The Return of Jonah Gray (7 page)

“Listen, it's not personal. I'm just doing my job. It's a compliance audit.”

“You think you're so special?”

“I didn't say that.”

“That young man, he gives. He gives to anyone who asks, and what does he want in return? Nothing. And after all he's been through.”

“What has he been through? Why did he give up the boat and move to Stockton? Did it have to do with the oak tree?” I cringed a little, hearing what sounded like desperation in my voice. But it suddenly felt very important that I figure it out. I felt like I had to know the answers. This wasn't my usual, measured approach. More often I made assumptions based on details in returns, then tested them against the evidence I collected. But I could not yet piece together the story of his past year. I found myself at a loss. And yet I wanted to know.

My caller was not inclined to help me. “Like you care,” she grunted.

“I do,” I said. “We're both from Virginia. And we both sail. Well, I mean, I used to. And, I guess, he used to. Too.”

“Then try showing him a little heart. He wouldn't do this to you.”

“How could he? He's not an auditor,” I said. “And he did publicly post the notification.”

“You started it by sending that letter.”

“But that was computer generated.”

“A real personal touch. That's the kind of thing he wouldn't do. He's a good person, which is more than I can say about you. You're not even good enough to be rummaging through his financial records.” She hung up.

Not good enough? I thought. How the hell could she know that? Who the hell was she to judge? Not good enough? At least I didn't prank call strangers. At least I didn't harass honest government workers. I was plenty good enough, I told myself. And besides, shouldn't that be Jonah Gray's choice?

As soon as the question popped into my mind, I sat up with a start. What was I doing? How had I become so riled from an anonymous phone call? That woman didn't know me. None of them knew me. And it wasn't for any of them to judge whether or not I was good enough to audit Mr. Jonah Gray. Ultimately, it wasn't even his choice. It was the IRS that had chosen. And apparently the Service, or its randomization algorithm, had chosen me.

I realized that I had stopped reviewing Jonah Gray's return in my standard way. Instead of following my long-held protocols, I was wandering around this guy's life like a lost soul, skimming forward and backward without any plan at all. Gone was my customary patience—I was acting as if I wanted to know everything all at once, which is exactly how I felt.

But that's not how an auditor was supposed to approach a return. It was not the way I'd been trained to work. I was supposed to review all returns in the same manner, to give them equal, undifferentiated consideration.

I steeled myself and closed his file. Yes, this guy was unexpected, and I didn't know what I would find next, and I wanted to know. But I wasn't going to abandon my professionalism for the sake of some stranger. I would unravel Jonah Gray's story in due time. But I would start over from the beginning, the standard way. That is, once I got the first page back from Ricardo.

When Ricardo finally reappeared, he was dripping from head to toe. The man couldn't have weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, which he was when he walked back into my cubicle.

“You left with my return. I need it,” I said.

“Look at me!” Ricardo shrieked, as the carpet below his feet grew sodden and dark. “They're replacing old water pipes up on five,” he said. He flipped his hair back and liquid spattered across my desk. “One of them burst before they got the water turned off. I walked in and got hosed.”

“And my return?” I asked again.

“I could have been hurt!”

“But you're not.”

“I should have gone to Susan for sympathy,” he said. He held out a matted, dripping clot of paper. IRS forms are essentially newsprint, and they don't hold up under liquid.

“My God, Ricardo!” I said, grabbing the paper. It ripped as I took it from him. It began to come apart in my hands.

“I was holding it and then, well, couldn't you hear? I had to protect myself.”

“With a piece of paper?” I spread the remains out on my desk. Half of the page had either been pulled off or had disintegrated. It was hard to tell which.

“Everyone knows that newsprint is just a weak mix of waste-paper pulps. You can't expect it to maintain any tensile strength when wet. The fibers are way too short.”

Ricardo blinked at me, water still dripping off of him. “Not everyone knows that. Just geeks like you. Believe it or not, that isn't what went through my mind when the pipe exploded.”

“Where's the rest of it?” I asked.

“I'm not going back up there,” Ricardo said.

The soggy remains on my desk looked like the beginnings of an unpromising papier-mâché effort. And I had a sinking feeling that I was in possession of the healthiest remnant. “That was the original. I'm going to have to request a replacement.”

“So call Mr. Bean Man. Mr. Funny Dead Chickens.”

“And tell him what?”

Ricardo shrugged. “I don't know. Mention the tensile strength of newsprint. What man wouldn't swoon?”

WHEN I WAS FIVE AND KURT WAS EIGHT, OUR FAMILY
moved from the outskirts of Roanoke, Virginia, to Piedmont, California. That was back before Blake, back when “family” meant just four of us—Mom, Dad, Kurt and me. Leaving Virginia was a huge deal. My father's family had been there for six generations, and Dad had planned to follow suit and put down roots, his and ours, in the Old Dominion after finishing his accounting degree at the university in Charlottesville.

My mother, on the other hand, was from California. She'd gone east on scholarship to Sweet Briar, which she left after three years in order to be by my father's side at the outset of his career. In the earliest years of their marriage, my mother had agreed to adopt Virginia as her own. But during the winter I turned five, the plan changed. I have this vivid memory of Kurt walking me home from kindergarten, the door to our house swinging open, the hallway inside stacked with boxes—giant cardboard containers, some taller than I was, kraft brown and sturdy. They were the sort of boxes you might lose yourself inside, the perfect makings for a clubhouse or tunneled fort. But as soon as my mother came around the corner, I saw something in the crimp of her mouth, and I knew without a word spoken that those boxes weren't for play. Two weeks later, we lived in California.

My mother had insisted on the move, explaining to us that kids in California were nicer than kids in Virginia. I was five. How would I know? Soon enough, though, I would realize that our cross-country move had more to do with turbulence in my parents' marriage. My father had been given a choice: Virginia or his wife and kids.

Sometimes I wondered what would have happened had he stayed behind, but I guess I'm glad he chose us, packing things up and shuttering his fledgling accountancy. He even found a house in Piedmont, a town my mother had long loved, though it was a stretch for them financially. And instead of growing up in Virginia, I became a girl from California, which brings with it a different set of expectations.

A part of me had always sensed that I'd missed out on something to have left Virginia so early. My scattered memories of the place were consistently tinged with the green of its thick, hot summers, its dense forests and its slow, fishy river. My recollections of the move itself are hazy, a pastiche of unrelated images, like puzzle pieces from opposite corners. The purple flower and the blue bird may be part of the same puzzle, but they don't fit easily together. A long plane ride. Kurt crying. Untouched trays of food left outside a hotel-room door. Neighbors that smelled of cigarettes. My old sheets on a new bed.

Three years older, Kurt probably remembered that stretch of time better than I did, but he didn't like to talk about it, except to say how scared he'd been to restart third grade in a new school of strangers, even if Mom had promised that they'd be nicer. I didn't notice that they were any nicer than the kids back in Roanoke.

My parents lived in that first Piedmont house for a few years, then moved to a bigger one, and eventually landed in the four-bedroom traditional on Banner Hill, where I spent my middle and high-school years. Each time we moved, my father would grouse for months about costs and bills and how the hell was he expected to afford it, what with pottery lessons and soccer uniforms and college tuitions for two and then three kids. But my mother had grown up knowing want (her family was from Hayward, down the east bay between nothing and nowhere). As a child, she had dreamed of living in a house with a three-car garage and a pool in Piedmont, a tony little town totally surrounded by the much larger city of Oakland. The Banner Hill house had both the garage and the pool. It was where she felt she had been meant to live, where she deserved to live. And it was where my parents would celebrate their thirty-fifth anniversary.

 

I arrived at the house at the same time as the Maselins, long-time neighbors from down the block. Mrs. Maselin I barely knew. She was painfully shy and seemed rarely to speak. Their son, Brian, was nice enough and had been friends with Kurt since both boys had been in their teens. And then there was Mr. Maselin.

My own father wasn't easy to get along with, often coming across as aloof and angry at the same time. But at least he didn't hit on every woman in a thirty-foot radius. That was Mr. Maselin's calling card, as was his reference, usually within the first minute of conversation, to whatever he'd most recently acquired—the biggest car on the block, the loudest stereo, the longest wet bar. He was a man of unwelcome superlatives.

I didn't know whether he had ever actually been unfaithful to his wife, Ellen, but he acted as though he wanted to be and as though he would be, should the opportunity present itself. I didn't like feeling that he was constantly seeking an opportunity. And I'd always hated the way his eyes combed over my mother.

The Maselins had pulled up to my parents' house just before I did. They lived four houses down, but they had driven to the party. If I followed them through the front door, I knew I would have to smile politely and hear what new gadget Ian had just bought. Instead, I wound past the side of the garage, back toward the pool. Maybe I couldn't avoid an exchange of pleasantries with Ian Maselin, but I could down a drink first.

My mother had spent months planning the anniversary party, meaning that she paid a party planner and remained available to make hard choices like, yes Stilton, no Muenster. From the looks of the place, the planner had earned her money. In the light of tiki torches, the back patio was washed a golden magical. Someone had trimmed the hedges and scrubbed down the deck. Fresh flowers floated across the pool. There were two bars and three bartenders and a good-looking wait-staff circulated with trays of buttery treats in puffs and crusts.

I grabbed a beer and gazed around the patio, trying to spot Kurt or Blake or Uncle Ed, my mother's older brother. Instead my eyes landed on my ex-boyfriend Gene. Before he could see me, I ducked inside the house and tracked my mother's voice to the kitchen.

“Gene's here,” I said.

She looked up from where she stood, hovering over a caterer as he tried to arrange a tray of fruit and cheese. “Sasha! You made it. And don't you look, well, androgynously festive!” She held out her hand and gave me a squeeze.

My mother was wearing the diamond necklace my father had given her for their thirtieth anniversary and the diamond bracelet she had bought for herself “just because.” I'd never before seen the outfit she wore, but no doubt it was the finest of several she had acquired for the occasion.

I chose to ignore her comment. “Gene's here,” I said again.

“How lovely. I'll have to come out and say hello. Why don't you put some more cheddar on that one,” she told the caterer. “Orange is such a nice summery color.”

I knew a fake smile when I saw one, and the caterer's smile to my mother was just that.

“You didn't tell me he was going to be here,” I said, trying to get her to focus on something other than cheese. I wasn't sure whether I was more frustrated that she had invited Gene or that I hadn't foreseen as much. I should have known; “I didn't realize you'd mind” was one of her set pieces.

“I wasn't sure he'd be able to make it.”

“That's not the point,” I told her. “I told you that we broke up.”

My mother put on her sad face. “So I'm not allowed to see my friend Gene anymore?”

“He's not your friend—he's your mailman. And it's not that you can't see him. Just, a little warning would have been nice.”

“He's
your
mailman now,” my mother reminded me.

It was true, but that was not the point either. Gene had originally worked my parents' route, which is how my mother had met him. She had found him appealing, in a reliable, rain-sleet-snow sort of way, and over a series of brief conversations, she had ascertained that he was both single and straight. Based solely on these two traits, she had deemed him a perfect life partner for her only daughter.

Gene had transferred to Oakland just before we'd started dating, to a route that included my house. I didn't consider my neighborhood anything special, but Gene had grown up around there, and he'd been angling to get back to familiar sidewalks from the moment he'd joined the postal service.

I'll give him credit—for all the ways he'd irked me while we'd dated, I'd never enjoyed such consistent and timely mail delivery. And I knew that it wouldn't change, even now that we were no longer together. Gene wasn't vindictive in the least, and he took pride in the quality of his work. In a way, he
was
perfect. As a mailman.

“Is he going to make you uncomfortable, sweetheart? Do you want me to go out there and ask him to leave?” my mother asked. “I wouldn't have invited him if I'd known.”

I doubted this, but the fact was it wasn't my evening to whine.

“I'm sure it'll be fine,” I said.

“That's exactly what I thought!” My mother smiled brightly before turning back to the caterer. “What about grapes? People like grapes.”

“We could do grapes if you want,” he said. He looked tired.

“Here, Mom,” I said, taking her by the elbow. “Why don't you let the professionals do that.”

“I'm just trying to help. Scott,” she said, turning to the caterer. “I'm not bothering you, am I?”

“I'm sure Scott agrees that you should be out enjoying your party,” I said. “Did you see that the Maselins were here?”

My mother must have already been on her way to another thought. When she answered, her voice sounded far off. “Oh, really,” she said. “I should say hello.”

“Thanks for that,” Scott said after she left. He gave me a smile that I liked to think looked less forced.

“She means well.” I picked a grape off the platter and popped it into my mouth. “At least, that's what I keep telling myself.”

 

I returned to the patio and found Gene by the pool.

“Hey there, stranger,” I said. I'd avoided saying
hi
to him ever since he'd told me that had been a joke in intermediate school. All the kids coming up, saying “Hi Gene,” thinking they were so clever.

“Why, hello Sasha.” He was always so polite, an otherwise inoffensive trait that had grown to annoy me. It was as if I'd become allergic to everything about him. You break up with someone, and then, maybe to prove to yourself that it was the right thing to do, you find all the ways that the person was wrong for you, wrong for your life or just plain wrong.

“You look as lovely as ever,” Gene said.

“My mother just used the word
androgynous.
”

“She must have been making a joke.”

“She says sometimes she forgets that she doesn't have three sons,” I added.

“That Lola is a funny one,” Gene said. He gazed at me with that way of his, the one that made me want to run screaming. He was so gentle. So sweet. So nothing.

“So how've you been?” I asked. I hadn't seen Gene since we'd called it quits. To be precise, I'd called it quits. To be totally precise—Jeff-Hill precise—I
had
seen him a couple times as he'd delivered my mail, but I'd stayed hidden behind a window shade.

It's not as if he would have ripped up my catalogs had he seen me, but it seemed easier to avoid eye contact. Maybe I hadn't quite filed away my feelings for him, even though I didn't have any use for them anymore.

“I've been just fine,” he said. “Work always slows a little in August.”

I nodded. Most things slowed in August. Only the IRS revved up.

“Are you here with anybody?” I asked him.

“No!” he croaked, clearly appalled.

It was a silly question. Bringing a date to my parents' party was the sort of provocation Gene would never have undertaken.

“You seeing anyone?” I asked. I didn't want him back, but I still wanted to know.

“No,” he said, with a sad sort of half smile. “One of the other carriers has been trying to set me up with his sister.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I don't know. It seems like so much trouble to go to.”

“Have you met her?”

He shook his head, then he shrugged. “I'm not comfortable having this conversation with you,” he said.

I nodded. Why did I still need to know every little detail? I had been the breaker-upper—I didn't get to know everything anymore. But even now, he made it easy for me.

“So how's your father?” he asked.

“Fine, I think. His doctor said it looks like a full remission.”

“I saw him when I came in. He's gained some weight back,” Gene said. “He looks good.”

In my job, I heard a lot of people lie. There's a tone to it, an airiness, a carefully constructed casualness. I heard the same in Gene's voice. “But?” “What?” Gene asked.

“It sounded like you were going to say something else.”

He paused. “No,” he finally said. “You know, I never got to know him very well.”