The Female of the Species (32 page)

“Ida,” said Raphael.

“What?”

He stared down at her and didn’t let up until she looked back at him. “Ida,” he repeated. “There are a lot of hours, a lot of days. Only so much happens. I have to think about something.”

She began to look nervous, and broke their gaze. She looked down at her feet and tried to pick her way in her sandals a few steps away. She looked back up, with several boards and
bricks safely between them. “I didn’t do anything to you, understand?”

Raphael just looked at her.

“I’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

There were so many things Raphael was not saying that the ensuing silence was astounding.

“You had a crush,” she went on, but her voice was losing its bite; it seemed unlike her to explain herself. “It happens all the time. To kids. What was I supposed to do? I was nice to you.”

Raphael smiled, just a little.

“What’s so funny?”

“
Nice
is such a strange word to hear from you.”

“All right, so I wasn’t nice,” she said, tossing her hair back with a flick of her head. “Who cares about nice? I don’t have to be anything. Who cares about any of this? Just so much small change, I mean, who cares? The whole thing is trivial. Really, who gives one little goddamned fucking shit?”

“Are you all right?” asked Raphael softly.

“Of course I’m all right! I’m fine. I could hardly be better. You come here, you don’t come here, big deal either way, okay? It doesn’t matter to me. But you walk in, you expect me to get all broken up, don’t you? I’m supposed to say, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Gosh, I was so terrible! You poor baby, what have I done to you—”

“People have just done things to me, that’s all,” he said steadily. “So I’ve ended up a certain way. Good or bad, I couldn’t tell you. You’d have to ask Gray K.” He looked over at Gray. “She’s the one who will have to pay for what I’m like.”

“Oh?” asked Ida. “And what are you like?”

“I am”—Raphael paused and considered—“like this.” At that he turned simply to his left and picked up the pink wineglasses one by one off the sill and unceremoniously dropped them onto the concrete. The shattering lasted little time and barely reverberated; then it was over and they were broken. Raphael looked at Ida unperturbed.

It took Ida a minute. “Fine,” she said. “This is old business. Who needs it. I sure don’t.”

“You have new business?”

“I don’t need any business. I don’t need you or your woman or your friend, understand?”

“All you need is Walter.”

“Boy, do I not need Walter.”

“And you make sure he knows that, don’t you?”

“He knows. But he needs me. I put up with it.”

“Why?”

“Well, I have a little boy,” she said reluctantly.

“I’m going to meet him now.”

“What if I say you can’t see him?”

Passing Ida as he walked toward the exit, Raphael paused to stare her down. Beside him she looked brittle and small. “A little something I picked up from anthropology: If I’m bigger than you, I do what I like.” He walked on out.

“You’d just love to beat the living shit out of me, wouldn’t you?” she shouted after him.

Raphael laughed softly from the shadows. “You wish.”

“What a big man,” Ida muttered to Gray and Errol, and the three of them ducked out of the mill. Raphael was ahead of them, crossing the street toward Ida’s bedraggled clapboard. “He thinks he’s changed so much.”

“And has he?” asked Gray.

“He’s the same. He’s a baby.”

“He can’t be the same,” said Gray, more to herself than to Ida, “if he thinks he’s different. That in and of itself is a change. And maybe if you think you’re a certain way long enough and hard enough, you become that way. Maybe, Ida, those wineglasses were a performance. But how many times can a man discard objects of great sentiment and still be sentimental?”

They crossed the street. “You talk pretty weird,” said Ida, striding away from them to where Raphael was standing and staring at a boy on the front lawn. The two were facing each other, saying nothing.

“Sasha!” said Ida. “Come here.”

The boy didn’t move, and continued to look at Raphael with wary curiosity.

Ida knelt by her son and pulled him over to her. Even with her arms around him, though, the boy didn’t take his eyes off Raphael. “This is Raphael,” said Ida. “He wanted to meet you. This is Sasha.” She squeezed his shoulder and stood up. “Okay, you can go off and play now.” Sasha didn’t move. Ida looked down at her son as if he were broken. “Go on.”

“I played,” he said.

“Well, do it some more.”

“I don’t feel like it.” He kept looking at Raphael. Raphael kept looking back.

As Errol and Gray drew toward the boy, they gradually understood what Raphael was staring at. Sasha was thin, delicate, and dark. His hair was black and wild, like Ida’s, but heavier. His lips were small, sullen, and scarlet. His cheekbones were high. His eyes drove deep to the back of his head.

“How old are you?” asked Raphael.

“He’s five,” said Ida quickly.

“I didn’t ask you. How old are you, little boy?”

Sasha pulled away from his mother. “Six.”

“Sasha, how many times have I told you not to lie?”

“I bet not many times,” said Raphael. “Do you lie, Sasha?”

Sasha compressed his lips and shrugged his shoulders.

“You don’t even know,” said Raphael. “I believe that. But tell me—and you can lie if you want—are you five or six?”

Ida turned her son around to face her and knelt so their eyes met. “You shouldn’t round up, Sasha. I know you want to be older, but—” She looked sharply at Gray. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”

“But—”

“You’re as old as I say you are. I’m your mother. Now, how old are you?”

“Five,” he said reluctantly.

“That’s better.” She let him go, and Sasha drooped like a humiliated soldier who has just been demoted.

“Reality is so malleable with you, Ida,” said Raphael. “It
doesn’t even exist within several feet of you, does it? Your life is one big multiple-choice problem, and every answer’s right. Every answer’s wrong. So there’s no answer, and finally no problem. I mean,
you
don’t exist, do you, Ida? Why don’t you just disappear?”

He was right. It was as if Ida were surrounded by a force field. Errol imagined if he reached into it his hand would shimmer and split into several translucent images; it would be impossible to tell which were his real fingers. In fact, he might no longer have “real” fingers. Ida’s game was like shyster threecard monte: the ace was not on the table at all.

“Why don’t
you
disappear, buddy?” A tall, massive, middle-aged man with a beard had trooped down the stairs of the front porch.

“Because I choose to be someone in particular,” said Raphael mildly, turning. “So I exist. If I keep a secret, at least I know what it is.”

“You’re not making sense, boy, and I don’t care. I’m used to nonsense. All that matters to me is that you’re gone in two minutes, and then I’m going back inside to have another beer and I’m going to pretend you never showed up here.”

“
Walter
,” said Raphael, with a melting fondness that stopped Walter in his tracks. “Don’t you get tired of pretending? Pretending to have a wife. Pretending to have a son.”

“We’re not talking.”

“What an imagination. I could swear we were.”

“Get out of here.”

“Walter, we used to have such fine times. I’m beginning to think you don’t love me anymore.”

“You’re leaving
now
.”

Walter started to reach for Raphael’s arm, but Raphael quickly pointed his finger at him and said, “No.” Walter froze. Raphael didn’t need a switchblade. That finger did just as well; it held Walter at bay.

Ida’s husband took a different tack. “Listen,” he said quietly. “It’s been a long time. We’ve got a kid. She’s all right, or as all right as she’s going to get. Maybe this is just a joke to you.
But I’ve gotta live with her, and we’ve worked stuff out. You’re a man now, so maybe you know women—if you do, you know they’re bugged out and anything can send them into a tailspin. So please just say goodbye nicely and get in your car. You’ve done enough damage already. Leave me to take care of her.”

“Oh, Walter, you’re breaking my heart.”

Walter punched Raphael in the stomach. Raphael doubled over. As he pulled himself upright again, he was laughing, but he didn’t make much sound because the air had been forced from his lungs. “Too late, Walt,” he rasped. “You missed your chance seven years ago. You’re wasting your time.”

In fact, Walter did not look as if the punch had given him much satisfaction. After all, there’s nothing to do after you hit someone but to hit him again. Yet Walter’s hands hung at his sides now, with boredom. “I could waste a lot more time like that if you stick around.”

“No,” said Raphael wearily, “you won’t do that again.”

Errol cased the two side by side. Walter had the weight over the younger man, but that was the end of it. It was so obvious that Raphael could decimate the man in a few blows that the fight was over already. They were back to an adult way of settling things: tally and verdict. When in one set of figures each number is larger than in the other set, there isn’t even any point in taking out pencil and paper.

“See, it doesn’t matter if I go or stay,” Raphael explained patiently. “It wouldn’t matter if I never came. I have no effect on your wife, Walt. Neither do you. If she doesn’t like the way this afternoon turned out, she’ll change it. If she didn’t like what I said, I’ll have said something else. I wouldn’t flatter myself that I could damage her. You shouldn’t flatter yourself that you can protect her. We’re putty, Walt. Maybe she isn’t married to you at all. Maybe she’s married to me.”

Walter may have been used to nonsense, but he still shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He looked at the sky. “Not a beer,” he said. “Jack Daniel’s.”

During all this Gray and Errol had been teaching Sasha to throw a Frisbee.

“Sasha,” said Raphael, perhaps tired of Walter already, “throw it here.”

The Frisbee came dutifully wobbling over to Raphael. He picked it up and threw it high enough that the gleaming of the sun obscured it at its peak; Sasha squinted. Gently it came banking back down and returned to Raphael, who caught it by reaching behind his back. Sasha smiled. “Teach me to do that.” Raphael gave him some tips; Sasha tried and got the Frisbee a few feet up; it did return to him. “Teach me more.”

Raphael showed him how to spin the disk on the tip of his finger. The Frisbee hovered, whirring, over Raphael’s hand, and with his forefinger pointing up and his face gentler than usual, he looked like Da Vinci’s
St. John the Baptist
gesturing heavenward. Errol apologized to himself for the analogy, but Raphael had Renaissance features, and sometimes these images were overwhelming.

Sasha tried and dropped it several times, intently.

“Sasha,” said Walter, “toss it over.”

Sasha looked at his father warily, then threw the Frisbee to Raphael. Again the two hardly stopped looking at each other. Raphael returned the Frisbee to Sasha and told him generously, “Throw it to your
father
.” Only then would Sasha toss it to Walter. When Walter threw it back, though, it curled on its side and dropped to the ground. Sasha rolled his eyes and retrieved it; he wouldn’t send it to his father again.

“Raphael is good with that thing, isn’t he?” said Ida to Walter.

“Just swell.”

“He’s gotten rather nice-looking, hasn’t he?”

Walter licked his lips. “He always looked all right, Ida. You pointed that out a number of times.”

Ida sidled closer to her husband. “They have the same eyes.”

“Yes, Ida. I noticed that a long time ago.”

The incredible patience! Errol was astounded. Casually Errol walked closer. What was Walter’s secret? How did he do it? Ida could say anything and Walter would breathe and shake his head and say something understated. Then, this murmur
of indefatigable suffering had a weirdly familiar ring to it. Errol recognized with a chill that it was the sound of his own voice.

“He hasn’t gotten over me,” said Ida, with a grim little smile.

“He never will,” said Walter. “That’s the way those things go, when you’re a kid.”

“It’s not ‘those things.’ It’s me.”

“It’s those things, Ida. You’re not exactly Elizabeth Taylor anymore.”

“Elizabeth Taylor isn’t Elizabeth Taylor anymore,” said Ida, sulking. “She’s fat. At least I’m not fat.” Ida tapped her foot. “He might still go away with me.”

“Go ahead, Ida.”

“No, really.”

“Go ahead, really.” Walter sounded so tired. In Errol’s head everything Walter had ever said sounded tired.

“I can’t believe he’s running around with that old bag,” said Ida, rather loudly.

“She seems like a pretty interesting character to me.”

“I bet she can’t do anything with him in bed besides tuck him in and sing ‘Rock-a-bye-baby.’”

“She’s got a lot of getup and go with a Frisbee.”

“A man and a little piece of plastic are hardly the same thing.”

“You mean all this time you knew there was a difference between objects and people and you never let on,” said Walter. “You’re a sly dog, Ida.”

“She acts so high and mighty—”

“All she’s doing is playing Frisbee.”

“She’s showing off.”

“The kid is showing off. She’s just throwing the thing.”

Walter stopped to watch. The Frisbee had rolled across the street, and Gray threw it from the mill. It was true she never twirled it or caught it under her leg, but her tosses were always long and low and smooth. The Frisbee was white and caught the sun; it made a sleek picture hovering gradually across the road and skimming a few inches over the roof of Raphael’s Porsche.

“In fact, she’s pretty well preserved, Ida. Maybe you should find out her secret.”

“I bet she sleeps in a coffin and sucks blood.”

“That’s your trick, sweetheart,” said Walter softly. “It’s not working.”

But Ida didn’t listen. She was watching her son with satisfaction. “He’s going to be pretty,” she said, “I made sure of that.”