Heather Cochran - The Return Of Jonah Gray

“You look as lovely as ever,” Gene said.

“My mother just used the word androgynous.”

“She must have been making a joke.”

“She says sometimes she forgets that she doesn’t have three sons,” I added.

“That Lola is a funny one,” Gene said. He gazed at me with that way of his, the one that made me want to run screaming. He was so gentle. So sweet. So nothing.

“So how’ve you been?” I asked. I hadn’t seen Gene since we’d called it quits. To be precise, I’d called it quits. To be totally precise—Jeff-Hill precise—I had seen him a couple times as he’d delivered my mail, but I’d stayed hidden behind a window shade.

It’s not as if he would have ripped up my catalogs had he seen me, but it seemed easier to avoid eye contact. Maybe I hadn’t quite filed away my feelings for him, even though I didn’t have any use for them anymore.

“I’ve been just fine,” he said. “Work always slows a little in August.”

I nodded. Most things slowed in August. Only the IRS revved up.

“Are you here with anybody?” I asked him.

“No!” he croaked, clearly appalled.

It was a silly question. Bringing a date to my parents’ party was the sort of provocation Gene would never have undertaken.

“You seeing anyone?” I asked. I didn’t want him back, but I still wanted to know.

“No,” he said, with a sad sort of half smile. “One of the other carriers has been trying to set me up with his sister.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know. It seems like so much trouble to go to.”

“Have you met her?”

He shook his head, then he shrugged. “I’m not comfortable having this conversation with you,” he said.

I nodded. Why did I still need to know every little detail? I had been the breaker-upper—I didn’t get to know everything anymore. But even now, he made it easy for me.

“So how’s your father?” he asked.

“Fine, I think. His doctor said it looks like a full remission.”

“I saw him when I came in. He’s gained some weight back,” Gene said. “He looks good.”

In my job, I heard a lot of people lie. There’s a tone to it, an airiness, a carefully constructed casualness. I heard the same in Gene’s voice. “But?” “What?” Gene asked.

“It sounded like you were going to say something else.”

He paused. “No,” he finally said. “You know, I never got to know him very well.”

“You got off easy,” I said. “But speaking of the guest of honor, I see him over there. I haven’t said hello yet.”

“You should go,” Gene said, nodding.

I was suddenly grateful that he’d made it so easy, as if he really did want the best for me. I felt my stomach sour a little. Why couldn’t I just be nice to the guy?

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

My father looked up and lumbered a step closer. “So you made it,” he said.

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t have missed this.” I was surprised that he thought I might not have come.

He leaned in for a quick hug and then pushed away, throwing me off balance. My father had always hugged abruptly, as if physical proximity were a reflex which, on second thought, he wasn’t comfortable with. I don’t know why I still wasn’t ready for it.

Though I lived only five miles away, it had been about a month since I’d seen him last. That wasn’t an accident. My father and I had hit a rough patch right around the time I took the IRS job, and we’d been skidding for about six years. Back when I was twenty-five and had passed my CPA exam, he’d wanted me to join his accountancy. At least, that’s what my mother had said. He’d never actually offered me a job, except to mention that if I ever worked with him, I couldn’t expect a handout, and I would need to generate my own clientele and find office space. It hadn’t been a terribly compelling pitch, and instead, I’d accepted the IRS’s offer.

Ever since, he’d seemed a little angry with me. I could tell by the way he asked about my work, on those very rare times he deigned to broach the subject, that he didn’t respect it, and so I’d stopped offering. I figured that he didn’t talk to me about his clientele because he thought I might audit them, and frankly, I couldn’t have promised not to. You get a lead and you’re obligated to follow it. Either way, as the years passed, we seemed to have less and less to talk about. He found the energy to talk to Kurt about geology and to Blake about various school subjects—things he knew precious little about. But with me, the child who worked in the same field as him, my father drew a blank.

Maybe I wasn’t the daughter he’d wanted. Or maybe that’s just the natural order of things. It’s an old song: children grow up, become adults, develop their own friends, buy their own houses, and in so doing, spend less time with their parents. It’s not as if my parents were suffering. My mother kept my father busy with shopping trips and golf outings and visits to the wine country and to the condo in Tahoe. It just meant that I didn’t see him very often. At least, I told myself that’s all it was.

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