Heather Cochran - The Return Of Jonah Gray

I didn’t know if the image I had built would be accurate, of course. I was never sure before I got an auditee into my cubicle. But I enjoyed the puzzle immensely, as well as the interim between the moment I wasn’t sure and seconds later, when I was. Imagine a life. Have you got it? I mean, have you really got it? Well then, let’s raise the curtain and bring out Donald and Miriam.

I walked into our no-frills reception area and looked around. Three sets of folks were waiting. One guy, off the bat I knew he was way too slick. He wore a perfectly tailored suit and crocodile loafers. My folks, the Ritters, they were savers. They weren’t wealthy, but I reckoned they’d been saving ten percent of Don’s take-home for the past twenty years. The guy in the suit—he’d dropped some serious cash (or more likely, credit) on his threads.

And anyhow, the crocodile man had an oily, better-than-you-are air. Donald and Miriam were softer than that, more hamburgers and horseshoes. The year before, they had donated an old car to a children’s hospital and hadn’t even claimed full value.

The folks by the door were too young. I knew that the Ritters had recently moved into a senior-living community, and both members of a couple usually had to have passed fifty-five to buy into such a development. Call me a warehouse, but that was the obscure sort of rule I got paid to keep track of.

“Ritter,” I called out, looking directly at the couple I had pegged as Donald and Miriam.

They stood. Tote bag and slip-on sneakers. I loved being right.

“I’m Sasha Gardner,” I told them. “Would you follow me, please?”

They looked unhappy to see me. I got no joy from ruining their day, but you can’t complete an audit without a face-to-face interview. It gives people a chance to explain themselves. Auditing might sound formulaic, but even I’d been surprised a few times. Sometimes, I would think I had someone pegged as an evader, and she’d arrive with a God’s honest explanation about the terrible year she’d had (and that’s why her numbers had gone all to hell). Other times, a taxpayer I thought I would surely let off would sit down and start lying through his teeth, even about the legit stuff. It didn’t happen often, but it happened.

“Here we are, Mr. Ritter, Mrs. Ritter,” I said when we arrived at my cubicle.

“Call me Mitzi.” As she folded up the newspaper she’d been holding, I could have sworn I caught sight of a crossword.

“Mitzi, then,” I agreed. “Have a seat.”

I noticed her staring hard at me. “You’re so young,” Mitzi Ritter finally said. She turned to her husband. “This girl can’t be older than Molly.” She turned back to me. “You’re not, are you?”

“Molly?” I asked.

“Our daughter,” Mitzi said. “You don’t know that? They said you’d know everything about us.”

“They?”

“Our new neighbors got audited once,” Don Ritter said. “Everybody has an opinion.”

“I don’t know everything,” I said. “But we don’t mind the rumor if it keeps people honest.” I smiled at Don Ritter to try to put him at ease.

He didn’t smile back.

I had assumed that the Ritters had kids by the size of their former house. “I take it Molly’s not a dependent anymore,” I said.

“Oh no. She’s been out of the house since, gosh how long has it been, Don?”

“Ten years,” Don said.

“Has it been that long?”

“She’ll be twenty-eight come December.”

“Time sure flies,” Mitzi clucked, then turned to look at me. “How old are you?”

I saw Don Ritter roll his eyes.

“Is that rude?” Mitzi asked. “It’s only because you look so young.”

“You think everyone looks young,” Don said.

“I’m thirty-one,” I told them.

“So young,” Mitzi said.

“So listen, Mr. and Mrs. Ritter. I mean, Mitzi. I imagine you weren’t exactly thrilled to receive my notice of your audit.”

Mitzi looked at her husband, who frowned, sitting a little higher in his chair and pulling his golf shirt down over his belly. Mitzi tried a smile. “There was a bit of language. I won’t repeat it here.”

“I know how you feel,” I said.

“Have you been audited, too?” she asked, eyes wide. “They do that?”

“Actually, no. Yes, they do audit auditors. I haven’t been tagged yet though.”

“Then you don’t know what it’s like,” Don said.

“Well, my father’s a certified public accountant, and my mother is a busybody. I kind of view my childhood as a series of unwelcome investigations.”

“I suppose it could have been worse,” Don Ritter said. “At least we’ve still got our health.”

“That’s a blessing,” Mitzi agreed. “Can’t take that for granted.”

“No, you can’t,” I said. Indeed, it was a subject I could have spoken about at length. Deep down, I knew it was the reason behind my current distraction. But other audits were waiting, piled high upon my table. I smiled at the Ritters. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR, I COULD HEAR MY phone ringing. I was just getting home, jacket and book in one hand and mail tucked under my arm, digging through my purse to find my keys. I hated that. A ringing phone and my response was practically Pavlovian. My heartbeat would quicken, and I’d bolt into over-drive, rushing, trying to shove my key in the lock, tripping over my purse, skittering across the room, and what were the chances it would actually be someone I wanted to talk to? Nine times out of ten, my desperate lunge got me to the phone in time for a sales call. Or, as on that day, my mother. And I’d been in such a fine mood leaving work.

“You sound like you’re out of breath,” she said. “You’re not getting enough exercise, are you?”

“I just got home,” I told her, picking up my purse, my mail, my jacket, my accounting book. Disappointed for some reason. Who did I expect that elusive tenth caller to be? Who would be worth the lunge and the scattered mail and the bent book jacket? No one sprang to mind.

“You work too hard,” my mother said.

“It’s not even six yet.”

“Long and hard aren’t the same thing.” My mother had held a part-time job for about six months, twenty-six years earlier. Apparently, it had given her a lifetime of insight.

“Were you calling about something in particular?”

She sighed. “I was just thinking about you and Gene.”

I looked at my mail and frowned. “What about Gene?”

“I want you to be happy, sweetheart. Are you happy?”

I had been before I’d answered the phone, I thought. There had been no more blistering phone calls, and the Ritters’ audit had gone well. In my analysis, I’d discovered that they hadn’t taken the full deduction on the appreciation of their former house (at issue was an upgraded bathroom), so I had sent them away with a refund. They were so surprised and relieved that they had invited me to a barbecue at their house that coming Labor Day. Of course, I wouldn’t go. Auditors never got involved with current or past auditees, not outside the office. It was important to remain impartial.

Still, it was nice to be asked and even nicer to feel as though I’d performed a public good rather than a necessary evil. Don’t get me wrong—auditing is about fairness. I mean, I pay my taxes. And people living in this country and driving on its roads and breathing its air, well, why should some folks foot the bill while others sneak off? But this audit had been different. I had actually made the Ritters’ lives easier. I liked the feeling that left me with—a sense of pride and satisfaction that drained dry as I spoke to my mother.

“Sure I’m happy,” I told my mom. “As much as anybody else.” That I’d been off at work of late wasn’t something I would ever admit to her. She would have leaped at an opening to tell me that I was in the wrong profession.