The Female of the Species (22 page)

Of course, there was always Ida if he got hungry enough, and sometimes he did. One weekend in late April, though, she insisted on sitting him down to eat a sandwich she’d prepared for him. Walter was there, naturally. Raphael was ravenous, but he could hardly swallow the bunches of heavy bread, and halfway through the meal decided that even starving to death was better than this: Walter looking dully at him and trying to make conversation, out of either sadism or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell which, and Ida, as usual, having the time of her life. Finally, when Walter asked him, “How is school going?” he rolled his eyes and walked out the door.

Raphael continued to give parties, but not because he was in a festive mood. At least it was one sure way of eating something once a week or so; his guests brought provender, and often there were leftovers. He sometimes wondered, though, if the real reason he kept giving dances on his second floor was for the preparations beforehand, taking the cord over the road, pulling it down to Ida’s house, and plunging those two prongs of his plug deep into her side socket. He liked the idea of the umbilical wire connecting them those evenings, the electricity tripping from her outlet to his mill, and he would watch out the window late at night to catch sight of the wire waving between poles in the moonlight.

Then it was June. School ended. At his graduation Raphael looked over the audience from the stage to find Ida clapping happily in the front row, in an insanely upstanding way, like a proud aunt. Then he noticed Walter next to her, clapping, but faintly, and looking pale, and he could not believe the man was there, as he could not believe it was June and it was time. He had to bolt from the auditorium to the boys’ room to vomit what little food he had eaten that day.

“I cannot
believe
,” said Ida, collapsing onto his white couch, “you’re asking me to run away with you. I am stunned, I really am.”

Raphael stood some distance away from her, tall again, determined. “There’s nothing else for me to do. So believe it.”

“Well, I’m curious,” said Ida. “Where is it you propose to run off to?”

“Boston, for now.”

“Pretty high rents.”

He had to smile. “So I’ve heard.”

“You’re going to find another factory to play in?”

“I’ll live somewhere. I’d like running water. I think I’ve earned running water.”

“And how’re you going to pay for your flush john?”

“I may go to school.”

“That pays?”

“It can.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll travel. With you.”

“And I thought
I
lived in a fantasy world.”

“You do.”

“Raphael baby, sweetheart, my little darling, don’t you realize? All I can do is watch movies and get a tan. I cook like shit. I don’t have a high-school diploma. I can’t even read worth a damn, you idiot—I can’t concentrate for more than five pages. I’m unemployable, stupid. And how would you buy me a john and paperbacks and olives? Forget oil-cured, how about the no-frills green ones?”

Raphael raised his hand to his forehead and touched himself between the eyes lightly with two fingertips, with a rare gentleness and sympathy for himself, as if giving himself a blessing or a baptism. “This is all beside the point,” he said quietly. “The world is malleable. Ingenious people don’t die in it without a fight. I’ve proved that. At thirteen I proved that. You’re thirty-three. You’d think of something.”

“If this is all beside the point, what’s the point?”

Raphael shook his head. “Why do
I
have to say it?”

“You don’t. I told you a long time ago, questions don’t have
to be answered. But if you don’t say something, we’re both just going to sit here.”

“We are just sitting here. You don’t mean that crap about olives. You’re just talking. You’re not even considering coming with me. You’re just saying words. Making yourself feel better.”

“I don’t need to feel better,” she said defiantly. “I feel just fine.”

“No, you don’t,” said Raphael with difficulty. “You’ll miss me.”

Ida looked down and played with that same black kimono, over the same black bikini, and said nothing.

“Is that true?” he asked. “That you’ll miss me?”

Ida mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said yes. Okay?”

Something huge in the boy fell. He turned away from her and exhaled; his shoulders crumbled toward each other. “Yes, okay,” he said softly. “But you can only miss me if you’re not with me. So we’re straight. Thank you.”

Behind his back Ida fidgeted in the ensuing silence, and at length jumped up from the couch and took several short, quick steps around the room. “You could stay through the summer,” she said. “It was always our best season.”

Raphael didn’t turn. He said nothing.

Ida looked out the window at her lawn and tapped her fingernails against the pane. The sound was unnervingly loud; she stopped.

“Well, for Christ’s sake, what did you expect?”

“I didn’t expect anything,” said Raphael. “I don’t think that way. I’m only eighteen.”

“Well, come on. You’re a kid. I’m a grown-up.”

He laughed.

“Thanks a lot,” said Ida. She scuffed along the floor. “And I’m married.—Don’t laugh at that, too, ’cause I
am
married.”

“I wouldn’t laugh at that, Ida. You think your marriage is funny. But I don’t.”

The next silence was longer.

“—Well, Raphael, it was fun and—”

“It was not fun.”

“Come on, you’ve forgotten, when we used to—”

“Ida.” Raphael turned to face her. “If you’re going to keep saying things like ‘It was fun,’ maybe you’d better be out the door. I don’t know what movie you last saw, but it seems to have been a comedy, or at least full of clichés. For God’s sake, get out of here and go watch something with a little integrity. See
Casablanca
again and listen to the ending. You may not be discriminating, but I am. I don’t want your bad movies in my life.”

“You condescending son-of-a-bitch.” Her eyes flashed as she looked at him; though she was angry, Ida hesitated for a tiny instant before swinging toward the door. No doubt Raphael missed this moment, for he had no mirrors in the mill and so could not now see himself as she saw him for one instant and as the world saw him then and ever after: Raphael Sarasola, hair blazing, lips full and red and drawn together, and most of all, those eyes beginning to burn. They did not look like the eyes of a man on whom any woman would turn her back ever again. Perhaps for some portion of that moment even Ida had second thoughts about walking out, but Ida was Ida and this story was set up from the very beginning to end a certain way. Maybe as much because she was a reader, a moviegoer, and could show some loyalty to form and plot, Ida did, then, turn and let herself out the boarded entranceway, imagining to herself that it was just Raphael. It was just Raphael, the vagabond.

So the next morning Raphael folded a few clothes into the same backpack with which he’d left Frank behind and let himself out of Cleveland Cottons with a hammer and a bag of nails. Slowly he drove nail after nail into the boards of the entranceway. All around the mill he covered the windows with planks, and the sound of his hammer, steady and slow and hard, carried across the street to wake Ida from her sleep. Incredulously she drew herself out of bed and watched from the porch in her robe as Raphael went with a deadly level gaze from window
to window. He didn’t look at her. Board after board he slapped over the glass, until the building let no light in and no light out and it stood facing Ida wooden and impenetrable. It would stare at her stoically for years this way; that was the idea.

After driving his last nail, he was about to throw the hammer aside, but he paused before he tossed it. You never know, he figured, what you’ll have to protect, what you’ll have to hit or drive in, where you’ll need to board up next, so instead, he tucked the hammer in his pack along with Nora’s rolled-up paintings and walked on down the road toward Boston.

“He did go to college,” said Errol. “When he filled out forms he said his parents were dead, and they gave him financial aid. In school you can bet he burned his way through several dozen women. He was a terror. And, gentlemen,” said Errol to the gathering at large, placing his hands flat on the bar, “Raphael Sarasola is still with us. He is only twenty-five. And he is still”—Errol shook his head—“a terror.”

For the next three evenings running, Errol threw on his corduroys and went slumming in roadside bars with Gabriel Menaker’s construction crew, drinking heavily, driving wildly in Gabe’s pickup over the same weaving roads that had made him so cautious in the Porsche, embellishing stories of Gray and Raphael and even Charles Corgie. For these few days the crew became Errol’s secret underground life, one in which he was loud, expansive, garrulous, and well liked. Errol McEchern was a novelty to them—the anthropologist was, according to Dave, “a hoot.”

Errol liked being a hoot. With a curious dread he noticed the light on in the den when he returned to the manse on the third night. So Gray was back from New York; the party was over.

He found Gray stooped by the ferret’s cage. She toyed with the animal through the bars, and Solo didn’t bite this time.

“Ralphie here?”

“No.”

“Ah,” said Errol, going over to the pet, “but his emissary is. This animal is a spy.”

The ferret bared his teeth at Errol and hissed.

“I thought you’d like to know I’ve decided to give up anthropology and become a carpenter.”

“That’s nice, Errol.” Gray finally pulled herself away from the ferret and looked at him. “So you’re drunk. You don’t usually do that. It’s cute.”

“I am cute. That’s another thing I decided today. I am a handsome and entertaining man.”

“I could have told you that a long time ago.”

“But you didn’t. Isn’t that the way,” said Errol cheerfully. “You know, I told a whole bar the other night about Ralph and that schizo in North Adams. Made quite a sensation, I must say.”

Gray wasn’t paying enough attention to find this strange. “I was thinking about Ida O’Donnell today. That pattern—I wouldn’t want to repeat it.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“
You
don’t want to hurt
him
?” Errol laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Our friend Ralph—well, I’ve never met anyone so impenetrable in my entire life! He’s worse than you are.”

“Oh?” She took a seat in her chair; the leather creaked stiffly.

Yet Errol felt breezy and somehow, after the raucous nights with Gabe, immune. “So tell me,” he said flippantly, lounging onto the couch and propping his feet on the table, “are you fucking him yet?”

Gray looked up sharply.

“Pardon me,” said Errol. “Let’s give you both the benefit of the doubt: have you two
made love?
”

“It wasn’t the wording. It was the question.”

“And the answer?”

Gray paused and drew herself farther into the padding of her armchair. “No,” she said finally.

“Ah. And has he tried?”

Gray chewed on the inside of her cheek and flipped the edge of her skirt down over her knee.

“Well?”

“Tonight.”

“But you said no.”

“That’s right.”

“Why? He’s not bad-looking.”

Gray just shook her head and said, “Too much,” looking away.

Something about the way she said that made Errol stop. He didn’t want to be cruel to her. She seemed sad. “Gray, do you want to talk about this? Do you want me to leave you alone?”

Gray looked down at the arm of her chair, her hand against her cheek with that same gentleness with which Errol had imagined Raphael touching himself when Ida wouldn’t come with him to Boston. “No. Don’t leave me alone. Who else am I going to talk to?”

“You wouldn’t rather talk about this with a woman?”

She laughed bleakly. “What woman?”

“A friend.”

“Haven’t you noticed? I don’t have any.”

“You do, too—”

“All my friends are men. That is a fact. The women I know are
colleagues
. Errol, women don’t like me.”

Errol paused.

“See? You can’t think of one.”

“It’s funny, Gray, I can’t. That’s damned strange.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why, except that it makes perfect sense that women would have no use for me.”

Errol stroked his beard. “You probably make them nervous.”

“I make men nervous.”

“They feel competitive.”

“Men feel competitive.”

“You’re very critical.”

“I’m critical of men, too.”

“And I think you make women look bad.”

Gray considered this.

“You make men look good, beside them. They want to be seen with you. But next to you other women look short. They look boring. They often look old, even though lately you’re older than they are. They look as if they—need something. Want something. They look as if they’re waiting. You’re not. Other people are waiting for you.”

Gray let out a long breath. “You’re kind, Errol. Thank you. But we know each other well, so let me tell you.” She paused. “And please, I’m a little sheepish admitting this to you. But I am waiting a little bit, and it makes me sick at heart. I don’t want to disillusion you, Errol—I don’t mean I’m a terrible fake. I keep busy; I love my work and my life and I have very few regrets. Or no regrets, because regrets are stupid. Had I wanted to live a different life I would have lived it—I’m that kind of person.”

“You mean you don’t regret you never got married.”

“Thank you, Errol, you keep doing that. I hate being vague. Yes, I don’t regret never having married. But—” She stopped.

“But what?”

“There is a place in me. It’s about the size of a half-dollar. Sometimes I feel it right under my ribs. In my throat. Under my breastbone. It moves around. Sometimes it lodges in my lower back, and I slump in my chair. It’s an ache. It feels a little bit like having a mobile tumor or blood clot or kidney stone. It’s not solid, though. Oh, it feels that way, it feels heavy. But I’ve had it long enough and it’s sunk to enough different places in my body that I’ve felt it out and I know what it’s made of. It’s made of nothing. It’s my own private black hole. Wherever it goes is cold. If you put your finger in it, you’d feel it sucking at you, like a vacuum-cleaner hose that tunnels off forever. You’d feel all funny inside, Errol, even frightened. You’d take your finger back and hold it in your other hand and breathe on it to get it warm again.

“Don’t get me wrong, Errol. I don’t mean I feel this way, that my whole body is a gaping vortex. No. I go through my day. I talk to you, and I enjoy that. I do fine work and give lectures. I run off to Africa and make contact with people who
will never understand until it’s too late that I’m not a very typical representative of the white race. All this is real. It’s just this small half-dollar-sized hole. It’s not big. But it’s there.”

As Errol was listening, a particular question bloomed in his mind until it grew overwhelming, and Errol sat up straighter; his eyes opened wide as he sat and watched Gray speak in her chair. “Gray,” said Errol, “I’m going to ask you something. You don’t have to answer me. And don’t take offense. But—”

“No.”

“All right. I won’t ask, then.”

“No, I mean I know your question. The answer is no. No, I haven’t.”

Errol just sat there.

“You’re surprised.”

“I am. Astounded.”

“I had a feeling from a long way back you assumed…”

“I did.”

“I even felt guilty, as if I were lying to you.”

“But, Gray, it’s so unlike you—”

“Mm.”

“There’s hardly anything you haven’t done.”

“When I was young it was a culturally complex thing to do when you weren’t married. Besides, I was on the lookout for an excuse to get out of it. I always imagined it would destroy me somehow. Obliterate me.”

“You overestimate the experience.”

“Maybe I’m overestimating
your
experience. But I’ve read a lot. And I know me. So I know this is a truly dangerous activity. For me.”

“Gray, you’re a human being—”

“Now, there is a frightening thought. No, Errol, I don’t suppose I’d explode or dissolve or die. I never decided, Oh, I won’t do that, it would hurt me. I didn’t marry and time went on; I was busy. Until after a while and I didn’t and I didn’t and then finally the opportunity would come along and I still wouldn’t because I never had. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“But you’ve gone out with a lot of men—”

“Most men are afraid of me, Errol. They treat me with deference. If I’m to be blunt for a moment—”

“Please do.”

“They don’t put their hands up my skirt.”

Errol looked her in the eye. “All of them except—”

She looked away, rubbed her arms as if she were cold, though it was a warm night, and stood up. She crossed to the window and stared out to the light by the walkway.

“Gray, what happened tonight?”

Her shoulders rose. “He put his hands up my skirt.” Her attempt to sound casual was pathetic.

Errol now understood the phrase “treading on thin ice” each step grew more precarious than the last. “So what did you do?”

“I
froze
.”

“…And?”

“He stopped. He was surprised.”

“Does he know about your—historical reluctance?”

Gray shook her head.

“And you didn’t tell him.”

“I was embarrassed.”

“Does he think you’re a prude?”

She laughed quickly. “I guess I am.”

“I mean, do you think he figures you’re, well, cold?”

“Maybe I am cold. One of those sad, stiff women that other women like to write sanctimonious books about. Manuals, with diagrams, that make lots of money.”

“No…” said Errol. “If you really believe it would be dangerous, you’re not cold.” Errol’s heart was beating hard. “You’ve always seemed very—sexual to me.”

“Well, I don’t need a manual,” she snapped. Errol was relieved she wasn’t listening to him very carefully. “I know what an orgasm is. I’m not a fifty-nine-year-old ice tray.”

“No one said you needed a manual,” said Errol softly. “You’re the only one who thinks there’s something wrong with you.”

Gray rubbed her forehead. “I’m too old for this. Errol, what have I gotten myself into?”

“Do you want out?”

“No.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to do?” she asked angrily.

The ice under Errol’s feet was extremely thin now, and he heard it crack and rumble as Gray’s voice itself gradually shattered with each answer. “I suppose I was asking,” said Errol slowly, “whether you’re going to sleep with him—or not. And I suppose I was also asking”—Errol spoke so slowly, so carefully now—” whether you ever will. Have sex. With a man. In your life.”

Gray covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head in bewilderment. Had Errol been thinking, he would have excused himself to leave her alone, but he wasn’t thinking, so instead he rose from his chair and went over to Gray by the window, taking her in his arms and pressing her head to his shoulder. With his other arm around her back he could tell how small she was, how thin her bones were, as he fit each finger of his hand neatly between her ribs.

The following couple of weeks Raphael appeared insistently at Gray’s, often with Corgie’s red baseball cap on backward at a cocky angle, which grated on Errol more than he could say. Even when the man was absent from the manse, the ferret scrabbled in its cage, hissing and raking its claws over the bars whenever Errol entered the room that used to be his favorite. Bwana would no longer walk near the den, and would use only the back door to go in and out of the house, because the foyer was too close to that sharp, narrow creature.

“I know, Bwana,” Errol would confide to the dog. “New regime around here. We’re the old guard.” He stroked the irongray sides, and the dog stood still and looked into Errol’s eyes with great trust. “But I’ve seen revolutions come and go. You take a step back and stay out of trouble, my boy. Lay low. Let the cocky young usurper strut through the halls of the old castle as if he’s in for silk shirts and fine cognac and leisurely afternoon
sports for the rest of his life. You and I, we pour his wine and take his coat and wait patiently for the new prince to make his first mistake and land smack back in the middle of his textile mill. Got it? The old guard endures. So we’re going to cool our heels, doggie. We’re going to use the back door and pad around the halls real quiet-like. We’re going to keep our toenails tucked in. But when the new order topples, we’ll move in for the kill. I’ll take care of that ferret, Bwana, if you go for Raphael.”

Bwana’s tail hit dully against the wall.

“Aw, you’re not going to go for Ralph at all, are you? I’m supposed to help you with Solo, but what do you do? What kind of an ally is that?” Errol rumpled Bwana’s ears affectionately and shook his head.

In keeping with his own advice, Errol started going back to his own apartment at night. It was a place where he’d stayed more and more rarely through the years and had never put much into, but that didn’t matter now—it was his, with some of the original furniture from his bedroom as a boy; the junk mail had his name on it; the clothes he kept here were the ones he never wore, but they still fit. It was a relief to be alone.

Though he hadn’t seen her in five years—she was a film editor in Australia and not often in the States—Errol couldn’t help but feel a twinge of resentment when in his second week of lying low a cable announced an imminent visit from his sister Kyle. She
would
have to come now, when for the first week in years he was living without a domineering older woman in his home. It was as if the fates had arranged his life in such a way that this particular relationship was his problem, and he was not to try to get away from it, because they would place it in front of him whichever way he fled. Errol was a responsible person, so he shouldered his problem with a sigh, having put it down for only a week, and tried to persevere with the weight of the thing returned to his back without complaining. She-was-his-sister. He-should-be-glad-to-see-her. He-loved-her. It was dreadful to have to hyphenate on the way to her plane.

For the moment before he recognized her, Errol saw his sister as others saw her: a fifty-two-year-old woman, aging gently
but not miraculously, a few pounds overweight, with great energy, striding toward him with efficient carry-on luggage. Then she was Kyle. He wouldn’t see her so clearly for the rest of her visit.