“Well. For starters . . . they’re all white.”
It struck him, in the pause that followed, that she had not known anything about his color, or lack of same. He wondered if she minded, now that she knew. He wondered if he had ever before met someone who got to know him a little before absorbing that information. Probably not.
“You are adopted?” she asked.
“No. My dad is black and my mom is white. But then they got divorced. And then my mom married my stepdad, who’s white, and they had three more kids, all girls.”
“You must feel their love for you, though, across whatever differences you think you have.”
Raymond sat quietly for a moment, sipping his cambric tea.
“You’re not saying anything,” she said.
“I was just thinking.”
“You do think they love you.”
“That wasn’t the question, though. The question was whether I feel loved. Not usually. Not so much. I think my baby sister loves me. My other two sisters, I don’t know. I’ll bet they do, in there somewhere. But they have funny ways of showing it. They sort of keep to themselves. I don’t think it’s about black and white. Or not all about it, anyway. Could be because they’re both girls and I’m a boy. But my stepfather. He definitely doesn’t love me. He doesn’t dislike me. It’s more like he just accepts me. I came along with the deal when he met my mom. He loves his girls, because they’re . . . you know. His.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s just kind of busy. Raising four kids. Working full time. But, you know what? I shouldn’t be saying all this. It’s probably just me. It’s probably a normal sort of a family thing, and I’m just not feeling it right.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “You’re not having cookies.”
“Oh. I forgot about the cookies.”
He took three, and laid them on the small fine china plate she had set down at his place at the table—a blue floral design that he guessed was very old. Maybe the plates had been passed down to her through generations. They looked like that kind of china.
“Children always feel they are the ones at fault,” she said. “They think they are defective somehow, if everything is not just as it should be. But usually not. If there was a lot of love going on all through that house, I think you would feel it. You would know.”
Raymond took a bite of cookie and chewed carefully before answering.
“Did you have children?”
“No. I have no children. But I was a child, so that will have to do. Tell me this, my young friend. It should not fall to you, but still I will ask if you give love to them. In a big sort of way that they can feel. Because it’s entirely possible that you might have to be the one to start this ball rolling. Somebody has to go first. It’s unfair that it should be you, but that may be the case all the same. Life is not always fair.”
“I never even thought about that,” he said. But her advice didn’t quite seem to fit in the moment. He agreed most with the idea that it was unfair that it should be him.
“Well, you think about it and let me know.”
He ate two cookies while he was thinking. Or trying to think, anyway. Somehow his mind just kept coming up blank.
“I’m not sure I would even know how,” he said after a time.
“Well, that is a problem,” she said, “yes. Ideally the parents get the ball rolling, so then the child recognizes this emotion and knows how to give love in a real way, so it can be felt. But a lot of parents don’t know such things themselves, and they can’t very well teach you what they don’t know, now can they? I’m sorry you are having trouble being happy right now, Raymond. We all take turns, I think. Yesterday I was very unhappy, but today I feel well. And do you know why? I’m sure you do.”
“Because you have food.”
“Yes. Because I have food. And because I see now that food was something I had grown to take for granted. And now I know better than to take it for granted again. Or at least, it’s my job to remember. We’ll see how I do. But also I’m happy because I met you. And not only because you walked me to the store. Someone else might have walked me to the store, and so I would be happy to meet them, but maybe only for that reason. Depending on who it was. You I am happy to meet for a number of reasons.”
Raymond felt blood rush to his face, tingly and hot.
“Every time I say a nice thing about you, you get very quiet,” she said.
“I’m not used to it.”
“That’s a shame.”
With that, they seemed to run out of things to say. Or things they were willing to say. In that conversational direction, anyway.
A minute or two later he asked, “What would you have done? You know. If I hadn’t come by?”
“I guess sooner or later I would have called the police, and said to them, ‘I don’t know who it is who can help a person like me, but I need them now.’ Almost anyone can help, I suppose. It’s more a matter of who will. But I would have called the emergency number. The 9-1-1. Because you can’t just sit in your apartment and starve to death. If you have no food, you will die, and that is an emergency. But I wanted so much not to do that. I kept thinking if I could hold on a couple days more, maybe Luis would come. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and admit to myself and others that I had given up on that. I wanted the subject still to be open.”
The apartment fell quiet again at the mention of his name. A deep, resonating silence, like that surrounding a eulogy or a prayer.
“I should get back,” Raymond said, swallowing the last bite of his last cookie. “I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. But I’ll come back and check on you.”
“That’s good of you. Thank you, Raymond. Who knows? Maybe Luis will come back. Maybe he will show up at my door. I have dreams about that. Both when I’m awake and when I’m asleep. He tells me different stories of why he couldn’t come sooner. But it’s no matter in the dream, because he is back.”