“Fine. But dinner has started. So come straight to the table when you’re done. Special dispensation for special circumstances.”
She spun away and left him alone.
He took his hand off the receiver and addressed Isabel again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Something just distracted me. I was saying how much I appreciate your calling.”
“I was so glad to hear from you. A friend of Millie’s! That’s what your note said. My neighbor read it to me on the phone. I was so happy because I thought Millie didn’t have anyone except Luis.”
“She didn’t. I didn’t meet her until after Luis . . .”
A silence fell. It was perhaps a second or two. Or three. But it stretched out painfully in Raymond’s mind and gut and heart, like a bad week you might live through that just never seems to end.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.
“Thank you.” He couldn’t tell if she was crying or not. Her voice was heavy and dense with emotion, and that emotion seemed to bend the words at their edges. But he wasn’t sure about tears. How could he be? They were only on the phone. “So, tell me,” she said. “Are you helping her now? Taking her to the store for groceries, and to the bank to deposit her checks?”
“Yes. Both. We go out every couple of days for groceries. And . . . I’ve been wondering about laundry. Should I be helping her do her laundry?”
“Don’t worry about laundry, because Luis talked her into using a service that picks it up and brings it back clean. Well, a thousand blessings on you, then, Raymond, because I worried so much about that. About her. I swear Luis would roll over in his grave if he thought that sweet old woman was home alone with no one to help. Maybe trying to cross the street by herself, which eventually she would have been desperate enough to do. So tell me something else, Raymond. I know you just now found out what happened. That’s what you said in your note. So have you told her yet?”
Raymond swallowed hard. Felt a frightened tingling sensation rise up through his belly. Into his throat.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I swear I was going to. Right after dinner. In my family you have to show up in time for dinner if you expect to eat. I had like six or seven minutes to spare. I couldn’t go tell her and then just disappear. Leave her alone with all that. So instead I found the newspaper article. I thought I’d print it out so I could answer as many of her questions as possible. I was going to go right after dinner, I swear I was. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”
“Raymond,” she said, her voice interrupting him, but gently. “Relax. I wasn’t criticizing. It’s just . . . I want to come meet her as soon as possible. So I was thinking, if you want, I’ll tell her. Or at least be there with you when you tell her.”
Raymond closed his eyes and breathed. Gasped air, really. He’d had no idea he’d been holding his breath.
“Yes, please,” he said.
“Okay. Give me your address. I’ll ask my mom to watch the kids. But I might have to run their baths first or get them started on their homework. I could be there in maybe an hour. I know it used to take Luis twenty minutes on the subway.”
While he recited his address by rote, his mind miles away, he imagined her coming to his door. Meeting his parents. Who thought he had a new girlfriend. And there she would be. In her thirties. And pregnant.
“I’ll meet you on the street out front,” he said.
As he moved toward the kitchen doorway to join his family in the dining room, he heard his mother and stepfather talking about him.
“Well, he’s obviously in love,” his mother said, clearly talking to Ed. It was not the tone she would take with her children. “When he came home today he was just ruined. Just destroyed. I’ve never seen him look so down. They must’ve had a fight. And then she calls on the phone . . .”
“He still needs to get to dinner on time,” Ed said.
“No. Absolutely not, Ed. Do not do that. You will not put your arbitrary rules on him when he’s going through a thing like this. Don’t you remember what it felt like to be in love? For the first time, I mean,” she added, stumbling and clearly embarrassed by what she had accidentally implied.
“You can stop talking about me now,” Raymond said. “Please? Because I’m coming in.”
Silence.
Raymond walked into the dining room and sat at his place at the table. Looked down at his plate. It was spaghetti with plain marinara sauce and garlic bread. He sighed as quietly as possible. He never liked the way he felt after eating a meal that was almost all carbs and almost no protein. And he never slept as well.