“But people think it’s abnormal.” She didn’t answer right away, so he added, “Or they seem to, anyway. Do you think it’s abnormal?”
“What is abnormal, though? Normal is just the norm. The norm is just what the average person feels. Most people have those feelings. But some don’t. Those who don’t are in the minority, so in that sense abnormal. But we don’t use ‘abnormal’ in that sense when we speak. We use it to say ‘bad.’ It’s not bad. It just is. Some people just are. Maybe schoolmates make a thing out to be bad, but only because they don’t understand it. People laugh at things they don’t understand. It makes them feel safe. But it’s a false feeling. They are no safer. They just feel as if they are. The world is full of people too foolish to judge the difference.”
Raymond chewed a piece of cookie and then dreaded having to swallow it. His throat felt tight and dry. He wondered why he had ever started with this line of discussion.
“They don’t laugh,” he said. He swallowed hard, against odds. Sipped his cambric tea to wash it down. “Because they don’t know. I mean, they notice how I’m not drooling all over the girls like they do. But they just call me a faggot. They just think I’m gay.”
“But you’re not.”
“No.”
Raymond took another bite of cookie, wondering how far back in the conversation they had dropped the some-random-boy pretext. Then he decided it hadn’t been very useful or convincing anyway.
“But you don’t tell them you’re not?”
“No.”
“So this is another reason why you feel like you don’t fit in anywhere you go.”
“Yeah. One of many.”
“Why don’t you just tell them they are wrong? Not that it would be a bad thing about you if they were right. But why not say what is true for you?”
“Because it almost seems like . . . it seems worse. Like the truth is worse. There are gay kids at my school. Boys and girls both. I know who they are, most of them. Everybody does. If I was gay, I could just go hang out with them. But who do I go hang out with? I don’t know anybody else like me.”
“There are others.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have lived ninety-two years, Raymond, and if there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that we are never so unique as we think we are. We are all people. Sure, some things will be different from one person to the next. Some people have more of those feelings than others. Some have too much, and it causes all manner of havoc. Some have none at all. But I can tell you this as a human being who’s had a lot of experience being one: If you’re feeling something, other people in other places are feeling it, too. It’s never just us. But don’t take my word for it. Explore the world for yourself. Look it up. Research it. In my day we went to the library and had to get up the nerve to tell the librarian what we were looking for. You, you have it easy. You have a computer, yes? So why sit here talking to an old woman when you have all of the recorded knowledge the world has gathered sitting upstairs on your desk?”
“Hmm,” he said. And ate another cookie. “I guess I was afraid to look. You know. Afraid what I might find.”
“Never be afraid to look, Raymond. It’s always better to look. Whatever you’re afraid of, turn toward it, not away. Once you’re willing to do that, it loses all its power over you. Trust me. I know this. I don’t always do it. But I really, truly know.”
“Maybe I will,” he said.
They sat in silence for a time. It was a reasonably satisfied silence, at least on Raymond’s end of the thing. Considering what had just transpired.
“It was so nice of you to bring all that cat food,” she said. “But you didn’t need to. How much did you bring?”
“A case of the little cans she likes. And a twenty-five-pound bag of the dry stuff.”
“You shouldn’t have. How can you afford it? I told you I could manage.”
“You’re doing enough,” he said. “You know. Just keeping her here. Besides. I came into some money.”
Chapter Six
* * *
Por Qué
Raymond raised his hand to knock, then paused. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped that, this time, someone would be home.
At least, part of him did.
It was the following morning. Sunday. This was Raymond’s third door for the morning. His third Luis Velez.
It was hard to admit it to himself, but a sense of palpable relief had flooded over him the first two times, when nobody had come to answer the door. Still, it solved nothing. It meant only that he had to go back to those doors. He had placed a hash mark next to those names on his list—the third and fourth Luis Velez—to indicate that he had tried them once so far.
He knocked.
Immediately he heard a flurry of motion behind the door. The sound of heavy footsteps carried to his ears. A TV that he hadn’t consciously realized he was hearing fell silent.
Raymond heard something scrape against the door. A chain lock, if he’d had to guess. He thought someone was undoing the chain. But a moment later the door opened just a few inches, and an older woman’s face appeared in the space. The chain had been put in place to protect her from Raymond.
“Is Luis Velez here?” he asked. “I mean, is he home? I know you don’t know me, but I just want to ask him a very quick question.”
“Qué?”
“Luis Velez, está aquí?”
“Por qué?” the woman asked.
That was a word—or words—Raymond didn’t know. He scrambled for the dictionary, which was in his backpack. While he was extricating it, the woman closed the door in his face.
He knocked again.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he called through the door, not knowing if she understood a word he was saying. “I just need to ask him a question. One simple question.”
“Por qué quieres saber?” the woman asked through the door.
So there was that “por qué” thing again. And Raymond had not yet managed to look it up.
“Lo siento,” he called through the door. He felt more panicky than the situation likely warranted. “No entiendo.”