Finding Jesus
31 March 2007 | Gerry | Stories
Jon dried his palms on his pants. Like dragging on a cigarette—the habit was gone, but the similes remained—it gave him something to do while he thought of something to say, without the lingering smell. So he just sat there, rubbing his pants as if a genie would appear and grant him a few much-needed wishes.
His mother, Ingrid, always impatient, said, “What is this all about, Jonathan? You gonna sit there all day rubbing yourself? You’re not a teenager and this isn’t the bathroom. What’s going on? We haven’t all been in the same room together on purpose since we thought your cousin Cindy had thyroid cancer. Remember, Auggie? When Cindy got fat and we thought she had cancer?”
“Only you thought she had cancer,” Auggie said. “You don’t get fat when you have cancer, Ingrid. You lose your hair.”
“My husband, the cancer doctor.” Ingrid’s lips disappeared in what passed for her smile. “So why am I missing General Hospital, Jonathan?”
“I have something important to tell you.” He looked at each of them—his mom, dad, and two brothers—in turn, locking eyes long enough to mark the importance of what he was about to say but not long enough to cause anyone to feel uncomfortable. “I want to tell you all that…that I’ve been born again.”
Ingrid clucked. “As if the first time wasn’t painful enough for me.”
“I’m serious, Ma.”
“So am I.”
Auggie rested two fingertips across his pursed lips, as if readying a kiss for a child’s scraped knee. “What does that mean, exactly? ’Born again’? I mean what does that mean?”
“It means I’ve found Jesus.”
Stuart, Jonathan’s older brother, laughed. “I didn’t know he was missing.”
“Yeah, I saw his picture on milk carton,” said Chick, Jonathan’s younger brother. “Have you seen this savior? Please call the Center for Missing and Exploited Dieties.”
“Boys,” Auggie said. It was his trademark toothless rebuke.
“I hoped you would support me.”
“Well what do you need Jesus for, anyway?” Ingrid scowled. “Why can’t you be a nice Catholic like the rest of us and leave this Jesus crap alone?”
“You said the same thing to him when he wanted to try out for that musical in high school,” Auggie said.
“Jesus was in a musical?” Stuart said.
“I mean that she”—Auggie thumbed at Ingrid—“didn’t want him to do that either.”
“Yeah, and remember the florist thing in college?” Chick said. “And what about the interior design thing he wanted to do?”
“Mom,” Stuart said for the men, “why don’t you just let him be?”
“Yeah,” Auggie said toothlessly.
“Ma, I can see your upset,” Jon said.
“Jonathan, I’m your mother. I’m not upset, I’m disappointed.”
“All right, I’m leaving.”
Jonathan closed the front door on the argument inside, walked around the corner, and got into the passenger side of an idling Mini Cooper.
“So, did you tell them?”
“I did. In a way I did.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I told them I came to Jesus.”
“More like came on Jesús,” Jesús said.
Jon leaned over the kiss him. “So I dropped the accent. Believe me, they’ll be so happy I’m not some evangelical nut job they won’t care about us. Let’s just drive. OK?”