The Return Of Jonah Gray. Heather Cochran

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СКАЧАТЬ sneak off? But this audit had been different. I had actually made the Ritters’ lives easier. I liked the feeling that left me with—a sense of pride and satisfaction that drained dry as I spoke to my mother.

      “Sure I’m happy,” I told my mom. “As much as anybody else.” That I’d been off at work of late wasn’t something I would ever admit to her. She would have leaped at an opening to tell me that I was in the wrong profession.

      “I don’t believe you,” she said. “What’s up with you and Gene? I want to know, but you don’t have to tell me.”

      I was long since sorry that my key hadn’t slipped away from my fingers in the bottom of my bag, at least for a few more seconds. Couldn’t I have hit another red light on the way home? My mother was an expert at the “I’m not overstepping, I’m just interested” arm-twist.

      “Nothing’s up with me and Gene.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

      “It means we’re not dating anymore. Like I told you.”

      “It was your job, wasn’t it? That job is always interfering with your love life.”

      “You’re the one who’s always interfering with my love life,” I reminded her. “Gene had no problem with my job.”

      “And I don’t have to tell you how unusual that is. You don’t toss a guy like that out with your dirty dishwater.” An image of my ex-boyfriend, shrunken down and bathing in my sink flashed into my mind. It was not appealing. “And you two have so much in common,” my mother went on.

      “We do?” That got my attention. She may have been the first person to say that about me and Gene. Most of my friends had chalked us up to a case of opposites attracting. Martina’s standing line was “He’s milk toast to me, but whatever makes you happy.”

      “You both work for the government,” my mother pointed out.

      “And? I have as much in common with the first lady.”

      “You’re not saying—”

      I cut her off. “No, not a lesbian, Mom.”

      “Because that would be fine,” she went on.

      “Gene and I broke up last month,” I reminded her.

      “You never said why.”

      “It wasn’t because I’m not into guys. I just wasn’t into him. He just—he never noticed anything. He only saw what was right in front of him. He never saw me.”

      My mother sighed. She sounded as if she was settling in. “Marriages are work,” she said after a time. “But they’re worth it.”

      Mom often used her marriage to my father as the example on which all unions should be based. She tended to gloss over her threats to leave, their trial separation years before, and the difficult times before my brother Blake was born.

      “Gene and I only dated for six months. We weren’t married.” I don’t know why I felt obligated to point that out. In some recess of her mind, she must have known it.

      “I’m just saying that no one’s perfect,” she said. “You’re not perfect. Your father certainly isn’t perfect. Even I’m not perfect.” She didn’t sound convinced about that last part.

      “Thanks for the pep talk. Big help.”

      “Are you sure it wasn’t because of your job?”

      Neither of my parents was happy that I worked for the IRS, and they’d never made any effort to conceal their feelings. Indeed, I had wondered a few times before whether my longevity at the Service stemmed from the fact that I liked the job and was good at it, or because I was determined to prove my parents wrong. I had expected the negative reaction from my father who, as an accountant, took an adversarial view of the institution. But I had always expected my mother to be more supportive—if only because of the social promise held out by the auditing group’s lopsided male-to-female ratio.

      Plus, she’d always been a numbers person. Even before I was learning the same concepts in school, she would tutor me in math, using examples from real life.

      “Suppose you wanted to buy a hundred pairs of shoes,” I remembered her saying, “but the first store only has six in your size. What percent would you still need?”

      “Why would I need a hundred pairs of shoes?” I had wondered. The absurdity of the idea was probably why I remembered the example years later.

      “Oh princess, every girl eventually does.”

      “I don’t,” I had said.

      I remember her sighing. “Let’s just say that the price was right.”

      The most meaningful numbers in my mother’s life had long been those on price tags. When I was growing up, my mother would discuss returns nearly as frequently as my CPA father, but to her a return meant that something hadn’t fit right when she got it home.

      “How can you be so sure that it wasn’t your job that drove him away?” she now asked.

      “Because I was the one who broke up with him. Because nothing was easy with Gene,” I said.

      “And you think your father was always a peach? Remember when he brought home that crazy boat?”

      “The sailboat? The Catalina? Of course I do.”

      “And none of us knew how to sail.”

      “I learned,” I reminded her.

      “You were the only one. I couldn’t wait to be rid of that thing. You remember that boat?”

      “I loved that boat.”

      It was called a Catalina 22 because it was twenty-two feet long. I could still hear my father explaining that. It was a little sailboat, not suited for much more than day-tripping around the Bay. My father had bought it during the summer I was fourteen, coming home and announcing the purchase to my mother, my brother Kurt and me. My mother hadn’t received the news well. She preferred to be the one who made our family’s splashy, spontaneous purchases. She reminded us that she was prone to seasickness. Why, she could barely stomach lying on a float in the pool.

      Only once had the four of us ventured out on the boat together, and after that, it was just my dad and me. I was always up for a sail. I liked the bluster of the wind, even when it was too biting for comfort. I liked the spray that kicked up as the boat galloped over wakes. I liked the nuanced adjustments we’d make as soon as the wind shifted direction.

      But that following winter had been a rough one at home. That was the winter my mother took a breather from the rest of us, holing up for a week in the family condo in Tahoe. Maybe the Catalina was one of the things she took issue with. Maybe my father simply knew what it would take to bring her back home. I don’t know when he sold it, only that the Catalina was gone by the time the following spring turned to summer. And when Blake was born, not long after, the subject of a replacement sailboat was effectively tabled.

      I had always planned СКАЧАТЬ