The Female of the Species (36 page)

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 Salvation 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.

As Tom’s grandfather clock struck midnight, Errol kissed Ellen Friedman, and was surprised by the heat in her lips, at the lingering after. He looked at her quickly and noticed she was pretty. Prettier than he remembered.

Yet Errol had to turn to the big picture window. Many mouths were at each other. It was a strange cultural ritual: one minute for giving away secrets, grabbing other men’s wives, slipping
in the tongue. Normally Errol enjoyed watching this gathering jockey for position before the bell, but tonight it gave him no pleasure. For on either side of this brief bacchanalia stood two pillars. Stalwart and austere, Gray and Raphael stared at each other from opposite ends of the room. The hysteria fell from Gray’s figure, the sleep from Raphael’s eyes. The grappling crowd looked grotesque between them. Errol shivered. Ellen, beside him, seemed disappointed, but he would not kiss her again, or touch anyone else tonight, and having been taught some time ago to take his own car, he left five minutes later. He did not leave in time, though, to miss Bob Johanas planting a big kiss, wet and sardonic, on Gray’s cheek, which broke her line of contact with Raphael, and struck Errol, skeptical as he was of Gray’s alliance, as a regrettable defilement.

New Year’s Day Gray came to Errol looking haggard. “I want you to escort me somewhere,” she said. Only a couple of days later, on the way, did she explain. “We’re going to my gynecologist. I didn’t want to go alone.”

“Routine, or anything special?”

“Since I was thirteen you could set your calendar by my periods. I’ve missed two.”

“Jesus. Well, have you two been using any—”

“No, nothing.”

“But the chances—at your age—”

“There are medical anomalies.”

“Would an abortion be difficult for you? Dangerous?”

“I’ve thought about it. I wouldn’t have one.”

“Woman, you are out to lunch!”

“So? I’m paying the check, as usual.”

“Pregnancy could kill you.”

“I could die from worse.”

Errol sighed. “God, I hope there’s nothing to this. Have you experienced any symptoms?”

“I have felt odd lately. Food often makes me ill. I can’t sleep. I run fevers. We’ll see.” She sounded oddly hopeful.

In the outer office they were surrounded by pregnant women
of reasonable child-bearing age and young, nervous girls. Gray sat calmly with her urine sample perched on her knee. “I’ve never done this before, you know. I never knew how the test was performed before this week.”

“Gray, why did you want to come here with me instead of Ralph?”

Gray looked meditatively at her jar and swirled the yellow liquid against the sides like brandy in a snifter. She raised her eyebrows and took a breath as if to say something, but let it go, and swirled.

“Sorry,” said Errol. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but somehow that hadn’t been a nice thing to ask.

Gray surrendered her jar to a nurse, who shot her a quizzical glance, and fifteen minutes later she was ushered into the doctor’s office. She took Errol with her, gripping his hand like a talisman. They sat down before his desk to await the verdict.

Dr. Denton swung genially in his chair. “Well, Gray, it’s negative. Now, while you’re here, I’ve looked at your records. It’s been a couple of years since your last Pap smear, and at your age—”

“Negative?” said Gray.

“Yes, relax, Gray. You’re not pregnant. Now, if you’ve got the time, I could get that Pap in five minutes…”

Gray did relax, but not, it seemed, with relief. She compressed her lips in what she must have hoped to pass off as a smile. She wasn’t looking at Denton but was staring fixedly at the photographs of his family behind him on the wall.

“Gray, are you feeling all right?” asked Denton. “Is there some other problem?”

“I suppose I’m wondering,” she said, pronouncing each word carefully, “why I’ve missed two periods. I’ve always been quite regular.”

“Well, Gray,” said Denton, seeming a little embarrassed, “you’re almost sixty. It’s surprising you didn’t shut down a few years ago.”

“Shut down?”

“Well, excuse my language. But you know.”

“Of course,” said Gray, and she had to clear her throat. “This whole thing was silly, I suppose. I’m sorry I wasted your time.” She stood to leave.

“You didn’t waste my time, Gray, that’s what I’m here for—” Denton rose and seemed apologetic, though he surely had no idea what he’d said wrong. “But if you could let us take that Pap—”

“I really can’t do that today, thank you. Errol?”

“For some women,” said Denton after her, “this is a difficult period. If you have any questions—”

“I have plenty of questions,” she said crisply. “You can’t answer them.” Looking at neither Denton nor Errol, she clipped out the office door.

Gray wouldn’t talk on the way home.

“It’s a big relief to me,” said Errol. “Really.”

She said nothing; she changed gears stiffly and kept her eyes on the road. When she got home she walked upstairs without a word. Errol heard the door to her bedroom close and shortly afterward the sound of strained breathing and an occasional thump against wood. Errol stayed upstairs, pausing nervously when he passed her door, hovering nearby when he heard her suck air through her teeth a little too audibly. After about an hour of this, a heavy thud shook his office floor.

Errol rushed into Gray’s bedroom to find her splayed on the floor, her chair tipped over and a barbell beside her sitting in a dent it had made in the wood. Gray’s eyes were closed; her face was splotched purple and white. He touched her cheek, finding it moist and cold. He patted it lightly; she didn’t move. Errol collected her carefully in his arms and lifted her onto the bed. He went to get a warm washcloth, and a few minutes later as he was wiping her forehead she came to.

“What?” she asked feebly.

“Sh-sh,” said Errol, swabbing her long neck.

“I’m cold.”

Errol pulled out several blankets. “Gray,” he said after she looked more awake, with her head propped up on pillows. “There’s something we haven’t talked about much, and I think
it’s time, all right? Today’s a big day for reality; we might as well get it all over with at once.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

“You’ll never be ready. That’s why I’m not going to wait any longer. Because we’re going to talk about how old you are, Gray—”

“Errol, please—”

“And,” Errol overrode, “we’re going to talk about Ralph.”

“It seems to me both those subjects have come up before.”

“Yes, but certain things we’ve never said out loud, and I think it’s time. You’re almost sixty and—”

“How many times do I have to hear that today?”

“Be quiet and listen to me. Remember? Gray Kaiser, anthropologist, grows more astute. Gray Kaiser, animal—”

“Disintegrates.”

“Basically. And that’s true no matter how much tennis you play or how much weight you lift. You’re going to kill yourself one of these days with those crazy barbells of yours—”

“They’re not crazy. I simply pushed it too far today.”

“Sh-sh. Now listen.” Errol wiped her forehead again with the wet cloth. “This is going to hurt, but you’re a grown-up. Ralph is a handsome man of twenty-five. Do you really expect him to stick around for years and years? Do you expect him to marry you?”

“I would marry him,” said Gray.

It pained Errol to hear this, but he persevered. “That’s not the question I asked.”

“I’ve never said that, Errol, about anyone. Don’t pass over that so lightly.”

“I have to, because you’re avoiding the subject, and we
are
going to discuss it, I don’t care if you don’t want to. Now, you know I’ve got my problems with our friend Ralph. He’s not my favorite person in the world.”

“You have a positively British gift for understatement.”

“But the point is, even with Ralph I can be sympathetic. I wonder if you’re asking him to be too much of a hero. You’re going to get old, Gray, and you’re going to die. You’re asking him to watch all of that.”

“I’m in tremendous condition. I could live to be a hundred.”

“But what are hundred-year-old people like?”

“They’re wizened and funny and smart, and they eats lots of yogurt,” she said sulkily.

Errol stood up from the bed and sighed. “Do you ever think how you’d feel if Ralph were sixty and you were twenty-five?”

“Raphael will never be sixty. He won’t live that long.” She said this quickly and with certainty.

“You say the oddest things sometimes.”

“I know the oddest things sometimes.”

“If you’re so perceptive, why can’t you hear what I’m telling you? You’re asking him to make a tremendous sacrifice, and one that I’m not sure anyone has a right to expect.”