Have You Seen Luis Velez?(33)
He raised his gaze and caught Luis’s eye.
“I’m sorry. What did she say?”
“You’re sorry a lot,” Luis said. “And I don’t think you need to be.”
“That’s what Mrs. G always tells me.”
It was Sofia who answered his question. “Abuela says it’s not a family heirloom. She says she bought it at the store for Luisa, and if she ever needed to, she could go buy another. And she also agrees that you should not wear the medal if your case is not hopeless.”
Luisa rose from the table and walked to Raymond, who pushed his chair back slightly and then froze in fear. Why fear, he had no idea. He was simply afraid of people. Afraid to be approached. It seemed to make no sense, but there was little he could do about it. At least, as far as he could tell.
The girl pulled the medal out from under her peach-colored shirt. It was on a heavy chain. A long chain. She slipped it off over her head, and Raymond sat very still as she reached out and slid the chain over his head. One of her hands accidentally brushed against his closely cropped hair, and he shivered slightly, because it tickled.
“There,” she said. “Saint Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes. Now you have him with you.”
“Thank you,” Raymond said, his voice hushed with awe.
Raymond did not believe in the saints. He did not think that Saint Jude was now with him, helping him with his hopeless cause. He did, however, very much believe in the simple magic of a girl who barely knew him, yet would be so kind. And that kindness, he knew, would stay with him through the end of the Luis Project. However it turned out.
He held the medal in his hand, out away from his chest. As if it had something to tell him, and he could listen by feel.
“That’s such a nice thing to do,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Luisa said, returning to her place at the table. Swinging her long hair out of the way before she sat. “It just felt like the right thing. It felt like it wanted to be yours.”
They sat in the living room together, a relentlessly spotless area with plastic slipcovers on all the furniture. Raymond’s stuffed wing chair squeaked underneath him when he shifted his weight, so he tried not to.
Luis Senior was speaking. The boys and the grandparents had gone their separate ways. Luisa sat across the room and watched Raymond finger the medallion she had given him. The toddler, whose name he had forgotten, stood too close and stared into Raymond’s face.
“I just feel bad,” Luis was saying. “Because I really want to be the guy who was helping the blind woman do her errands. And I don’t just mean because you wanted me to be. I mean I want to be that guy. I always thought I’d be that guy. But then I have all these kids, and we’re taking care of Sofia’s parents, and we both work full time. But still, I look back over what I’ve done in my life, and it’s good and all . . . but I still want to be that guy.”
“You’ve done a lot with your life,” Sofia said, reaching across the couch and taking her husband’s hand. “You take good care of your family.”
“I try,” he said. “Yeah. But most people take care of their family. That’s the problem. They give everything they’ve got to their family and nothing to anybody else. And then this poor old blind woman, she has no family. And she’s just out of luck. Nobody figures she’s their problem.”
“I agree with Sofia,” Raymond said. “It sounds like you do a lot, and you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“Maybe,” Luis said. He had huge eyebrows, graying and long. Wild, swirling in every direction. They seemed to join in the middle of his forehead as he furrowed his brow. “But I still want to be that guy. This Luis Velez you’re looking for, does he have kids?”
“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “Somebody else asked me that question. A different Luis Velez. And I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I asked a few questions that I thought might help me find him. But now I feel like if I ask any more, she’ll figure out what I’m doing. And I don’t want her to know. Not now. Not till I know how it turns out. When I come home and I’m all disappointed, I don’t want her to have to take it on with me. And now I’m just feeling more and more like I’ll have no way to make her feel better in the end. She’s hurting now, because she doesn’t know. But whatever I find out, I feel like it’ll hurt her to know it. I have no idea what the answer is. I have no idea what to do.”
They sat in silence for a time. The baby girl stepped closer and stared up into Raymond’s face as though fascinated by his sadness. She leaned her sticky, sausage-plump fingers against the knee of his jeans.
“Honey,” Sofia said. “Karina. Give the boy a little space.”
The girl did not retreat, so Sofia swooped in and picked her up. The girl fussed and cried at being overpowered.
“I should go,” Raymond said. He stood, feeling how full he was. All that omelet. All that cake. “I should get out of your hair. But I want to thank you for talking to me and being so nice. And for this medal. It really made a difference after this morning, and how horrible everything was. It’s going to make a difference next time I have to knock on a door.”
But, even as he said it, he could feel his overly full belly curdle sickeningly at the idea.