The Return of Jonah Gray

by Heather Cochran

  Eddie ran up to it and peered through the windows. “At the zoo, they had a place like this for butterflies,” he said. Then he pushed away from the glass and wiped his hands. “It’s just plants,” he said, not trying to hide his disappointment.

  “Plants can be cool, too,” I said.

  He shrugged, no longer as willing to believe me.

  “Did you know that the oldest living thing on earth is a plant? Well, a tree. Right here in California.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s true. There are bristlecone pines in the White Mountains that are four and a half thousand years old. That’s like forty-five centuries. That’s like dinosaur old.”

  “That’s old,” Eddie said.

  “In a way, plants are like very quiet, green animals.”

  “Like a snake?”

  “Sure. A vine is like a snake, right?”

  “But snakes move.”

  “Yes, but, well, you like bananas, right?”

  “I like bananas.”

  “Some banana trees can grow an inch a day. It’s true. The farmers who grow them swear that they can hear them creaking and stretching.”

  “Scary,” Eddie said. “How come you know so much about plants?”

  “I don’t, actually. But I’ve been reading a lot about them recently.”

  I wished I could identify what was growing inside the greenhouse. Through the glass I saw rows of hanging ferns, flowers as big as grapefruits, spiny cacti, thorny palm trees, slick-looking leaves in the shape of hearts, trees that looked like miniature willows, trays of moss and grass and what appeared to be water lilies. There were bags labeled Potting Soil and bags labeled Loam and Mulch and Peat and Sand. There were gardening gloves and trowels and pruning shears and little rakes. It looked like a magician’s storehouse.

  “Hello there,” a man said.

  I jumped at the voice and wheeled around, searching for its source.

  An older man headed toward us, down the path alongside the house. He limped and listed a bit to the left. Eddie immediately took my hand and tucked in behind me.

  “Hello,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was obviously trespassing. Front yards were one thing. Backyards were something else entirely.

  I figured I could outrun the man, should it come to that—but I was loath to panic Eddie, and I had to assume that carrying a five-year-old would slow me down. As I stood there, considering my escape path, I noticed that the old man hadn’t demanded to know what I was doing there.

  “I haven’t seen,” he said, then got stuck on the word. “Seen, seen.” He seemed to be struggling to pick the right one. “You. In years.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re a Potter girl,” he said.

  “This is my aunt,” Eddie said.

  “No, I’m…” I started to say but petered off. The man was too old to be Jonah Gray, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to explain myself. “We were biking and we got a little lost,” I said. “Then we saw the greenhouse.”

  “We’re lost?” Eddie whispered.

  “You live…you live there. Across that field,” the man insisted, pointing through the corn.

  “She lives in Oakland,” Eddie said.

  The old man didn’t appear to have heard him. “What’s your name, little one?”

  “Eddie,” he said. He no longer seemed scared.

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “This is my home,” the old man said. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t have to. I’ve paid…paid, paid…bills.”

  “It looks like you’re quite a gardener,” I said.

  He looked at the back lawn, then shook his head. “Allergies.”

  I wanted to ask him more—who he was and if Jonah’s wife or son were around, but I didn’t want Eddie to realize how little I knew. I’d gone far enough and I didn’t want to push it. It was time to return to my own family.

  “We should get back. Our family is waiting.”

  “Your family,” he said. “You say hello. For me.”

  I could tell that he still meant the Potters. “I will,” I promised.

  “How’s your father?” the man asked.

  “He’s okay,” I said. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was answering for my own father or for the unknown Mr. Potter.

  “Don’t blame him for getting old,” he said. “It happens. To the best of us.”

  “I won’t,” I assured him.

  “Don’t be a stranger. I’ll mix lemonade next time. Always nice to have the company of a young lady and gentleman,” he said, his words at last running smooth.

  “See you,” I said, though I didn’t actually expect that I would again. Eddie and I made our way back up the driveway. The man waved and turned back toward the house.

  “He was nice,” Eddie said.

  At the end of the drive, I strapped my nephew into the trailer, then climbed back onto the bike.

  “There you are,” my mother said, seeing us arrive. “I was beginning to worry.”

  “We had an adventure!” Eddie announced.

  “Is that right?” my father asked. “An adventure?” He was back at the table, less wan than when we had pedaled off. He patted the bench beside him and Eddie sat down.

  “We met a man with a limp, only he wasn’t scary and I didn’t point,” Eddie said.

  “How considerate,” my father said.

  I looked at my father. The old man had been right—I couldn’t blame him for getting old or sick. It just happened.

  “Do you need anything, Dad? A drink? Something to eat?”

  He reached out and I gave him my hand.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  ON MONDAY MORNING, AS THE MAILROOM ATTENDANT made his rounds, a letter landed on my desk. The return address read 530 Horsehair Road.

  A bolt of panic. Had the old man figured me out? Had he realized who I was and tracked me down? Did Jonah Gray know that I’d been snooping around his house?

  But then relief. The letter had been postmarked that past Friday. It was in the mail before I’d gone to Stockton and trespassed. I breathed a little easier.

  Dear Ms. Gardner, Jonah Gray had written. I recognized his handwriting from his return.

  I don’t mean any disrespect when I say that I’m not exactly looking forward to my upcoming interview with you, but I am not writing only to tell you that. It was just brought to my attention that certain readers of a Web site that I maintain have taken it upon themselves to contact you on my behalf. I want to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

  It was probably an error in my judgment to post the initial notification letter I received, the one that included your name. Please know that it was never my intention for my readers to harass you. Gardeners are simply a passionate lot. While I’m touched by their initiative, I have since asked them to refrain from calling you about my audit.

  It’s been a tough year in the Gray household. My father suffered a stroke about a year ago, and I uprooted back to Stockton to take care of him. I’m not quite sure why I’m telling you this. Perhaps to explain that I haven’t been taking care of everything else as well as I might have. But he’s my father and you do what you’ve got to do. Apparently, in this phase of life, that means trying to keep him comfortable, safe and in his own house. Who knew such basic needs could be so difficult to fulfill?

  Ethan Gray was no child, I suddenly realized. It all made sense. Ethan Gray was Jonah’s father; 530 Horsehair was Ethan’s house. The unexplained medical expenses, the donation to the VFW, even the AARP membership dues that I’d found confusing—they slipped into place in this now more rational universe.

  That was why he had left Tiburon, left his job, sold the boat. He hadn’t run away. He had run toward. He had run to help his father.

  I thought about the old man in the garden, about his limp (from the stroke), his halting speech (aphasia, I could now deduce), his determination to stay in his home. T
his was the father Jonah Gray hadn’t known as a child, the man he had both hated and found a way to forgive. For a second time, Jonah had upended his life to go live with him. Strange how a simple explanation can change one’s perspective.

  There wasn’t much more to Jonah’s letter.

  But my family issues aren’t your concern and are not meant as an excuse. My audit interview takes place next Wednesday. Whatever the result, it’ll be over after that.

  Yours, Jonah Gray

  I looked at my calendar. Heaven help me, he was right. I’d forgotten that his interview was on Wednesday, just two days away. I searched for Susan’s documentation on the Gray return, but that seemed to be one piece of his file she hadn’t returned. Even if I did nothing else for the next two days, it would be a push to finish my analysis in time.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Jeff and Ricardo were standing, like a bar chart, one tall, one short, at the entrance of my cubicle.

  “Oh, hi. What are you two doing?” I asked.

  “Are we still on for dinner tonight?” Jeff asked.

  “Dinner?” I repeated.

  “It’s that meal at the end of the day,” Ricardo said. “I’m sure you know some obscure fact about its history.”

  During the course of our initial date at Hunter’s, Jeff had mentioned going out to dinner on Monday. I’d just forgotten it, but now, here it was, the Monday in question. No wonder the guy requested definite affirmatives. Maybe I was a flaky Californian after all.

  “Seven o’clock tonight?” Jeff asked. “That’s what you’d suggested.”

  “Where are you two lovebirds going to go?” Ricardo asked.

  I ignored him. “Seven o’clock,” I agreed, though it meant that I wouldn’t be able to work late. There was always Tuesday night.

  Jeff gave me a big smile before leaving. But once he and Ricardo were gone, I felt myself frowning. Jeff was a nice guy. And I had enjoyed kissing him at the tail end of our first date. But I wondered what that simple action had gotten me into.

  I supposed that I had already made my choice. I was going on my second date, and after that, perhaps a third. I’d sworn to Martina that Jonah Gray was behind me and my date with Jeff was meant to prove that. But now I wondered why I’d been so quick, going from sixty to zero, as Martina said, in just a few minutes. If only Jonah had written me a few days earlier.

  My phone didn’t ring for the rest of the day. It rang only twice all told. Once was my mother, and once was Martina, asking which flavor of jerky had been my favorite. The calls from irate and protective gardeners in Jonah Gray’s army had stopped coming in. He’d called them off, all right. And I was surprised to find myself a little sorry that he had.

  Throughout the day, as I prepared for Jonah’s audit, my mind wandered back to Stockton, peering in the windows of that old farmhouse, focused on a man whose world wasn’t even mine to reach for. I couldn’t stop imagining how our conversation would go on Wednesday. What would he say? What would I say? How would his laugh sound in person? Would his eyes light up? Would we speak of Roanoke? Or the Catalina?

  And even if he turned out to be a jerk, a bore, evasive or defensive, that, too, would be something. As he had written in his letter, whatever happened, it would all be over and done with soon enough. And all that had drawn me to him—the phone calls, the postings, the life revealed in his returns and his words—all those things could be packed up and put away, and I could get on with it, with the rest of my life.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT WAS JUST ANOTHER FACE-TO-FACE. I TOLD MYSELF that I wasn’t hungry. That’s why I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast. I needed new clothes. That’s why nothing I pulled from the closet looked right. I drank too much coffee. That’s why my heart started pounding when the receptionist called to say that my eleven o’clock appointment had arrived.

  I made my way to the lobby, focused on my breathing. I wanted to portray steady. In charge. Sane. Not a man-hater or a bean counter or a trespasser. But when I surveyed the reception area, my heart sank a little. No one in there looked the way I thought Jonah was going to look. Though I still hadn’t seen a picture of him, the act of combing through a man’s financials always created a clear mental image. I figured I’d know him when I saw him. But there in the reception area, I wasn’t sure what I saw.

  Three of the people waiting were men of around Jonah’s age. One sat with his eyes closed, head leaning against the wall behind. He was dressed entirely in denim—shirt, jeans and cowboy hat, all the same deep-rinse indigo. I hadn’t figured Jonah Gray to be an all-denim guy, and if he were to wear jeans, that they would be faded, with smudges of dirt permanently ground into the knees.

  The second guy was dressed nicely enough. Smart, flat-front twill pants and an ironed button-down. But he was twitchy, nervous. He wiped his palms on his pants again and again, smoothing out a wrinkle that wasn’t there. He looked around the room, caught my eye and quickly looked away, and all the while, his knees bumped up and down to an uneven beat. That didn’t square with my impression of Jonah either. The overgrown house. The relaxed and steady tone of his voice. The way he wrote about gardening through the dusk, lost in the smell of dirt and roots and leaves, until he realized that he was pruning by moonlight. Could this possibly be the same guy?

  And then there was the third man. He sat still, quiet, unassuming at first glance. But a silent anger seethed from every pore, from the clench of his jaw and the way he held tight to a can of soda, squeezing the roundness from the aluminum. He barely moved, but the under current of rage that radiated from him was so bitter, I found myself stepping back.

  “Jonah Gray?” I said, too quietly to be heard. I didn’t want any of the three of them to stand. And yet, I had to know. “Gray?” I said more loudly.

  A woman stood. “Here,” she said.

  I watched her approach, wondering whether someone was playing a trick on me. Was Ricardo in on this?

  “I’ll be representing Mr. Gray today,” she explained. “I’m his CPA. My name’s Linda.” She looked more like a pageant winner than any CPA I’d ever seen, with coiffed hair and perfectly arched brows.

  “He didn’t come with you?” I asked.

  She looked around the waiting room, then back at me. “No,” she said. “He’s not required to. But you must know that.”

  I was relieved and disappointed at once. I motioned for Linda to follow me. “So Mr. Gray decided to send a professional,” I said, as we headed for my cubicle. “He’s not scared of me, is he?”

  “Excuse me?” Linda asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. It was a question that I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.

  “Do you know what I’m going to ask about?” I quizzed her, once we were sitting at my table, each of us with our papers arranged.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “In Jonah’s—I mean, Mr. Gray’s—last return, he neglected to declare some significant capital gains from the liquidation of a retirement account.”

  “It was a lot of money,” Linda said, nodding.

  “Are you admitting that your client knowingly filed a fraudulent tax return?”

  “Fraudulent, no. Inaccurate, sure. And that’s not the half of it.”

  That wasn’t the way most CPAs spoke to me. They didn’t get chummy. They stuck to the facts and gave away as little information as possible. And apparently she wasn’t finished.

  “Poor guy,” she said. “He was totally fucked over. Excuse my French. But royally fucked.”

  That definitely wasn’t the way most CPAs spoke.

  “Fucked?” I asked. As luck would have it, Fred Collins was passing my cubicle at that moment. He stopped, took a step back and looked inside.

  “Royally,” Linda said, offering him a Miss America-quality smile.

  Fred smiled back, looking more confused than anything. He edged away.

  “Here’s the long and short,” Linda went on. “Jonah’s wife, Pilar, she’s Argentine. Never really took
to the States.”

  “It sounds like you know him pretty well,” I said. Why did I say that? What did I care how well the pretty CPA knew him? The man was married.

  “I’ve been friends with the Grays for a long time,” she said. “Anyhow, Ethan—”

  “Jonah’s father? With the stroke?”

  She looked at me as though she didn’t appreciate being interrupted. “Right. He had the stroke last July. Plowed, full bore, into that poor oak tree before he could get to the hospital. Thank goodness a neighbor found him. That’s when Jonah convinced Pilar to move to Stockton. Temporarily, of course. So Jonah could take care of Ethan. Well, Pilar, I only met her once or twice, but I mean, San Francisco was way too stifling for her. So you can imagine her reaction to Stockton.”

  “And the stock sales are related to the move?” I asked, in case Fred lurked nearby. I hoped to sound at least somewhat professional.

  “Let me finish so you get the full picture. So Pilar left.”

  “Pilar left?” I repeated. “You mean, Jonah’s separated?”

  “Not separated. Divorced. I think it was final last month,” Linda said. “She left about four, five months after they moved to Stockton. Left Jonah, left the States, hightailed it back to Argentina.”

  “So Jonah’s not married?” I asked, making sure that I understood. “Because his return said single and then married and I just didn’t know—” I was afraid to feel relief before it was warranted.

  “What did I just say? He’s divorced. She left in January, just after New Year’s. Poor guy—he was a wreck. Came home from work one day and poof, she’s gone. Not only that, but she had cleaned out his investment accounts back around Christmastime. The girl faked a whole, happy holiday season just to buy herself enough time to get home. It’s the sort of thing that gives women a bad reputation. She should have been an actress.”

  I was reminded of the hostess at Hunter’s. Some people were very good at faking it.

  “The thing was, if she had told him she was unhappy, Jonah would probably have given her the money.”