Heather Cochran - The Return Of Jonah Gray

“You think you’re so special?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“That young man, he gives. He gives to anyone who asks, and what does he want in return? Nothing. And after all he’s been through.”

“What has he been through? Why did he give up the boat and move to Stockton? Did it have to do with the oak tree?” I cringed a little, hearing what sounded like desperation in my voice. But it suddenly felt very important that I figure it out. I felt like I had to know the answers. This wasn’t my usual, measured approach. More often I made assumptions based on details in returns, then tested them against the evidence I collected. But I could not yet piece together the story of his past year. I found myself at a loss. And yet I wanted to know.

My caller was not inclined to help me. “Like you care,” she grunted.

“I do,” I said. “We’re both from Virginia. And we both sail. Well, I mean, I used to. And, I guess, he used to. Too.”

“Then try showing him a little heart. He wouldn’t do this to you.”

“How could he? He’s not an auditor,” I said. “And he did publicly post the notification.”

“You started it by sending that letter.”

“But that was computer generated.”

“A real personal touch. That’s the kind of thing he wouldn’t do. He’s a good person, which is more than I can say about you. You’re not even good enough to be rummaging through his financial records.” She hung up.

Not good enough? I thought. How the hell could she know that? Who the hell was she to judge? Not good enough? At least I didn’t prank call strangers. At least I didn’t harass honest government workers. I was plenty good enough, I told myself. And besides, shouldn’t that be Jonah Gray’s choice?

As soon as the question popped into my mind, I sat up with a start. What was I doing? How had I become so riled from an anonymous phone call? That woman didn’t know me. None of them knew me. And it wasn’t for any of them to judge whether or not I was good enough to audit Mr. Jonah Gray. Ultimately, it wasn’t even his choice. It was the IRS that had chosen. And apparently the Service, or its randomization algorithm, had chosen me.

I realized that I had stopped reviewing Jonah Gray’s return in my standard way. Instead of following my long-held protocols, I was wandering around this guy’s life like a lost soul, skimming forward and backward without any plan at all. Gone was my customary patience—I was acting as if I wanted to know everything all at once, which is exactly how I felt.

But that’s not how an auditor was supposed to approach a return. It was not the way I’d been trained to work. I was supposed to review all returns in the same manner, to give them equal, undifferentiated consideration.

I steeled myself and closed his file. Yes, this guy was unexpected, and I didn’t know what I would find next, and I wanted to know. But I wasn’t going to abandon my professionalism for the sake of some stranger. I would unravel Jonah Gray’s story in due time. But I would start over from the beginning, the standard way. That is, once I got the first page back from Ricardo.

When Ricardo finally reappeared, he was dripping from head to toe. The man couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, which he was when he walked back into my cubicle.

“You left with my return. I need it,” I said.

“Look at me!” Ricardo shrieked, as the carpet below his feet grew sodden and dark. “They’re replacing old water pipes up on five,” he said. He flipped his hair back and liquid spattered across my desk. “One of them burst before they got the water turned off. I walked in and got hosed.”

“And my return?” I asked again.

“I could have been hurt!”

“But you’re not.”

“I should have gone to Susan for sympathy,” he said. He held out a matted, dripping clot of paper. IRS forms are essentially newsprint, and they don’t hold up under liquid.

“My God, Ricardo!” I said, grabbing the paper. It ripped as I took it from him. It began to come apart in my hands.

“I was holding it and then, well, couldn’t you hear? I had to protect myself.”

“With a piece of paper?” I spread the remains out on my desk. Half of the page had either been pulled off or had disintegrated. It was hard to tell which.

“Everyone knows that newsprint is just a weak mix of waste-paper pulps. You can’t expect it to maintain any tensile strength when wet. The fibers are way too short.”

Ricardo blinked at me, water still dripping off of him. “Not everyone knows that. Just geeks like you. Believe it or not, that isn’t what went through my mind when the pipe exploded.”

“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

“I’m not going back up there,” Ricardo said.

The soggy remains on my desk looked like the beginnings of an unpromising papier-mâché effort. And I had a sinking feeling that I was in possession of the healthiest remnant. “That was the original. I’m going to have to request a replacement.”

“So call Mr. Bean Man. Mr. Funny Dead Chickens.”

“And tell him what?”

Ricardo shrugged. “I don’t know. Mention the tensile strength of newsprint. What man wouldn’t swoon?”

WHEN I WAS FIVE AND KURT WAS EIGHT, OUR FAMILY moved from the outskirts of Roanoke, Virginia, to Piedmont, California. That was back before Blake, back when “family” meant just four of us—Mom, Dad, Kurt and me. Leaving Virginia was a huge deal. My father’s family had been there for six generations, and Dad had planned to follow suit and put down roots, his and ours, in the Old Dominion after finishing his accounting degree at the university in Charlottesville.

My mother, on the other hand, was from California. She’d gone east on scholarship to Sweet Briar, which she left after three years in order to be by my father’s side at the outset of his career. In the earliest years of their marriage, my mother had agreed to adopt Virginia as her own. But during the winter I turned five, the plan changed. I have this vivid memory of Kurt walking me home from kindergarten, the door to our house swinging open, the hallway inside stacked with boxes—giant cardboard containers, some taller than I was, kraft brown and sturdy. They were the sort of boxes you might lose yourself inside, the perfect makings for a clubhouse or tunneled fort. But as soon as my mother came around the corner, I saw something in the crimp of her mouth, and I knew without a word spoken that those boxes weren’t for play. Two weeks later, we lived in California.

My mother had insisted on the move, explaining to us that kids in California were nicer than kids in Virginia. I was five. How would I know? Soon enough, though, I would realize that our cross-country move had more to do with turbulence in my parents’ marriage. My father had been given a choice: Virginia or his wife and kids.

Sometimes I wondered what would have happened had he stayed behind, but I guess I’m glad he chose us, packing things up and shuttering his fledgling accountancy. He even found a house in Piedmont, a town my mother had long loved, though it was a stretch for them financially. And instead of growing up in Virginia, I became a girl from California, which brings with it a different set of expectations.

A part of me had always sensed that I’d missed out on something to have left Virginia so early. My scattered memories of the place were consistently tinged with the green of its thick, hot summers, its dense forests and its slow, fishy river. My recollections of the move itself are hazy, a pastiche of unrelated images, like puzzle pieces from opposite corners. The purple flower and the blue bird may be part of the same puzzle, but they don’t fit easily together. A long plane ride. Kurt crying. Untouched trays of food left outside a hotel-room door. Neighbors that smelled of cigarettes. My old sheets on a new bed.