Have You Seen Luis Velez?(32)
He looked up to see every face at the table staring at him. Even the toddler. No one was eating cake. They were all watching him, transfixed. As if waiting to see what he would say next.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Wrong?” Sofia said. “Wrong? No, everything you said was just exactly right. Why do we leave people on their own like that? I ask myself all the time. They’re human beings, they’re our fellow human beings, but we don’t even act like we care. See, this is what I’m always telling you kids.” She looked to the side of the table where her five children sat. Two of the boys had gone back to eating their cake. “Junior! Eduardo! Pay attention when I’m talking to you.” Two forks dropped. One hit its dessert plate with a startling clang. “What this young man is saying is just what I’m always telling you kids. You see someone struggling, you help that person. Doesn’t matter if they’re familia, or even a friend. They’re a person. So you help.”
Luis Junior rolled his eyes. Or maybe it was Eduardo.
The senior Luis slammed one of his palms down on the table. Everyone jumped. But no one jumped higher than Raymond.
“Junior,” Luis said, his voice dense and grave. “You have one more chance to show respect to your mother, and if you can’t, you will leave this table. And the cake will stay here.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Junior mumbled. It sounded sincere.
Everyone went back to eating their cake in silence.
A minute or two later Raymond looked up to see the older girl staring at him. Luisa.
“You shouldn’t feel so discouraged,” she said. “Maybe the next Luis will be the right one. Or the one after that.”
“Maybe,” Raymond said.
“But he had a bad experience this morning,” Sofia said. “A couple of them, and now it’s much harder for him to knock on doors. Am I right, honey?”
She looked directly at Raymond, who cleared his throat and swallowed hard.
“Yeah,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s even more. I feel like I sort of . . . painted myself into a corner with this. Like . . . I’m not even sure how to say it. Like there’s just no good way this can end now. Mrs. G thinks Luis would never have stopped coming without even telling her why. I guess she thinks the best about people. But I don’t know if she’s right or not. So now I’m trying to think of a good way this can end. And I just don’t see it. Maybe she’s right, and something terrible happened to him. And that would be . . . well . . . terrible. Or maybe he doesn’t care nearly as much as she thinks he does. And that would be a whole different kind of terrible. I keep trying to picture finding out something better than that. But what would it be? Sometimes I think maybe he’s in the hospital, and he can’t come. But he could call, or send somebody. Or I think about what if he had amnesia or something. But that’s one of those silly things that I think only happens in the movies or on TV.”
Raymond paused. Took a deep breath. He poked his remaining cake with his fork. He purposely did not look up at the faces. He plunged on.
“So today I decided to stop. Not knock on any doors anymore. But then I looked at her, and she looked so . . . helpless, kind of. I mean, not literally, because she has a good brain. She can take care of herself in a lot of ways. But she just looked so . . . easy to hurt. And I don’t want the world to keep hurting her. I mean, if I can help it. Even though I know she’s probably pretty strong and she’s been taking care of herself since before I was born. So it’s probably just me, but I get worried about her. So I came and knocked on another door. But I just don’t see any good coming of it at this point. It just all feels so hopeless.”
He paused again. Shoved a huge bite of cake into his mouth. He did not look up at them as he chewed and swallowed. No one spoke.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring everybody down.”
A long pause.
Then the teen girl, Luisa, said, “I want to give him the medal. My Jude medal. Can I give it to him?”
Raymond looked up to see her exchanging glances with first one of her parents, then the other.
“The one your abuela gave you?” Sofia asked. “Are you sure you want to do that, honey?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. He needs it more than I do. Anyway, I’ve been thinking I shouldn’t be wearing it anymore. Because that makes it seem like I’m still hopeless. And I’m not. I’m good now.”
Raymond stared at her as she spoke. She was thin and pretty, with straight hair that was so long she might have sat on it if she wasn’t careful. She spoke in a high, quiet voice. There was something insubstantial about her. But only on the outside.
He looked to Luis and Sofia to see their reactions. He had no understanding of what was being offered, and that must have reflected in his eyes.
Luis Velez Senior said, “Luisa’s grandmother gave her a Saint Jude medal last year when she was sick. She had meningitis. It really looked like we were going to lose her for a while there. But she came through.”
A ringing silence. Raymond did not feel he could accept such a gift, but had no words to say so. At least, no words he did not fear would sound ungrateful.
The grandmother spoke up for the first time since Raymond arrived. She spoke in breathless Spanish, one word running into the next. Raymond did not understand one of them. Also, he could not have separated one out from the crowd to look it up in his book.