The Female of the Species (35 page)

“What had so struck him?” asked Gray.

“Some story about a man in Africa. He told me a last-minute assistantship had been posted for fieldwork in Kenya. He was dying to go. I know it’s difficult to imagine Raphael dying to do anything, but he had an urgency I’d never seen—I certainly never saw it in his arrangements to see me…” She took a sip of her tea. “Anyway, he knew I had some close friends in anthropology, and asked me to do what I could.”

“And you did?” asked Errol incredulously.

“I can’t explain if you don’t understand.”

“He used your connections to go to Kenya? He used you to leave you.”

“That’s right,” she agreed without heat. “He left the continent within a few days, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

Errol was getting frustrated with her mildness. “Doesn’t this make you angry?”

“No. He used me. I allowed it. It was my fault. Or my choice, anyway. Why should I be angry?”

“That sounds to me as if you’re taking too much responsibility.”

“Raphael was responsible,” she responded reasonably. “He was faithfully the person I knew he was from the moment I met him. When you know someone, you know what they’ll do to you. You accept that, or not.”

So Anita had refined responsibility, just as Ida (people put themselves in the situations they put themselves) had refined blame. Ida would say: “You asked for it.” Anita would say: “Yes, I did.” Ida would hit her; Anita would say: “I knew you would do that.” Ida would say: “Yes, you did.” They would get along famously.

“By that way of thinking,” Errol pointed out, “the behavior of everyone in your life is your fault.”

“Maybe it is,” said Anita, as if the assertion weren’t the least farfetched. “But especially Raphael’s. It’s easy to know what he’ll do, because he doesn’t even lie. He never told me he loved me, not once.”

Gray squirmed on the couch. “Maybe he has a hard time saying such a thing.”

Anita looked at Gray sympathetically. “Or maybe it wasn’t true. I knew that. I also knew,” she went on with a sigh, “that maybe he couldn’t ever say that to anyone. So if I still insisted on believing that he loved me anyway, that was my own weakness. He was hardly to blame for that.”

“Errol,” said Gray, in a funny, strangled voice, “maybe we should go, please?”

“Before you leave,” said Anita, “what is that?”

“A ferret,” said Gray heavily.

“May I hold it?”

“Well,” said Gray reluctantly. “He’s very fond of me, and well behaved. With other people he can be unpredictable. He sometimes bites.”

“I’ll brave it,” said Anita. She reached for the pet with hun
ger, as if she hadn’t touched anything warm and animate for a long time. Gray looked disappointed when Solo acted with Anita exactly as he did with Gray—he was tolerant of being fondled and rested placidly in her hands. Anita stroked him, purring, “There. I’m not so different from your master, am I? I’m not so bad.” She looked up. “These can be vicious. You’ve got him well tamed.”

“I hope so,” said Gray, taking Solo back and walking toward the door.

“I was glad to finally meet you, Errol. And Dr. Kaiser—”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to extend my—congratulations, in a way. He’s a hard catch.”

“Pardon?” asked Gray coldly.

“But you also have my sympathy.”

“I don’t need your sympathy.”

“You will. You’re already suffering. I can see it around your eyes. Why are you here, after all? You shouldn’t have had to ask me if Raphael used me. He would tell you himself. It’s one of the things that’s most appalling, isn’t it? He answers questions. But you can’t afford to ask him something like that anymore, can you?” She pressed Gray’s hand. “I’ll pray for you tonight.”

Errol had the strange sensation as they parted that she hadn’t always been a religious woman.

Gray ran down the stairs; Errol had trouble catching up with her. “Gray!” he called. “The car’s right here!”

She kept walking. The ferret was sitting on her shoulder and stared back at Errol with black, mocking eyes. Errol ran up and stopped her with a hand on her arm. She wouldn’t look at him. “Why did you do that to me?” she asked, looking straight ahead.

“I didn’t do it to you. I did it for you.”

“You lost me.”

Tact was beside the point now. “The sooner you get away from the man, the better, and you know it.”

“I know it? That sounds strangely like your opinion.”

“And the opinion of anyone who’s ever known him or seen you two together. The man is poison, and even Dr. Impervious can’t swill that kind of arsenic week after week without getting a little woozy.”

“I was wondering when you’d pull this.”

“I’m your best friend. To keep quiet any longer would be to do you a disservice—”

“That’s very considerate, but I can live without your little revelations, thank you.”

“He’s doing you in!”

“But I want him to!” Gray stood and breathed.

Errol’s hands fell to his sides. She wanted to be done in? Gray had no idea what she was talking about, but Errol did. He wanted to save her. He wanted to save her from what his own life was like.

“The point is,” he explained practically, “especially knowing what kind of man he is—”

“You have no idea what kind of man he is, and neither does she.”

“
—You cannot allow him to affect your work
.”

“So that’s it. Work. The great sacred icon, isn’t it? The untouchable Work. The one real God in Gray Kaiser’s life, isn’t that right?” For someone who didn’t believe in regret, she sounded awfully bitter. “Imagine a mere man interfering with the study of man. Let me ask you this,” she said, with an almost ugly insight. “What if I asked you to go live with the Lone-luk by yourself? What if I told you to go ahead and fly there tomorrow? Since Work is so hallowed, so all-important?”

Errol drew himself up. “I would say,” he said icily, “absolutely not. This is your project, and I’ve done plenty more than my share already. If you think you can shove me off to Africa so you can ruin your life and your career with total abandon—”

“I wouldn’t be ditching you, Errol. You and that sister of yours!”

“You would, too! But you’re not packing your only conscience off to do your work for you just because Ralphie isn’t up to Ghana this month—”

“We may all be packing off to Ghana if you would just give me a chance to ask the man to go.”

“What if I told you that if he goes, I’m staying here?”

“Is that what you’re telling me?”

Errol stopped, frightened of his own ultimatum. He stammered, “I have to think about it.”

“You do that, Errol. I’m going for a walk. Goodbye.” She wrapped the ferret around her neck and turned on her heel. Errol turned on his, and they both walked militantly in opposite directions back to back, as if marking off paces in a duel. Yet neither turned around and fired; instead, Gray rounded a corner and did not return home until late at night. As for Errol, he drove to his office and spent the whole evening typing letters.

There was a mirror in the foyer that reflected a panoramic view of the den. Errol had noticed this before, but because information so frequently bounded over him uninvited, he’d rarely resorted to this wide screen. As Errol walked downstairs that next Friday evening, though, the mirror had the same enticing quality of drive-in movies that one passes on the highway; of big, unbidden human anguish splashed up beside the road. Errol paused.

“Frankly, I’m surprised you asked,” said Raphael, leaning back on the couch.

“You shouldn’t be. What else was I to do?” Gray had that brave look. She faced Raphael on the couch with her head high, the way Barbara Stanwyck might face into a stiff prairie wind.

“But you must know the answer,” said Raphael.

“I don’t presume anything with you.”

“What would I do?”

“Collect data. Talk to people. Live as they do and take notes. Find out what it’s like, how the power structure has shifted.”

“Why would it make any difference that I was there?”

“You’re younger,” said Gray, in a passable imitation of her
most professional voice. “You could make contact more easily with the young adult and adolescent population. And—” She shrugged.

“And what?”

“Why do I always have to spell things out?”

“We don’t have to do anything. We could both”—Raphael smiled—“just sit here.”

“We are just sitting here,” said Gray with difficulty, turning away. “Aren’t we? It would make so much difference to me, but you aren’t even considering going for an instant, are you? What are we doing. We’re just passing time.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said Raphael mildly. “What else is there to do with it?”

“Plenty else. Love each other. Set people like the Lone-luk a good example. Work hard. Go somewhere else and suffer and return and have a whole new appreciation for a gin-and-tonic in a tall glass with lots of ice and a twist of lime. Otherwise tall drinks go to nothing.”

“I still have a taste for them. I’ve already suffered. I’ve gone and returned. I’ve had enough.”

“You’re too young to make a statement like that. I don’t care what you went through as a child. You’re only twenty-five, and hardly ready for permanent sun and fun in the Pacific and early retirement.”

“Gray K.,” he said, now sounding almost wistful, “I’m older than you, by far. You know that. That’s why this has been possible. You—” He shook his head. “You’re a little girl.”

“You say something like that,” said Gray, “and I get lost. The whole meaning of age falls apart. Why talk about it? Why say anything?”

Raphael shrugged. “You’re the one who likes to talk.”

Gray raised her hand to her forehead and touched herself between the eyes lightly with two fingertips. “This is all beside the point.”

“The point is, you said they live in squalor. But I already know what it’s like to live without running water, to sleep with rats, to scavenge. I don’t need a wilderness camping trip as a
refresher course. I also know what it’s like to live with people who hate each other, and beat each other—I grew up with it. I learn something and move on.”

“No, that’s not the point. And what you’d have to learn you haven’t learned yet, not at all.”

“What’s that?”

“To do something hard,” said Gray simply, “for me.”

Raphael said nothing.

“Then I will leave when I originally planned to,” said Gray heavily. “In February.”

“That’s good timing. I’m leaving then myself.”

“Oh?”

“To study the Goji,” he said without question. “Where they have plumbing and small, clean houses and a beautiful beach. You’re paying for it, remember?”

“We’ll see,” she said weakly. “Until then we’ll have some time together. In February we’ll go our separate ways.” She paused, and gathered courage. “Will you miss me?”

“I don’t know.”

Gray looked at the ceiling. “You won’t even do anything easy for me, will you?”

“Like what?”

“Even say you’ll miss me.”

“Gray K., you’re wrong. That’s not easy at all.” Raphael got up off the couch and walked to the window.

“I’m begging you,” said Gray at his back in a strange, flat voice. “I’m begging you to go with me.”

“I would never have thought,” said Raphael, “when I first saw you by that fire—so tall, so commanding, so wry—that you would ever beg anyone to do anything.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“It’s either odious or admirable. I can’t say which. So let’s just say that it doesn’t make any difference.”

“It does to me.”

“How?”

“I would hate to think,” said Gray, “sitting in a tin hut with only Errol at my side, that I hadn’t tried everything.” She turned
away. Raphael left the room and quietly picked up his coat in the foyer. Before he left he looked up at Errol on the stairs with no particular surprise. They looked each other in the eye for a long time before Raphael turned to the door and softly let himself out.

From then on, Errol could only admire her. She did not, as he feared, cancel the Lone-luk project altogether but advanced toward its due date with fatalistic resignation, the way an inmate on death row might approach his upcoming execution when there was little hope of pardon. Somehow it didn’t help matters that a few days before they were to fly to Ghana, Gray would turn sixty years old.

Yet she persevered. At length Errol could almost approve of letting the Lone-luk wait, for she’d started another project she had to finish: the project of being done in. She went at it with the commitment, tenacity, and abandon with which she attacked all the other projects of her life; in fact, he’d never seen her do a better job. She continued, for example, to play tennis at least once a week, though ever since that game in early November she’d lost every single game they played. She said she tried, too, tried hard; Errol believed her, for he remembered the picture of her arm at full tension when she wrestled Raphael in July, the way it remained taut and tendonous until it lay absolutely flat against the table. She continued, too, to dine with Raphael, lunch and dinner, though the bills landed with regular humiliation in her hands. Perhaps most surprising and lovely of all, she continued to have a good time. She laughed a lot. Sometimes she laughed until she cried.

Gray managed to plant two colleagues with the Lone-luk—no substitute for being there herself, of course, and they would want more than their share of credit later. Still, at least someone was keeping track of this fragile society, and regular reports were wired to Boston. These telexes did not present a pretty picture. The new patriarchy was harsh. Women were often beaten; girls were no longer allowed to go to school. Women had been divested of property and had few legal rights. The
men drank to excess, and children were hungry. As he read these reports, Errol was in some ways relieved Gray was spared this unpleasant drama. The anthropologists on location, a man and a woman, were being treated badly, and after two weeks the woman returned abruptly to the United States. The man remained, but certainly out of determined professional ambition rather than pleasure or even interest. His wires were bleak, spare, and dutiful. By week three he confessed that he disliked his subjects, and that he had lice.

In spite of the fact that she was about to turn sixty years old, Gray arrived one afternoon in early December with, she said, a Christmas present for herself. The package was not large, but she was out of breath by the time she got it upstairs.

“Errol! Come see!”

Errol followed her into her bedroom. When she laid the bag on the bed, it pressed into the mattress. One by one she lifted out two short red-and-black iron barbells and two sand-filled ankle weights with Velcro closures.

“What’s all this for?” asked Errol, as politely as he could.

“What does it look like? Lifting weights.”

“These are for you?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Tennis isn’t enough lately. I feel weak.”

“That’s understandable. You always lose.”

“Now go away. I want to play with my new toys.”

Gray came downstairs later with a purple cast to her face and a glaze of sweat over her body.

“Are you sure you can handle that stuff?” asked Errol.

“Come on, I’ve always been in fine shape. This is one more exercise. It’s wonderful!”

“Gray, don’t overdo it.”

“There’s a burn—”

“You’re really making me nervous.”

“And afterward the muscles sear. You could have fried an egg on my upper arm.”

“Just take it easy, will you?”

Gray never took it easy. Through the month of December, from behind Gray’s door nights, Errol heard all kinds of grunting, breathing, and heavy thuds as she barely got the barbells back to the floor without dropping them.

Errol tried to leave her alone on such evenings, but when Raphael called one night near Christmas, Errol decided she would want to be interrupted. He knocked.

“Come in!” came a thin voice from inside.

Errol opened the door. “Ralph’s on the phone.”

To Errol’s surprise she shook her head. Gray was sitting on her straight-backed chair with one arm across her knees, the other braced above the elbow in the crook of her wrist. Leaning over, she lifted the barbell from the floor toward her face.

“You’ll call him back?”

She nodded. Her ears were a brilliant red. The muscles around her mouth were twitching. Errol paused before he left. It was interesting to watch her. He noted that the muscles in her arms were getting better defined; the faces of her forearms were rumpled with a series of small lumps; the dent of her biceps had deepened, though Errol couldn’t help but wonder what difference any of this made to anyone, even to Gray herself. So much effort, and for what? Why was she doing this?

“Somehow this seems unlike you,” Errol ventured.

“Why?”

“It’s so—narcissistic.”

“I’m not in love with
myself
,” she said, abruptly pulling one more curl. Just then Errol felt the heaviness of those barbells in his own chest, the dullness and burden of the iron, and dragged himself out of her bedroom lifting his feet with difficulty, as if his own ankles were strapped with pounds of sand.

Christmas was a strangely quiet and simple time. Although it was a season when many people stopped by, Gray frequently cloistered herself upstairs and pretended she wasn’t home. Gray, Raphael, and Errol decided to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, just the three of them. Errol built a fire in the den. At midnight Gray set out three globular snifters and poured a generous
round of expensive cognac. Raphael leaned back in the leather armchair and held his glass before him, watching the flames flash in the amber brandy and lick up the curves of crystal. As Errol brought his glass to his lips, the fumes rose and his eyes smarted. He held the cognac in his mouth until his tongue went numb. Gray stood by the fire and stared down into the liquor, swirling it around and watching the eddies curl and die, as if there were a fortune to be read there. The quality of the gathering was subdued, like a Christmas when a member of the family has been hospitalized with a terminal illness.

Still, the evening had a quiet humor. When Errol handed Raphael his present in an envelope, Raphael said, “Don’t tell me: a one-way ticket to Elba.” He opened it to find a two-hundred-dollar gift certificate to Gray’s favorite restaurant by the wharf.

“That’s to take the guest of your choice out to dinner,” Errol explained. “Or lunch.”

“Maybe you and I should go out, McEchern.”

“We’re actually exchanging gifts, Ralph. Let’s not push it.”

It was hard to understand later why most of this evening was so even-tempered and mildly amusing, but it seemed natural at the time.

Raphael reached beside his chair and handed Errol a long, flat box. “I couldn’t think of anything you needed more, McEchern.”

Errol pulled the ribbon. As he lifted the top, fire flashed inside the box. Errol withdrew a ten-inch carving knife of fine Solingen steel.

“I sharpened it myself,” said Raphael. “Here.” He reached for the knife and ran the edge lightly over Errol’s forearm. He raised the blade for Errol’s inspection—several dark hairs lay on the steel. “You can shave with it.”

“I think I’ll stick to vegetables,” said Errol.

“At least use it on meat. Just for me.”

“All right,” Errol agreed. “As long as you don’t make me use it on my father. He’s a nice man.”

“There’s one more thing there,” Raphael pointed out. “The travel version.”

Errol picked the second object out of the box. Though smaller, this one caught the light more fiercely than the first gift. Errol snapped it open: a switchblade. Exactly the same design as Raphael’s, all steel and chrome.

“I wouldn’t shave with that one, though,” Raphael advised. “It might be dangerous.”

Errol ran his thumb over the bevel; it made a chilling, sheer, scraping sound as it traced over the whorls of his skin. “What am I going to do with this?”

“Carry it. That’s usually enough.”

Errol found Raphael’s presents disturbing, but also flattering somehow, and though he thought of any number of barbs as a response, Errol simply said, “Thanks, Ralph,” and held his tongue. “Gray.” Errol pointed. “Those two are for you.”

Gray opened the smaller package first, and stood before the fire dangling the present critically. “Unless Bwana has lost some weight,” she said, “I think we have a problem here.”

“It’s not for Bwana. I had it specially designed. It’s a ferret leash.”

Gray laughed.

“See, this strap goes under the belly, this one around the neck.”

“I’ll try it. But he won’t like it.”

“That occurred to me. But that’s the lesser of the two. Try the bigger box.”

Gray tore it open with appealing impatience. “Errol!” She held it up. This, too, caught the firelight; flames whipped around its rim, shot down its throat, and cross-hatched across its tight new strings. “It’s beautiful.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be open to a new one,” said Errol. “I know you’ve had that same wooden one for twenty years. But they’re making better rackets now. This is graphite; it absorbs more shock. A larger head means you get more shots, and these strings should give you more power.”