“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I think you are sorrier than you need to be,” she said. “Especially since you came and knocked on my door. Most people don’t. Most people hurry by, and the more I try to reach out, the faster they hurry. ‘Oh, no,’ they say, not with their lips but with their hurrying. They say, ‘You are not my family or my friend, you are not my little tribe. You are a them, you are not an us.’ And I know that the very fact that I would speak to them across those well-recognized dividing lines makes them feel they were right to be afraid of me all along. This is how people are these days, I’m afraid. You are welcome to come in, Raymond from the fourth floor. But I must ask that you not move anything. If you pull out a chair, later today I will fall over that chair. Everything must stay exactly where I expect it to be.”
They stood a moment, silent and still. Raymond did not go in. He was not quite ready to be in.
He looked past her, into her apartment. A hand-crocheted afghan lay carefully folded on the back of her faded sofa. There were lace doilies on the arms of it. And more doilies on the round antique wooden dining table.
“Here’s why I came by,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me. You came because you are a good young man, but probably there is something more specific than that.”
“I got to thinking about something you said. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. You said Luis used to come help you and check on you.”
“He did,” she said. “For more than four years.”
“And now he’s gone.”
“I am sorry to say yes.”
“So now there’s no one to help you. Or check on you.”
“You are correct. And you are a very decent person, Raymond. Which I knew all along. I’m a very good judge of human nature, you know.”
Raymond shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. It was his way of processing being ill at ease with her kind words. He liked them. But the very fact that they felt good as they settled inside him brought its own sense of unease.
“What did he help you do?”
A woman came down the stairs. Fortyish. Dark haired. Her forehead knitted into a careful frown, though Raymond couldn’t imagine over what. She looked up and saw him there, talking to the old woman. And saw the old woman there. She cut her eyes away and hurried faster down the stairs.
Wow, Raymond thought. I see what you mean.
“He walked me to the bank and to the market. I know it sounds silly to say.”
Raymond opened his mouth to speak. But she just kept talking.
“I have a white cane. And I know how to use it. Even though I haven’t been blind all my life, I’m good enough with the cane. It’s everybody else I’m worried about. Once upon a time people saw that white cane with the red on it, and they respected that. Everybody knew what it meant. The cars would stay far back. People would be careful not to get in front of me. Total strangers would stop what they were doing to help me cross the street. Now, either nobody knows or nobody cares. Or maybe they just don’t pay attention. They are too busy looking at their cellular phones. Last time I went out on the street alone it was more than four years ago. Someone cut right in front of me and tripped me, and I fell and broke my wrist. It was miserable. My right wrist. I couldn’t hold things or open jars. I could not sign my monthly checks. I could only just barely feed myself. That’s when the program sent Luis as a volunteer. Then the program ran out of funding and closed its doors and was no more, but Luis kept coming to help me. I haven’t been out on the street alone since then. I am afraid to go.”
“So . . .” Raymond had so many questions. It was hard to single out just one. “. . . how long has Luis been . . . missing?”
“Seventeen days.”
“So do you have any food left in there at all?”
“I have one-half of a can of condensed soup. Chicken and rice. I started it day before yesterday. It’s the last food I have, so I’ve been forcing myself to eat only one-fourth of it each day.”
“That’s all you’ve had to eat? For the past two days? A quarter of a can of soup a day?”
“I wasn’t sure how long it would have to last,” she said simply. “But now I feel so weak I’m not sure I can walk there. With help, even.”
“Well, get your white cane. And your purse. Here, I’ll give you my granola bar. And then if you feel up to it, we’ll go to the store.”
“First the bank, or I can buy nothing at the store.”
“Okay. First the bank.”
The old woman pressed the palms of her hands together. Brought them up in front of her face. She squeezed her cloudy eyes shut and turned her head up, as if gazing at the hall ceiling, but with her eyes closed. Then again, with her eyes, what difference did it make?
“Thank you for the answer to my prayers,” she said. Then she turned her face back down to the approximate location of Raymond’s. “And thank you for being the answer to my prayers, Raymond from the fourth floor. I will go get a few things, and we will be on our way.”
“Here’s something I don’t get,” Raymond said as they walked away from the bank.
He held his left elbow out. Exaggeratedly so.
With his right hand, Raymond dragged her little wheeled grocery cart.
“Ask away,” she said.
The morning air felt cool and crisp to Raymond. It smelled of car exhaust and sewer grates, but also some kind of curry cooking. The day had a new feel to it.
“You’re completely blind?”
“Almost completely. If you were to walk across my line of vision right now, right in front of me, I would know you had. I would see a general shape of you, like a shadow. But indistinct. But only because we are out in the bright light, so that I have the advantage of contrast.”
“So, when I came up the stairs yesterday . . . after school . . .”
“Yes. I remember.”