The Return of Jonah Gray (9 page)

My parents' friends laughed. My mother laughed.

My father was finishing. “To my lovely wife of thirty-five years. Here's to another thirty-five.” He gave her a kiss, and their friends cooed and applauded. It was sweet. It really was.

 

At any gathering, you couldn't miss my uncle Ed. All you had to do was find the center of the largest and loudest group of people. As an oncologist (though not my father's), Ed had traveled around the world, setting up clinics and medical trials where there had been none before. He had a wallet full of stories about being chased by bulls in Argentina, sailing through the mouth of Gibraltar, trying to outrun a mob in New Delhi.

He loved good stories, too, and as I glanced over at him—later, after the glasses had all been lowered again and the guests had retreated to smaller circles of conversation—he seemed to be taking great pleasure listening to someone's anecdote. I heard him snort and saw his eyes light up. He put down his drink and wiped his broad brow with a cocktail napkin.

“Let me catch my breath!” he said. “A moose? You couldn't make that up!”

The crowd around him was laughing, too. Meanwhile, I stood beside my mother, listening as she described in minute detail the golf trip she and Dad planned to take in November. Even if I had any interest in golf, which I didn't, it would have been a tedious story.

Maybe Ed sensed my envy. “Sasha, you've got to hear this,” he said, calling me over.

I took a step toward him as he went on.

“Camille here was down at Yosemite and ran into Marcus—”

I froze in my tracks—my smile, my feet, the air, nothing moved. I heard my mother stop her own story mid-sentence. I saw my father, maybe six feet off, his eyes darting from my mother to Ed and back again.

Uncle Ed's sentence hung there, stalled in his throat. He stiffened, then a second later shook himself free and went on. “Marcus Hunt,” Uncle Ed said. “He's a radiology resident. I forgot—you don't know him.”

I doubted that the people in Ed's orbit had noticed the stutter in his speech, but you can bet that everyone in my immediate family had. I glanced back at my mother, who continued to watch her brother, as if unsure whether or not to believe him.

“Go on, Mom,” Kurt prompted. “You were saying?”

“It sounds like Ed has quite a story,” she said.

I tried to see my father's expression, but he was inching away from all of us, slowly, like a cat trying to avoid a fight. He crept off so slowly that at any one second, he looked to be standing still, yet the space between us kept growing.

 

I was soon back in my chair beside the pool, chatting up Scott and the other caterers as they sneaked cigarette breaks. I liked listening to their banter. It was such a different world from the one I inhabited. Sure, we both interacted with strangers and passed judgment on them. But while I researched, they eavesdropped. While I worried about maintaining confidentiality, they gossiped openly. They also laughed, carried trays, refilled drinks and ate well. And they all intended to do something else with their lives, something larger. Maybe we did share that last trait.

“Has anyone seen Emily?” one of them asked, looking around the party.

“She left already,” Scott said.

“She left?”

“Which one was Emily?” I asked, as if I might possibly have had something to add.

“Short blond hair. Great legs.”

“With the mini-quiches. I think my brother was admiring her earlier.”

“I expect a lot of the guys here were,” Scott said. “Maybe one of them took home a party favor.”

That's when Uncle Ed wandered over. “May I?” he asked.

I motioned for Ed to sit down. At once, the caterers began to fade back toward the kitchen, as though Ed seemed like more of an adult than me and thus someone who might cause trouble for them. How little they knew. Caterers were frequently audited. All those undeclared tips.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked Ed.

“I'm having a grand time.” He sat heavily beside me. “But I guess I said the wrong name back there.”

“It's a sore spot. Always has been. Always will be.”

“You think?” Ed asked.

“I know,” I said.

Ed shrugged and took a pull on his drink. He looked out over the pool. “I talk to him,” he said. “I bet you didn't know that.”

I turned to look, to make sure that he wasn't joking. Of course he wasn't joking, I thought. Of course he wasn't.

“You talk to Marcus? Johnston?”

“I talk to Marcus.”

“But, you're not even related.”

“Sasha—”

“Well, you're not.”

“What does that matter? He's a person. I'm a person. We certainly have people in common.”

“I'm just pointing out…” I wasn't sure what I was trying to point out. “How? I mean, how often? When?”

He shrugged again. “A few times a month maybe? Sometimes less.”

“Does Mom know?”

“Oh heavens, no.”

“And Dad?”

“He does.”

I turned back to the pool. “Where is he?” I asked quietly. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to want to know.

“Sacramento.”

“California? He's in California? Doing what?”

“Working.”

“Construction?” I asked.

Ed looked at me and sighed. “That was five years ago.”

The way he said it made clear that changes had occurred that I ought to have known about. I was embarrassed. I searched my mind for any newer information about Marcus, but I had none. I couldn't even remember the last time I had thought of him.

“Does Dad talk to him?”

“Sometimes. When Jacob got sick, it seemed a good time to start something. But you understand, the way your mother is…He's coming down next week. We're having dinner on Thursday. You should come.”

“To dinner? Why?”

“Call my office on Monday and my secretary will give you the details. You want to come?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Put it in your calendar. I'll drop you a line to remind you.”

I nodded. Marcus. Now there was a name from the past.

 

Genetically speaking, Marcus Johnston was my half brother, though on the day of the anniversary party, I wasn't sure I could have picked him out of a crowd. Marcus was the child of my father and Eloise Johnston, “that woman,” my mother called her. “That woman” had been my father's secretary in his first accountancy office, back in Roanoke. I'd never known much more about the affair—not how serious it was or how it had begun or how long it had lasted. Long enough for Eloise to get pregnant, that much was clear. And it must have ended quickly. We were already months into our first Piedmont home by the time Marcus was born.

It seemed a strange subject to be thinking about on that day in particular. The affair had been a stress fracture, straining my parents' marriage to the point of breaking without actually snapping it in half. My mother had stayed, or rather, she had allowed my father to stay. And over the years, especially after Blake came along, the breach had healed into something secure.

All I knew about Eloise Johnston was that she'd moved to Florida soon after Marcus was born, where she could live near her mother. I didn't know whether she had married, bore any other children or anything else about her. Marcus wasn't officially a secret, but nor was he ever discussed, which was the functional equivalent. I read once about the New Guinean word
mokita
, which means the truth that everyone knows about but no one speaks of. Marcus was my family's version of that.

He had come to visit just once that I could remember—when he was eleven. He'd been acting out at home, and apparently Eloise felt that it might help him to know who his father was, or else she'd simply needed a break. She'd put him on a westward plane with little warning. He'd stayed just three days before my father sent him back again, but in that time, he managed to break Kurt's favorite model plane.

I remembered being a little nervous around him, though I was almost six years older than he was. I wasn't scared of him, but he seemed like such a brooding kid and unpredictable. Kurt had gone off to college by then, and as soon as my mother heard that the boy was on his way, she bundled up Blake and took him to her parents' place for the duration. So for those three days, it was just me and Dad and Marcus.

I hadn't heard much of him in the years since. Somehow, I knew that he'd dropped out of high school, although I also recalled that he'd gotten his GED. There had been a run-in at a convenience store—either he'd started a fight or botched a mugging or something—for which he'd spent a few months in a sort of halfway jail. He'd gone into construction after that, and that was the last rooted fact I could recall about him. I had assumed he was still in that line of work, traveling to jobs around northern Florida or southern Georgia.

“When did he move to Sacramento?” I asked. I felt certain I would have remembered if I'd been told he lived in-state.

“Maybe a year ago. After he finished his degree.”

“He got a degree?”

My uncle rolled his eyes. “You should get to know him. He's your brother, for God's sake.”

“Not really,” I said. “I know he is, but I don't know him.”

“And why is that?”

“Oh, you know, I…” I faltered. “He just…we never. He's always lived across the country.”

Ed looked as if he'd tasted something spoiled. It was an expression I'd never seen on his face before.

“What?” I asked. “He has.”

“He was just a kid. You don't punish a kid,” he said. “I always figured that you would be the one who got that.”

I'd never before received a harsh word from Uncle Ed, and I hated the way his comment made me feel. As if I'd done something wrong, when I hadn't done anything.

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“You're his sister,” Ed said, but he didn't get a chance to continue. My mother ran out of the house and called for him, not in a casual way, but in something closer to a panic. People parted to let her through.

“Over here. Calm down,” Ed said as she ran up to us.

“You need to come inside.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Your father fell—”

“Is he okay? Should I—” I began.

“You stay there. You stay right there. Ed, come with me.”

“But Mom—”

“You stay with the guests. I want Ed to take a look.” With that, they hurried through the crowd, now buzzing a bit about things overheard.

Apparently, my father had been in the kitchen when he took an abrupt tumble. The caterers who'd witnessed his fall were unclear what he might have tripped over, but whatever it was, he'd gone down hard. Ed quickly pronounced it a simple sprained ankle, but my father's demeanor proved more troubling. He had accused one of the catering assistants—a girl who had quickly come to his aid—first of causing the fall and later, of trying to steal his watch. The girl had burst into tears.

I figured that my father had simply been drunk. It wouldn't have been the first time. But Ed insisted on a trip to the hospital, to do an X-ray and look for signs of a concussion.

“I'm going with them,” my mother told me. “You stay here,” she said.

“Why me? What about Kurt?”

“Kurt left already. Something about an early appointment. And with Blake over at Barney's, someone's got to pay the caterers and make sure they get moved out.”

What could I say? It was their anniversary. I told myself that I'd count the inconvenience as part of their present.

It was nearly eleven when my mother left for the hospital, and there were still seven or so couples lingering in the torchlight. I stood by the sliding doors between the den and the patio, watching them. I was wondering when everyone would leave when a hot hand settled onto my shoulder.

“Is the old man gonna survive?” I turned to face Ian Maselin. “I can tell you're worried. It's always a shame to see a pretty girl worried.”

“I think he'll be fine,” I said, trying to inch off gracefully.

“You're probably right. And here I am, left,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, you know that song, don't you?” He swayed a little bit to get the rhythm down.
“Well, you're right, I'm left, and she's gone,”
he sang. Mr. Maselin was always singing or humming something. Serenades were a large part of his flirtation routine.

“I don't think I know that song,” I said, backing farther away.

“No? Oh, honey, it's Tom Jones. You've got to know Tom Jones.
Well, you're right, I'm left, she's gone. You're right, and I'm left all alone.
I've got a whole collection of original records in my media room. You should come by some time and take a listen.”