“You’ve done a lot with your life,” Sofia said, reaching across the couch and taking her husband’s hand. “You take good care of your family.”
“I try,” he said. “Yeah. But most people take care of their family. That’s the problem. They give everything they’ve got to their family and nothing to anybody else. And then this poor old blind woman, she has no family. And she’s just out of luck. Nobody figures she’s their problem.”
“I agree with Sofia,” Raymond said. “It sounds like you do a lot, and you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“Maybe,” Luis said. He had huge eyebrows, graying and long. Wild, swirling in every direction. They seemed to join in the middle of his forehead as he furrowed his brow. “But I still want to be that guy. This Luis Velez you’re looking for, does he have kids?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “Somebody else asked me that question. A different Luis Velez. And I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I asked a few questions that I thought might help me find him. But now I feel like if I ask any more, she’ll figure out what I’m doing. And I don’t want her to know. Not now. Not till I know how it turns out. When I come home and I’m all disappointed, I don’t want her to have to take it on with me. And now I’m just feeling more and more like I’ll have no way to make her feel better in the end. She’s hurting now, because she doesn’t know. But whatever I find out, I feel like it’ll hurt her to know it. I have no idea what the answer is. I have no idea what to do.”
They sat in silence for a time. The baby girl stepped closer and stared up into Raymond’s face as though fascinated by his sadness. She leaned her sticky, sausage-plump fingers against the knee of his jeans.
“Honey,” Sofia said. “Karina. Give the boy a little space.”
The girl did not retreat, so Sofia swooped in and picked her up. The girl fussed and cried at being overpowered.
“I should go,” Raymond said. He stood, feeling how full he was. All that omelet. All that cake. “I should get out of your hair. But I want to thank you for talking to me and being so nice. And for this medal. It really made a difference after this morning, and how horrible everything was. It’s going to make a difference next time I have to knock on a door.”
But, even as he said it, he could feel his overly full belly curdle sickeningly at the idea.
Sofia walked him to the door. Variations of good wishes and luck followed him as he walked down the hall.
“You’re a lovely boy,” Sofia said to him.
Raymond looked down at his shoes and said nothing.
“Here,” she said, and pushed a folded scrap of paper into his hand. “I wrote down our phone number. I know you might forget, and it’s okay if you do. There’s no obligation. But if you can think to do it, please give a call and let us know how it works out.”
Raymond nodded, still feeling as though his mouth might or might not be in full working order.
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Sofia said as he walked out her door. “I think that lady’s story will have a happy ending. Because no matter what happens with Luis, she has you. And that’s not nothing. That’s no small prize.”
Raymond got off the subway on the Upper East Side and tried Luis M. Velez again, one of his “no answer” stops from earlier that morning. Because it was on his way.
There was no answer at Luis M. Velez’s door this time, either.
He put a second hash mark by that name and address on his list.
His mother was waiting for him in the kitchen when he got home, hands on her hips, her face set into a hard mask of belligerence.
“And where the hell have you been?” she asked.
It surprised him. He hadn’t expected any trouble.
“Just out,” he said. “I told the babysitter I was going.”
“She didn’t say you’d be gone until after dinner. We didn’t save you anything. You know the rules. You want to eat, you show up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, one hand on his full belly. “I’m stuffed.”
His sister Rhonda stuck her head into the room, betraying the fact that she’d been eavesdropping.
“Raymond has a girlfriend!” she crowed in a singsong voice.
His mother looked first at her, then at Raymond. “Go to your room, Rhonda,” she said. Then, to Raymond, “Do you have a girlfriend?”