Raymond had expected the apartment to be dirty inside. Or at least dusty. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
“So what about you, young one?” she asked, knocking Raymond out of his thoughts. “Tell me what it is about your life that is making you so unhappy.”
“I didn’t say I was unhappy.”
“You didn’t need to.”
He struggled inwardly for a moment, floundering in the embarrassment of having been seen. It struck him odd that he’d had to come to the home of a blind woman to be seen clearly. At long last.
“Well . . . ,” he began. “Lot of things, I guess. Hard to put my finger on just one.”
“Then tell me two or three.”
“I just feel like . . .” Raymond paused for a long time. Or at least it seemed long to him. He closed his eyes and listened to the traffic outside. “I guess I feel like I don’t fit anywhere.”
“You must fit somewhere.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about up on the fourth floor with your family?”
“That might be where I fit the least.”
“Tell me how this is so,” she said. “Because I cannot imagine such a thing.”
“Well. For starters . . . they’re all white.”
It struck him, in the pause that followed, that she had not known anything about his color, or lack of same. He wondered if she minded, now that she knew. He wondered if he had ever before met someone who got to know him a little before absorbing that information. Probably not.
“You are adopted?” she asked.
“No. My dad is black and my mom is white. But then they got divorced. And then my mom married my stepdad, who’s white, and they had three more kids, all girls.”
“You must feel their love for you, though, across whatever differences you think you have.”
Raymond sat quietly for a moment, sipping his cambric tea.
“You’re not saying anything,” she said.
“I was just thinking.”
“You do think they love you.”
“That wasn’t the question, though. The question was whether I feel loved. Not usually. Not so much. I think my baby sister loves me. My other two sisters, I don’t know. I’ll bet they do, in there somewhere. But they have funny ways of showing it. They sort of keep to themselves. I don’t think it’s about black and white. Or not all about it, anyway. Could be because they’re both girls and I’m a boy. But my stepfather. He definitely doesn’t love me. He doesn’t dislike me. It’s more like he just accepts me. I came along with the deal when he met my mom. He loves his girls, because they’re . . . you know. His.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s just kind of busy. Raising four kids. Working full time. But, you know what? I shouldn’t be saying all this. It’s probably just me. It’s probably a normal sort of a family thing, and I’m just not feeling it right.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “You’re not having cookies.”
“Oh. I forgot about the cookies.”
He took three, and laid them on the small fine china plate she had set down at his place at the table—a blue floral design that he guessed was very old. Maybe the plates had been passed down to her through generations. They looked like that kind of china.
“Children always feel they are the ones at fault,” she said. “They think they are defective somehow, if everything is not just as it should be. But usually not. If there was a lot of love going on all through that house, I think you would feel it. You would know.”
Raymond took a bite of cookie and chewed carefully before answering.
“Did you have children?”
“No. I have no children. But I was a child, so that will have to do. Tell me this, my young friend. It should not fall to you, but still I will ask if you give love to them. In a big sort of way that they can feel. Because it’s entirely possible that you might have to be the one to start this ball rolling. Somebody has to go first. It’s unfair that it should be you, but that may be the case all the same. Life is not always fair.”
“I never even thought about that,” he said. But her advice didn’t quite seem to fit in the moment. He agreed most with the idea that it was unfair that it should be him.
“Well, you think about it and let me know.”
He ate two cookies while he was thinking. Or trying to think, anyway. Somehow his mind just kept coming up blank.
“I’m not sure I would even know how,” he said after a time.