What Would Jesus...

'What would Jesus do?' had been Dallas' latest refrain; even on her very deathbed a rasped, rattling refrain.
'What would Jesus do?'
The skull-faced smirk, a last ditch attempt at glib eyebrows. What would Jesus-'
A strange yuletide silence.
----
Dallas had never been the religious type. Nor had she been the sort to question her own strong-willed choices of action. A brash, loudmouthed ex-socialite from St. Louis with a refined taste for the vulgar, she liked to pick up words or phrases that amused her and put them to ironic use, never quite appreciating how sincere she could seem in her insincerity.
I would never forget the 2008 summer of 'groovy', much less when she first moved to England and read John Masefield and insisted that time and tide and buttered eggs were waiting for no man. I don't believe she had ever permitted butter to pass her lips, let alone those of her then husband (number four).
Since then we had passed through a short-lived 'lol', a newly single 'life is like a box of chocolates' all the way to the worn winter of 'what would Jesus do?'
Of the tropes it was my least favourite.
'What would Jesus do?' Sipping a martini in a Mayfair lounge. 'Well he sure wouldn't have approved of me.'
'What would Jesus do?' Reviewing the divorce settlement from husband (number five). 'If I had long hair like his I'd buy me that De Beers tiara Paolo showed me.'
'What would Jesus do?' Gazing at shoes with unpronounceable names in the swankier bits of Chelsea. 'Pick the reds, I think.'
It never added much, as a catchphrase, never seemed to stop her in her tracks or make her think. She bought the tiara anyway and I grimaced at the receipt. 'For chores day,' she joked. I think she joked. She had never worn an apron in her life.
Not once did I see her falter in her luscious decadence; not once did she put a sparking pedicured toe out of her lavish hedonistic line. But always the relentless, indulgent refrain: 'What would Jesus do?'
----
I don't think I ever realised in those months quite how frail she was. The cancer that had been toying with her for a year or so had spread to her lungs, and however much she flirted with handsome, long-suffering Dr. Chivas, it was not going away.
----
At her insistence, I was the one to hear the news from him. She didn't like hospitals. Charming the nurses to their chagrin, she pushed through the children's radiology department to find the building's only balcony, pulled a gitane from a little brass and wood case in her purse, and calmly lit it. Her matte lips closed around it and she waved off what I was trying to say.
'One thing you have to hand to Jesus,' she said. 'He was no quitter.'
I had never really felt angry before.
She smiled and took another drag.
----
Dallas died at two minutes to six on a cold December Wednesday. Any later and I would have been asked for a gin and tonic. Her last words were incomplete and her window was open. Dr. Chivas had been relegated to the downstairs kitchen. I fetched him and we looked down at the stubborn silver lady.
It did not matter what Jesus would have done - what were we to do? It was that, exactly that, the verb. The 'doing' bit. It was one thing to think of this man, this presence, the words that echoed down generations of faith, generations of disbelief - to think of what he said and what he meant and what we took it to mean when we killed for him and bled for him across the strata of history. But quite another to commit him to action, to complete her sentence.
We folded the eiderdown over her face and left the room with the window open.
----
In her will she left me the De Beers tiara and two framed photographs. The first was a photocopy of her divorce settlement from husband number five; the second a black-and-white family portrait. It was of a ranch in a southern state. In the corner a little girl, seventy years ago. She was holding a Bible.