Have You Seen Luis Velez?(93)

She pulled two bills free and handed them to Raymond. “Put these in his . . . whatever he’s using to collect money.”

Raymond dropped the bills in the cellist’s hat.

The man stopped playing suddenly. Right in the middle of a note. He raised the hand not holding the bow and offered an expansive gesture of thanks to her, like the tipping of an invisible fedora.

“She can’t see that,” Raymond said.

It only just then struck Raymond that she had not brought her red-and-white cane. Maybe she had been too tired and dispirited to go fetch it. Or maybe she trusted him now to tell her everything she needed to know about the sidewalk in front of her feet.

“Did I miss something?” she asked.

“It was a gesture of gratitude,” the cellist said. He leaned one elbow on his knee a moment, seeming to have lost the will to play, or the thread of the piece he had abandoned. “Your friend here has an emotional reaction to the music,” he said to Mrs. G. “A lot of people do. It made him cry. I think he brought you here so you could cry, too. Just a guess. I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

“I didn’t assume you did.”

“I think maybe he thought a catharsis would do you good. But I’m only guessing based on my observations.”

“He may be onto something there,” Mrs. G said. “After all, the only thing that hurts more than tears shed is tears unshed.”

“Indeed,” the cellist said. “Now I’d better start again at the beginning. I can never pick up the thread of that piece once I’ve lost it.”

For nearly two hours they sat in the street and listened to him play, neither seeming to want to say it was time for the concert to be over.



“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.