The Return of Jonah Gray

by Heather Cochran

  “Blake is conducting,” he said. “Sit.”

  “Where’s Martina?”

  “Some sort of jerky expo. Hey, do you have a problem with me seeing her? I realize it might be weird for you.”

  “It’s only a little weird.”

  “She’s not the kind of girl that usually goes for me,” he said. “You told her about me, didn’t you?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “I mean, you told her about me being in jail.”

  I froze. What had she told him I’d said? “I might have mentioned something,” I admitted.

  “You mean she might not know?” he asked. Only then did he seem rattled. “I figured she knew and liked me anyway. Shit—what if she doesn’t know?”

  “You like her, huh?”

  “She’s real different. She makes such an effort.”

  “I think you’ll be okay. She also gives people the benefit of the doubt,” I said. I looked around at the crowd. “Have you been here the whole time?”

  He nodded. “It’s kind of fun to watch the teenage jungle from a safe distance. I’ve been trying to figure out which of these kids is most like I was. Of course, the kid most like me probably isn’t at the football game. He’s breaking into cars while everyone’s watching the game.”

  “Really?” I asked. I began to stand and turn toward the parking lot.

  “Sit down. You’ll be fine. Hey, there’s Blake!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “DAD,” I SAID. “YOU AWAKE?”

  He bobbed his head a little, but didn’t look away from the television. I knew he’d heard me.

  “I’m going to the store. Do you need anything?”

  It seemed to take a great effort for him to pull his eyes from the set. “The store? What kind of store?”

  “The supermarket,” I said.

  “No.”

  “No, you don’t need anything?”

  “Not from the supermarket.”

  “Does that mean you need something from another store? I’m already going to be out. I could stop somewhere else.”

  He considered this for a moment before shaking his head. “Never mind. You’re not a very good driver.”

  “What? You’re thinking of Kurt. I’ve never gotten into a car accident. Not once.”

  “You’re too cautious.”

  “So you don’t want anything from the supermarket or any other store?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He turned back to the television.

  When I returned from the market, my mother and I began to unpack the groceries. I had just pulled out two bags of Halloween candy when my father wandered in. Marcus followed at a close distance, watching carefully as Dad started to dig through the grocery bags.

  “What are you looking for, dear?” my mother asked.

  “Beans,” he said.

  “Sasha, did you get beans?” my mother asked.

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know—they weren’t on the list. He didn’t ask.”

  My mother sighed. “Do you mean baked beans, dear? That kind you like?”

  My father nodded. My mother began to look for her purse. “I’ll run out and get you some.”

  “I can do it,” I said. “Dad, if you’d told me, I would have gotten them.”

  “No, sweetie, you stay here,” my mother said. “I’ll go. You have a nice visit with your father.”

  As if that was going to happen. The fact was that there were no nice visits with my father. Every visit, every stopover, every meal together was another flavor of unsatisfying. One evening, he’d be asleep. The next day, he’d be high on pain medication. Three times in a row, when I drove over expressly to prepare my father dinner, he’d refused to eat.

  “The lesions are getting worse,” Marcus said. “That affects everything. He’s the same with me.”

  But I didn’t believe Marcus. As far as I could see, my father managed to remain appreciative of Marcus’s presence while he could barely stomach my own. And I knew that it was worse for Blake.

  “Blake!” my father was always yelling. As he grew weaker, his voice seemed to take on a shape of its own, a hawkish, hollow echo that made me cringe.

  “What?” Blake would yell back.

  “Turn down that music!” or “Get in here!” or “What are you doing now?”

  At which point Blake would pull off his headphones, on which he was probably listening to classical fugues and marches, and stomp to the master bedroom to explain that the lawn mower two doors down, or my mother’s whistling teakettle, were not his doing.

  After one such incident, I followed my little brother when he stormed back toward his bedroom.

  “I hate him,” Blake said, flopping onto his bed.

  “You don’t hate him.”

  “It’s like he’s trying to take me with him. He’s up in my face about cutting my hair. You know that he’s been after me to wear a tie to school? And not just for picture day.” Blake’s complaint became unintelligible at that point.

  “Again?” I asked. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I said that he says I mumble.”

  “Well, sometimes,” I agreed.

  “That’s not the point!” Blake yelled.

  A moment later, Marcus poked his head in. “Dude, can you lower it a little?” he asked. “Your mom is trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” Blake said.

  “I know it sucks,” Marcus said. “It’s not his fault, though. I’m not saying it’s yours. No way it’s yours. But your dad doesn’t know he’s being a dick.”

  Blake nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’ll try harder.”

  I thought of Jonah Gray, as I had on and off in the months after his audit. I wondered whether his father was ever so difficult. I could only imagine the old man on the lawn, the one who had offered lemonade to strangers. From my own father, it was lemons, just lemons.

  But my father and Blake still had their sweet tooth in common. Both ripped into the candy I bought, finishing it off the morning of Halloween. My mother only realized it at the last minute and called in a panic to ask whether I could bring something to hand out to trick-or-treaters. I like to think that Martina’s individually wrapped samples of beef jerky were viewed as a refreshing change of pace by the neighborhood kids, but I’ll never know.

  And then it was November.

  Early in the month, my mother spent an entire weekend winterizing her garden. One chilly day, I wandered onto the patio and watched as she cut things back, mulched and covered her more tropical plants.

  “I thought you usually replanted everything in the spring,” I said.

  “Usually.”

  “Not this year?”

  “This year, I thought I’d try to keep things alive,” she said.

  I nodded. We were all trying to do that.

  She’d given away her broccoli a couple of months before. “I began too late,” she said. “If only I’d seen Gray’s Garden earlier.”

  “Gray’s Garden?” I repeated. “Have you been going to that site?”

  “Oh, it’s wonderful, dear. I’m so glad you introduced me to it. I went back and read a lot of the old discussion topics. They had some funny things to say about you, didn’t they?”

  “If by funny you mean nasty.”

  “Those people don’t know you. They were just trying to protect Jonah. He had an awful time with that ex-wife of his. And poor Ethan,” she said.

  “You know about all that?”

  “It came up a few times recently. Did you know that Jonah lives in the same town as Kurt?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve got that nice space behind your house, Sasha,” my mother said. “You should make something of that. You could get some great ideas from him.”

  “Maybe I don’t need great ideas,” I said.

  She frowned, as though she hadn’t understood.

  “From him, I mean. Jeff has some good ideas, too, you know. Maybe not about gardening but about…” I thought har
d. “Food preparation. And cleanliness. And insects.”

  “I’ve been thinking of signing up for some courses at the city college,” my mother said, ignoring me. “They have a master gardener program. Maybe I’ll become a professional.”

  “Ian Maselin is always talking about what a green thumb you’ve got. He’d probably get Ellen to hire you.”

  “Well, Ian, of course,” she said. Whatever that meant.

  “My mom’s thinking about going back to school,” I told Jeff as we lounged in his bedroom later that night.

  “Good for her. I’m a big believer in lifelong education. And you said that she needs the money.”

  I told him that she was thinking of gardening.

  “Gardening?” Jeff asked, his brow all wrinkled.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “All those worms.”

  I nodded.

  “What about something that pays more? Didn’t you say your mother was good with numbers? She could always do the books for a nursery or florist.”

  “But just because she’s good at it doesn’t mean she has to be a…” I petered off. I realized why I felt defensive and whom I was answering for. It wasn’t my mother.

  “Be a what?”

  “A numbers person. You know, have a quantitative job. Especially if it’s the plants she likes and not the numbers.”

  “Life’s a lot easier when you do what you’re good at,” Jeff said.

  I wasn’t sure that was true. It wasn’t easy if you’d stopped enjoying what you happened to be good at, if you were just going through the motions.

  “So, have you thought any more about Fresno?” Jeff asked.

  “Fresno. Right. You know, I think I ought to stay here. My dad and all.”

  Jeff had invited me to Fresno for Thanksgiving. I wasn’t begging off because I didn’t want to meet his family. My father had graduated from radiation to chemotherapy by then, and he’d been weaker than usual in recent weeks. On the plus side, the chemotherapy seemed to have sapped much of his churlishness along with his energy.

  “Don’t stay on my account,” my father had told me when I’d mentioned Jeff’s invitation.

  “I’m not,” I’d said. “I want to be here for Thanksgiving. Especially now that Kurt’s coming.” That was a lie, and he probably knew it. Much as people talk about honesty at the end of life, and coming clean about your regrets and forgiveness, a lot of lying goes on, too. Even when he was at his surliest, the rest of us tried to wear happy faces in front of my father. We didn’t want to stress him more than necessary. Happy faces and good news and funny stories—as if our lives were made of spun sugar.

  My father had begun to do it, too. He’d emerge from a round of chemo green to the gills and give a thumbs-up sign, as if he wouldn’t have minded another shot of the stuff.

  Marcus was the only one who consistently held my father to a more truthful standard. “You look like shit. You’re trying to tell me that you’re ready to go bowling?” he’d ask.

  In response, my father would let out the sort of moan that made me miss his lies.

  Jeff was understanding about Thanksgiving, especially after I explained that Kurt would be down with Lori and the boys, and that Blake would be there and Uncle Ed, too. Marcus was the only one who wouldn’t be around. He had made arrangements to see his half sister in Florida. His other half sister, I should say.

  “Man, I wish I was going to Florida,” Blake said.

  “Maybe next year,” Marcus told him.

  “You’re going to have so much fun. You can hang out on the beach, check out the girls.”

  “Hello—you know that he’s dating Martina,” I said.

  “So?”

  “You’re going to have fun, too,” I reminded Blake. “Eddie and Jackie are going to be here. And Kurt and Lori.”

  “What if something happens with Dad?” Blake asked.

  “Uncle Ed will be here,” I reminded him.

  “I wish Sara was going to be around,” he said.

  “Sara?” I asked. “I thought it was Beth.”

  Blake rolled his eyes.

  “It’s hard to keep up,” Marcus said.

  Kurt’s contingent arrived on Thursday afternoon, just in time for the big meal. With such a sizable group around the table in the dining room, it almost felt like Thanks givings in years past. Except that my mother looked exhausted and my father was too weak to cut the turkey.

  “I can cut it,” Blake offered, standing up.

  “Have you carved a turkey before? It’s a big job,” my mother said.

  “I’ll do it,” Kurt said. He stood, too.

  “I asked first,” Blake said.

  “You could take turns,” my mother suggested.

  Blake sat down, disgusted. “Turns? Why do you have to treat me like I’m five?” he asked. “Forget it. Kurt can cut the turkey. Maybe I should go sit at the kiddie table, too.”

  “Uncle Blake’s coming to sit with us!” Jackie yelled.

  “I was kidding,” Blake snapped.

  “Now that we’re all together, I wanted to read something,” my mother said. She unfolded a sheet of paper.

  “Is this that Ann Landers column you read every year?” Ed asked.

  “This is new. I doubt you’ve heard it before,” my mother said. “It’s not exactly about Thanksgiving. But it reminded me of this past year.”

  “What’s it about?” Kurt asked, carving into the bird. He was making a mess.

  “Repotting,” my mother said.

  “Repotting?” Kurt asked.

  “Moving a plant from a pot it has outgrown into a larger one. Transplanting.”

  “Sounds like organ donation,” Kurt said.

  “Where is it from?” I asked.

  My mother just smiled at me, as if I knew better. She cleared her throat. “Repotting a plant gives it space to grow. Repotting ourselves means taking leave of our everyday environments and walking into unfamiliar territory—of the heart, of the mind and of the spirit. It isn’t easy. The older we get, the more likely we are to have remained in the same place for some time. We stay because it’s secure. We know the boundaries and, inside of them, we feel safe. Our roots cling to the walls we have long known. But remaining inside can keep us from thriving. Indeed, without new experiences or ideas, we slowly grow more and more tightly bound, eventually turning into less vibrant versions of who we might have been.

  “Repotting means accepting that the way is forward, not back. It means realizing that we won’t again fit into our old shells. But that’s not failure. That’s living.”

  My mother refolded the paper and sat down, patting my father’s hand.

  “Lemme see that, would you?” Uncle Ed asked her.

  “I don’t get it,” Eddie said.

  “Not exactly a Thanksgiving theme,” Kurt said.

  “Well, we’re all Gardners here,” my mother said. “Except you, Ed. I thought something from the garden would be fitting.”

  “I liked it,” I said. Then again, I had a feeling that I knew who had written it.

  “You would,” Kurt said.

  “Just hurry up and finish destroying the bird,” I snapped.

  “There’s the Gardner Thanksgiving spirit,” my father muttered.

  After dinner, the phone rang. “It’s for you,” Blake said, handing it to me. “Again.”

  His intonation told me who it was. Jeff preferred multiple short calls to long catch-ups. He had checked in the night before, as we were baking pies. He’d called again on Thursday morning, and now on Thursday evening, as a few of us lounged around the kitchen, digesting.

  “Hi Jeff,” I said.

  “How are things, baby?”

  “About the same as before,” I said.

  “Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Say hi to Fresno for me.”

  Blake, Kurt and Uncle Ed were staring at me when I hung up.

  “What?” I asked. “He’
s efficient.”

  “He calls too much,” Blake said.

  “This isn’t that guy you were auditing a while back?” Uncle Ed asked.

  “No, she works with this one,” Blake told him. “His name is Jeff and he’s serious and he doesn’t like tattoos.”

  “There’s more to him than just those things,” I said.

  “What happened to the one you were auditing?” Ed asked. “Didn’t Kurt say you had a thing for him?”

  “Jonah Gray,” Kurt said. “Yeah, Sasha. What happened to him?”

  “How should I know? You’re the one who lives out there.”

  “Isn’t that the same guy who wrote the repotting piece Lola read?” Ed asked.

  “He wrote that?” Kurt asked. “I should have known.”

  “I thought it was nice,” I said.

  “Whatever. Don’t listen to me,” Kurt sniped.

  “Best advice I’ve heard all day,” I said.

  My mother wandered into the kitchen, yawning. “Your father’s resting. It took a while to get the pillows adjusted.” My father’s proprioception—his sense of where his body was—had begun to falter. It took some time to arrange his pillows in such a way that he wouldn’t feel dizzy. Marcus had mastered it, but Marcus was in Florida.

  “I wish you’d consider getting that hospital bed,” Ed said.

  “I thought that meant moving him into the den,” Kurt said.

  Ed nodded. “It would.”

  “These meds he’s on now. It’s been havoc on my sleep schedule,” my mother said.

  “Those hospital beds are awful,” Kurt said.

  “They’re not pretty, but they’re functional,” Ed said. “Especially in this sort of situation.”

  “He can’t sleep in the den,” Kurt said, as if the conversation were over.

  “Why is it your decision?” I asked.

  “I talk to him. I check in. I probably call more often than you visit.”

  “I live here,” Blake chimed in.

  “Anyway, Marcus was saying—” I began.

  “And if Marcus says it, it’s golden?” Kurt asked.

  “Not necessarily. But he’s Dad’s nurse. And we agreed that—”

  “We didn’t agree to anything. You agreed. All of you decided to open the door to some guy we know nothing about and now he’s in charge and you’re passing every decision to him,” Kurt said. “I’m surprised you could even decide what to eat with precious Marcus gone.”