“Should I drink a sports drink?”
“If you want to waste your money,” the doctor said, then reached into his pocket for a pad of paper and wrote out a simple recipe for a drink.
“It looks disgusting,” John said as he read the ingredients.
“It is,” the doctor agreed. “Or you can drink Gatorade, which is a little less disgusting. But rest, drink a lot, and you might need to stay home from work tomorrow. If you get a headache or have any problems with your vision, call me. My number’s on that slip of paper.”
The curtain pulled back just then and the nurse whispered to the doctor.
“You have a visitor,” the doctor said, and as he stepped out of the little room Jillian came in. He realized he hadn’t yet explained to his mother that he and Jillian weren’t dating any more. He’d been avoiding the topic every time they spoke.
“Sorry to drag you out here,” he said with a weak, apologetic smile. “I’m okay. Just dehydrated.”
“I met some big truck driver out in the lobby,” she said. “He almost ran you over in his driveway. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “Can you wait a minute to berate me? I have to call my mother.”
Jillian sat in the chair and listened as John explained the whole thing to Liz. It was clear that she doubted the story, and John had to assure her several times that he wasn’t drunk or high and that he was going to be okay. It was a long and weary call for John, but eventually he calmed her down enough that he could make excuses and get off the phone.
After he hung up he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
“Your turn,” he said.
“No, I think I heard enough,” Jillian said. “I can drive you home when the nurse says you’re ready.”
* * *
John’s boss was concerned for John’s health when he called in for a second day of sick leave. John gave a brief account of his jogging catastrophe and that was too much for Hank.
“Take the rest of the week,” Hank said in a voice that didn’t allow for dissent. “God knows you’ve earned it. There’s nothing much going on right now, and ... quite honestly, John, it sounds like you’re stressed or something, which is damned weird for you. You’re my rock of Gibraltar, and I need you back at full strength. Get some rest. Go to the museum or spend the day at the zoo. Come back on Monday, and take care of yourself.”
He heaved a sigh of frustration as he hung up the phone. So much for his reputation in the office. Now he was a mortal like the rest of them.
A few minutes later he had three eggs in a pot and an English muffin at the ready in the toaster. He set the table for a leisurely breakfast, complete with the newspaper, butter and marmalade, kippers, and a large pot of coffee.
Mid-way through his second soft-boiled egg, the doorbell rang. It was Jillian.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, allowing her to come in. It was a brisk morning.
“Can I just be your friend today?” she asked, her eyes misting up. “Do you think you can set aside all the crazy stuff from the past few months – just for today? I’m worried about you.”
He could have marshaled enough energy for a fight. Or at least for telling her off and sending her away. The anger still played at the edges of his mind, and he wanted to latch onto it. He felt it was the only strength he had right at that moment.
But he felt like such a fool. It was as if something deep inside was coming undone, and he felt his own eyes starting to tear up. He didn’t want Jillian to see that, so he hugged her, then invited her to the table while he went to the kitchen and dropped another muffin in the toaster. He was back in control when he returned with a table setting for her.
She didn’t know how to eat a soft-boiled egg, so John had to help her with that. It felt so easy and comfortable to be near her, to touch her hand, to speak to her quietly, and to let go of his anger. At least for a little while.
As they cleaned up after breakfast, Jillian recommended a walk in Greenbelt Park. John had dressed for work after his shower, and it was only after a sudden dizzy spell that he called in sick. He thought a walk in the park might be nice, so he went into the back room to change into jeans and boots while Jillian fussed around in the kitchen.
Jillian had come prepared. She had packed a small backpack with sandwiches, fruit, water and juice.
They chatted about small things on the drive to the park, then studied the trails on the sign at the Sweetgum picnic area and picked a route. Jillian insisted that they walk slowly and that John keep a drink in his hands. Normally he would resist this kind of babying, but he was a chastened man. It was more than just the jogging incident.
“Jillian, is there a tarot card about an eye?” he asked after they’d gone about a half mile.
“I’ve never seen one like that,” she said. “There are lots of different cards people use. There’s a typical deck, but not a standard deck, if you know what I mean. Why?”
“Just curious,” he said in a completely unconvincing voice. They walked on for a while without speaking.
“I went to church this past Sunday,” she said after a moment to break the awkward silence.
“Did you like it?” he asked, trying not to laugh.
“More than I expected,” she admitted.
“So explain this whole card thing to me,” John said. He wanted to believe she wasn’t a nut, but he was having a hard time reconciling “lives by the tarot card” and “not a fruitcake.”
Jillian was quiet for a while, gathering her thoughts. They were walking next to a little creek, and John stopped to sit on a log. He opened Jillian’s backpack and took a long sip of the apple cider she’d packed.
“Do you know what Jungian archetypes are?” she asked, and John nodded. “Well, imagine for a moment that you could explain most of human behavior by the interaction between a collection of archetypes. Not unlike all that Myers-Briggs stuff, I suppose. Just way more complicated.”
“So instead of being an INTJ, you’d be a seven of cups and a Magician?” John asked, trying not to laugh.
“No, it’s not so much that you are those things. It’s that those are the kinds of influences that affect your life.”
“And pulling a card out of a deck does what? Does it put a spell on people or something?” John asked, confused.
Jillian looked at him with a bewildered expression for a moment, and then her eyes lit up and she laughed.
“Oh,” she said. “You have it backwards. Drawing the card doesn’t cause anything. That would be very silly,” she said with a concerned expression, as if to wonder how stupid John thought she was. “The cards are more of a barometer. They don’t cause anything, they just read the forces that are at work in the world.”
John nodded and thought for a moment while he tossed some pebbles into the creek.
“So there are these forces out there affecting all of us,” he said, trying to understand, “and the cards are supposed to represent those forces. And just as the forces affect our lives, they affect the cards. So by reading the cards you’re essentially reading the way the archetypal winds are blowing at the moment.”
“Something like that,” Jillian smiled. “But you’re trying to make it all logical, with causes and effects and all that stuff. It’s not supposed to be that way. It’s supposed to be more intuitive.”
“I don’t know what that means,” John said. “And what do you mean ‘supposed to be’? Haven’t you been doing this stuff for a long time?”
“I was for a while. I tried, anyway, but it wasn’t really my thing,” she said, and John read between the lines. It was Sean’s thing. “And ... it was so wrong, the way I treated you. Ever since then I’ve been thinking that if I can read things that badly, who am I kidding?”
John got up from the log as if to start down the path again.
“I am so very sorry, John,” she said.
John just looked down at the path for a moment, then slowly started to walk. Jillian
walked quietly at his side.
“Why were you asking about the eye?” Jillian prodded after a while, but John remained silent.
“I can tell it’s bothering you,” she said. “C’mon, John. We’ve discussed my silly, irrational beliefs. Can’t you let your guard down for a minute and tell me what’s going on with you?”
“It’s nothing all that important,” he said. “It’s just that I’m losing my mind.”
Over the past couple weeks, he explained, three themes had been playing through his thoughts, and weaving themselves into his dreams. First, the idea of a “necessary being,” or a First Cause, that upheld the universe from moment to moment. Second, the concept of a perfect, unwavering, unforgiving moral standard. And third, the all-seeing eye that watched his every movement and scrutinized his very thoughts. The three of them had been pressing on him, chasing him down, giving him no escape, even in his sleep.
“But they’re just ideas, right?” Jillian asked after John had explained it all for a few minutes.
“Yes, they’re ideas,” he admitted. “But I’m in a little deeper than that. I’m actually seeing this eye.”
He stopped and looked at her seriously. “And it’s all your fault.”
“Me?” she said, astonished. “What did I do?”
“Well,” John said a little less confrontationally, and turning to walk down the path so he didn’t have to face her. “You or Sean, anyway. He told me that all your tarot stuff was going to open a door in my mind, and that it would change me.”
“You’ve definitely changed,” Jillian agreed. “The John I first met would have brushed all this aside like so much nonsense and forgotten all about it. Don’t you think you’re getting a little obsessive about this?”
“It’s hard to just chill and not think about it when you see an eye in the bottom of your coffee cup.”
“What?” Jillian said in alarm. “Are you serious?”
John started with an explanation of his dreams, and how they’d grown in intensity ever since the night he met her. And then he explained how the dreams had moved into his waking hours, and he described the vision he had in the liquor store of the little pagan boy. Jillian put a hand to her stomach as he described the boy.
“It hasn’t stopped,” he said. “And I’ve grown .... I don’t know how to say it. Morally careless, I guess. I’ve been doing things I never would have done before. And all the while, this eye is constantly watching, judging and disapproving. I can’t escape it.”
“So you see, Jillian,” he said, turning and taking both her hands in his. “Even if I could forgive you and forget the past. Even if I could get past your weird pagan ideas, and even if we could find some happy medium between my skepticism and your belief, it can’t work out because I’m going insane.”
As John looked into Jillian’s eyes it was as if something melted in that very moment. Until then, there was a reserve, or a hardness to her gaze. She had been angry at him, despite her best efforts to come alongside and be a friend. Now it was as if all the anger had vanished away, and he felt for the first time in many weeks that he might be able to forgive her after all.
“You’re not the only man who’s been tormented by God,” Jillian said with a crooked smile. “He’s not always a nice fellow, you know.”
“Who says it’s God?” John asked, some of his inner skeptic reasserting itself. “I’m just losing my mind.”
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe that’s the choice you have to make. You can see all these things as the random craziness of life, and you can cling to your skepticism as you slide into insanity. Or you can see a higher purpose in it and believe that God is calling you out of yourself.”
“He’s not calling me anywhere,” John complained. “If this is God, he’s just a vindictive, nasty, bully who wants me to cower in fear. I won’t do it. I’ve defied him before and I’ll do it again.”
“John,” Jillian said with a laugh. “You’re talking nonsense. Come,” she said, letting go with one hand and taking the other in a firm grasp. “Just walk with me for a bit. No more talking until we get back to the car, okay?”
“I won’t be treated that way,” John said, pulling away from her. He turned and walked back towards the car in the other direction. Jillian just stood in the path and looked after him.
“Please wait,” she called out after a moment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t treat you like a child.” She ran up the trail to catch him and walked beside him in silence.
“Which church did you go to?” he asked after they’d walked a half mile.
“Episcopal,” she said. “It was nice.”
“Let’s go together this Sunday,” he said.
“I’d like that,” she replied.
John took her hand and they walked in silence back to his car.
* * *
They were inseparable the next three days, although Jillian went home each night. There was no physical affection between them beyond the occasional touch on the arm, or holding hands.
Jillian helped John rearrange things in his attic, and John helped Jillian with the leaves and sticks in her back yard. They cooked some of their meals, and ate out other times. As long as Jillian was near, the eye didn’t seem to bother John, but nights were a different story. His dreams were becoming more fantastical, and he was waking up several times each night in a cold sweat.
He didn’t tell Jillian about that.
Saturday afternoon they watched college football, and Saturday night John took Jillian to the Ram’s Head. But they stayed upstairs and lingered over dinner. John associated the basement with things he didn’t want to think about, and he ignored the hostess when she tried to get his attention.
They rented a movie and watched it in John’s den. Jillian snuggled up next to him as they shared a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of chardonnay.
When Jillian left for the night, John started to get ready for bed, but feared he would have another string of nightmares. He opted instead for a night in his easy chair, in front of the TV, with enough bourbon to quiet the monsters.
* * *
The bourbon didn’t keep the dreams away. When he awoke in a sweat the next morning at five o’clock, he could only remember one dream, but he felt as if he’d been having it all night.
He was in his chair in his living room, too drunk to move. The women he had been seeing the last few weeks came into the room, one by one, and tied him to the chair. All the while the house was slowly filling with water, and the eye watched him from the TV set.
John drank a tall glass of alka seltzer and took a long shower, then at first light he went for a quick jog to try to flush the poison out of his system. After a second shower he started to feel human again, but there were still a couple hours before he had to pick up Jillian for church, so he went down the road to Dunkin Donuts and lingered as long as he could stand over a newspaper and a bear claw.
He arrived early at Jillian’s house and had a third cup of coffee while she finished getting ready.
The service was well attended, and John was pleased to see that most of the parishioners were in nice clothes. He was wearing a gray flannel suit, and Jillian was in a modest tea-length dress.
Having been raised Catholic he was familiar with the basic form of the liturgy, but when they said the Penitential rite John’s eyes were glued to the page
Almighty and most merciful father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
we have followed too much the devices and desires of our
own hearts,
we have offended against thy holy laws,
we have left undone those things which we ought to
have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to
have done.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent,
according to thy promises declare
d unto mankind
in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
After the congregation recited this, the priest said.
The Almighty and merciful Lord grant you absolution and
remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of
life, and the grace and consolation of his Holy Spirit. Amen.
John sat and held the book in his hands, then stared at those words for the rest of the service, paying no attention to the hymns or the prayers or the sermon.
* * *
Three weeks later, John and Jillian were sitting on the couch in Liz’s living room, sipping at egg nog and admiring the Christmas tree, while Liz was bustling about trying to put the finishing touches on the dinner table. John’s young nephew was on the carpet, playing with his new wooden train set. Everyone else was outside on the deck, watching while John’s brother Paul tried to get the turkey out of the smoker.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” John asked, taking Jillian’s hand.
She smiled and nodded.
When everyone was seated and the food was served, Liz asked Paul if he would say grace.
“If you don’t mind,” John said, standing up. “I’d like the floor for just a moment.” He looked at his mom and almost started laughing. Her look of hopeful, scared expectation was too much.
“Jillian has agreed to be my wife,” he said, to the delight of everyone at the table. After everyone quieted down from “hear hear,” and raised glasses and various murmurings of approval, he added, “We’ll be married sooner than you think, for reasons you can probably guess. And while I know that our devout Roman Catholic mother will be shocked at the news, we’ll be getting married in the Episcopal Church.”
Liz’s carefully scripted dinner plans were completely out the window at this point as everyone had to get up and give Jillian a hug and welcome her to the family. The women gave her a knowing wink and patted her on the belly, which seemed odd to John because women should know better.
The Five Lives of John and Jillian Page 11
