The Female of the Species (41 page)

“You mean that?”

“Of course I do. When have you known me to be politely warm?”

“When have I known you to be warm?”

She looked down. “Not often enough.”

“What do you think I should do?” asked Errol softly. “Should I take the job or not?”

Errol looked at her imploringly. It would take nothing. She had almost said enough already. About wanting to travel with him. Gray, go ahead. Tell me that you need help; that the Porsche coiled around a telephone pole may be conversation now, unbelievable, but that later you’ll climb into your gray coupe, tomorrow morning or even tonight, and find the car down the road before they tow it away and drape yourself over the crinkled windshield of that car—tell me that you’ll need someone to lift you up and carry you away, someone to pick the bits of glass out of your hair and wipe away the smears of brown that would have dried onto your cheek and remove from your possession all the stray bits of shrapnel and that dented can of ravioli you’d collected from the wreckage as morbid souvenirs. Tell me, Gray, that you won’t eat without me, and I’ll stay. Tell me you won’t sleep well. Just say, Errol, I’d miss you horribly, please don’t go.

In fact, Errol realized, she needn’t say any of these things at all. She need only say, Stay. She need only say, Errol, I don’t think you should take that job, and he would walk upstairs and write out his regrets this very evening, and then he would never leave, he knew that. He’d always have his office here, and he’d watch Gray finally give in year by year to being an old woman; Errol himself would gray and slow; until she didn’t publish as much and was mostly a figurehead, invited to many functions, given lots of awards and honorary degrees, but perhaps invited to speak less, and asked her opinion more out of deference than out of real concern over what she thought. This
was all much, much later, when she was ninety, say, which she would be—Errol had little doubt she’d live to a hundred, after all. That would make Errol eighty-eight, and he’d wear a hat more and use a cane, and they would finally get a maid for this place, still over Gray’s protest, because she didn’t like them, where they came from. The maid would have to be white. They might, too, move the bedrooms downstairs to save climbing all those stairs day after day. The bedrooms, there would be two of them, as always, though in his old age Errol would finally forget why that ever mattered in the first place. When she died, at a hundred and two or three, he’d spend the final years of his own life working out his grief by writing her biography, and he’d be sure to live through to its publication, though after that he wouldn’t much care. She’d have left the house to him, and he’d totter in here evenings to light the crimson lamps, eye the dry bones of the wildebeest skeleton, and say hello to Ralph’s father. In his dotage, he’d talk to her sometimes as if she were still alive, forgetting in moments of senility that she was no longer perched in that leather chair, where Errol himself would still refuse to sit.

“Gray,” he might say, and Errol imagined he would smoke a pipe by this time, “you remember the time I almost left? When I almost went to New Guinea? But you said stay, and by God that was enough for me. I always took your word on just about everything. Oh, I had my problems when you got involved with young Ralph. We came awfully close, you’ll remember, to snapping things off. But I guess that was just something you had to go through, to get out of your system. He was certainly a pretty boy. You know, I’ve still got those pictures you took of him early that morning? You never knew I saw you take them. I didn’t find them until after you died—” Errol would pause here and take a puff on his pipe and shoot the wildebeest a look; so she was dead, well past ninety you were so much closer to being a dead person than a live one that it was naturally easier to talk to the dead ones if you had a choice. “I found them tucked away under some papers when I was going through your drawers. You hid them pretty
well. I noticed they were soft, though, and wrinkled; you must have found them yourself often enough. Even in those crumpled photos, though, he looks pretty sweet. Asleep, of course. And you sure captured it—he looks real sad, absolutely. Tragic, I’d say. I’ve never seen so much despair in someone’s face while they were asleep. He had one beautiful body, though. You did have taste. And I’m old now, but I remember the guy pretty well. The tone of his voice, you know? It haunts me sometimes—sharp, slow, hollow. I don’t know if I ever told you of that conversation we had about blankness. Sent chills up my spine. He could be nasty sometimes, but tear your heart out others, I’m telling you. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you, at that. You’re dead, and anyway, you probably knew that better than anybody.”

Errol would pour himself a cognac, though the money would be getting tight and he’d buy the cheaper stuff now; Gray would be appalled—the bottle actually said
Brandy
. And that wasn’t the only thing that had changed around the house—thank God, he didn’t have to eat all those brownies and eclairs anymore. He had Gray to thank for one plate of false teeth, and he was going to hang on to the ones he had left.

“One more thing before I turn in, Gray.” He’d take long drags and blow rings aimlessly into the air; the leopards on the wall would still be gnawing on the same meat, and he’d salute them with his pipe. “There was one incident a way long time ago we never talked about since. I swear that’s pretty incredible, since out of desperation you’d think we’d have covered everything, even if it embarrassed us a little. But we always managed to come up with something else to talk about, even if by the end there it actually was the weather and what birds came to the feeder and the fact that, though all that tennis and what have you had been good for your heart, it had wrecked your joints something awful. Well, you’re dead, so we’re safe—don’t worry, I won’t touch you now, and I never did again, did I? Oh, a comforting hug, a pat on the shoulder, a hand when you got too imbedded in that chair, but I never put my arms around you again and pressed you against my chest until I pushed all
the breath out of your lungs. I only kissed you that one night. We’d drunk an awful lot, you were anxious to point that out the next morning. And I was only twenty-six, full of energy; we could pretend, you and I, the next day that I was like that with any woman after two bottles of wine—it’s natural, right? But I’ll never forget that morning, Gray, just as I’ll never forget the night before. I’ve never been so happy in my life. I didn’t tell you that, but you must have known, the way I bounced downstairs to breakfast so jauntily, really wanting to take you out to champagne and pastries, in spite of the hangover. You looked so severe, though, sitting at the table. You looked concerned. You said we had to talk and then
we wouldn’t discuss it again
. You made that awfully clear. You said it wasn’t ‘that way,’ that it couldn’t be. You said if I felt that way about you, then you’d have to find another assistant, since that situation was untenable. You actually used the word ‘untenable.’ So what was I supposed to do? This famous woman in my field wants to fire me because I’ve got a crush? I swallowed hard, and I lied so furiously I broke into a sweat, and then I said I had things to do. I skipped the champagne that morning, if I recall correctly.

“I guess what I was wondering, Gray, was this, see: were you glad I kept my promise? Did you ever wish I had tried one more time? And were you proud of me? Because you asked me once whether I thought you were pathetic. I never asked you whether
I
was. Was I, Gray? Are we all pathetic? Is that the secret? We’re all desperate? Or was it just me?”

The leopards on the wall would purr. The wildebeest bones would rattle softly. The eyes of Frank Sarasola (in Errol’s senility, Vincent would return to Frank) would stare back, clear and trusting. The brandy would swirl in Errol’s glass and the fumes would sting his eyes when he raised the liquor to his lips and he would listen for an answer. Yet there would be nothing. Nothing, Ralph. I always think of you when I hear that word.

Maybe then Errol would shuffle off to bed. Or, no. Maybe at that moment Errol would suddenly curl over from a stroke.
That would be appropriate, having finally approached the big taboo, as if he could rest in peace only after having addressed it. Errol had always felt, too, that were he to bring it up, something terrible would happen: lightning would strike, a flash of blinding white would fell him in the middle of this den. So then Errol would ask his questions and lie on the crimson carpet with the globe of brandy shattered after all these years and the smell of the stuff rising from the red pile. When you had a stroke, did you bleed? Errol wondered. Did it hurt? Could you think clearly? And would he, maybe, in the end there on the carpet, not even talk to Gray, but reach deeper and keep asking questions, but of someone dead much longer than Gray and therefore, perhaps, better informed on these matters?

Ralph, my buddy. I hated you, I did. I always got the feeling you enjoyed that. Gray was right, Ida didn’t hate you, to your regret. I did, though. You seemed to savor walking into a room where I would glare at you and you could say things to needle me. We worked it out, you and I; we had a pact. But you didn’t hate me, did you? Did you, Ralph? No, I think I was one of your closest friends. Isn’t that appalling.

You admired me. I know that for a fact. I may be laid out here on the carpet, but I’m still the one who’s alive; I have the upper hand at last, so I can make my accusations to my heart’s content. I accuse you of admiring me. I watched you listen to Leonia Harris. I know you thought she was a sucker. I know you thought Walter and I were suckers. Absolutely, Ralph. We were. Across the board, we’d capitulated. And you were so eaten up with envy I could smell it in the air.

As for me: I worshipped you, Ralph. I would have given anything to be you, Ralph. But of course I could only want to be you being me. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to be you one bit. Funny how that works. You’d hate being me, too—toadying and groveling all these years, writing some woman’s biography.

But you disappointed me. I’ve looked at those pictures of you, I’ve looked down your magnificent back, I’ve watched the way the early-morning light shone on your cheekbones,
the way that amazingly thick black hair of yours flamed out on the pillow, and I remember that number you pulled with your Porsche. Ralph, such a pretty car—how could you? I thought you had it over on her, I really did. I envied that so badly—I thought you had her in the palm of your hand. But she plowed you straight into a telephone pole. Is that what people do over whom we have complete
control
? She destroyed you with only $45,000, with that grotesque generosity of hers, and where did that come from, anyway? She was never like that before, Ralph. She was never like that with me.

But Errol wasn’t dead yet, neither was Gray; she was sixty, Errol was only forty-eight, and when she finally spoke and returned him to this particular February day well before he had a stroke and lay mumbling on the carpet, Errol felt suddenly very young at that, and full of possibilities.

“By all means, Errol, you should accept that position. As you said, it’s a wonderful opportunity.”

Incredulously Errol looked at her in that chair, and suddenly remembered his earlier fear last summer—that vision he’d had of her with all the pins out, the terrible deflated old woman he’d seen her become. He’d imagined Ralph would do this to her, and he stared at her hard as she sat there looking him bravely in the eye and trying, though Errol didn’t want to flatter himself, not to cry. Was she withering before his eyes? Were the pins falling from her face? Was the skin hanging sadly from her bones as he’d seen so clearly that one summer night as he drove faster and faster to get home?

Before him sat a beautiful woman. Her bones were slender. Her skin had acquired a slight translucence Errol had never noticed before. With the lamplight welling in her collarbone and shining through the tendons in her high neck, she seemed to glow there, more than ever. No pins fell from her face, for there didn’t seem to be any pins, after all. Furthermore, her body looked so light and airy and vertical that surely what would happen in the coming years would not be a gradual crumbling and collapse but an extension—he imagined she
would finally get so tall that her head would touch the ceiling, like Alice after she’d eaten too much mushroom, and she might have grown so weightless by that time that when she took a step her whole body would rise from the floor and she’d have to wear those ankle weights of hers just to keep from floating away altogether.

“Gray,” said Errol, “are you sure you can manage? Because I’d be glad—”

“I’ll be fine, Errol, but that’s not even the point.” Her voice was clear and lovely. “You’ve served your time. You have to stop worrying about me for a while. Tend to your own life. Your own success.”

“I don’t mind tending to your life, Gray. I never have.”

“I know that. I’ve admired that, even.” Errol felt a flush of blood rise to his cheeks. “But I haven’t been fair to you, Errol. Sometimes I think I’ve used you, just a little bit. So you can use me for a while. I can help you more than I have. I can help you get those NET grants if you want them, and better if you’re up for it. Send postcards, Errol. Come back and visit.”

“I’ve thought,” said Errol, “about asking Ellen Friedman to go with me.” Errol felt a breaking between his ribs, and his voice began to crack. “I’ve thought I might ask her to marry me.”

Gray smiled with difficulty. “I think that’s a splendid idea. I’m sure she’ll accept. She’s a lovely and intelligent woman, a fine choice.”

“Gray, what are you going to do now?”

“I might take that time off, as I was threatening. Go somewhere warm. Think. Maybe write a book. Collect shells. Remember. I can’t just go right back to work, Errol, not for a little while. I think that might be arrogant.”

“You’ve always liked being arrogant.”

“I have. And I’ve been that way. Maybe I’ll try something else for a change.—But I think you’d better go now. You’ve got a lot to think about, too. You should give Ellen a call, it’s before eleven. Tell her the good news. Ask her to marry you. Go out and celebrate, have a piece of chocolate cake on me.”