When the story came up, Raymond couldn’t bring himself to read it. Because there on his screen, front and center, was a photo of Luis M. Velez. Raymond just couldn’t seem to get any farther than that photo.
He was younger than the man Raymond had pictured. And so alive. He was so alive in the photo that it seemed impossible to think he could be dead. His smile was so infectious that it almost made Raymond smile just to look at it. And there was nothing for Raymond to smile about in that moment. Luis’s eyes shone. His hair was dark and a little bit shaggy, his eyes dark. Eyebrows neat and thin. But it was hard to focus on those details, because Luis’s smile just kept stealing the show.
The caption under the photo read, “Luis M. Velez, 33, of Manhattan, leaves behind a wife and two children: Maria Elena, 11, and Esteban, 7. His widow, Isabella, is pregnant with their third child.”
Raymond’s door flew open, and his mother stuck her head into the room.
“I thought you were going to keep your ears open.”
“Sorry. Did you call dinner? I didn’t hear.”
“No, I called in and said someone was on the phone for you. You didn’t hear the phone ring?”
“Oh. Sorry. I was busy paying attention, I guess.”
His heart pounded, wondering if it was Isabel. He figured it must be, because nobody else ever called him. Mrs. G had memorized his number, but she always waited for him to come by her apartment of his own volition.
He clicked his computer back into sleep mode and rose from his chair. As he walked through the open bedroom doorway, his mother punched him on the shoulder, surprisingly hard.
“It’s a young lady,” she said, her voice all full of happy conspiracy. “Thought you said you didn’t have a girlfriend.”
“I don’t,” he said, and ran to take the phone.
Unfortunately, the phone in the kitchen was the only phone they owned.
“Hello?” he said, sounding breathless from the fear.
“Raymond Jaffe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s Isabel. Luis’s wife.”
“Thank you so much for calling me,” he said on a desperate rush of breath. He heard a movement. Turned his head to see his mother standing in the kitchen doorway behind him. He covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with one palm. “Excuse me,” he said. “A little privacy, please?”
“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 . . .”