The Return of Jonah Gray (23 page)

ALL IN ALL, I THOUGHT JEFF'S INTRODUCTION HAD
gone well enough—at least until the next day. My mother and I were out on the patio. Out of the blue, she stopped her pruning and looked over at me.

“Whatever happened to that nice man you were auditing?”

“Nice man?”

“The gardener.”

“Oh, Jonah Gray?” I said. I knew that she knew his name.

“That's the one.”

“Nothing. I audited him, and then he got his life back.”

“Oh, sweetie, don't be so self-deprecating. I'm sure being audited by you isn't the absolute worst thing in the world.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Why don't you give him a call?”

“What? Why? Why on earth would I ever do that?” I asked.

“Why wouldn't you?”

“Because he doesn't know me. And I don't know him. And I was his auditor. What good could ever come of it?”

“Pay attention, Sasha. Real, fundamental connections are few and far between in life,” my mother said. “Didn't you say that he had a sailboat just like that one your father once bought? That's a start.”

“Besides, if you'll recall, I'm dating Jeff now.”

My mother sniffed and focused on her gardenias.

“I thought you'd be relieved to see me with a man,” I said.

“You did, did you?” She kept on pruning.

I waited, watching her. “You might as well say it,” I finally said.

“Say what?”

“You don't like him. You don't like Jeff.”

“I didn't say it. You did.”

“But it's true, isn't it?”

“He's fine, dear.”

“Why don't you like him?”

My mother put down her shears and looked at me. “You live your life the way you want to live it. I don't want to interfere.”

My expression must have prompted her to revise.

“Okay, honestly, I'd love to interfere. I just want you to have the best, dear.” She didn't say that she thought Jeff was something less than that. She didn't have to. “I'm afraid that your father's illness has begun to teach me some hard lessons,” she said.

“Like?”

“Oh, I don't know. How the best thing often isn't the easiest. I know I've pushed you toward a lot of different relationships because they were there and because I don't want you to be alone all your life. But you're special, Sasha. You ought to hold out for special, too.”

I knew how much my mother enjoyed her meddling, so I was surprised to hear her admit that it might have been ill-advised. She really must have been doing some hard thinking. “You don't think Jeff is special?” I asked.

“Not in the way I mean, no.”

 

That next week brought more of the same from Ricardo.

“So, how's it going with Jeff?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. “It's going fine. Why wouldn't it be?”

“There's a ringing endorsement.”

“Really. He's nice and smart. And he makes me feel normal.”

“I wonder if it's too late to set him up with Susan instead.”

“What a terrible thing to say,” I told him. “You don't like us together?”

Ricardo waved me off. “Whatever happened to that guy with the Web site? You stopped talking about him.”

“Because I started dating Jeff,” I said.

“Do you keep in touch with him?”

“I don't keep in touch with anyone I've audited. No auditor does.”

“What about Collins?”

“Fred Collins? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I liked that bean guy,” Ricardo said. “He got you all revved up.”

“Maybe,” I agreed.

“He was different and different is good,” he said. “For you. I mean, you're already different, so it makes sense.”

“That's exactly what Jeff lets me forget,” I said.

 

After Ricardo left, I sat there, staring at my phone a while. I told myself not to think too much before picking up the handset. I told myself that I could always hang up. I told myself I just wanted to hear his voice.

He answered. “Jonah Gray.”

“Jonah?” I felt my heart pounding.

“Yes?”

“It's, uh, Jeffrine. Hill. From the—”

“IRS, I remember.” He sounded as friendly as ever, as if no time had passed. “How have you been? Where are you calling from?”

“Work,” I told him. I leaned back in my chair and reveled in the sound of his voice.

“No, I mean, where are you working now?”

“The same place. I'm still at the Service.”

“Really?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I called there. I asked for you.”

I flew upright. “What? When?”

“Just the other day. I saw this documentary on horses and I thought of the whole hair-versus-fur issue and that got me to thinking of you. I didn't know your exact number or anything, but I called and, well, it was a little weird actually.”

“Weird how? How weird?” I heard the panic rise in my voice.

“I was put through to a guy named Jeff Hill. Maybe they didn't hear me say Jeffrine.”

“Jeff Hill?”

“You know him?”

“I think he's an archivist,” I said, wincing at myself.

“Yeah, the archives. He said he didn't know any Jeffrine in your building.”

“You talked to him?” My mind was racing. “Well, he's new,” I said. “And I moved, I mean, my desk did. My cubicle.”

“Does that mean you're not under the thumb of Ms. Gardner anymore?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, I still help out over there.”

“I shouldn't be too rough on her. I know she's having family issues.”

“Family issues?”

“I understand her father isn't well,” he said.

“You know that?” How would he know that?

“Don't get me wrong—I can sympathize. In fact, I wrote her this letter before my audit and told her about all this stuff with my dad. I wonder if she got that.”

“I'm sure she did.”

“Anyway, enough about the Gardners. Is everyone in the Hill family doing okay, Jeffrine? No run-ins with manatees?”

“We're surviving.”

“It's funny, your name being so similar to that guy in the archives. I thought maybe you were related or something. He's not your husband, is he?”

“No!” It came out more forcefully that I'd intended. “I'm not—I mean—”

“You okay over there?” It was Cliff, calling through the wall.

“I'm fine, Cliff,” I called back.

“So Jeff and Jeffrine, that's just a coincidence, then,” Jonah said.

“Exactly. A coincidence. He's not my—we're not related or anything.”

“I'll be right there,” Jonah said.

“Here? In Oakland?” I ran my fingers through my hair.

Jonah laughed. “I'm sorry. I was talking to my editor,” he said. “I've got to jump into a meeting now. Were you calling for any reason in particular? More looper issues?”

“No, those went away. My mother is eternally grateful.”

“Excellent. It's always helpful to have someone's mother in my camp.”

“Believe me, she's in your camp. I think she lives there.”

“I'm not getting audited again, am I? Is that why you're calling?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Because my accountant is supposed to be taking care of all the paperwork,” he said. “I asked whether she met you at the interview, but she said that it was just her and Sasha Gardner.”

“Just the two of them, yes.”

“I kind of wish you'd been in the room. I get the impression you know my file at least as well as Ms. Gardner does.”

“Probably about the same.”

“They're buzzing me again. I should get to this meeting,” he said. “So you're not calling with any particular request or news? Not that you have to.”

“I just—” I paused. I didn't know what to say. Suddenly, it felt as if this were finally and definitely goodbye. “I just wanted to make sure you got through the audit okay.”

“That's so kind of you. You're a good egg, Jeffrine. I feel like you get me,” he said. “That's weird, huh?”

I didn't want to get off the phone. “Is it?”

“I'm coming!” he yelled to someone in his office. “I'm sorry. They're waiting for me.”

“Sure. No, of course. Okay. Well, goodbye.”

I hung up the phone and turned to the wall so that no one who passed would see my eyes well up. I sat there for a few moments, at first willing myself not to cry and, finding that ineffective, willing myself to stop. I would miss him. I already missed him.

“Oh, baby,” I heard Jeff say.

I spun around and he was there. He walked around to my side of the desk and lifted me out of the chair into an embrace. He smoothed back my hair and shushed into it.

“It's your father, isn't it? I know. I know.”

I nodded because it seemed the easiest thing to do. Maybe not the best, but the easiest.

“Just let it out,” he said. “Go ahead and wipe your nose on this sweater. I've been meaning to throw it out anyway.”

MY FATHER'S ILLNESS EXPRESSED ITSELF IN THE STRANGEST
ways. The radiation therapy had slowed the march of lesions across his brain, but hadn't stopped them. And so in addition to the phantom smells he would announce—roses once, coffee, rotten eggs—he suffered continued headaches, a narrowing of his visual field, and sometimes rapid mood cycles and shifts in energy.

He had begun to lose weight again, which worried Dr. Fisher, who wanted to keep my father strong for the chemotherapy still ahead. But my father's sense of taste kept waning and, with it, his appetite.

But even as he lost physical stature, his personality continued to exert itself. “Now what?” my father said after dinner one night, maybe two weeks later.

“What are you in the mood for?” my mother asked.

“We haven't played Hearts in a while.”

Blake groaned.

“What?” my father said. “You don't want to play a game with your old man?”

“I'll play,” Marcus said.

“I'll play, too,” I said.

“I'll get the cards,” Blake said, sighing as he rose from the table.

“Lola? Will you join us?” Marcus asked.

“That's all right. Hearts is best with four. And I've got some reading I want to do,” she said.

We cleared off the kitchen table, and Blake returned with a deck in hand.

“I always forget how to play,” Marcus said.

“It's easy,” my father said, grabbing the cards from Blake.

“I was going to shuffle,” Blake said.

“I'll show you the right way to shuffle.”

“I shuffle wrong?”

“I read that Hearts evolved from a game called Reversé that was played in Spain in the 1700s,” I said.

“Fascinating,” Marcus said, as if he knew that I was trying to create a distraction.

“That's a useless bit of fluff to keep track of,” my father said. “Is that what I paid the University of California system to teach you?”

I felt my jaw begin to clench. “I didn't learn it in college. It's postgraduate fluff.”

“Marcus can cut the deck,” my father said.

“I'm still not sure how to play,” Marcus said.

I turned to him. “The goal is either to get all thirteen hearts, plus the queen of spades—”

“Dirty Dora,” Blake said.

“Or Black Maria or the Black Lady,” I noted.

“We'll play an open hand until Marcus gets it,” my father said. “He'll pick it up.”

“Or we can do that,” I said.

“We're starting,” my father announced and dealt out the cards.

I was ordering the hand I'd been dealt when my father suddenly pushed back from the table. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

“I'll be right back,” he said. “Keep going.”

“I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing,” Marcus said.

My father left the room, which gave Blake and me a chance to explain the rules in more detail.

“Supposedly, the queen of spades originally represented Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. But she gets no respect in this game,” I said.

“Maybe because wisdom can be both powerful and dangerous,” Marcus offered.

“Do you think that's why?” Blake asked.

“Ask your sister. She's the smart one.”

“Where's Dad?” I asked. By then, he'd been gone nearly ten minutes.

Marcus stood and hurried from the room. “Jacob?” we heard him calling.

Blake looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“What?” I asked again.

“Do you ever wish it would just end?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” I admitted. “It's hard, isn't it?”

“It totally sucks,” he said. “And then I hate myself when I wish it would end.” He looked miserable.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Marcus came back in a few minutes later. “He's asleep.”

“Asleep?” I asked. “He was just here.”

“I guess he was tired.”

“Huh,” Blake said. “Typical.”

“I don't suppose anyone still wants to play,” I asked. “No? Okay then.”

 

As September eased into October, I began to take on new audits once again, first returning to my previous workload, then surpassing it. Fred Collins wondered aloud where my energy had come from, but I didn't tell him my secret. That I was sticking to the numbers. That I had stopped trying to imagine the various shades of life going on behind the sales receipts and income expense and itemized deductions.

Tagged taxpayers shuffled into my cubicle, as unhappy as ever.

“Some years are worse than other years,” I'd tell them. “If you're going to gamble, you've got to be prepared to lose,” I'd say. But mostly, I stuck to the form in front of me, skimming down it like a checklist, allowing or disallowing as I saw fit.

Susan had begun to ask me for advice again. “Nice catch on that return,” she said one day. I took it as a white flag when she sent me a page from a return she couldn't make sense of. “I couldn't see what was wrong in there.”

“All I did was compare income against mortgage interest. That's a fancy house to live in on forty-eight hundred a year,” I told her.

“Well, anyway, thanks again,” she said. Neither of us mentioned Jonah Gray. And even Ricardo stopped asking me about him. When my workdays finished, I often spent evenings with Jeff. We tended to hang out in Fremont, in his apartment, though my house was closer. He was apologetic about it, but said that he slept better when he'd been the one to wash his sheets. I didn't mind. His apartment was spotless, and he did have a fascinating collection of insects, all carefully mounted. His favorites were flies.

Martina and I had stopped going to the Escape Room. I felt self-conscious in there, wondering whether she'd been right, whether I'd sought it out as a way of avoiding anyone with actual potential. It was just as well—Jeff didn't like the idea of me hanging out at a dirty bar with a single friend, though I wasn't sure whether my fidelity or the germs worried him more. Besides, my father's deteriorating condition provided a reason to meet in Piedmont and lounge around the pool as the sun dropped low. My mother approved of Martina's company and Marcus frequently pulled up a chair to join us.

One particularly warm evening, after he'd emerged without a shirt on, I pointed at his arms. “So which one was first?”

He smiled. “How long have you wanted to ask about the ink?”

“I've been thinking about getting one,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Martina laughed.

“You and Blake,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “Next it'll be Kurt.”

“Now
that
I doubt,” I said.

Marcus stood and began to unbutton his jeans.

“Am I going to be sorry I asked? Keep it clean. We're related, you know.” I noticed that Martina didn't look away.

“Relax,” he said. He stopped at the third button and only pushed his jeans low enough to reveal a tiny bit of text, neatly printed along his hip line. Rise Above, it read. “This one's the first.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen,” he said.

“Don't tell Blake,” I asked him. “My mother would have a heart attack if he came home with one of those.”

“Blake'll do what he wants,” Marcus said. “But don't worry. Right now he's more focused on marching band. And Beth.”

“Beth? Who's Beth? I thought it was Nancy.”

“It was.”

“Why ‘Rise above'?” Martina asked.

“It's the name of a song I really liked. And a reminder. You know, not to let hurdles stop me. To rise above them, even when it's hard. The best stuff is usually hard.”

“Is it?” Martina asked, meeting his gaze.

Only then did I realize that there might be something going on between them.

“I'm not sure I want you dating my half brother,” I told her a few nights later.

“You don't think I'm good enough for him?”

“That's not it.”

“Is it because he smokes? Is it the motorcycle?”

“Those things just make him more your type.”

“I realize I'm a few years older than he is.”

“I guess I just worry about him getting distracted. With Dad getting worse.”

“Marcus is a professional, you know. And I care about your father, too. Neither one of us would let that happen. What is this about? Are you feeling bad because you're not dating anyone?”

“What are you talking about? I'm dating Jeff.”

“Oh, right. Of course. So are
you
distracted?”

“No, but I'm not doing the work Marcus does.” I realized that I was mostly worried that Marcus would suddenly have somewhere else to go. He'd been at my parents' house nearly every night and day since moving from Sacramento. None of my father's other children had put in so much time. In the month and a half since Marcus had moved in, Kurt had visited only a handful of times. Lori brought the boys every other weekend or so, and he had tagged along once or twice. But more often, he called to plead an excess of grading, a faculty meeting, a new class to prepare for or some academic crisis. I knew that he frequently checked in by phone, but in-person visits remained rare.

Blake's presence, too, had grown sporadic, and when we did cross paths, he never wanted to talk about anything but marching band. One evening, he showed me how his right arm, in which he carried the mace, was now noticeably larger than his left.

“That never happened with the trumpet,” he said.

“I guess that's cool,” I agreed.

“Blake,” my mother called. “Come say good-night to your father.”

I watched Blake deflate. “I thought he was already asleep,” Blake muttered, before leaving the room.

I felt awful for Blake. He had been so excited about the drum-major position, but the achievement couldn't compete with meta-static cerebral lymphoma. Then again, it shouldn't have had to.

When my mother called, a week or so later, to remind me about Blake's performance that weekend, I promised to go. The marching band was debuting a new Dvorak piece during the halftime show. What's more, Blake was being given the chance to conduct it.

I invited Jeff to come along, but he'd been planning to clean his bathroom that night, and I knew he liked to keep to his schedule.

Then I called Kurt.

“You have to come,” I told him. “Dad was really out of it today, and Mom doesn't want to leave him at home.”

“I told you, I can't. I'm grading.”

“What about Lori and the boys? Wouldn't it be fun for them? It's Uncle Blake. He's their favorite.”

Kurt sighed. “Listen, even if I could make it, which I can't, I wouldn't go out of my way to bring my sons to watch their uncle Blake spin a baton. I don't see why he didn't go out for football. He's tall enough.”

“It's called a mace,” I reminded him.

“I know what it's called. And he wears that hat and marches all around. It's totally dweeby.”

“I don't see what your problem is with it. It's not like he's skipping school and doing drugs.”

“Given his recent influences, that's a relief to hear.”

“Being chosen drum major is an honor. It means he's got talent.”

“Spoken like the queen of the dweebs.”

“Hey—”

He elevated his voice into a more feminine register, mimicking me. “Did you know that the California redwood is both the tallest and the heaviest living thing?”

“I can't talk to you about this. You're being an ass,” I said, hanging up.

So I would go by myself. I'd been to a number of Blake's performances the year before. I knew how they worked. Not a football fan—particularly not of high-school football—I tended to sneak in around halftime and leave soon after. That was my plan for the night of Blake's conductorial debut, too. I didn't expect I was going to know anyone there.

I was walking by the bleachers when a piece of popcorn hit me in the face. I ignored it, but another one followed. I looked around, suspicious of every adolescent smile I saw. Then I spotted Marcus waving. I picked my way through a gaggle of rowdy fans to his place on the bleachers.

“Nice aim,” I said.

“You liked that?” He offered me some of his popcorn.

“I see you asked for extra butter,” I said, wiping my cheek. “I thought it might have been one of Jonah Gray's gardening thugs, taking a hit out on me. What are you doing here?”