H2O: The Novel Part 20

"Know what?" he asked as he stowed the treasure back in his jacket pocket.

"All ears," I responded.

"I prayed for you." He said it without any flair, no bragging. Just a simple statement of fact, like he said this to everyone.

I felt my face go flush. "Prayed for me?" I stammered. "Thanks, I mean . . ."

"I prayed that I'd meet you here. And you came."

" Today?"

"Uh-huh. Thanks for coming."

"You really expected me? Just ask, and poof, here I come?"

"You're here aren't you?"

"Excuse me?"

"I prayed that I'd meet someone who could teach me to whittle a ball and chain, and you left yours at the monument, remember? Then you came to our boat to show me how." He shrugged. "And I prayed that I'd get to see you again. I asked every day."

"For me?"

He nodded. "Every day." He jumped up, grabbing his bike. "Mom and Dad prayed for you, too. Come on," Liam said, mounting the saddle. "They told me to bring you home when I found you."

One week later.

I needed John so badly. It had been three long days with no calls, and no sign of my dearest friend. Perched on a tall chair at ISIP, I scanned my email inbox yet again.

Where is he?

My ancient laptop knew John by name, and my fingers could type his I.M. address while I slept. I dreamed about him-not the wild visions brought on by water immersion, but real dreams. I imagined him in my life, wondered about him in his job. I imagined him with me in my condo at dinner, or riding a motorcycle together, on a bike more suited for a couple than my new Ice Rocket. I daydreamed about him when I plowed through my spider script at ISIP, and I imagined him returning to my apartment to sweep me off my feet. I felt like I was seventeen again, hanging on every call, every word, to learn more about the man I loved.

"More?" Candice asked, working her way past my table. I'd found a little spot off in a private corner today, a rare part of Hiram's shop that remained quiet. My spider script search had begun to narrow in on some key indicators of my horrible condition. I didn't have a complete diagnosis yet, but one thing was sure: John's guess had been right. I wasn't alone. The good news? Other people all over the world, some of them in Seattle, walked my path. The bad news came upon discovering in my search that none of them claimed to have defeated this debilitating disorder.

"Yes, one more cup please," I said to Candice and slid my empty mug in her direction. I watched her hands and that ubiquitous wet rag, keeping a safe distance. Water was a weapon in her grip.

The laptop beeped. Word from John! He'd been out of town since a few days after we returned from New York, off at a retreat in nearby Maple Falls. I always thought retreat to be a dumb word for a group of people going off-site to work out a way to advance their particular business agenda. Why not call it a "forward" instead? But that's where he was, retreating from Seattle and much too far from me.

This "forward" of his had something to do with church planting. I had a mental image of him with a microminiature white wooden church and its steeple, digging a hole in the ground and watering it patiently. After a time, he would have a big building sprouting up with lots of people. It made me laugh, and I'd not done that for months. Not until I met John.

His I.M. read so beautifully, no doubt prepared while he waited for a break in the action at their remote location. He loved to write, I'd learned. I loved poetry; the new Kate, the seventeen-all-over-again Kate, also adored verse. I'd pretended to hate creative writing after I left home, but he'd brought it all back into my life. I opened the latest file he'd attached, a poem he'd ent.i.tled I Can Wait Forever. His message said he wrote this today, just for me.

Tears bubbled up the moment I finished reading it. I didn't wipe them away. I wanted to cry, to be normal, to be a woman and feel emotion-not to run from it. I wanted be touched by him, to be noticed by him. The tears grew and fell from their launching platform, sparking images of ice and snow, gurgling brooks and still lakes, as I read through his poetic imagery many times over. His words spoke about him. And yet, somehow, they were about me. A poem with two faces, the two of us joined as one in his words.

Winds are blowing, Flowing, growing; Feathering about me From the sprouting wisps.

Rocking gently, Bowing saintly, I relax encapsuled From their wetting hiss.

Longing, pensive, Inking missives, I pray to know His truth And feel her calling kiss.

"I've got something for you, Kate," a voice said. I heard, but the voice didn't move me. My eyes were glued to the poetry on my laptop, reading every line over and over, finding new meaning about me and about John in every word.

"Kate?" the voice repeated.

I looked up. Hiram had a furry brown smile plastered from bearded ear to bearded ear.

"From John?" I asked, my heart skipping.

"Who?" Hiram looked puzzled.

"Sorry. Never mind," I said, feeling my cheeks warm up in a sudden blush. I wiped away the wetness from my eyes, and the last of the image of a waterspout disappeared. Somehow, I'd found a way to coexist with these teary movies.

"Your spider script. It produced interesting results."

"It did?" I exclaimed, jumping up. Hiram had my full attention. "You ran it when I went to New York?"

"Yeah. You asked me to. Remember? You even paid me in advance." He handed over a single sheet of paper.

"What's this?" I asked as I scanned the report.

"Oh, sorry." He took it back, moving a finger down lines of code. "That spider script of yours is genius, by the way. I admit you came up with a super idea. I'd like to use it-maybe to provide a special search service here at ISIP-if you don't mind." His finger rested at a point in the middle of the page, but his eyes honed in on me. "Is that okay?"

"Fine by me. But I plan to sell it, Hiram, so don't scoop me. What did you find?"

"This." He held the paper out of reach. "I ran the script the day you left, and when I realized what it would do, I started tinkering with it. Actually, I spent a week working on the code. You needed a few key enhancements to really make this baby sing. Maybe we could share the intellectual property when you sell the rights?" He smiled again, holding the sheet above his head as I reached up for it.

"Deal. Partners. Fifty-fifty," I insisted, stretching as high as I could.

Hiram laughed. "Here you go, Miss Pepper."

The printout displayed several fields, and near the bottom, he'd composed a kind of handwritten summary. It showed how many websites, and how many related searches and collaborative fields he'd found. I couldn't believe it. Hiram's report looked like a Google directory. The script, with his additions, had run hundreds of millions of searches, and one sentence stood out from the others at the bottom, highlighted in yellow.

"Does it mean anything to you?" he asked, looking over my shoulder after I sat down. "Apparently this is some kind of common denominator with most of the people who describe your symptoms. This search went all over the world, Kate. There are people like you from pole to pole. It's like it's some kind of new disease."

Mental illness? I wondered.

I could be crazy or chemically imbalanced, the ugly conclusions I'd run into at every phase of my research-yet something in me said "no." John's encouragement, and Dr. Lin's words when I contacted him after the trip to New York . . . even Hiram's enthusiasm . . . drew me to a different conclusion. Perhaps they were right. Maybe it was a message. Somehow, that Voice from all my visions seemed to be calling me from deep inside, urging me in a different direction with my life. But that's as much as I had to go on. Nothing more concrete.

I looked up at Hiram, then back at the paper.

"Yeah, some new disease," I replied as I read. "Maybe all the people who see things are drinking coffee from Rwanda."

He laughed. "Smart people then." Hiram took off, headed for the coffee bar. Someone waited on a fresh cup of joe.

I read his summary three times, puzzling over the "common denominator" he'd highlighted at the bottom of the sheet, a mystical statement that supposedly captured the essence of all these people's problems. People plagued by water. People like me. It made sense, yet it made no sense. Sort of like John's poetry, I imagined there was some double meaning in it. I folded the paper at the bottom line and placed it on the table, looking down at it as I stood and stretched.

I needed John. I needed him to be with me to help sort this out. I picked up the paper again, studying its cryptic conclusion. Ten words that somehow encapsulated the common elements of visions and struggles of thousands of people just like me. Who could have dreamed that my symptoms would be so common? I wished again that I'd pressed Dr. Lin harder at the hospital months ago, and that I'd not been so hardheaded and resistant to advice in the months since. I read the words aloud that Hiram had highlighted in yellow, sure that if I did, their meaning would suddenly jump out at me.

"Water is eternal, and it has a tale to tell."

I placed Hiram's search summary in my bag and pulled out Mother's journal, laying it on the "funt." Since I'd returned, I carried her words everywhere I went. One moment I'd be prepared to read it, the next I was packing it away, petrified. I imagined that I'd find some evidence that she had my symptoms, that our visions were tied back to our mutual DNA. An article I'd read said that mother and daughter shared the same mitochondria or something like that. Though I'd become more open to the prospect of a lifetime of pictures dancing in my head, I couldn't bear the idea that Mother and I were destined to be exactly alike.

I paged through the book, seated far from the other customers. Just as John had on the airplane, my fingers found their way to the lock of hair. It fell out, red curls bound with a pink bow. The book seemed to open naturally to that spot, as if Mother had gone there often, perhaps fingering the memento and rereading her words. She'd written a quote from the Bible, along with the chapter reference. I hesitated, unsure what to do next. I wanted to read it, but hadn't consumed a word of the Bible since I attended high school. I'd avoided the Bible, to be honest. But her words pulled me to them, and I leaned over the journal, soaking them in. Something about the quote seemed to speak to me now, calling to me in a way that sounded so familiar. I could almost hear a voice speaking, a familiar voice.

If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

Wasn't it Mother who'd read that to me once? Not likely. Perhaps the words came from our old family priest, before I put my foot down and quit going to Ma.s.s. I couldn't remember that far back with much clarity. I had quit church at a young age, much to the chagrin of my parents.

Had I heard these words at the funeral? Maybe I'd read them? They sank their tendrils into me, pulling at me from deep inside. It was like seeing someone you knew well a long time ago, but suddenly forgetting her name. I racked my brain for the connection. These words held some special meaning, and it was right under my nose. On the tip of my tongue. I could taste it.

Candice's rag caught my attention, and before she could damage me again, I dodged her swipe at my table with the wet white cloth.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Miss Kate," she said with a lilt in her voice.

"What?"

"Happy Valentine's Day, Miss Kate," she repeated, standing in front of me, her white cloth tucked into her bosom, dampening the dingy blue polo.

"Valentine's Day?" I looked down at my watch. February 14. Candice nodded, a smile plastered across her face. She pushed thick gla.s.ses up on her nose and wiped my table again. I dodged the wet bullet a second time.

Today made thirteen years. Thirteen years ago, one mistake, one evening of pa.s.sion gone awry, one tryst with a boy I had loved, and it had changed the course of my life. A Valentine's Day date that ended up in his bedroom down the block at 122nd Street. A bedroom that led to a pregnancy and later to a doctor's visit, one that ripped the hole in my body that launched me out of New York. I sat here, in Seattle, because thirteen years later, I was on the run from that dreaded Valentine's night and one mistake that I could never bury deep enough to forget.

I looked up. Candice's smile faded into a quizzical look. Suddenly I had that same feeling again, sure that I knew exactly where or from whom I'd heard that verse in my mother's journal. The answer teased me, so very close.

I studied Candice, desperate for clues.

She reached down slowly, her thick, clumsy fingers touching the journal, at first caressing a page. Her gaze riveted on the pink bow. With her wiping-cloth hand, she set the rag down on the table, her mind focused on only one thing. The wet hand found its way to her head. As she touched the bow with her right hand, picking up the bound curls with a reverence, she stroked her hair, reconnecting with some memory of her own. Her eyes turned wet, blue irises awash in pools that threatened to spill over. She pulled the curls and bow to her cheek, rubbing the memento slowly across her skin, her eyes closed. Candice floated far from here, perhaps a child again in the hands of her own mother or someone else she'd loved.

At that moment, I wanted to be in her vision, to know what she knew. I could feel the deja vu, that incredible sense that I'd been here, that I knew why the verse was so important, that in fact I'd heard this message spoken many times before. My inner being screamed at me to make this connection. I felt like I was leaning into a finish-line tape while running in slow motion, just inches from a win, but frozen in time.

"What?" I blurted out, a desperate cry in response to my search for some answer. That word jolted Candice back into the present. She looked at me, smiled as she replaced the lock of hair gently in Mother's journal, and picked up her rag. She bent at the waist and wiped a third time about my laptop and the old book, then looked up at me. As she tucked her rag in place in the middle of her breast, she whispered in her simple voice to the famished yearning of my soul.

"Jesus will make you clean."

I remembered that Voice! It leapt off the page again as she walked away, headed to another table. I saw the words on the page, but felt Candice's warmth, felt John's warmth, felt Liam's warmth and that of his mom, as the words reverberated in my head, echoing in the same clear Voice I'd heard so many times before. It was the Voice of the man in the river. The One at the well. The Man at the pool. The Man who was walking on the lake. The Radiant One who told us where to fish. It was the voice of the Man in brilliant white, the One whom I'd seen so many times.

I drank in Mother's penned words again, desperate to understand them, and to see his face again more clearly.

If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

WASH ME!.

I jumped up from the chair, yelling at Candice as I dashed out of ISIP. "I'll be back!"

My laptop and rucksack, my purse, and all my spider script search results sat neatly arranged on Candice's favorite table in the corner of the coffee shop. For the first time I could remember, leaving valuable stuff behind didn't bother me. I ran for home.

Yes! Wash me!

I repeated the words in my heart, somehow aware that I didn't have to sing them out, or yell them as I ran. My words were heard when I spoke them in my heart.

I sprinted the blocks to my condo, reliving fresh memories of approaching storms that wet me on other days. Memories of dark days when I'd wandered so long in mental hinterlands, searching for an answer. I felt foolish as I jumped curbs and rounded the corner for my place. Dear Candice. She'd been there from the beginning, pointing me along the way. But I was too prim, too good, too professional or rich or brilliant or good-looking to listen to her, to really hear those precious words repeated so often. It took a mental pounding, a gut-wrenching depression, the death of my mother-and a gentle plumber-to get my attention. I dashed in the door.

"One hundred five!" I yelled with glee, ripping at my Gore-Tex jacket and pulling it off my head while I ran through the den. "No! One hundred ten!" I could hear the water click on in my voice-activated shower as the condo locked shut. I kicked off my sneakers and pulled at the zipper on the legs of my running pants, leaving a trail of waterproof clothing as I hobbled and skipped toward the bathroom door. Steam billowed from my unused shower stall as I hit the bath, dressed in my running shorts and a singlet. I didn't care. I dove in.

Ecstasy!

The first deliberate splash of water in months fell on my head, hot water soaking into shampoo-starved hair. I reveled in it, repeating over and over the words that had consumed me when I ran.

Wash me!

I could feel it coming. The vision. It took its time, as though the Author of these images knew I'd expected a vision, even wanted it. I craved the culmination that lay just around the corner, something glorious headed my way. Wet joy about to overtake me, I stood, face into the stream of liquid silk that coursed over me, eyes squeezed shut.

Show me!

No words left my lips. I knew words weren't needed; John had proven this by his example. I stood straight, sure He would hold me up. I wouldn't fight it this time-and I wouldn't faint. I wanted this moment more than anything I'd ever wanted in my whole life.

The onset of the joy struck me with bright, brilliant hues, a rainbow splas.h.i.+ng over me and drenching me in deep colors. I could taste them. From the depths of the rainbow came a point of light, a brilliance that outshone all the Crayola shades. I lifted my hands in the direction of the light, anxious to pull it closer and to hold on to it, to never let it go.

My hands touched wood; the rough surface of a thick hewn timber rising before me. Light shone with a blinding radiance, and I stared up into it, desperate to plumb its depths. I leaned into the treelike pole, searching. Then I felt a gush of water, tasted its saltiness when it doused me from above. The light faded and I saw its source. The Man hung from a crossbeam, arms outstretched, and a wound pierced His side where the water flowed from Him to me.

I heard His voice.

"You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

The timber disappeared; my hands clasped stone, a rugged rock near a hole in a cliff. A tomb. The Radiant One emerged, a towel in one hand, a basin in the other. I felt dry, dirty, scaly in His presence. Kate Pepper, unfit to be seen, and desperate to be clean.

Someone behind me spoke up, in a voice I'd heard before. It was the voice of the man who sank in the water, the man who jumped overboard to swim to sh.o.r.e. "You shall never wash my feet," he said. I wanted to find this voice, to ask why he refused the offer of the One.

The Radiant One spoke with a voice that made me weep, tears streaming as I stood immersed in the soaking warmth of my shower. Somehow, I lived in both worlds, vitally aware of each.

"Unless I wash you," He said, "you shall have no part with me."

I couldn't wait. I ran toward Him, falling to my knees at His feet, wiping at my tears with the dirty sleeve of a soiled torn cloak that hung like rags about me.

"Wash me," I cried. I wrapped my hands around His tunic, clutching at His ankles. I craved His water and His touch. "Wash me!" I buried my wet face in the wounds on His feet, sobbing softly. "Please forgive me. Make me clean."

"You are forgiven," He said, a gentle hand settling on my head. "Go, and sin no more."

Then the Radiant One knelt down and took me by the arm, lifting me up. Just as John had said He would. In silence, He brought His hand to my face, dampening His cloth and wiping at my eyes. Suddenly I could see Him much more clearly. His brilliance was like a star, yet He was also human. He knelt at my feet and washed them in the basin, then dried them. I touched the sleeve of His garment and felt His power surge through me. I wanted so much to be one with Him.