The Female of the Species (33 page)

Errol had had enough, and walked away. There was something sickening about that last statement of hers. Errol would hate to be around this happy family in ten years. It would be the kind of trio about which movies are made: a damning retrospective on a man’s early life which explained why he later became the second Boston Strangler. By the end of the movie you’d be entirely sympathetic, too, and when he stepped into the electric chair you might even cry, because you’d know very well who should really get strapped into that thing, even though
technically
she hadn’t strangled anyone.

Diving for a toss, Sasha fell hard on the walkway. Everyone stopped. Ida and Gray started toward the boy, but Raphael shot them both looks and they hung back. Raphael approached the child, but didn’t reach to pick him up. Sasha looked up from the concrete at the man who was not helping him. Slowly, not taking his eyes off Raphael, he drew himself upright. His hands and knees were bleeding, but the boy didn’t cry.

“You know you’ll be all right, don’t you?” said Raphael.

Sasha nodded.

“And you know you’ll always be all right, don’t you?”

Sasha nodded again.

“I’m going to have to go. I’m going to give you some advice first. You’re going to remember it for the rest of your life. Are you listening?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ready?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This is serious.”

Ida hovered a few feet away, and looked ready to whip her
son out from under Raphael at the first opportunity. Even Errol had an odd feeling of wanting to save the boy from some terrible spell that was being cast on him, a curse that would follow him until someone shot him with a silver bullet or ran a stake through his heart or burned down his entire castle. Sasha should have run off to his mother by now, and for God’s sake, he should certainly be crying. Blood was beginning to run down his leg in streams.

“First,” said Raphael, “keep quiet.”

“Okay.”

“That’s harder than you think.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s only one other thing. Ready?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t count on anyone.”

Sasha looked back.

“Do you understand?”

He shrugged.

“Say it.”

“What?”

“What I told you.”

“Keep quiet.”

“Good. What else?”

Sasha thought a minute. “Don’t count…”

“Go on.”

“Don’t count on anyone.”

It was a truly bizarre experience to hear a child of five or six repeat this advice. It gave Errol the same shiver as photographs of children with progeria. Errol would have comforted himself that the boy didn’t know what he was saying, but when Ida came up to him to help him with his cuts, Errol could only conclude that Sasha understood Raphael’s advice perfectly well.

“Let’s go inside,” she said. “I’ll clean those hands and knees right up.”

When she took him by the hand he pulled away. “I’m okay.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve got to get the dirt out or you’ll get infected.”

Again Sasha shook her off. “I’ll do it.” Shooting a conspiratorial glance at his mentor, he marched inside by himself. Raphael smiled.

“Well, you’ve created a regular little hero, haven’t you?” said Ida.

“Being your son is heroic by definition.” He watched the screen door bang behind the boy.

Errol had followed all this standing by Walter. “You like having a kid?” Errol asked, making conversation.

“I don’t know. I don’t really have one.”

“No?”

“He steers clear of me. She tells him stories, see. I reach for him, he flinches. And I’ve never hit him once.”

“That’s odd.”

“No. Nothing’s odd. Not anymore.”

Errol knew it wasn’t polite, but he had to ask, “Do you ever think about leaving her?”

“Think, sure. Do it, never. Then what would I do, go marry a nice girl? I’d probably flip out. I’d end up beating the crap out of her just to get her to say something with a little sting in it, you know?”

“I’d think you’d get tired of sting.”

“You think I’m some sort of henpecked asshole, don’t you?”

“Well,” said Errol amenably, “if there are going to be people like Ida, I suppose there have to be people to put up with them.”

Walter nodded to Ida and Raphael. “She’s coming on to him.”

It was true. She was standing right up against Raphael; he didn’t step away, either, though Errol looked up to find Gray seated on the porch with an excellent view. Gray looked worn out and increasingly annoyed; Errol was sure she’d gotten all the amusement she was going to out of this escapade, and was now waiting for it to be over.

But it didn’t stop. It wasn’t just a passing moment. Ida didn’t move away. Raphael leaned closer. He must have felt her breath on his chin. Errol stopped talking to Walter and craned his
neck. Gray uncrossed her legs on the porch. Only Walter was not incredulous. It was a fact, then, that nothing was odd to him anymore.

Raphael reached up and placed his hand gently on Ida’s cheek. Errol decided: Great. Do us this favor. Kiss her and we will dispense with you quickly. Kiss her and Gray will stand and lift the keys from your pocket as she strides down the walkway, and the two of us will take your car back to Boston and leave you stranded here where you started: back with this mess, and a hovel across the street that has rats again, and Ida older and worse than ever, Walter harder to entertain, at last impossible to surprise, until you screw her in broad daylight on the grass and he yawns and goes for his beer. Not even Jack Daniel’s, he won’t need it, but Rolling Rock, Bud, something cheap. Fine. Do us all that tremendous favor.

A sound cracked across the lawn. Raphael had slapped her. Only once, but so hard that Ida almost fell over.

“Now don’t tell me,” he said tenderly, “I never did you a favor.”

Ida looked up at him and rubbed her cheek. She looked wary, but amused also; pleased. “How do you figure that?”

“You’ve been dying to have someone smack you for twenty years. You beg them and beg them and they just won’t do it. I hate to see you suffer, Ida. Maybe I came all this way just to help you out.”

“That’s real smart. You tell yourself that everything you do to people they’re asking for. Then you can do whatever you want.”

“‘People put themselves in the situations they put themselves.’ I’ve never forgotten that. A miracle cure for responsibility. One of the most useful things you ever gave me, dear.” And now he did kiss her, lightly, on the forehead. Then he turned and reached toward the porch, and Gray came down the stairs to take his hand. The two walked across the street to the car, saying nothing, not looking back.

Errol shook Walter’s hand. “So long, Walt,” he said warmly. “Enjoy.”

“Endure, maybe. That’s all I ask.”

“I admire you,” said Errol.

“Then you’re the only living human being who does.”

“No, I do. I should put you in touch with someone. Seriously, you two should write. Her name is Leonia Harris, and she’s a big black woman in the South Bronx. She’s in for the duration, regardless. You’d understand each other. Here.” On this odd impulse, Errol reached for a scrap of paper and a pen. The first piece he found had Anita Katrakis’s address on it, which he put wryly back in his pocket. He scribbled Leonia’s address and gave it to Walter. Errol slapped him lightly on the shoulder and walked away, waving goodbye to Ida. The funny thing was, stranded there, getting older on that same front lawn, her black hair lank, her face red on one side and white on the other, her knees knobby, her perch unstable in those high-heeled shoes, she seemed actually grateful to Errol, and waved back, though they hadn’t spoken that whole afternoon. Errol would always remember her left alone there on that lawn, squeezing out that one drop of niceness like water from a stone.

Once they were in the car, Raphael reached for the ignition, but Gray put her hands over the keys. “Before we go, kiss me.”

Raphael looked at her.

“I’m serious. Now. Just once.”

Raphael turned back to the steering wheel. “I don’t feel like it.” He started the car. As he revved the engine, Gray reached over simply and took the key back out again. The motor died.

“I said now.” She held the keys in her lap.

Raphael looked at her incredulously. “You’re not giving me my keys unless I kiss you?”

“That’s right. On the lips.”

“If we were sixteen this would be funny.”

“If we were sixteen this would be a joke.”

Raphael looked into her face. Actually, for someone who had just begged to be kissed, her expression was quite dispassionate. He looked down at the keys in her lap. With an air of clinical curiosity, he did kiss her lightly on the lips. Gray raised her eyebrows calmly and dangled the car keys in his outstretched hand.

“You’re going to explain what that was about?” asked Raphael as they started toward Boston.

“I needed to experience human emotion for a change.”

“There were plenty of emotions back there.”

“They weren’t my favorites.”

“No?” Raphael chided. “Hatred is exhilarating. I can get high on it.”

“You hate her?”

Raphael considered. “No.”

“You hate Walter?”

“Oh no. Who could hate
Walter
?” Raphael had a way with Walter’s name.

“Then Walter hates you.”

“Walter likes me. That’s one of the reasons he’s sick.”

“Then I don’t understand. Where’s all this hatred you’re high on?”

“From my father, for one.”

“A matter of debate. But from whom else?”

“Ida.”

“Ida doesn’t hate you. She couldn’t if she tried.”

“What, you think she loves me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Ida can’t—she isn’t—Ida’s unplugged. You said it yourself: she doesn’t exist.”

After they rode a while, Gray told Raphael, “I didn’t like it when you dropped those glasses. It was chilling.”

“No? I loved it. I haven’t enjoyed anything more in weeks.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re touchy today,” said Raphael with irritation. “It’s unattractive.”

Gray said nothing. The word “unattractive” hung in the air for a long time.

Things were beginning to happen. Little things, Errol told himself. Everything’s fine, Errol told himself. Errol even told the dog: Bwana, relax. We’ll wait this out. She’ll get bored, right? How much can a guy that age have to say to her? She’ll wake up one day with that man taking more than his share of the bed and feel crowded. Or she’ll look out the window and find him once again waxing that stupid car, and she’ll roll her eyes and decide she’d like someone around with a little more maturity. Or better yet, Bwana: she’ll go off to Ghana in February—we can wait five months, can’t we? and he’ll disappear, and in the meantime she’ll realize she’s a brilliant professional who doesn’t need to be jerked around by some little twenty-five-year-old nobody.

Bwana would stare back and hit his tail against the wall skeptically.

Bwana had good reason to be skeptical. Raphael turned up often in the kitchen now with that towel wrapped insolently around his waist, or in the den with the red baseball cap cocked over hundred-dollar cognac. Yet suddenly sometimes three or four days would elapse and no Ralphie. He didn’t stop by; he didn’t phone. At times like these Errol breathed easier, but Gray paced and stayed up late and listened to Mahler sym
phonies turned up incredibly loud. Or sometimes she’d be blasting one of her favorites all over the house and then just—turn it off. Then Errol would know not to talk to her, and he’d find himself tiptoeing down the halls and holding the bolt in when he shut doors behind him.

It was September, too early to put on the heat, but on certain evenings a chill would set in; Gray would go about the house closing all the windows. Even with the windows closed, a draft seemed to cut through the upper floor and down the staircase. Gray would put on a sweater, then a jacket, maybe two layers of socks, and still Errol would find her upstairs pacing from her office to her bedroom rubbing her arms. Sometimes her teeth would actually chatter.

“It’s not cold,” Errol might point out. “It’s only September.”

“I just can’t get warm,” she’d claimed more than once. “No matter what I do.”

Toward the end of the month, Errol found Gray one such evening huddled in her straight-backed chair wearing her fur coat. It was surely no colder than fifty-five, maybe even sixty degrees, but still Errol went downstairs and built a fire in the den. He fixed hot buttered rum, and placed the two mugs beside a pile of heavy quilts and pillows by the hearth and brought her downstairs. It was absurd, of course, for this was the kind of scene Errol was used to preparing after a long day of skiing in January; but she seemed pleased, and huddled in the quilts, cupping her hands around her mug and breathing in the steam. At last she admitted she was getting warmer, though it had been four days since Raphael had called.

“You know, I’ve never been to where he lives,” Gray confided. “We’ve never even passed by.”

“That’s odd. Why don’t you stop in sometime, then?”

“I can’t. I don’t have his address.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I even checked his fellowship application,” she admitted sheepishly. “He gives a box number at B.U., no help. He says he lives in a big house in the better section of Belmont. That’s all I can get out of him.”

“A tony location, for a student.”

“Yes.” She stared into her rum pensively. “But I don’t think he pays rent.”

“How does he swing that?”

“The owner is evidently—an older woman.”

Errol looked up sharply. “Interesting that he told you that.”

“Very interesting.” She sighed. “Furthermore—” It seemed she had to talk to someone tonight. “He never makes appointments with me.”

“Appointments?”

“Plans, anything. He says he’ll call. That’s all, or sometimes not even that. Sometimes he just leaves.”

“Well, that’s his problem, right? You have a busy schedule. People who don’t make appointments with you don’t get to see you.”

“Mmm.”

“Then you can always call him.”

“I do. But lately I don’t. I can’t. Sometimes it rings for ages, ten, twelve times, before he finally picks it up. I picture him looking at that phone, watching it tremble. I have to let it ring twenty times before I know he’s not home. And even then I can’t be sure. He picked it up on nineteen once. I counted.”

“Maybe he’d just walked in.”

“Oh no. He was there. Imagine watching the phone ring for nineteen times and then picking up the receiver as if nothing were unusual.”

“Let it ring six or seven times and hang up.”

“If I call him, I want to talk to him, Errol. I’ll wait if I have to.”

“But if he knows that, then next time it’ll be twenty rings, then twenty-one.”

“Then I’ll wait twenty-one.”

“Gray, there are limits.”

Gray shook her head and stared into the fire. “No, there aren’t. I thought there were, but there aren’t.”

The phone rang. Gray’s eyes widened. Her body went rigid and wavered. She stood and untangled herself from the quilts with uncharacteristic awkwardness. She picked up the receiver and swallowed.

“Hello?” Her voice was thin. Her ears were bright red. “Hello?” She held the receiver away from her, looked at it, held it back to her ear, and hung up the phone. “Nothing,” she said, leaning on the desk. “Dial tone.”

“Wrong number, I guess.”

Gray hung her head and breathed deeply, as if she couldn’t get enough air.

“Gray, are you all right?” Errol walked over to the desk. She tried to stand up straight, but immediately had to grab Errol’s shoulder for support. Her eyes were glazed and her coloring blotchy. Errol took her hand; it was limp and cold. He held her wrist, and after a moment or two made her sit down. Surely he was making a mistake. He tried again, this time putting his hand around her neck. He placed his fingers over the artery there. There was no mistake. The rate of her pulse was astounding—not only frantic, but uneven:
bu-bum…
BUM. BUM
.
Bu-bu-bu-bum…

“Gray, your heart—”

“I know.”

“Does this happen to you often?”

“Only when the phone rings.” She stopped to breathe. She let her head hang over the back of the chair. “When the doorbell rings. I have a problem with bells, I suppose.”

“Gray, you should take it easy.”

“What am I supposed to do, wear earplugs?”

“Maybe you should lie down.”

It rang again. Gray closed her eyes.

“I’ll get it,” said Errol.

She shook her head, prepared herself however she did that, and picked it up again. “Hello?” She put it back. “Dead.”

“It’s late. You should go to bed.”

“Have you ever tried to sleep with your heart beating like the drums in ‘Marjorie and Her Filthy Dog’?”

“I’ll take the phone off the hook.” Errol started for the receiver.

“NO!”

Errol withdrew his hand. “All right,” he said quietly, the way he would talk to a child who had just gone wild-eyed when he reached for her bedroom light switch.

Gray fell asleep in front of the fire that night. Errol stayed to watch it die to embers, until in the glow of the last red coals he wrapped a quilt around Gray’s thin frame. She was still breathing too fast and whimpering in her sleep. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom with her head on his shoulder. As he climbed he had a clear picture of this ascent from the foyer floor. When he left her on the bed with the four posts, by the straight-backed chair and the bureau with the small white cloth and the porcelain dish for pins, he had to leave the room quickly and shut the door. He was sure that when she woke in the morning she would not understand that her sleeping upstairs that night had cost him some pain.

Something was happening. Errol had to admit it even to the dog. Something was happening, and it was serious.

“Did you know she’s impossible to see?” Ellen asked Errol. “No one can make an appointment with her. Is she too busy getting ready for this next project?”

“I wish she were,” said Errol. “She spends most of her time obsessing over the Charles Corgie documentary. But what do you mean, no one can see her? She’s home all the time. More than ever, sometimes all day.”

“That’s strange. Because I’ve tried. Bob’s tried; Tom. No one’s seen her in weeks.”

“What does she say on the phone?”

“Just that her schedule is completely packed for the next month and I should call later. I got the impression—much later. Like in about five years.”

Errol heard this himself: “I couldn’t possibly” would come drifting through the cracks of Gray’s office door. “Next week is out of this world.” “I wish I could.” “You would not
believe…
”

Because they shouldn’t have believed. There was Gray, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. With exceptions, of course. Always the same exception.

“Do you ever tell him,” Errol asked one morning, “that you’re busy?”

“What do you mean?” She knew exactly what he meant.

“When he wants to get together. Do you ever tell him you have something else you have to do?”

“Not often,” she said warily. “If I want to see him, I will. I’ll cancel something else if I have to.”

“Gray”—Errol spoke slowly and distinctly—“is that wise?”

“Why can’t I see him if I want to? No one is looking over my shoulder. Except you.”

“That’s not true. There is one other person watching you.”

Gray glowered at the kitchen table. She did not like this conversation.

“Our buddy Ralph is watching you awfully closely, don’t you think? And you’re never busy. You never kick him out in the morning so you can get to work.”

She hit the table. “I don’t want to! I want him to stay as long as he’ll stay!”

Errol couldn’t tell if she was missing the point; more likely she didn’t care about the point. “Is he ever busy?”

“
Sometimes
.”

“Well…” Errol was glad that Gray wasn’t a man, because it takes a lot longer for a woman to get to the point where she will actually hit you. “Perhaps it would be diplomatic—whether or not you have commitments—to say you do—once in a while.”

Gray stood so quickly that she knocked her chair over backward. “Diplomatic! I’ve been a diplomat my whole life! For once I’m not a representative of my country or my profession, for once it’s just me, Errol! Diplo
matic
!” She raged around the kitchen as if looking for something to break, though she didn’t do that sort of thing. “I
know
,” she said with loathing. “
Don’t you think I know?
What I’m supposed to do? Put him off, make it weeks before I see him, let the phone ring two or three times and hang up, forget five or six? Don’t you think I know? I
WON’T
. Errol, I
WON’T
. I don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t want it.” She shook her head back and forth with her hand over her face. There was no helping her, Errol knew that, so there was nothing to do but to give her advice she wouldn’t
take, in the end just to make Errol himself feel better, for saying the “right thing.”

“But you’ve got it,” said Errol softly. “I’m sorry it’s a contest, but it is, and you’re losing.”

“I want,” she said, “to lose.”

“But do you understand what that means?”

“Not at all, Errol. That’s what I intend to find out.”

She started finding out that very week. It was October now. One of the things she discovered was that losing costs you. Costs money.

Gray had seen Raphael the day before. Late that next afternoon Errol was highlighting sections of the transcript of the Leonia Harris interview. Gray came into his office and sank into a chair by his desk. Errol looked up; she was touching her forehead and staring out the window. Errol went back to his transcript. It was too bad such a fine woman as Leonia was pinning so much on some lousy drunk. Gray sighed several times. Each time Errol looked up, she looked away. After five or six bouts of this, Errol put down the paper and sat back in his chair. “All right. What has he done now?”

“Nothing much, I suppose,” she said, chewing her lip. “It’s little, actually.”

“Anything to do with Ralphie at this point is not going to be little.”

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“Which means it does.”

“Well, I have plenty of money, don’t I?”

“Didn’t you just skip over something? Like the whole story?”

“It’s not much of a story.”

“Gray!” said Errol impatiently. “What?”

“All right. We went to lunch down at the wharf.” She stopped.

“And—”

“They brought me the check, as usual.”

“Right.”

“It wasn’t that much, compared to sometimes…”

“Gray, this is like pulling teeth.”

“Well, Raphael has always paid for lunches. I pay for dinners, and a lot of other expenses, too—play and concert tickets, gas and tolls, even his clothes. It’s seemed fair he should pay for something.”

“Doesn’t sound unreasonable.”

“I put the check by his plate. He looked at it and handed it back.”

“What did you do?”

“I said, ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ He said, ‘What wealthy people do with lunch checks.’ I said, ‘I’m a wealthy person, and what I do with lunch checks is give them to you.’ He said, ‘Then maybe you should learn a new trick.’ All this time he’s holding out the check across the table waiting for me to take it, and people are looking over at us. I said, ‘I’m an old dog if there ever was one. I don’t care for new tricks.’ Then he said, ‘You can’t screw twenty-five-year-old men and still claim the benefits of old age.’ That last line made me shudder.”

“And?”

“And I knew what I had to do.”

“Walk out.”

“Exactly. Stand up, say something very biting and very clever, and stride coolly out of the restaurant.”

“So did you?”

Gray looked down at her lap and ran her fingers over the back of her other hand.

“You didn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Errol.”

“I am, too, Gray.”

“If I’d left, I’d have gotten a taxi. I’d have come back here and worked, maybe grabbing a sandwich for dinner, if that. Then I’d have gone to bed. By myself. That’s how I would have ended up paying for that lunch: lying there wide awake by myself. I’d have won, Errol. Terrific. I didn’t want it.”