study group, who wore hearing aids from ten years ago, because she couldn’t afford to replace them with more modern technology. All she said to Jesus just now, however, was, “Oh.”
Gladys took a deep breath and headed for her closet and her coat. The temperature in the forties by noon, she could transition to her spring coat, for a change. Gladys welcomed the chance to leave the bulky winter coat, with its dusting of salt acquired from brushing against her car. It was about time to wash that coat, that is, as soon as she was sure that winter had no encore in mind.
As she struggled into her tan pseudo trench coat with a fuzzy lining and a feminine cut, Jesus gave her a hand. She continued to ask questions.
“So you’ll come with me, but you’ll just talk to me in my head, and I’m gonna talk back to you in the same way,” she said, sorting what she had just experienced.
“Exactly,” he said, aloud. “I think that will make it easier for you to remember not to address me out loud when we’re out in public. Not that I mind you doing that, but you know others will feel strange about it.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to care what others think,” she said, as she tugged her brown wool cap over her head and reached for her cane by the door.
Jesus picked up her purse from the dining room table and handed it to her, pulling the door open for her. “Well, it’s not that you’re not supposed to care at all, it’s just that you shouldn’t let it push you around. Sometimes you consider what others think for their sake and not your own, and that’s okay, up to a point.”
“I don’t suppose you’re gonna tell me where that exact point is,” she said. Gladys held her cane in one hand and the black painted railing on the porch in her other, her purse swinging from her left shoulder and bumping into the railing. She had become accustomed to moving slowly, and to ignoring the awkwardness of her physical limitations.
Jesus, of course, walked patiently beside her, not offering to help carry her purse, given the odd visual that would cause for the neighbors. He was practicing what he had just been preaching, as they walked to the car. When Gladys wasn’t looking, Jesus even slipped right through the passenger door, without opening it. She didn’t notice.
Unlike some of her passengers, especially relatives, Jesus didn’t criticize—or even wince at—Gladys’s slow driving style, which included giving the curb a very wide berth, such that her tires often touched the center line, wherever there was one in that small town.
Union City had grown up as a farming hub a hundred and fifty years ago. It had sprouted and flourished as the place of commerce and social connection for hundreds of family farms and the industry needed to support those farms. The cabbage processing plant was still the most prominent remnant of that past, its bouquet dominating many summer nights for miles around. Gladys and Harry had often breathed a grateful word that they lived north of the cabbage plant and not to the south or east of it, the direction of the prevailing winds. But when the wind was out of the south, as on occasional sultry summer days, their house smelled as if the neighbors had just sold out to a pig farm, or so Harry used to claim in some fairly crude terms.
As corporate farms replaced family farms, beginning in the 1980s, some families moved into town, but most moved away, if they weren’t hired on to work for the new landowners. This served to settle the population into a trench that sank until after the recession of 2007. In recent years, as some industries began to recover, Union City had attracted some folks who work from their homes and others that don’t mind a commute to Kenosha or Racine, or even the corporate headquarters in suburbs north of Chicago, or west and south of Milwaukee.
Up until their retirement, and then after Harry’s death, these changes affected Gladys little, and not in any way that she could see. Harry’s sales job, for a food manufacturer based just twenty minutes away, didn’t change before he retired at age sixty-eight, and they had made no plans to sell their house or move since. They liked the quiet little town. Harry had his buddies to watch sports with, or have a beer with, and Gladys liked her growing Bible church and the friends she had made there. When Patty and Derek, and their family, moved up to Naperville, that cemented Gladys and Harry’s plans to stay put. In January, Florida did look pretty good, but that was a pleasure for other people, as far as they were concerned. A drive down to the Chicago suburbs was traveling adventure enough for two people happy with the slow lane.
Harry experienced his retirement as one continuous sigh of relief. He didn’t have to convince anyone to buy anything ever again. At the same time, Gladys had always been the creative homebody, who made the most of every dollar and kept the house together, both socially and physically. She was even handier with a hammer and nails than Harry was, though he wouldn’t have ever admitted that.
When Gladys swung her old Chevy Malibu into the grocery store parking lot, less than a mile from her little house, Jesus sat in the passenger seat next to her, looking out the window, but watching her as well. Lacking the vigilance of others who had ridden with her in recent years, Jesus seemed to be free to absorb everything they saw inside and outside the car. His eyes cast in her direction made Gladys uncomfortable, at first, but when she saw the peaceful, approving look on his face, she started to enjoy it.
As they eased into a parking spot with empty spaces on both sides, Gladys said, “You know, with that silly grin on your face all the time, I think my family would think that you’re the crazy one.”
Jesus guffawed, restraining his volume in deference to the tight confines of the mid-sized car, but otherwise holding little back from his appreciation of Gladys’s playful tease. He sobered just a little, and said, “Well, Gladdy, by the time we’re done with our special time together, you’ll have this same look on your face.”
The car fully at a stop, Gladys looked at him under the rolled edge of her wool cap, trying to guess if he was serious. He just looked back at her with that grin that she had teased him about. She shook her head and popped her door open, grabbing her cane just before she swung her legs out. Jesus checked around and then pulled his own door handle, jumping out and closing it before anyone noticed the invisible passenger leaving the vehicle. Gladys missed this performance that first time.
In the store, Gladys welcomed the shopping cart to prop her, as she strolled through the aisles, her cane hooked to one corner and arranged diagonally along one side of the cart, her purse in the child seat. She leaned her forearms on the handle and looked at her list. Jesus offered some help.
“I know what’s on your list, so you can put that down and I’ll just remind you as we get to each aisle,” he said.
Gladys, who had removed her cap and stuffed it in the top of her purse, nodded her hat hair at him, and said, “That would be a big help. Did you look at the list before we left home?”
Jesus smiled, watching other shoppers pass by, “No, Dear, I just know things.” As before, he communicated this without moving his lips. When Gladys noticed this, she realized that she had spoken aloud just a moment before. She turned her old neck as far as she could, to see who might have heard her speaking to thin air.
Jesus assured her. “Don’t worry. Nobody noticed.”
To settle into her strange new reality, Gladys focused on gathering groceries, as Jesus recited the next item on the list, in the same order as the store aisles. She had arranged her list this way, as always, and Jesus only had to edit one item to prompt her at the correct end of a particular aisle. Gladys didn’t notice the added assistance. The efficiency of this arrangement made her feel spoiled, like she could get used to these timely prompts along her slow stroll through the store.
In the produce section, Gladys noticed Valerie Wilson looking over the bananas. Normally, Gladys would have rolled her cart over that way and started a friendly conversation with a woman from church whom she had known for about twelve years. But Jesus’s presence next to the cart eliminated this option, on first consideration. On the other hand, she wasn’t about to skitter off to another section of the store in order to avoid Valerie. The compromise was to just do her shopping and act as if she didn’t notice Valerie, only speaking to her if spoken to. As soon as Gladys resolved her dilemma this way, Valerie looked up and saw her.
“It’s okay,” Jesus said. “I’ll behave myself.”
Gladys glanced at him but straightened her gaze back to Valerie in quick correction. The two women smiled at each other and Valerie waved a gloved hand at Gladys. Gladys just nodded, careful to keep both hands on the cart, maintaining her balance and minimizing her pain from walking. Valerie, an active woman in the church since she and her husband had moved to Union City, knew all about Gladys’s physical limitations. About sixty years old, now, Valerie had a few pains of her own, especially arthritic hands. This was one reason she kept her maroon leather gloves on. Her hands always felt better when they were warm.
“How are you doing, Gladys?” Valerie said, pulling her cart next to Gladys’s, facing the opposite way, like two police cars passing time in a parking lot.
“Oh, I’m fair to middlin’ as usual,” Gladys said. “How about yourself?”
“Oh, I can’t complain. The warm weather will certainly be welcomed, that is as soon as it finally gets here
.” Valerie laughed a bit awkwardly, her round, jowly face lighting with a patient smile.
Gladys actually struggled with an urge to introduce Valerie to Jesus, but reading her thoughts, Jesus reminded her.
“She can’t see me, so you probably shouldn’t do that,” he said, speaking directly into her slightly befuddled brain.
After an awkward hesitation, Gladys tried to recover. “Well, I did see the crocuses coming up in my garden the other day.”
Valerie nodded in long sweeps up and down. “That is a good sign.”
Gladys caught Jesus staring at Valerie’s gloves while the women talked. He directed her attention back to the other mortal present, but not soon enough. Valerie interpreted that wayward glace as Gladys being anxious to get on with her shopping, so she extricated herself from the conversation.
“Oh, well, I won’t keep you. So good to see you, Gladys. Have a nice day.”
Gladys nodded, faked a smile and said her goodbye. But, as soon as Valerie was out of ear shot, she addressed Jesus in a hushed tone, with little lip movement, like a bad ventriloquist.
“Why were you staring at her gloves?”
Jesus snickered, and answered in a similar whisper. “Not her gloves, her hands. I was looking at the arthritis in her hands, thinking how I would like to heal that.”
Gladys looked at the tomatoes and continued speaking in a low voice. “Well, if you would like to, why don’t you?”
Very little thought went into that question. Gladys was simply connecting two things, Jesus’s stated desire and Valerie’s proximity. She added no theological sophistication to the connection. She was more deeply concerned with the condition of available tomatoes in Wisconsin toward the end of winter.
Jesus answered, nonetheless. “I don’t usually heal that way. Remember, as far as other people are concerned, I’m not really here. I count on my people to do that kind of thing for us now.”
Hearing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 2) Page 5
