HELPLESS

The roses were blooming, all at once, on both sides of the sidewalk: red, yellow, pink. It was too much, the profusion. Jessica closed her eyes. She would feel her way home

under the sun, she decided, guided by the trees; follow the cool shady spots like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs. She took a few steps, shuffling so she wouldn’t trip. Then she opened her eyes and ran the rest of the way to the door of her brown stuccoed cottage, put the key in the lock, opened the door, strode to the tiny breakfast nook, and stared across the painted wood table at the wall. The blankness felt right. Not right, nothing felt right. Correct.

She needed to talk to someone. Everyone she knew had heard plenty about her sister and her cancer, and Jessica’s brain was as empty as a haunted house when she groped for some other subject. Her friends were kind, but they kept on talking, new shows on Netflix, amazing Burmese place, trip to Italy, then Trump Trump Trump. That’s when she had to excuse herself. She was up to here with malignancy.

“God,” she said. “I need help.”

She jumped at His voice.

“Help? Really?”

“Um, yeah? That’s You?”

“None other.” As she would expect, He had a deep, mellifluous voice.

“Well then, You know, right, my sister has Stage 4 ovarian cancer?”

“In the sense that I know everything, yes.”

“Okay. Monica. Monica Claren. Remember?” God. Shouldn’t he know?

“It’s not memory. It’s connections. I move outward from you, and right there, there’s Monica. First up. So you want to talk about it?”

“I’d like You to make it go away if it’s not too much trouble.” She looked at the ceiling, so maybe He could hear her better. Was He up there?

“Like maybe a miracle or something?” He said from his invisible post. “Because actually, I don’t do those.”

“What do you mean you don’t do miracles? Didn’t Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? If you did it for him, why not do it for my sister?”

“I think you mean, why not do it for you? You don’t want to lose your sister, right?”

“She doesn’t want to die. It’s not all about me.”

“But you’re the one who’ll feel your pain. Let’s be honest.”

Jessica drummed her fingers on the table. It was weird enough she was having a conversation with God, but who would have expected it to be this irritating?

“Okay, then. Do it for me. I’m a good person. I believe in You. I promise I’ll go to church, and do good things. I bet I could even get more people to believe in You.”

“But remember, Jennifer, I told you I couldn’t do that.”

“Jessica.”

“That’s what I said. Jessica.”

“You said Jennifer.”

“No I didn’t.”

God was getting on her last nerve. Jessica got up and went out the kitchen door to her tiny backyard.

“Okay, God.” Not her most reverent tone of voice. “You never answered my question about the miracles. What the hell…heck? You did it for people in olden times but not now? Did you use up all your magic? Or what?”

God’s voice had followed her out into the yard without changing or breaking up or

anything. That made Him seem more credible somehow.

“You know magic isn’t real, right? Magic exists because people want to believe.”

“So Jesus and Moses and Mohammed and whoever? Just random guys?”

“I don’t think anyone’s really random. Or else everyone’s random. Depends. Anyway, people have different gifts. Not from Me, they just have them. Like Jesus, he was a sensitive kid, very smart, good with words. And lucky with his mom. Luck, now there's something real. But Mary, she doesn’t get enough credit. A virgin birth, that’s actually possible, if you do it right. But that wasn’t the main thing, if it was even a thing at all in that case. What was important was her parenting skills. She really brought out his empathy, his ability to connect with people. If true saints existed, she’d be the first one I’d nominate.”

Jessica sighed, picked up some pebbles from her gravel walkway, and lobbed them one by one at the dandelions growing in her ragged lawn. “You still didn’t explain the miracle thing.”

“Can’t do it.”

Jessica threw all the pebbles at her geranium. “Why? You did it for other people, and not us? Is this a punishment for the sexual revolution, and drugs and whatnot?”

"No, no, no. You guys are actually doing better in terms of loving one another, generally speaking. Slipping a bit lately, but, that’s not the point. There were no miracles. They made it up. Wishful thinking. There you have the root of all evil, actually. People thinking they’ll finally be happy if they have enough stuff, or kill someone. Or get me involved. But look, all these so-called miracle workers are human, they made mistakes. Like Jesus. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth?’ Where’d he get that? Pure propaganda, and he couldn’t see it.”

“Well, can you at least tell me whether she’ll live or die?”

“No can do.”

Tears stung her eyes. She walked into the house and slammed the door.

"Sorry," he said.

“Are you kidding? You can’t even see the future? Come on!”

“Look, I got here the same way you did, just a little sooner. There was a Big Bang, as you people call it, and there I was, aware of everything, but nothing I could do about it.”

“Jesus!” she exploded; then reconsidered. “Don’t you get depressed?”

“You know, I feel people’s pain, but I don’t take it personally. And I feel their joy too, and their fear, the whole gamut, Alpha to Omega. But as to your question, yes, I can see the future. I’m just not able to interfere in it. It’s a setup. Bad things are going to happen to good people.”

“So when people say ‘everything happens for a reason?”

“Newton figured that out a few centuries ago. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Throw pebbles at your flowers and the petals fall off. There you have your reason.”

“And free will?”

“If I don’t have it, what’s your guess about people having it? Nope, all an illusion.”

“But You’re talking to me. Don’t you think that will affect the future?”

“Actually, no. You still kind of believe in God but have some doubts, right? And you still feel the same way about your sister. It is what it is.”

”For fuck’s sake!” Jessica stomped into the living room, banged her fist against the wall. “That’s what people say when something bad happens and they don’t want to hear how pissed off you are! ‘It is what it is.’ This is like, the worst conversation ever.”

“It may not make you feel any better, but it doesn’t matter if you’re pissed off. That’s the bottom line. Your anger, your grief, your joy, it doesn’t matter.”

She opened the door and stepped out. Silence. She walked slowly, pausing before her neighbor’s rosebush. It didn’t matter, God said. She could be furious, her anger twisting like a tornado and wiping out everything in its path, and it wouldn’t change a thing, for better or for worse. She saw a white rose, observed its perfect swirl of petals and its heavenly scent. And behold, it was good.