Blue Jesus

Abstract

Blue Jesus J. C. Dickey-Chasins (bio) Mrs. Betts scraped egg remnants from the frying pan and filled it with water. Mr. Betts hummed the theme from Camelot in the bathroom. She gazed out the window as she scrubbed, watching two cardinals flit through the canopy of the Siberian elm. In all my born days. The phrase hung in her mind, a talisman conjured up from the depths of memory. From where? What did it protect her from? She rinsed the pan and placed it in the dish drainer. Now Mr. Betts mixed in words from Oklahoma, mangling the melody as he went. Mrs. Betts had never cared for her husband's singing, humming, or whistling—he missed the notes by crucial half-steps, and his rhythm was irregular. She wiped her hands and stepped into the hallway to shush him. The sound stopped suddenly. There was a grunt and the dry, sliding sound of fabric against wall. Mr. Betts lay slumped against the bathtub, his head lolling as if he'd nodded off. His right hand gripped the tube of toothpaste, which had left a white, sticky trail from sink to floor. "Harry!" She shook him by the shoulders. His fingers loosened. The tube dropped to the floor. * * * His hospital room was 70 degrees, cool enough that Mrs. Betts sat with a blanket pulled tight around her shoulders and chest. She couldn't sleep the first night—just watched him doze under a plastic mask, the fluorescent light from the hallway tingeing his skin pale, making it look dead. Two tubes ran into his left arm, and six pads attached to wires dotted his chest. After the operation—after Dr. Arantha told her everything would be fine—she thought of all the reasons her husband would die: he had retired just a year ago; hospitals were poisonous; his father had died of a heart attack at 59; he had chain-smoked until he was 52; he refused to [End Page 5] exercise; he screamed at televised football games; he put Tabasco in his coffee. But the doctor's words pushed back: Every reason for recovery; Remarkable shape for a man his age; Good vitals. Mrs. Betts studied the backs of his hands, how the blue veins seemed to glow under translucent skin. Where were his thoughts now? Was he dreaming? Of what? Did he remember the thing he'd done to her? How separate they had become. He was an old man singing show tunes and watching the NFL. And she was just a busybody. A nobody. Mrs. Betts pulled away from the bed and settled in the corner, away from the physicalness of how they kept him alive. The nurses came every hour like nervous taps, glancing at her and asking how she was. Mrs. Betts fingered the silver and turquoise Jesus that hung around her neck. She closed her eyes. * * * The room was tacked on to her aunt's house, low-ceilinged and stifling in the Iowa summer. Great-Aunt Ethel laid covered in quilts and blankets, her monkey's head yellowed by years of smoking. Mrs. Betts had only been six, but she knew the woman was dying. She smelled it in the stench of urine rising from the linens and saw it in the milky corneas of Great-Aunt's eyes. Her mother pushed Mrs. Betts close to the bed. "Hold her hand!" her mother said. Mrs. Betts did so. Great-Aunt's palm felt like a cast-away snakeskin, soft and crinkly. Her fingers trapped the girl's hand. Mrs. Betts tried to pull away, but her mother wedged her tight against the bed. "Sarah?" Great-Aunt said. "Molly," Mrs. Betts said. "Molly." Great-Aunt's mouth gaped, displaying toothless gums. "The painter." Mrs. Betts nodded. She carried a reputation in the family for her watercolors of Great-Aunt's irises and daffodils. She'd begun as a finger-painter, then moved to a brush last year. Great-Aunt's lids dropped, as if she would drift again into sleep. "What do you want?" "To visit, Great-Aunt," Mrs. Betts said, unable to break loose of the old woman's grip. [End Page 6...