Talk to Me

by T. C. Boyle

  The door stood open. She was aware of the sun on her back and the steady protestation of a jay from the trees along the drive where she’d parked her car, and if she’d wanted to say anything to Professor Schermerhorn, who was framed there in the doorway, tensing himself for a foot race, or to the other girl gaping at her and the guy with the panicky expression who’d suddenly appeared behind the professor like a pop-up doll, she couldn’t have found the words. The ape was in her arms, his breath hot on her throat. The jay screeched. She was in shock – or a kind of shock, the shock of awakening to something radically different from anything she’d ever experienced or expected.

  Professor Schermerhorn was saying, ‘Sam, Sam, calm down now, it’s OK, everything’s OK. Time to eat, right? Are you hungry? Eat?’ And he leaned forward, shifting his weight to slip an arm around the chimp’s shoulders, so that the three of them were locked together there on the porch, arm to shoulder to arm.

  He tried to take the chimp from her, but the chimp – Sam – wasn’t cooperating. She felt him tighten his grip on her, hands and feet both. The professor – they were no more than eighteen inches apart, as if they were rehearsing some weird interspecies dance routine, the ape waltz, ape tango, cha-cha-cha – gave her a naked pleading look over the back of Sam’s head. That look cemented everything. She had the job, she knew that in an instant, and it didn’t matter if fifty applicants came to the door, because Sam had selected her and Sam wasn’t letting go.

  ‘You all right?’ the professor asked her.

  She nodded.

  ‘You think we could all maybe just swing around and go back in the house now – I mean, can you hold him?’

  She nodded again and he said, ‘Good, good,’ and they shuffled awkwardly through the door, which the other guy slammed shut and locked behind them with a key he kept on a chain at his belt. The other girl said, ‘Jesus, I had no idea he was so fast, because on TV, I mean, the way he was walking…’

  ‘You can let him down now,’ Professor Schermerhorn said, and Aimee gently tried to extricate herself, but Sam wouldn’t let go. Which could have been a problem – as she was soon to discover, there was another girl in the bathroom, a grad student who’d been bitten on the face and was going to need a rabies shot and maybe stitches too – but strangely, she wasn’t afraid. It was like the time when she was five or six and the neighbours’ Dobermann had got loose and come charging across the yard at her, showing its teeth, and her mother screamed and the neighbour shouted, and then nothing happened – the dog pulled up short, let out a soft whine and began licking her face.

  She tried again, working her hands under his armpits to hoist him out and away from her as if he were a clingy preschooler, and this time he went slack and let her lower him to the floor. For a moment he just stood there, upright, staring at her as if to assess the face and figure of this new plaything in his life, and despite all the frantic activity – and the disaster he’d made of the room, which she was just now registering – he seemed eerily calm, solemn almost. His eyes – perfectly round, the colour of the cinnamon sticks she liked to use to flavour her tea in the morning – never wavered. He stared right into her as if he could see what she was thinking, as if he already knew her, then reached up a hand for her to take hold of – she laughed, she couldn’t help herself, glancing at Professor Schermerhorn and the other girl, who said, ‘Looks like you’ve got a new friend’ – and then let him lead her across the room and into the kitchen, where he dropped her hand, took a bib down from its hook on the wall beside the refrigerator and climbed into a high chair drawn up to the kitchen table.

  Everybody else crowded into the kitchen behind her. The other girl was trying to make small talk by way of ingratiating herself, saying, ‘He scared me there for a minute, he really did, just the way he came at me so fast, I mean, I didn’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Professor Schermerhorn gave her a brittle smile. His hair – it was blond, honey-coloured, actually – hung in his eyes and he shoved it back with an impatient gesture, as if all this activity had cost him more than his tone of voice admitted. He was on trial here too, Aimee saw that now. He needed her, and maybe this other girl as well, to take some of the pressure off him, to babysit and change diapers and bring order to things while he was teaching his classes and writing his papers and whatever else he was doing. The chimp could be difficult, she’d just seen that, no different from any other pet – but then he wasn’t a pet, was he? He could talk. He could reason. Chimps shared 98.9 per cent of their DNA with human beings – she’d looked it up – and that set them apart from any other animal species on the planet. And more: he knew things, secrets of existence no human could ever know, and he was going to reveal them. To her. To her alone. That was what this was all about. That was what she was doing here.

  ‘He can have that effect on people,’ Professor Schermerhorn said, ‘till you get to know him, that is. Because he’s a good boy’ – addressing the chimp now – ‘aren’t you, Sam? You didn’t mean to scare Barbara, did you? That wouldn’t be very nice, would it?’

  Sam swung round in the chair and folded back his upper lip in a grin. He’d already fastened the bib round his neck and now he made a gesture to the professor, a sign anyone could read – the fingers of his right hand pressed together and tapping at his lips – and the professor said aloud, ‘OK, time to eat,’ while simultaneously signing it. ‘Josh’ – turning to the other guy now – ‘will you do the honours? If you can manage to put the groceries away before everything turns to shit, I mean.’ He paused, looked to her, then glanced at the other girl. ‘Sam’s going to have a little yogurt and fruit as an appetiser, but then we’re going to send out for pizza and a mixed salad and we’ll all sit down and have a proper meal – sound good? I mean, you’re invited. Both of you.’

  At the mention of pizza, Sam clapped his hands and began to grunt his approval. In the next moment, Josh disappeared into the other room to retrieve the groceries and the professor went to the phone hanging on the wall beside the refrigerator. ‘What do you girls like on your pizza, any favourites? Any dislikes? Oh, by the way’ – he made as if to slap his forehead in what she would come to see as his characteristic gesture, as if he were simultaneously criticising himself and apologising – ‘Aimee, this is Barbara; Barbara, Aimee. That was Josh you just met, if only briefly, and Elise is in the bathroom. And call me Guy, by the way – there’s no need for formality here.’

  ‘Hi,’ Barbara said, glancing up at her. ‘Nice to meet you.’ And then, turning back to Professor Schermerhorn – Guy – she said, ‘Anything but anchovies.’

  ‘You hear that, Sam? Barbara doesn’t like anchovies. What about you, Sam, you want anchovies – you love anchovies, don’t you?’ he said, signing it as he spoke.

  Sam – he was the centre of attention, always, in any situation, in any room, the marvel set down amongst them – signed something back and then pretended to gag, drawing it out till his was the only voice in the room, and Aimee had the sense that it might have gone on all night if Josh hadn’t ducked back into the kitchen at that moment, a carton of peach yogurt in one hand, an apple and a banana clutched in the other.

  ‘OK,’ Guy said, already dialling, ‘how does this sound – two extra-large, mushrooms on one, pepperoni on the other? Everybody cool with that?’

  She just nodded. Barbara said, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and Sam, who was already occupied with the yogurt, no spoon necessary, his face smeared and the bib doing extra duty, paused to clap his hands sharply, twice, then began licking the smears of excess yogurt from the front of the bib, which, Aimee now noticed, featured a colour picture of the Gerber baby, front and centre, a wide, toothless baby grin spread across her baby face.

  There was a moment of silence, during which Sam’s slurping and grunting were the only sounds in the room, before Guy spoke into the phone, his voice narrowing. ‘Yes, hello, this is Professor Schermerhorn speaking? I’d like to place an order?’

  Aimee had backed into
the kitchen counter, bracing herself against the edge of the countertop. She folded her arms across her chest, then dropped them and let her hands dangle at her sides, feeling awkward and unworthy. She wasn’t in her apartment. She wasn’t spooning up Top Ramen and finding ways to avoid studying. She was here in a professor’s house, with new people, with Sam, the chain of events leading to this moment so haphazard, so unlikely, it didn’t seem real. She wanted to go home. She wanted to stay.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Guy said, hanging up the phone and swinging round on them, spreading his hands wide, ‘but I could use a glass of wine – I mean, it’s been a day, what with my class and a faculty meeting on top of that, and then I got stopped by a cop on the way home and then Sam almost got loose, which, by the way, everybody has to be attuned to, number one priority, the door is shut and locked at all times.’ He swept his eyes over her and then settled on Barbara, who’d been the guilty party, after all. ‘Unless Sam’s in his harness and on his lead. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Barbara said in a reduced voice.

  ‘Aimee?’

  She didn’t know whether he was asking her if she wanted wine, which she was going to refuse because this was all coming at her too fast, or if he meant the situation with the doors, so she just smiled, or half-smiled, and dropped her eyes.

  ‘OK, good. But wine. I’m afraid all we can offer you is red, but it’s a pretty decent Pinot Noir from the Santa Ynez Valley. Right, Josh? We still got a couple bottles of that left?’

  Josh was hovering over Sam, dabbing at his face with a napkin while Sam tried to snatch it away from him, all in fun, everything relaxed now, crisis averted, pizza on the way. ‘Yeah, I think like five or six bottles and the one I already opened – I poured Elise a glass to calm her down.’

  Guy shot him a look, and whether it was meant to be judgemental or not, she wasn’t sure, though she was good at reading people – or told herself she was. ‘Why don’t you go see how she’s doing and ask her if she wants to join us for pizza? I’ll fetch the wine myself.’ He gestured to her and Barbara, grinning now. ‘That’s one of the little perks here, by the way – maybe the only perk. But the owner of LaSalle Vineyards is a friend of the project and he donates a couple cases once in a while – which we tend to go through pretty fast, don’t we, Josh?’

  ‘What’s a ranch without wine? Or a chimp, for that matter? You want a glass, Sam?’ Josh asked, thrusting his face into Sam’s line of vision and signing as he spoke. ‘Wine? You want wine?’

  Sam glanced up at him, nodding his head and bobbing his fist up and down at the same time – the sign for yes, an enthusiastic yes.

  Barbara said, ‘Is that true? He drinks wine?’

  ‘Try to stop him,’ Josh said.

  ‘But I thought he was still a baby? I mean, is that good for him?’

  ‘Not strictly,’ Guy said, ‘but is it good for us? We limit him to one glass only and we like to give it to him at dinner in the hope it’ll make him sleepy, which it does, and that makes it all the easier to get him to bed – which, by the way, Josh, is going to require the changing of the nappy, remember? Which is full? And stinking?’

  That was when Elise emerged from the bathroom, which was just across the hall from the kitchen. She was tall, pretty, with a milky complexion and a kinked-out dome of pale red hair, and she was pressing a damp hand towel packed with ice to the side of her face. ‘Can you believe it,’ she demanded, stalking into the room and going right up to Guy as if the rest of them didn’t exist, ‘– the little shit bit me.’ She made an angry gesture towards Sam, who ignored her, the broad spade of his tongue probing the recesses of the yogurt carton, his head down and his shoulders slumped in indifference.

  ‘Is it bad?’ Guy took her by the arm, gently drawing her to him. He stood there a moment, searching her eyes, and, as if unconsciously, began stroking the underside of her wrist, where the blue veins stood out against the soft pale skin. It was an intimate gesture and Aimee wondered about that, because Elise was Josh’s girlfriend, wasn’t she? Or had she missed something?

  ‘I thought he was going to give me a kiss, you know?’ Elise bunched her lips. Her voice trembled. ‘Like a hundred times before, like every day? But he – the little shit.’ She turned to Sam now. ‘You little shit. I’m talking to you, yeah, you!’

  Sam had his back to her. He peeked over one shoulder as if to gauge the level of emotion in the room, the finest calibrations of which he was a master at decoding as Aimee would soon come to learn, then shifted his eyes and went back to the yogurt carton. Which was empty now. He played with it a moment, shuffling it back and forth across the tray table with a whispery scrape, then inverted it on the tray, flattened it with an abrupt slap of one hand and inserted the circular white disc in his mouth, holding it there between his lips and teeth like a sixth-grader playing for laughs. He didn’t grunt. Didn’t hoot. Didn’t sign SORRY.

  ‘Let me see,’ Guy said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I can’t believe it! Jesus! ’ Elise snarled, jerking away from Guy and kicking the leg of the high chair so hard it rocked away from the table and then back again, so that Sam had to tense his muscles to keep from going over. He looked guilty, if that was possible, and something else too: annoyed.

  Aimee just stood there, taking it all in, embarrassed and fascinated at the same time. The chimp was small still, an infant, a tot, cute as a toy come to life, yet she could see how defined his muscles were, especially in the shoulders and upper arms.

  ‘Come on,’ Guy repeated, taking Elise by the wrist again, trying to comfort her.

  Elise’s eyes were swollen and red. She stared furiously at him a moment, then peeled back the towel to reveal the raw red gash at her jawbone, just below the bow of her mouth. ‘Am I going to need stitches? I am, aren’t I? I’m ruined, right? Fucked, I mean. You tell me, Guy, you tell me.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, his voice soft and melodic, as if he were crooning to her. ‘It’s not that bad, not at all. You’re going to want to get a tetanus booster – and rabies, because any mammal can carry rabies, though the chances of Sam having it are like one in a trillion…’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Really, thanks a lot, because that’s so comforting to hear… But I mean, isn’t anybody going to take me to a doctor, or what, the emergency room? This is my face we’re talking about, don’t you get it?’

  ‘They use silk,’ Aimee heard herself say, and everybody turned to stare at her as if she’d just touched down from outer space. She hadn’t meant to say anything because all this was so fraught, so new, but now she was exposed and she couldn’t help herself. ‘I had this friend? She was in a car accident?’

  For an instant she thought Elise was going to turn on her – she was an interloper, a stranger, and what right did she have even to open her mouth? – but Elise ignored her, pushing herself away from Guy with a savage snap of both wrists and wheeling round on Sam in his high chair. ‘You!’ she shouted. ‘You’re the one that did this, you shitty little monkey. If you ever, I swear—’

  Sam just grinned at her, his eyes unblinking, the white disc of the crushed yogurt carton catching the light like a false set of teeth.

  Josh, who’d been hovering just behind her, wrapped an arm round her now. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said, and he was crooning too. ‘Come on, I’ll take you right now – we’ll go straight to the emergency room and have somebody look at it, OK?’

  The pressure in the room seemed to dissipate. Elise had a cut on her face, that was all, a wound, a minor wound. They’d stitch it up. Treat it. Bandage it. Everything was going to be all right.

  At that moment, Sam leaned forward, shucked the bib, which he laid out neatly on the tray top before him, and climbed down out of the high chair. He stood there beside it, erect, as if he’d never gone on all fours, as if he was human, and signed something to Elise as she and Josh made their way out of the kitchen. ‘What’s he saying?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘He’s saying he’s sorry
,’ Guy said. ‘He doesn’t mean to bite, doesn’t even know what he’s doing, really – he just gets overexcited, that’s all.’

  ‘But this happened what, like an hour ago? How does he even remember?’

  Guy shrugged. And then he winked, first at her, then at Barbara. ‘You tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Like with a dog,’ Barbara went on. She brought her hands into play, shaping a dog in the air. ‘They say you don’t discipline a dog for doing his business on the rug unless you catch him in the act because otherwise he has no idea what he’s being punished for, and it’s just like random cruelty.’

  ‘Sam’s not a dog.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m beginning to realise that.’

  They were all moving now, through the kitchen and into the living room, Sam right behind Josh, Elise and Guy, but he wasn’t hurrying, wasn’t trying to make a break for the door as he’d done earlier. Josh applied the key to the three locks, opened the door and held it for Elise. She was hunched over, pressing the ice pack to her face, and she didn’t bother to look behind her to see where Sam was. But Sam wasn’t a problem. He ignored the open door, settling into a green plastic kid’s chair just to the left of it and pulling his feet up to his chest as if to warm them. ‘Look at him,’ Barbara said. ‘He’s not even trying to get out.’