“Good Lord, George!” she exclaimed, “This time you’ve gone too far. I’m beginning to worry about you, dear.”
“You mean you don’t believe me, right?” he shot back. “Well, I just saw it in my drink. The image of Jesus was right there in one of the ice cubes, clear as crystal.” He stood up, moved towards her, and raised his voice, “And the only reason you didn’t see it was that it had melted by the time you looked at my drink.”
“George, maybe you should see someone. Maybe it’s the stress of the pandemic, or maybe old age, or maybe it’s something else. But you really should think about getting some help,” she pleaded.
“But, Thelma, what about the hotel in Vegas? I pointed it out to you right there on the bed, remember?” he implored.
“You mean the image of the Virgin Mary in the crumpled bed sheets, George? I looked and looked, but I never could see anything,” Thelma said, shrugging.
George sat down hard on his recliner, his hands gripping the chair’s arms. He stared straight ahead, a distant look in his eyes, as he muttered, “Sometimes I wonder what God’s up to, Thelma.”
Thelma chuckled as she sat down across the room on the sofa and replied, “My, George, for a hardcore unbeliever like you to invoke the name of God, there must be something going on with you, right?”
George said nothing and continued to stare while Thelma suddenly had an idea which she thought might work. “George, how about a little truce, huh? I’ll stop harping at you about these ‘visions’ if you stop telling me every time you see some holy image in the mash potatoes, okay?”
Reluctantly, George agreed as both of them sat back in their respective seats, George grabbing his evening paper and Thelma picking up her knitting. As he flipped on his table lamp and straightened out his newspaper, a shadow briefly appeared on the opposite wall.
‘It’s the crucifixion of Christ,’ George thought, ‘right there on my living room wall! But I promised not to say anything to Thelma about things like this, so I won’t.’ And without looking at Thelma, or letting on that anything had happened, he went back to reading his newspaper, his heart pounding in his chest.
Thelma saw it for just a split second, too, right before it disappeared. ‘No questions this time,’ she thought to herself, ‘it really was the crucifixion scene.’ She stole a quick look at George who had started to read his newspaper, and said to herself, ‘But I can’t say anything to George. He’ll just think I’m making fun of him and breaking our promise.’
She returned to her knitting, but her hands were shaking too hard to make any progress.
End