When I met Jesus I realised they never painted him right. Those awful eyes. Always either rolled up at the ceiling, or drifting down to you, as you stood below him on the floor. When I opened the door, I realised that Jesus was strictly on the level, eye to eye, and then a little bit more.
Some women do this when they really want something from you. They get this ability to click in. It's not a mad stare, it's just a docking of glances. Friends might do it, in an absentminded sort of way. But Jesus did it because he was god.
He was also quite short. I tend to compete with shorter men. And look up to taller ones. Well, you can tell it like a joke, but it is true.
So, he is short and we look at each other and everything is just fine. His breath, as he passes, is fresh and yeasty. The pores on his nose are large but sort of spent, the way an older person's pores are. Which is surprising because he is in his early thirties so he looks unbearably young to me.
Other people's ages are like the climates of other countries, I have decided. You can't believe it will be so cold, you can't believe it will be so hot. I looked at Jesus and couldn't believe that 33 could be that young, when I had grown up thinking it was a proper time to die.
His eyes are a honeyed brown with the pupils very small. I thought, he doesn't want to be touched. But you get that with eyelock. It's a way of keeping everything still, not just you, but the whole room.
I didn't like him, I decided. It was hard to put your finger on. It wasn't a "knowing" look, or even too "caring". He wasn't like the dying, who also see you in a special way. He just . . . he just . . . I just couldn't warm to him.
I thought about my life, all right. I thought about all the things I should want to ask him. But I don't like men who cross their legs. They lean back and cross their legs, and I think "Here we go . . ." It's always something small, and considered and picky. Something womanish.
He said "Lovely day." "Who for?" I wanted to say. "For you? For me? For the dog in the street?" But then I realised he was talking about the weather. "Yes, lovely," I said.
His fingers were small and very pliable. He wrapped them around the point of his knee and rocked back to look at the ceiling. Then he looked over the knee at me and did the eye thing again.
I had nothing in the house. Or next to nothing. There was tea, and a bottle of wine we had been saving for sometime special. But not a biscuit, not a cracker, or a bit of cheese. He said tea would be lovely, thanks.
So, I tell him about my two children, in and out of the kitchen as I make the tea. They are what I usually talk about, of course. But now I feel obliged to talk about them, if you know what I mean. I handed him the cup and thought "So, who are you?"
He took a sip, then left it down on the carpet and got up to walk around the room. I can't tell you how irritating I found this. The way he tapped one hand with the other behind his back, while he looked at the pictures on my walls, and his tea going cold. They aren't very interesting pictures. They are probably terrible. I tried to keep things light. I said "I remember this little girl at mass once saying, `Mammy, why is Jesus wearing a nappy?' " He laughed.
Then he turned to me and asked was there anything I might want. But you know, I want nothing. I'm careful that way. "Not at the moment," I said.
"I see."
"Thanks."
"And thank you," he said. "For the tea."
He looked a little sad. But there really is nothing that I want, in the way of things. I buried a husband 12 years ago and I don't want to lose the one I have now. I suppose I could have asked for that. But on some level, you know, I don't even mind.
I picked up his cup from the floor and held it out to him. I said, "Those pictures. They're just because there's spaces on the wall.
"They're lovely," he said.
But he was wrong. And it left a taste in the air.
I'm sure he was just as disappointed in me. Maybe I should have asked something for the kids, for their happiness, even. But I love them too much. I don't think you should make bargains like that. Especially when there's no guarantee.
He finished the tea and looked for somewhere to leave the cup; ended up balancing it on the radiator beside the door. And I felt sorry for him then. I should have gone over to him and touched him on the arm. But somedays I have too much love and I don't know what to do with it. I feel I could have 10 more children and love them all. I fall in love in the street, not just with the cute black child or the young woman with one short leg. I fall in love with anyone, almost anyone at all.
It may be over tea in the canteen. We have a frightful canteen, but sometimes in the canteen. Or not even drunk at some office party. I love, I fall in love, terribly with someone who seems lovely to me, who is lovely. I am wrecked by a sweetness in them, a smile when they will not look at you, or a little helpful social laugh. And I don't know where to put it, this love.
It could be a man, or a child, or any kind of woman. Or they could be a stranger, or your boss almost. Or someone you could never talk to, even if you both really made the effort. They might not have any place to put it, this love, it might even hurt them; their pockets might be already full. But I still have it, I'm hauling it around with me, like a suddenly inflated blow-up doll sitting in my lap and saying, Oh.
I get too awkward and my voice is too loud, and I walk home with my hand on my breast, or just over it, the flat place under your throat that has no name. And my feet hitting the pavement. Saying where will I put this, how will I shape it, where will I leave it down?
Of course, it makes you hate them a little too. So, although I want to touch him as he puts the cup on the radiator, I don't. I stand just where I am. He turns to smile goodbye and it would be nice, I know that. But I am filling up, I can sense it, I am about to fall in love with Jesus now. And it annoys me the heck out of me. As it always does.
I pass him in the hall and open the door and, as he walks through, I put my hand between his shoulder blades. Like he was a child. Five feet five, I would say: maybe five six, no more. His body under the cloth was, you know, small and fierce. There was nothing dead about him. For some reason I was reminded of Mickey Rooney in that film, Boys' Town.
I said goodbye to him and nodded to the man at the gate. The sun made me squint, so maybe it looked like a smile. But he tilted his hat at me, as I sent Jesus back out to him and closed the door.