The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  “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 straig
ht-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.”

  Gray kissed him lightly on the lips. “Thank you. You know the racket won’t make any difference. But at this point I’ll try anything.”

  It was an evening of gestures and sentiments; a very O. Henry Christmas. When Errol thought back on every gift they gave one another, not one of them was something that anyone would actually use.

  Errol unwrapped his present from Gray. “I’m not sure you want this, Errol. You made a remark once. You were drunk. I don’t know if you were serious.”

  Inside the box Errol found a complete array of woodworking tools. “I was half serious. I’ve got some work to do on my apartment.”

  “Yes,” said Gray, “I thought you might want to make it nicer there. I’ll—help you if you like.” Errol wasn’t sure—was he being unfair?—but he could swear this was the first time Gray had offered to help him with anything.

  Errol pawed around in the box. When he found the hammer and nails he smiled. Between this and the two knives, he’d been given a nearly complete Raphael Sarasola kit. He wondered, Would he get the cheekbones and the chest hair and the eyes? Maybe next year. He’d ask for a cape, too, with a big S on the back. He’d seen them around.

  Silently Raphael handed Gray a large rectangular package. Errol could see her eyes calculating its contents, but she wasn’t doing very well.

  The face that stared out at that company when Gray tore back the paper made Errol’s heart skip a beat.

  “Are you sure you want to give this to me?” asked Gray. Raphael nodded. “But it’s your mother’s.”

  “I have other canvases. And I’ve looked at this one more than enough for one lifetime.”

  There it was, Nora’s portrait of her husband. Errol had to admit she wasn’t a bad painter. Especially around the eyes and mouth the portrait had an amazing softness and delicacy. It had a Renaissance quality, in browns and reds, with sudden lighting on the cheekbones, gentle shadows around the lips, and of course a cavernous blackness in those eyes. While this was clearly a picture of Frank—Vincent—it brought out the resemblance between father and son.

  “I almost hate to take this from you,” said Gray. “God, he’s changed. This portrait is so trusting, so open. So naïve.”

  “And who needs that?”

  “I do,” said Gray.

  “That’s why you’re going to keep it, then. I’m outgrowing this picture.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Gray. “Here.” She handed him her box. “One last thing.”

  Raphael lifted out Gray’s presents and set them on the table. The flames rippled in the pink-tinted fluting. Raphael stared and said nothing.

  “They weren’t at all expensive,” Gray explained nervously. “Just hard to find. It took a lot of combing. I finally found them in a S
alvation Army…after I’d almost given up…”

  Raphael kept staring at the glasses. “They’re like ghosts,” he said at last.

  It was true. There was something eerie about the way these two glasses hovered now before the fire, bubbles in the cheap glass glinting in their stems. All three had watched these destroyed, and now they were back, exactly the same. It was like being haunted.

  Raphael’s breathing grew labored. The muscles in his jaw popped in and out. Errol hardly ever saw Raphael disturbed, but something was mounting as he leaned forward in that chair eyeing those pink glasses. “You can’t,” he said, “do this, Gray. You aren’t divinity, Gray K. You can’t resurrect whatever you like.”

  “I’m sorry…” she said, “if you don’t like them. I tried—and there’s champagne to go with them for later. Domaine Chandon. A good year…”

  Gray saw what he was about to do just in time, and stepped quickly out of the way. Raphael picked up the glasses and flung them both into the fire. They smashed against the back brick.

  He stood with his back to her. “Think of something else, Gray,” he said hoarsely. “Save the champagne for something smooth and cold and brand-new. Do that, get me new glasses. Sheer and modern and uncomplicated. Got that?” He picked up his coat and looked at neither Errol nor Gray. “Good night. I’ll call.”

  They didn’t hear from him for a week, and then it was as if nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

  The happy trio went to Tom Argon’s for New Year’s Eve. Errol drank too much. He spent most of the party with Ellen Friedman. Having to tell someone at last, he confided to Ellen what had happened in the South Bronx. She was appropriately appalled, and for once wasn’t disappointed in him for not being more forceful.

  Raphael was perfect this evening. Reserved, urbane, amusing. Errol knew his buddy Ralph better now, though, so he could see that the man was on autopilot. Ralph could steer his way through parties this smoothly in his sleep.

  Gray, however, was hyperactive. Again, for someone who knew her less well, she must have seemed exuberant, charming. Errol saw her as more on the edge of hysteria. Her coloring was fantastically high and her movements quick, angular. She didn’t talk to anyone long; she didn’t talk to Errol or Raphael at all. Her laughter was slicing, and in the middle of talking with Ellen, Errol would hear it cut across the crowded room to his ear. The sound pierced him, and he would turn aside and lose his train of thought. As the evening progressed, Errol would continually imagine he heard someone sobbing. Hearty laughter sounded like throes of distress. Likewise, the glaze of alcohol over everyone’s eyes looked for all the world like tears. Grins turned to grimaces, expressions of surprise or pleasure to contortions of pain. Errol began to feel unwell, and led Ellen onto the porch for air.