The Female of the Species (23 page)

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.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“That’s just one of those mysteries you’ll have to puzzle out nights sitting up awake in bed by yourself. But let me save you the trouble. Know how it works? You see a woman and you like her and you go for her. It doesn’t work and you move on until something does, not move in and be ‘friends’ for the rest of your life and lock the bathroom door a lot. God, why do I have to tell you this? When can I give up on being your Big Sister? When are you going to give me advice for a change?”

“I’ll give you some,” said Errol. “Lay off and shut up.”

Kyle laughed. But she did shut up.

Errol showed Kyle his apartment; they had dinner; after an evening of talking about food and how to decorate Errol’s flat, Gray snuck back into the conversation.

“I see articles by her from time to time,” said Kyle. “I like to read them, as a way of keeping up with you.”

It depressed Errol that to keep up with Gray’s articles was in fact to follow his own work. “Yes,” he said, trying to be mature about it, “she sometimes lists me as a consultant on her publications, which I appreciate.”

“She writes some interesting stuff. But she can be—oh, how should I say it?—not very compassionate. A little hard.”

“I’d think you’d like that.”

“Why? You think of me that way?”

“Well. Yes.”

Kyle shook her head and laughed. “Errol, you never have forgiven me for locking you in that cabinet, have you?”

He smiled. “No, I haven’t. I’m still angry. And that was forty years ago. What would my Freudian friends call me? Retentive. That’s it.”

“Errol, I’ve raised four children, and I’m a regular sweetheart, a softie. A pushover even. I give them too much money. I let them come home and loll around the house eating sandwiches and watching TV when the poor confused darlings are between marriages. I brake for animals, Errol. I feed strays and give burns my quarters. I’m sorry, but I’m not who you think at all. And I feel so bad about that cabinet, yes, even forty years later, you sweet boy—” She reached over and tousled Errol’s hair as if he were still eight years old. “So please, let me apologize. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

They laughed, and finally at forty-eight Errol forgave her for locking him in that stupid cabinet.

Kyle wanted to see Gray. They had liked each other before, if with a certain wariness; besides, Kyle had a taste for gossip, and Errol could let her in on the ground floor of this one.

Sure enough, when they drove up to the manse, the white Porsche was gleaming out in front, pulled up to the bumper of the gray coupe. Errol rang the doorbell.

“Come in!” cried a strained voice inside.

Errol walked in with Kyle to find Gray and Raphael in their tennis clothes arm wrestling in the den. Gray didn’t look up as Errol entered the room; her gaze was locked with Raphael’s. The tendons stood out on Gray’s metacarpus all the way down her forearm; veins were beginning to rise. She had a pretty shoulder. There were hollows that formed at this degree of flex that Errol had never seen before, just about the size of a thumb; Errol had to resist the urge to touch them in the same way he had to stop himself from plumbing depressions of marble sculptures in museums.

While the look on Gray’s face was one of pleasure, amusement, the muscles over her eyes were curdling and her head began gradually to lower toward the table.

“Don’t get this wrong,” said Gray in a tight whisper. “This is a joke, Errol.”

It was a joke. Errol looked at Raphael. There was no tension in his face, no pain, just an absurd gentleness. A small smile played over his lips. His own arm appeared firm, but not swollen. His shoulder was low; its lines were simple. He held her long, thin palm in his and seemed less inclined to defeat it, to press it down onto the table, than to keep it held in front of him indefinitely, balanced, force against force.

He nodded at Gray. “I’m pleased,” he said. “I can feel it.”

Gray rolled her eyes and with her mouth set in a wry contortion increased the pressure against his hand; the edges of her palm went white; small bulges of purple bloomed along her arm; the hollows in her shoulder deepened. Her neck bent, bowed. Her elbow smeared on the mahogany table. Her forehead kneaded and the muscles stood out on her jaw.

At last a single indentation showed on his forearm. Yet the peak of their arms remained still. Gray did not push his hand one millimeter lower, so that the only movement in the pyr
amid was the rise and swell of muscles, the trickle of sweat from the crook of Gray’s elbow, the tremble of her grip.

His eyes warmed from black to brown. “It saddens me to win. You know that.”

Gray, whose head was now so low that she was staring into the wood grain, nodded with difficulty.

“However, I don’t know how else to end this. You’ll tire. Eventually you’ll pass out.” His voice was low, even, easy. “So here,” he said, “let me help you.”

Slowly, gracefully, the pyramid fell. Yet at no point did Gray relinquish her pressure, give in to defeat. When her arm was an inch from the table, Raphael looked regretful. In this last inch the two hands slowed and hovered, until they carefully lowered to the wood like a helicopter landing. Only then did Gray’s arm relax, but gradually, the way big engines die.

Gray leaned back in her chair. Raphael spread her hand out on the table and traced her fingers. “You’re strong,” he said. “It’s magnificent to see.”

Gray smiled. “It feels good. That complete resistance. You know the feeling? Sometimes I try to move furniture by myself—a couch, a filing cabinet, something ridiculous, two or three hundred pounds. I can’t do it, but I like to try. I like the feeling of applying more and more force, and meeting absolute resistance, absolute refusal. Watching the filing cabinet just sit there. The only reason I don’t pass out is that I always start laughing.” Finally, Gray took her hand back and swung around to her guests. “Errol, I’m terrible. How are you? It’s been so long. And, Kyle, I didn’t know you were in town. You’ve stolen your brother away! I’ve missed him.”

“Actually, I’ve only been here a day.”

“Quite the recluse, then, Errol. Was it something I said?”

Errol mumbled something about work and could see that Gray understood perfectly well.

“Who won your tennis game?” asked Kyle.

“The master,” said Raphael. It was unclear to whom he referred.

“So, Kyle, how long are you in town?”

“A week.”

“We’re getting tickets to see Hard Cheese on Tony next Thursday. Would you two like to come along?”

“A new play?” asked Errol.

“They’re a new-wave band,” said Kyle.

“Oh, of course,” said Errol. “I guess with all the other new-wave bands we listen to day and night it’s easy for Hard Cheese on Tony to get lost in the shuffle.”

“I’ve been to my share of symphonies,” said Gray. “I thought I’d try something different.”

“Seems to me,” Errol attempted to say casually, “you’ve tried plenty that was different lately.”

“I’d love to go,” said Kyle.

“How do you know who they are?” asked Errol.

“They’re from Australia. I helped edit their video for ‘Marjorie and Her Filthy Dog.’”

“Oh,
they’re
the ones who did ‘Marjorie and Her Filthy Dog.’ There’s only one thing you need to clarify, then, Gray,” said Errol. “Are you serious?”