The Return Of Jonah Gray. Heather Cochran

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.

      “I don’t believe you,” she said. “What’s up with you and Gene? I want to know, but you don’t have to tell me.”

      I was long since sorry that my key hadn’t slipped away from my fingers in the bottom of my bag, at least for a few more seconds. Couldn’t I have hit another red light on the way home? My mother was an expert at the “I’m not overstepping, I’m just interested” arm-twist.

      “Nothing’s up with me and Gene.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

      “It means we’re not dating anymore. Like I told you.”

      “It was your job, wasn’t it? That job is always interfering with your love life.”

      “You’re the one who’s always interfering with my love life,” I reminded her. “Gene had no problem with my job.”

      “And I don’t have to tell you how unusual that is. You don’t toss a guy like that out with your dirty dishwater.” An image of my ex-boyfriend, shrunken down and bathing in my sink flashed into my mind. It was not appealing. “And you two have so much in common,” my mother went on.

      “We do?” That got my attention. She may have been the first person to say that about me and Gene. Most of my friends had chalked us up to a case of opposites attracting. Martina’s standing line was “He’s milk toast to me, but whatever makes you happy.”

      “You both work for the government,” my mother pointed out.

      “And? I have as much in common with the first lady.”

      “You’re not saying—”

      I cut her off. “No, not a lesbian, Mom.”

      “Because that would be fine,” she went on.

      “Gene and I broke up last month,” I reminded her.

      “You never said why.”

      “It wasn’t because I’m not into guys. I just wasn’t into him. He just—he never noticed anything. He only saw what was right in front of him. He never saw me.”

      My mother sighed. She sounded as if she was settling in. “Marriages are work,” she said after a time. “But they’re worth it.”

      Mom often used her marriage to my father as the example on which all unions should be based. She tended to gloss over her threats to leave, their trial separation years before, and the difficult times before my brother Blake was born.

      “Gene and I only dated for six months. We weren’t married.” I don’t know why I felt obligated to point that out. In some recess of her mind, she must have known it.

      “I’m just saying that no one’s perfect,” she said. “You’re not perfect. Your father certainly isn’t perfect. Even I’m not perfect.” She didn’t sound convinced about that last part.

      “Thanks for the pep talk. Big help.”

      “Are you sure it wasn’t because of your job?”

      Neither of my parents was happy that I worked for the IRS, and they’d never made any effort to conceal their feelings. Indeed, I had wondered a few times before whether my longevity at the Service stemmed from the fact that I liked the job and was good at it, or because I was determined to prove my parents wrong. I had expected the negative reaction from my father who, as an accountant, took an adversarial view of the institution. But I had always expected my mother to be more supportive—if only because of the social promise held out by the auditing group’s lopsided male-to-female ratio.

      Plus, she’d always been a numbers person. Even before I was learning the same concepts in school, she would tutor me in math, using examples from real life.

      “Suppose you wanted to buy a hundred pairs of shoes,” I remembered her saying, “but the first store only has six in your size. What percent would you still need?”

      “Why would I need a hundred pairs of shoes?” I had wondered. The absurdity of the idea was probably why I remembered the example years later.

      “Oh princess, every girl eventually does.”

      “I don’t,” I had said.

      I remember her sighing. “Let’s just say that the price was right.”

      The most meaningful numbers in my mother’s life had long been those on price tags. When I was growing up, my mother would discuss returns nearly as frequently as my CPA father, but to her a return meant that something hadn’t fit right when she got it home.

      “How can you be so sure that it wasn’t your job that drove him away?” she now asked.

      “Because I was the one who broke up with him. Because nothing was easy with Gene,” I said.

      “And you think your father was always a peach? Remember when he brought home that crazy boat?”

      “The sailboat? The Catalina? Of course I do.”

      “And none of us knew how to sail.”

      “I learned,” I reminded her.

      “You were the only one. I couldn’t wait to be rid of that thing. You remember that boat?”

      “I