The Return of Jonah Gray (17 page)

“I like figuring out what people don't know they're telling me,” Jeff said. “I was really shy as I kid,” he went on. “People barely talked to me, so I sat and watched a lot. You know, when I wasn't collecting insects.”

“You don't seem shy,” I said.

“I'm better now at asking for what I want,” he said. He smiled at me.

“So what have I told you?” I asked. I found myself nervous to know.

“Something's going on with you,” he said. “Everyone talks about you like you're the most on-the-ball person in the office, but you're not, are you? Not right now at least.”

I felt my eyes begin to well up. I shook my head.

“I mean, that's fine. I don't need to know why. I respect your privacy. But you asked, and well, I could see it.”

“What gave me away?”

“Your desk.”

“My desk?”

“It's been cluttered since I first met you. I don't think it usually is.”

“It's not,” I said. For some reason, it was important that he believed me.

“I didn't think so, because you don't have piles.”

“Piles?”

“See, there are messy people, but you're not one of those. You don't leave old food containers around. Then there are cluttered people. But really cluttered people usually have some organizing principle that you can see if you look carefully. You know, defined piles, stacks of reading, overstuffed file folders. But you don't. Your bookshelves are neat and organized. Your photographs don't have any dust. It's like you've only let your desk go in the past month or so.”

“All of August,” I said. “It's true.”

“I hope I didn't upset you,” Jeff said. “You asked.”

“So what's your desk like?” I asked, though I had a feeling I knew. I looked at the salt and pepper shakers, precisely arranged.

“It's organized and clean,” he said, “but you knew that.”

The rest of dinner was surprisingly easy. Jeff seemed relaxed—at least, as relaxed as I'd ever seen him. He told one or two decent jokes. He asked about my friends. He held definite opinions, but they tended to complement my own, and it was a relief to be with someone who wasn't scared of making decisions.

He walked me to my car after dinner, and there, under the fluorescent streetlights, he leaned in. Though I hadn't quite made up my mind about him, about what I wanted or didn't want to happen, I found myself kissing him. It was nice, actually. He had made the decision for the both of us, and it was reassuring to feel someone's arms around me, so solid and certain. Reassuring isn't necessarily the wrong reason.

Back at home though, I didn't sleep well. At first, I thought it might be the beef jerky, the smell of which had leached through the cardboard box to permeate my bedroom. But even after I relegated the stuff to the hallway, I tossed in my bed.

I liked Jeff. Sure I did. And his world fit my own so neatly. He had no issue with my job. His car was paid off. I felt confident that he'd never leave dirty dishes in my sink. And his eye for detail and head for facts made me feel better about my own. And after a successful date, after you'd found yourself curled into the crook of the guy's arm, leaning in and kissing him back, didn't it make sense to drift off imagining what you might be at the cusp of? So why was I still thinking of Jonah?

THAT SATURDAY, I ARRIVED AT MY PARENTS' HOUSE AT
three, to see how my mother was handling things. Marcus was expected for dinner that evening.

“You didn't need to come early,” my mother said. “I don't feel like I have to bend over backwards, for this person of all people.”

“I'm not saying that you should.”

“Maybe I'll just run the vacuum,” she said, glancing around the living room.

“You want me to do that?” I offered.

“If you'd like.”

So I vacuumed, and when I was done, I found my mother in the kitchen, leaning into the refrigerator with all her weight and scrubbing the shelves. When she emerged and noticed me waiting, she smiled self-consciously.

“You're wondering why I'm doing this,” she said.

“Sort of.”

“I threw out last week's lamb chops and some of your dad's old limburger, and then, well, I don't know. It had to get done at some point.”

She had stacked all of the perishables in a pile on the counter. As I looked closer, it was clear that each condiment bottle and jar had also been rinsed.

“Is there anything else you want me to do?”

“Just sit. I'll get this food back in the fridge and we're finished,” she said.

But we weren't finished. All afternoon, she kept noticing things—a spiderweb in the top corner of the ceiling, dust along a windowsill, a pair of Blake's shoes hiding beneath the TV-room sofa. The same things that had gone untouched for weeks that Saturday were deemed unsightly.

At six, Ed brought my father back from radiation therapy. “Someone's been cleaning,” my father said.

My mother cut her eyes at him. I imagined she might have liked to say,
Yeah, you asshole, I've been cleaning up for the son you had when you cheated on me.
I was fine with the idea that my mother might yet be angry at my father, even though his mistakes were more than a quarter century in the past by then. Had I been in her shoes, I probably would have wanted to say something biting. But the fact was my dad had cancer. He was going to die. Neither of us said anything.

 

When the doorbell rang, right at seven, my mother jumped a little, then settled back against the couch. She made no move to answer the door, and her look told Blake to remain seated as well. I thought about Ed's comment—about who was being punished in this situation. I didn't want to be part of the Gardner cold shoulder, so I hopped up and went to let Marcus inside.

“Hello again,” he said. He wore a black sweater that covered his tattoos, his hair was neatly combed, and he was clean-shaven. I found myself wishing that my mother had met him before, so she could have appreciated how much he'd cleaned up for the occasion.

Maybe Ed had advised him to make the effort. Or maybe Marcus felt compelled to look nice for this visit with relative strangers. Maybe he had done it for my father, to make the smallest waves possible. I had to remind myself that Marcus and my father actually had a relationship now.

Or maybe Marcus wanted the evening to go well, needed it to, even more than we did. Whatever time my father had left was all that Marcus would get before he was orphaned for good. I heard Ed saying, “Don't punish the child.” I realized this was what he meant by that.

“Everyone's in the living room,” I said, motioning for him to follow me there.

Ed did the introductions. “Lola, this is Marcus Johnston.”

“Good evening,” Marcus said. “Thank you for inviting me over tonight.”

“Is that what I did?” my mother asked.

Ed cleared his throat.

“Dad! Can you come in here?” I called down the hallway.

“You have a lovely home,” Marcus said.

I respected his determination.

Finally, my father appeared. My mother looked at him, then turned back to Marcus and smiled more graciously. “Why, thank you, Marcus,” she said. “I don't believe you know my youngest son, Blake.”

“Hey, man,” Blake said, quickly standing to shake his half brother's hand. It was clear that my mother wasn't aware of the baseball game, though I supposed it didn't matter now. Suddenly, the same subjects that had been tucked away throughout Blake's life were standing in the middle of the living room.

“And of course, this is Sasha,” my mother said.

“I'm glad you could make it,” I told him. And I was.

“Well, it smells wonderful in here,” Ed said.

“It's the pot roast,” my mother said. “I trust you eat beef?” my mother asked Marcus.

“Yes, ma'am,” Marcus said.

She took a deep breath. “You might as well call me Lola,” my mother said.

I watched Marcus walk over to my father. There was no question as to whether they were related. Though Marcus's darker coloring was his mother's, his bearing and voice came straight from my dad. It was funny to hear how their accents matched.

“How are you today?” Marcus asked. “That radiation can really tire a guy out, can't it?”

My father nodded. “It wears me to pieces,” he said.

“Any disorientation afterward?” Marcus asked. “Feeling sort of wobbly?”

My father nodded again.

“Is it better after you rest?”

“Usually.”

“Then keep on resting. Don't let the bear get you yet. You've got some running still to do.”

“Blake, help me get the table set for dinner,” my mother said, standing and moving toward the kitchen.

“Aren't we waiting for Kurt?” Ed asked.

“He's not coming,” my mother said.

“But he told me he was coming,” Ed said.

“And he told me that something came up.”

Blake dragged himself off the couch and followed her into the kitchen. “We're eating in the dining room?” I heard him ask.

“Of course,” my mother said.

“What do you mean, of course? We haven't eaten in there since…” He paused. “Easter?”

“Oh, it hasn't been that long,” my mother said.

“Has, too.”

It was true. The formal dining room was usually reserved for special occasions. It was a stiff, closed-off room, with an air that carried the tang of silver polish and mothballs.

“Well, there are six of us tonight,” my mother said. “You want to try to fit around the kitchen table?”

“I'm just saying,” Blake said.

 

Considering that my father had cancer and that Marcus was getting to know a side of the family that had previously rejected him and that Blake was still sore about being the last to know, the conversation that Saturday was remarkably benign.

“I suppose you like being a nurse, then?” my mother asked Marcus.

“I do. Very much,” he said.

“You're going to take care of Dad?” Blake asked. “What can you do?”

“I haven't gone all feeble yet,” my father snapped. “Give the old guy a little time.”

“Come on, now. He didn't mean any harm. I know y'all are concerned,” Marcus said. He turned to Blake. “I can make sure he remains as comfortable and pain-free as possible, for as long as possible.”

I looked at Blake and thought he seemed older than fifteen. I wondered whether this past summer would turn out to have been the last one of his boyhood. I wondered whether he had any inkling.

My father turned to me. “Your brother said you've developed a thing for one of your audits.”

I was taken aback. For six years, my father had made it a point to be uninterested in my work. I wondered if he was bringing up the subject to try to keep the family tension at a more manageable level.

“Which brother said that?” I asked, eyeing Blake suspiciously.

“Kurt called a couple days back,” my dad said. “Don't do anything stupid.”

“A thing?” Ed asked. “Do you need it looked at?”

“It's not a thing,” I said to him, then turned back to my dad. “I'm not doing anything stupid. I'm not doing anything.”

“Who's the audit?” Marcus asked.

“He's nothing. I mean, he's not nothing—”

“So he's something,” Ed chimed in.

Maybe we were all punchy from the stress of that dinner. I didn't appreciate being the target, but I was willing to play along for a short while, if it got us through alive.

“He's neither nothing nor something,” I said. “He's just a guy I'm auditing. It was weird, is all. He's from Virginia and he had the same kind of sailboat as we did. But it's nothing important.”

“Sasha, you like someone? A man?” my mother asked.

“Why is this my life?” I sighed. There was no way I was going to fan the flames by mentioning my recent date with Jeff.

“Kurt said she did,” my father said.

“That was before,” I said. “Can we drop it?”

“His name is Jonah Gray,” Blake said. “I talked to Kurt when he called, too.”

“Jonah Gray?” my mother asked. “The gardener?”

“I thought Kurt said he worked at a newspaper,” my father said.

“He's a wonderful gardener, Sasha,” my mother said.

“Don't start. I've got gardeners coming out of the woodwork to tell me that.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” my father said.

“They are open. Open enough to notice that he was dodgy with last year's taxes.”

“I find that hard to believe,” my mother said.

“Well, he didn't declare any stock sales, yet stocks were sold. Figure that one out.”

“I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation,” my mother said.

“You've got to declare,” my father intoned. “You've got to report.”

“Besides, he's married. And filing separately, so he's probably hiding the sales from his wife.”

“You don't know that,” my mother said. “Don't prejudge the man.”

“That's her job!” my father hollered.

“I don't know what I know anymore,” I said.

“Sasha's got a crush,” Blake sang.

I had tired of being the target of my family's inquisition. I was all for pretending, for Marcus's sake or my father's or everyone's, that everything was
Leave It to Beaver
easy around the Gardner dinner table. Hell, we were all doing it. But I was going to share in the ribbing, too.

“Blake's got a girlfriend,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said. “I do not.”

“Then where'd you get the hickey?” I asked, pointing to the bruise on his neck.

“You have a hickey?” Ed asked. “Is it your first?”

“What are we talking about now?” my father demanded.

“Blake's friend kissed him a little too hard,” my mother explained.

“Mom!” Blake looked as if he might implode.

“Where?” my father asked.

“What, dear? Isn't that what a hickey is?” my mother asked.

I laughed and caught Marcus's eye. He'd been watching us in silence. “See what you've been missing?” I asked.

“What's burning?” my father suddenly barked. “I smell something burning.”

“Do you?” My mother rose from her chair. “Oh, dear. Don't tell me I left the oven on.” She hurried into the kitchen.

“I don't smell anything,” Blake said.

“Something is burning,” my father said again.

“I heard you the first time,” Blake said. “Jeez.”

My mother returned from the kitchen, frowning a little. “Well, the oven's off, thank goodness. You had me worried. Do you still smell it? Maybe the neighbors are grilling.”

My father sniffed the air again. “I don't smell anything,” he said.

Marcus put a hand on my father's arm. “It might be that the radiation therapy is affecting your sense of smell. It's a harmless side effect, just a little disarming when it happens.”

My mother turned to Ed. “Is that true?” she asked.

“That would be my guess, too,” Ed said.

“Would someone show Marcus to the spare room?” my mother asked. We had finished eating by then. “I understand he's going to be staying over.”

I looked at Marcus. “You're staying over?”

“What spare room?” Blake asked.

“Your sister's old room,” my mother said.

“That's where you're going to put him?” I asked. It wasn't my room anymore, and she had a right to do with it what she wanted. But still. “Why not Kurt's room?”

“Kurt got a little touchy when I suggested it. Anyway, your room has more privacy,” my mother said. “I don't really care which room he takes.” She kept her eyes down as she spoke, very carefully smoothing out the napkin on her lap.