Have you ever actually met me?
“Fine,” she said. “Then just the jeans.”
Raymond was pressing “Send” on his email to Isabel, telling her the big news, when his mother threw open the door to his room. Without knocking.
“And what exactly is this?” she asked.
She sounded angry.
She was holding up what was obviously a bill of paper money. But she was not close enough for Raymond to make out the denomination.
“I can’t see,” he said.
She marched up to where he sat at his desk and pushed it so close to his face that he had to jerk his head back to keep it from hitting him in the nose.
It was a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill.
“It was in your jeans. You weren’t smart enough to go through the pockets before you gave them to me.”
At first he just stared at it. She was holding it so close to his face that his eyes crossed in the process. A few seconds later it came together in his head.
“Huh. He’s getting better at that. I never felt a thing.”
He glanced up at his mother, who looked as though her head were about to explode, letting out a burst of scalding steam.
“Do I even want to know what that means?” she shouted.
“No, it’s . . . It’s nothing. It’s not . . . it’s just this guy who drops money anonymously on people when he thinks they deserve it.”
“And what exactly did you do to deserve it?”
“Nothing. Just trying to help a friend. I was just trying to get a referral for a friend for something she needs. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’re not selling drugs?”
“Of course not.”
“Or yourself?”
“Jeez, Mom. Have you ever met me? I mean, do you actually know me at all?”
“I know you’re gone an awful lot these days.”
“Just hanging out with my friends.”
“All of whom are adults. Which is weird.”
It was actually weird to hear her use the word “whom,” but he didn’t say so.
“None of whom are into any of the things you’re accusing me of.”
She stood over him in silence for several beats. Then she let out a long and audible breath, and Raymond knew she would let it go.
“Okay, good,” she said, and headed for his bedroom door.
“Um. Mom?”
“What?”
He didn’t ask. Just held out his hand. She sighed deeply, walked back to his desk, and handed him the hundred-dollar bill.
Nice try, he thought as she walked away without comment. This time he was smart enough to keep his thought to himself.
He knocked on Mrs. G’s door an hour later, using his special “It’s Raymond” knock. In one hand he held a bouquet of flowers—irises and a few roses, with baby’s breath in between the blooms. In the other he held a small box from a shop that called itself a chocolatier. In it were four finely handcrafted and very expensive chocolate truffles.
There had been a great deal of walking involved in getting them. His neighborhood did not have florist shops and chocolatiers on every corner.
“You may come in, Raymond,” she called through the door.
He let himself in with the key.
She was sitting on the couch, slumped forward, chin nearly on her breastbone—as though holding her own head up required more effort than she was willing to expend. She was still in her nightgown, with a blue terry-cloth robe tied on over it.
“I smell flowers,” she said. Listlessly, Raymond thought.
“That’s because I brought you some.”
He stood in the middle of her living room for a moment, hoping she would say more—wake up in some internal sense.
When she didn’t, he said, “Do you have a vase or something I can put these in?”
“In the cupboard over the refrigerator. It’s a very high cupboard. You might have to stand on a chair. I put them up high after Rolf died because I couldn’t think who else would bring me flowers.”
“I’m tall,” he said.
“That’s true. You are. Well, see how you do.”
He moved into the kitchen and pulled down one of her three vases easily. Meanwhile he nursed a gnawing sensation in the back of his mind having to do with her mental and emotional state. He would not have put it so clearly in words if he had been asked. It was just a sense of everything being wrong.
He poured water into the vase at her sink. Unwrapped the flowers and threw away the paper. Arranged the blooms carefully in the vase for display.