The Female of the Species (31 page)

“Whatever you say, Ralphie. You’re never here; I can not call you whatever you want.”

“No, I’m here right now. Go ahead. Say goodbye. But use my real name.” Raphael used his best smile on his father. Frank recoiled slightly in its wake.

“I never liked the name, Ralphie…”

“What did you call me?”

“I said I never liked that name. Your mother—”

“Do you address people by their correct name only if you happen to like it?”

Frank looked at his feet. “You’re not just anybody.”

“God, I’d like a recording of that.”

“Bye, son.”

“I’m not moving this car until you say it.”

“That’s a hell of a threat.”

“I thought it would get to you.”

Frank took a breath, and must have felt old—his own son was beating him. “Bye, Ra-fee-ell.”

“Good start, but needs practice. Maybe I’ll come back in ten years to see how you’re coming. So long, Vincent.” With that Raphael accelerated swiftly away from the curb to leave his father in a cloud of exhaust.

“You wanted to know where your mother is, didn’t you?” asked Gray when they’d pulled away.

“Of course.”

“But you didn’t ask.”

“I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Absolutely.”

Gray looked despairingly out the side window. Errol for once wasn’t listening. He was in shock. Frank’s name wasn’t Frank. Errol had made Frank up. His name was Vincent. Errol found this disturbing, but also funny, and he laughed.

“You all right back there?” asked Raphael.

“You wouldn’t understand, Ralph.”

“Watch it, McEchern. You’re next.” Raphael accelerated to the next light with a peculiar jauntiness considering what a largely venomous scene he had just left behind. He turned the radio on, loud. He nodded in time to “Under My Thumb,” and an odd little smile crept onto his face. Errol couldn’t actually hear the words for the music, but he saw Raphael turn to Gray and mouth it clearly enough: “He liked my car.” Then he shifted into gear and tore off gleefully around the next corner.

When Raphael pulled up in front of Cleveland Cottons, he said nothing. He got out of the car and went to the trunk. Errol scanned the mill. The windows were still boarded up, the grounds overgrown. The
CLEVELAND COTTONS
sign was completely rusted, and squealed in the breeze. The building was even bigger than Errol had imagined; to have renovated and exterminated such a place must have been an enormous task.

Raphael returned with a hammer.

“Is that the same one?” asked Errol.

“How do you know about my hammer?”

Errol smiled and said, “I’m a romantic,” and didn’t explain.

Raphael went first to one of the front windows and pried off the boards one by one. He piled them on the ground with quiet care, like stacking hymnals; he dropped nails with a deliberate
ping
on the broken bottles at his feet, like coins into offering plates full of change. Halfway through he started to sweat and pulled off his T-shirt, draping it around his neck like a vestment.

Yet when he stepped away from the window he looked wistful. Each pane had been individually shattered. No, he shouldn’t have been surprised, as he shouldn’t have been when he made his way to the side entrance of the mill to find the boards he had pounded over it pulled away again. The cathedral had been overrun, there could be no doubt now. Still, Raphael gestured for the two of them to come with him; he waited for Gray’s hand before he ducked down and stepped into his old sanctuary.

It took a few minutes for Errol’s eyes to adjust; the only light in the mill was from the window Raphael had uncovered. The way the sun caught shifting clouds of dust reminded Errol of the South Bronx, and he felt a chill. There was a scuttering in the shadows. As he began to make out the room around him, Errol was disappointed. Why did he expect a well-swept expanse with high ceilings and long white sheets hanging spare and graceful like Gray’s clothes? Why did he expect homemade lanterns still burning in their sconces? Why did he even expect Ida O’Donnell to be lingering with her pink-tinted wineglass in the middle of the room, eyes flickering with mischief in the lantern light, her kimono falling away to show the delicate mound of her stomach and the single angling pubic hairs crooking out from her black bikini? They were all adults here; it had been seven years; why the big surprise? All three of them knew about mildew and decay, about the boredom and maliciousness of little boys. Of course there were beer cans underfoot, and bottles of Yago Sangria. Of course every single pane of glass was broken, hadn’t they been before Raphael moved in? And of course married women did not remain standing in the middle of old factories and drink and smile and wait.

Raphael picked his way silently through the first-floor living room. Once in a while he would reach out and touch something, then pull away—an old sheet would crumble in his fingers; a dish sticking out of the rubble would turn out to be a shard.

“It’s odd,” said Gray, “what we choose to put ourselves through, isn’t it?”

Yet in the midst of the decimated trash heap the mill had become, there was a turn—even Errol felt it. Subtly their focus shifted from what had changed to what was the same; from what was gone to what remained. Certainly this did not look like the Cleveland Cottons of Raphael’s adolescence, but everywhere it was evident that he’d been there. The cotton was crumbling, but sheets still hung on the occasional window. Raphael pointed to bits of wood and metal on the walls where his lanterns had been fixed. And though damp and rank-smelling, the trunk was still there, even if Ida was not on top of it
now. He touched the leather with the springy deference of incredulity.

The trunk had a padlock on it, never cracked; Raphael spun the dial; Errol was amused that he still remembered the combination. When he opened the chest it creaked; the leather hinges broke, and the whole top fell off with a
poof
onto the floor. Raphael peered inside. He lifted, one by one, carefully wrapped in plastic: a caulking gun, a drill, a ten-inch carving knife. Then: a corkscrew and two bundles of felt. He unwrapped these and walked over to set two fluted, pink-tinted wineglasses gently on the sill of the window he’d unboarded. Just then the sun came out from behind a cloud and the glasses glowed.

“Who’s there?”

Raphael froze.

“I told you assholes to stay out of here! You’re gonna get hurt, you hear!” It was a woman’s voice, and sounded nervous.

Raphael took a breath so deep that Errol could see his chest expand from fifteen feet away. “Don’t worry, I know my way around here!” he shouted back.

“I don’t give a damn! This place is about to collapse. I’ve got a kid across the street, and I don’t want him to see people going in and out of here. I’m trying to keep this place boarded up!”

Raphael looked down at the pink glasses and ran his finger pensively around the rims. “A child,” he said, no longer shouting.

“Listen, I mean it, get out of here or I’m calling the police!”

“No, you won’t.”

“Oh yeah?” Someone was scuffling through the entrance. A bottle skittered away and a board tumbled. Suddenly a woman stepped into the light. “And why wouldn’t I call the police?”

Raphael turned toward her. He was right by the window, and the sun lit his one side brilliantly, leaving the other half in full shadow. “Because that’s not like you,” he said quietly. “You might board this place back up with me inside and bury me alive. Or forget the whole thing and go back to your towel,
because you’ve gotten bored, or whatever it is you get now. But the police? Sedentary Ida. That’s not your style.”

Ida stared. “You son-of-a-bitch,” she said slowly.

Errol was surprised to be looking at a stranger—he had expected, ridiculously, to recognize her. She was wearing a faded denim shirt and cutoffs and heeled sandals that didn’t function well in this rubble. Errol noticed her legs. Her knees were a little knobby, but the legs were still long and thin and imperious-looking. Her face, though, was disappointing. That sharpness that Errol had imagined was there, but while at thirty it had possibly been insolent, provocative, now her skin had tightened and her weight was too low, so what remained was a look of strain, even harshness. Perhaps it was the light, the severity of shadow, but she didn’t look pretty.

“Kind of depressing here, huh?”

“No,” said Raphael. “Complex. Interesting.”

“Kids stayed away from here for a long time. They thought you’d be back and do something terrible. They’d take a board and run away. It wore off, but you had a reputation.”

“Funny, and I was never violent. Then.”

“Reputation has nothing to do with what you’ve actually done. Only with what you seem like you’ve done. For example, you look right now like you could’ve just run somebody through with your carving knife.”

“I have.”

“Trying to scare me?”

“I’ve always scared you.”

“You’ve gotten uppity.”

“You’ve gotten older,” said Raphael sadly.

“What did you expect?” she snapped. “So have you. Time marches on, right? I’m not superhuman.”

“Why so angry?”

“I’m tired of being told I’m older like some accusation. Like I’ve done something wrong.”

“Be easy on me, Ida. I’ve never watched people age before.”

“You’ll get bored with it soon enough.”

“I’m afraid you may be right.”

Gray walked into the light and looked Raphael in the eye. Ida started. Gray and Errol had been in the shadows, as they’d been, in a sense, all afternoon.

The startling thing was that now, with both of them in the light, Gray looked by far the younger of the two women. Gray was on the soft edge of sunlight; with the dust rising and flecking around her, she seemed at her most hauntingly timeless, looking both kind and grave, like a seraph who has come to deliver tidings which are not exactly bad but which will require mortals to make painful choices.

Ida, by comparison, looked ancient, and entirely of this earth. The lines in her face seemed to deepen, the veins on her legs to rise.

Yet side by side they were also joined by an odd commonality. Not only were they both tall and thin and physically strong; their resemblance had more to do with the way they held themselves, which was, more than inches, what made them tall. Each head lengthened so far over each set of shoulders. Simply, they both stood as if they were somebody. The difference was that Gray seemed to believe it; Ida was no longer sure, and stood that way out of habit, and anger. They both burned tall in that sunlight, but Ida from fury, Gray from something else, and something, Errol had to admit, new. By Gray’s fire you could warm yourself, put out wet clothes to dry, go to sleep in the surety that she would keep wolves away through the night. Ida’s fire would burn down your house.

“Gray,” said Raphael, “Ida.”

“This is the kind of scene you like, isn’t it?” Gray observed.

“Don’t act like you know me. I’ve never met you.”

“I do know you. I know you well.”

“You can’t believe anything he tells you. I never told him anything.”

“You told him everything.”

“Are you kidding? I lied my head off.”

“That’s what you think. But you can’t lie, Ida. You don’t know how. Every time you lie you tell the truth. How old are you?”

“What do you care?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Thirty-five,” said Ida warily.

“See? Now, I know you’re at least forty. It always intrigues me that it’s the people who think they keep secrets who are so transparent.”

“You’re going to invite us to your house,” said Raphael.

“Oh, am I?”

Now, as Errol emerged from the shadows, Ida must have felt a little invaded. She took a step back. “Well, we’ve got enough for a regular party, don’t we?”

“That’s right,” said Raphael.

Ida’s chin rose. “What if I’m not in a party mood?”

“Ida,” said Gray, “admit it. You can’t resist. Is Walter home?”

“Yes…” she said, not getting Gray’s drift.

“All the better,” Gray went on. “It would be twisted, wouldn’t it? Gnarled, even impossible. Think how awkward it would be, Ida—how pointless and painful.”

“You think you know so much,” snapped Ida. “You don’t. You predict what I’ll do, I do the opposite.”

“Maybe I know that,” said Gray evenly. “Maybe I don’t want to go to your house. Maybe I was just getting out of it.”

Ida looked confused.

Raphael stepped toward her and looked down; he could now make her look short. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? You’re afraid to take me home with you.”

“You must be joking,” she said bravely. “You’re a kid.”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m supposed to be so impressed you grew up? That happens to everybody, you know. It’s not some kind of accomplishment.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Raphael. “I regard every year as a trophy, won at some risk.”

“I guess by that way of thinking you’ve got yourself a regular award winner there.”

“She’s better than you are,” said Raphael, as if realizing this for the first time himself.

Ida smiled. “So. I still get to you, don’t I?”

“How do you figure that?”

“You came here to show off, didn’t you? Look how old I am. Look, I have another woman, even older than you are. Though God knows why you think that’s so impressive. And you took your shirt off. So you’ve got more chest hair! Did you go to college? Are you going to show me your report card?”

Raphael stared at her steadily. “I came to see if you’d changed. Somehow that was important.”

“Yeah? So what’s the verdict?”

“I can’t decide yet. You put on a very good Ida-act. I’m curious if it’s real, or just something you remember.”

“You never give up, do you? Why don’t you just forget about me? What’s your problem?”

Raphael sighed. Errol had, for once, some clear sense of what was going on in his head: a certain tiredness. It must have occurred to him to claim that he’d forgotten her; that, like his father, she wouldn’t affect him if she died. To go through this again was boring, though. Sometimes that’s what’s wrong with lying, that it’s boring, because when you allow yourself to say anything at all, something convoluted happens and you can no longer say anything in particular—you get lost and you’re left with only words, or not, and they are too much trouble; you might as well keep your mouth shut. Raphael had not come here to bluster, for bravado. He was not sure why he’d come here exactly, but it wasn’t for bravado. Errol had to grant Raphael this much: he wasn’t interested in fakery. If the man acted cold, he felt cold. That’s what was frightening.