“What?” he yelled suddenly.
It came out much louder and angrier than he had intended. It startled Clarissa, who jumped. Her eyes immediately filled with tears.
Rhonda was the one who said it out loud.
“Raymond has a girlfriend. And she’s . . . like . . . a hundred!”
Raymond jumped up from the table, purposely catching the edge of his plate and flipping it up into the air. It came down hard, a foot nearer the center of the table, pitching the slab of mystery meat off onto the plastic tablecloth.
He turned his eyes on his mother, who threw both hands in the air as if being held at gunpoint.
“I didn’t say anything to them,” she said. “One of them must have overheard.”
“See, this is why I can’t stand being part of this family. You treat me like I’m totally weird, like I’m from outer space or something. We have nothing in common. Look at me. I don’t look like I belong with you people, and I don’t act like it, and I don’t feel like it. We don’t even have the same last name. And you all drive me crazy, acting like there’s something wrong with me—well, I’ve got news for you. Maybe it’s not me. Maybe I’m perfectly okay, and there’s something wrong with all of you.”
He froze there, towering over them, and looked at the horrified faces. He had never spoken to them like this before. He had never spoken to anyone like this before. The middle girls sat with their mouths hanging open. Clarissa was crying openly.
“Not you, Clarissa,” he added. “You’re okay.” He looked down at the tablecloth. Shook his head. Hard. “I’m not hungry. I’m going to my room.”
As he walked away down the apartment hall, he heard Ed say, “You gonna let him talk to you like that?”
He couldn’t hear what his mother said in reply.
She came to his room a minute or two later. She knocked, but didn’t wait for a reply. Raymond was lying facedown on his bed. He didn’t move as she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the mattress beside him.
She placed a hand between his shoulder blades.
“Please don’t,” he said, because he wanted to stay angry.
She took the hand back.
“We don’t mean to make you feel like you don’t belong here.”
“The point is not whether you mean to make me feel that way. The point is not even whether you make me feel that way. The point is that it’s true. I don’t belong here. I don’t fit with this family. It’s just a fact.”
A pause fell.
Then Raymond dropped a bomb that had been in the bay of his aircraft for a very long time. He had never paid it any conscious attention. He hadn’t thought it through. But it was always there.
“Maybe I should just go live with Dad.”
Silence. Deadly, nearly radioactive silence.
Then, with an eerie tightness in her voice, she said, “You honestly think his new wife would put up with that? That she’d treat you better than we do?”
“No. I think she’d treat me like I don’t belong. But at least I fit with Dad. That’s one person, anyway.”
Then he realized that move would put him a subway ride away from Mrs. G. But maybe it wouldn’t matter. Luis had moved farther away, and he had continued the friendship just as well.
He felt a slight bounce to the bed and heard the door open and close. He had to look around to confirm what he knew, but he knew it. She had gone away and left him blessedly alone.
When Raymond arrived at the breakfast table the following morning, both his mom and stepdad were there. Which was . . . wrong. It never happened that way.
Ed immediately rose from the table and took his coffee into another room. Whether he was angry at Raymond or had agreed to leave them alone to talk, Raymond couldn’t tell.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked his mother, a note of anxiety creeping into his belly. He heard it come through in his voice.
“I made an arrangement to go in late so we could talk. Sit.”
Raymond sat. He always wished she would say “sit down,” so it sounded less like a command you would give your golden retriever. Still, it did not feel like the time to bring it up.
“What can I do,” she began, “to make you feel like I respect the differences between us?”
Raymond felt stunned. He was aware of his own rapid blinking.
Meanwhile she was still talking.
“And I don’t just mean the outer differences like height and skin color and last names. Yes, you seem to care about a whole different set of things from the rest of us. Obviously. And when you try to tell me what you care about, I don’t understand. I get that. So what can I do to make you feel like I see you, and that what you are is okay with me? Because I really want to do that if I can.”
“Whoa.” For a moment, Raymond had no idea what else to say. And then, just like that, he did. “There’s something I want to do. It’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and it’s really important.” He filled her in quickly on the trial. Four or five sentences, maybe. The least he thought he could get away with saying. “Like you just almost can’t imagine how important it is to me. But I’d have to take some time off school, and I’d need a note from you.”
“No,” she said. Fast and immediate. “No, you know I’m not into any of you kids missing any school. That’s out of the question.”
Raymond dropped his face into his hands. And left it there for a time. A rush of anger came up, but he let it go again. Let it pass through him. It wouldn’t help him now. It would only cement her resistance.
He dropped his hands again, and looked at her face. To gauge where she stood with all of this. It was the usual Mom face. She wasn’t treating him any differently yet.
“So what you’re saying,” he began, “is that you want to see me differently and respect what you see and get along with me in a whole new way . . .”
“Right.”
“You just don’t want to make any changes at all.”
He watched her face as she took in those words. Watched her “Mom resistance” crumble, one brick at a time. He knew he had said the right thing for a change.
“You’ll keep up with your schoolwork?”
“I promise.”