The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  “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 Err
ol 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.

  She was warmer than he remembered, and walked arm in arm with her brother toward the car. When she asked him how he was, Errol didn’t know what to tell her. “Fine. Or I’ve been better. I don’t know, Kyle. I thought when you grew up everything got all straightforward. It’s not working out. Lately what I thought I understood one day completely baffles me the next. I don’t know if I’m fine. What’s fine?”

  “Are you in a mood, or did you just get weird these last five years?”

  “Okay, Kyle, I’m just fine.” Errol slammed the car door.

  “Errol, don’t pout. It’s just I asked you how you were and you went into this long thing—”

  “You mean you didn’t really want to know, you were being polite. So, fine. I-am-fine.”

  They drove in silence, until Kyle squinted at him. “Are you okay? You do seem weird. Work okay?”

  “I read about matriarchies. Of course. But I won’t go into it. You were never much interested in what I do.”

  “Jesus, Errol, I just got off the plane.”

  Errol looked down to find he was clutching the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were turning white. “I’m sorry, Kyle,” he said, not sounding very apologetic. “Please. Why don’t you tell me about your work. Tell me about the ad you’re editing and how well it’s going and what awards it’s going to win. Tell me how much money you’re making and how everyone in Australia thinks you’re the best, and tell me how happily married you are. Then I’ll tell you that I’m distracted and screwed-up and that I work for someone else, that I’m second-rate, or at least second-fiddle, permanently, and that would be sad except that I don’t give a damn about my profession right now. I’ll tell you that I haven’t slept with a woman for three years, but that I have a sick relationship with my large foam-rubber pillow that I hope to keep up through old age, as we crumble and yellow together in the coming years. I’ll tell you I’m tired and confused and angry and jealous, and this is a strange time for you of all people to walk into my life.”

  Errol was glad he was driving and had an excuse not to look at his sister, who he could see in his periphery had bent her head down and was staring at her hands in her lap. He shouldn’t have said any of this, Errol knew, but something had given way in him, as if he’d been holding his breath for months like The Man Who Swallowed the Sea and suddenly couldn’t hold it in any longer. All the water he’d swallowed spewed back out, drowning his sister because she was there.

  “Errol,” asked Kyle quietly, “do you want me to stay somewhere else? I didn’t know this was a bad time. Maybe I should see you on another visit.”

  As she said this, Errol felt a peculiar panic, and pulled over to a gas station as if by stopping the car he could also halt the progress of this conversation. She was his sister. Errol had a sudden visceral understanding too rare for an anthropologist of the importance of blood ties. At long last, you idiot, someone to talk to besides a dog. “I feel bad,” said Errol. “I’m lonely. I feel betrayed, but I don’t have any right to feel that way. I haven’t been betrayed. No one has broken any promise to me that they actually made. So I can’t even be angry. I’m just sick. I walk around, Kyle, and I feel sick. That’s the answer to your question. I’m not fine at all. I don’t want you to leave. I need someone around now. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Kyle reached for Errol’s hand and stroked it the way Errol petted Bwana when the ferret was making noises in the den.

  “She’s famous, Kyle. I can’t talk to anyone about it.”

  “I assume this all has to do with Gray Kaiser.”

  “You said it.” Errol took a deep breath and started driving again. “She’s gotten into a—relationship. With a man.”

  “Well, you two are just friends, aren’t you? Or are you?”

  “Oh, we are just Friends, with a capital F. We should have T-shirts printed up: Just Friends. Lapel buttons. Paperweights for our desks. I feel as if I’m working on a goddamned merit badge.”

  “So who’s the man?”

  “For one thing, he’s only twenty-five.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  “She is too much.”

  “People are beginning to notice, too. It makes her look bad.”

  “I think it’s a kick! That takes guts, Errol. What’s he like?”

  “Gorgeous. Savvy. Opaque. I don’t trust him.”

  “You think he’s looking for a Sugar Mommy?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Even if he is, Gray Kaiser can take care of herself.”

  “That’s what she thinks.”

  “Well, if it turns out he’s in it for side benefits, she can throw him out on his ear, right? Meanwhile, she’s having a good time. What a riot. I cannot believe this.”

  “I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow it’s not that simple.”

  “You have explained it. You’re jealous, you said so.”

  “No, beyond that. She’s
seen men before. They’ve come and gone. This is different.”

  “Come on, baby brother. You don’t expect this to last, do you? Just wait for it to blow over.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What, they’re going to get married?”

  “No…”

  “Well, then.”

  Errol liked this point of view. “So I should just wait, as always.”

  “Sure…” Kyle’s brow rumpled, and she added uneasily, “Though for what?”

  “Nothing,” said Errol warily. “We’ll go back to the way we were.”

  “You liked the way you were? Wearing T-shirts?”

  “I’d rather be friends with Gray than married to any other woman.”

  “My God! What do you do, masturbate furiously every night?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “In all this time, have you seen other women?”

  “Plenty.”

  “For how long?”

  “It’s varied.”

  “The longest.”

  “Couple months.”

  “You’re forty-eight years old and the longest relationship you’ve sustained lasted a couple of months?”

  “I’ve seen Gray Kaiser for twenty-five years!”

  “As a friend!”

  “Who cares?”

  “You do!”

  “You don’t understand. All right, I’m frustrated, I admitted that. But I don’t care that much about sex—”

  “My brother doesn’t care about sex. No wonder you get in the car and explode the first time I open my mouth.”

  “Our culture blows sexuality way out of proportion.”

  “Every culture does! There are only so many experiences of consequence: getting born, having sex, having children, and dying. There you go. Everything else is just icing on the cake. You’re the anthropologist; you should be telling me this! Art and work and friends, possessions, education—all just little extras.”

  Errol sighed.

  “I’m right. You know I’m right.”

  “I don’t want you to be right. I see her, talk to her, work with her, eat with her. I have everything, or almost. It shouldn’t matter. It should be small.”

  “It couldn’t be bigger.”