“So, is that true what he guessed?” she asked him on the subway ride home. “Did you think I needed a good cry?”
“I had no idea if you would cry,” Raymond said. “I never thought about it. I cried, but I never thought about whether you would. I just thought it was beautiful. I’m always trying to think of beautiful things I can share with you about the world, but usually you can’t see them. This one you could enjoy just as much as I could, and so I wanted you to.”
She reached up by feel and placed a warm hand on his cheek. Patted it lightly, then just held it there for a moment. Then she patted his cheek again and dropped her hand back into her lap.
“I was hoping it would be another light for you,” he added. “You know. In that long night.”
“It’s getting lighter in here all the time,” she said. “I thought it was interesting what the cellist said.”
“Which part?”
“The part about his instrument having the same sad-to-beautiful ratio as life. And now I’m sitting here thinking, Who am I to make some big, sweeping pronouncement that the balance of life is wrong? I must have quite an ego to think I know better than God about a thing like that.”
“You believe in God?”
Raymond wondered if he had known that already or not. Maybe.
“I believe in something,” she said. “Something that I certainly hope knows better than me how the world should be arranged.”
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
The Block Party and the Sunset
Raymond was on his way to the apartment door when his mother stuck her head out of the kitchen.
“Going out?” she asked. A little too brightly to sound natural.
“Yeah,” he said, hoping not to have to say more.
“With your friends?”
“Yeah.”
“The older lady? Or that family who lost the father? Or that other family with the same name who still have the father?”
“Yeah.”
She fixed him with a curious look. “That last one wasn’t really a yes or no question.”
“Kind of all of the above. Is there a reason I’m getting the third degree?”
Her look changed then. Wilted. Morphed into something that looked weak and hurt. Raymond wasn’t used to that on her, and it made him feel guilty.
“That was so not what I was going for,” she said.
He paused a minute, his hand on the knob. Nearly teetered, half there and half gone, at least in his head. Waiting to hear if there would be more.
“I was trying to show some interest in your life,” she added.
“Oh. Got it. Sorry.”
He opened the door, but she had more to say.
“I know I said I was trying to understand you better. And I have been trying. But I think mostly I’ve been failing.”
The conversation hung there in pause mode for a moment. Raymond stepped through the door, nearly desperate for his freedom from this discomfort. But, as he did, he remembered what Mrs. G had told him. About making peace with his family of origin, especially his mother.
He stuck his head back in. “Thanks for trying, though.”
“And mostly failing,” she said.
“Still, though . . . thanks for trying.”
They met Isabel and her three children on the corner, Raymond leading Mrs. G slowly by the arm. They walked together, all six of them, toward the apartment of Luis and Sofia Velez and family.
They walked quietly at first.
“So we’re just going there to have supper?” Isabel asked after a time.
“I think so,” Raymond said. “They wanted to meet you. And the kids. But Sofia was very . . . I don’t quite know how to say it. She sounded excited, and she kept insisting that it had to be all of us and it had to be this Sunday, not last Sunday and not next Sunday, so . . . I don’t know. Sounded almost like there could be more, but she wouldn’t say more about it. So I’m not sure what to tell you. But there might be more.”
He heard Mrs. G sigh and knew the older woman hoped there would not be much more. She clearly didn’t feel up to much more.
“Hope they have a big dinner table,” Isabel said. “That’s going to be an awful lot of people eating supper. Okay, I have something to tell you, and I think this feels like the right time, so here goes. It’s really good news.”
“I can always use some good news,” Mrs. G said.
“I met with that attorney this morning, Raymond. That friend of yours. He met me at his office even though it’s Sunday. And he’s going to take the case. He thinks we have a really, really good case. He gives us a ninety-five percent chance of winning it. And he’s taking it on contingency, so I don’t have to pay him until we win. Which he’s confident we will. So I’ve just been really excited about that all day.”
“Wait,” Mrs. G said. “Am I supposed to know something about this? Because I know nothing about it.”
“Oh,” Isabel said. “I thought Raymond would’ve told you.”
Raymond swallowed hard against a sense of shame—almost as though trying to swallow the shame back down. “I didn’t want to tell you until I knew if it would work out or not,” he said, his voice small. “I thought maybe it was too soon.”
“You have a friend who’s an attorney?”
“Yeah. Sort of. He’s one of the men named Luis Velez who I went to see, but who turned out not to be the right one.”
They walked in silence for a handful of steps. Their heels on the pavement and the roar of traffic provided the only sound.
“But her trial is already over,” Mrs. G said.
“But this will be a civil trial,” Isabel said.
“Oh. A civil trial. I see.”
“We don’t know how much money she has,” Isabel said. “But in the course of filing the case we’ll have a right to find out. He says the court will let her keep enough to live on, but not much more. Rent and food and utilities and such, but no luxuries for her ever again. Everything over what she needs to live will go to me and the kids toward what the jury awards. If we win. Which he’s confident we will.”
“So she will have to pay something for what she did,” Mrs. G said, her voice hushed with emotion.
“Looks that way.”