The Female of the Species

by Lionel Shriver

  Methodically he picked up his father’s portrait and worked the staples one by one out of the broken stretcher. From there he moved to his mother’s studio, where he found her canvases strewn around the floor; there were footprints on the landscapes. He’d broken his fingernails on those first staples, so with a palette knife he started taking out the stays from her other paintings, all his favorites. His father had left the house, but could return any time, and Raphael must have known what Frank would do to these canvases once he returned, for he worked quickly, stacking the loose paintings, rolling them up, and wrapping them with rubber bands.

  “What’d you do with them?”

  The boy said nothing. His lips remained full and relaxed and inexpressive. He didn’t even shrug. He looked at his father.

  “Where’d you hide the pictures, Ralph?” Frank was almost patient. “You’re makin me tired, Ralphie. This is gonna get real boring if I have to keep asking the same question and you just stand there. You never know what I might have to do to keep myself entertained.”

  Raphael stood, his shoulders low and back, his hands limp at his side, his feet comfortably apart, his chin high. Frank pulled his arm back and smacked his son on the jaw with the back of his hand, with methodical patience. Raphael’s head turned squarely to the side, remained there a moment, and returned to the front, waiting. “Ralph.” There it was, to the other side of the jaw, so Raphael looked in the other direction, his eyes open and keen and trusting. Raphael could trust his father to do what his father would do now. Though they both must have been tired and confused, since there was no dinner tonight, nor would there be again, they would each persevere this evening, in the mood or not. Father and son, real troopers.

  The back of the hand again, again. Frank hit his son with boredom. At last Raphael’s head took longer to face frontward, and at length lolled a little toward the floor. Encouraged by this flagging, Frank hit him harder, and began to knock Raphael off balance. His son staggered once to the left, once to the right, like a dance.

  “Ralph,” said Frank, “I’m warnin you, Mommy’s not here to rescue you anymore, so you’re gonna have to hang this bullshit up, understand? The party’s over. Time to pay attention to dear old Dad, okay? Now, where’s those lousy pictures, Ralph?”

  Raphael breathed unsteadily. His nose was bleeding in a drizzle. His mouth tasted salty.

  Somewhere along the line it must have occurred to Frank that Nora had left him. Maybe he told himself that she’d be back, but a voice deeper down inside him must also have replied, No, Frank, she’s gone and you know it. The bitch. The bitch had left. And here was his son, looking insolently like her.

  The rhythm of Frank’s blows speeded up. Raphael could not remain standing, though each time he fell he rose up, dutifully maintaining his position, staying at attention, like a good soldier under fire. Yet at some point Raphael must have looked at his father and noticed something different. No doubt Raphael felt like any intelligent soldier left too long at his post, who sees that there are no other troops on his side left around him, that the flak is coming faster and harder than before, that he is suddenly alone and at such a strategic disadvantage that he is beyond duty and is left simply with survival versus pointless suicide. In short, he realized that Nora was gone and Frank was not going to stop.

  The boy’s eyes sharpened. He no longer tried to stand but crouched in a ready position—Raphael was down in the trenches. No more fife blowing or flag waving. He had leaped in the course of a minute from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I. When Frank came after him now, he fled. They stalked each other around fallen furniture. When the boy bolted for the kitchen Frank belted him in the kidney, but even doubled over, Raphael knew his new stronghold was worth the price. There were munitions in kitchens. Rolling pins, glass, knives—

  “Stop there.” For the first time since Nora had left, Raphael spoke. Frank had been about to make another lunge, but thought better of it. His son was pointing a ten-inch carving blade at a point just below his chest. The bevel had recently been sharpened.

  “You little son-of-a-bitch, put that down.” But Frank didn’t move.

  “You aren’t hitting me anymore,” said Raphael distinctly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Boy, you got any idea what they do to a kid who runs through his own father? It don’t look good, Ralph. You don’t just get a slap on the wrist and a pat on the ass.” Still, Frank didn’t move.

  “You aren’t hitting me anymore,” Raphael repeated. “Go upstairs. Don’t come down.”

  Now, Frank had read his share of tabloids, and this scene in the kitchen must have looked like eerily familiar front-page material. When Raphael took a step forward then, leading with the tip of the blade, Frank took a step back, though this kid was only thirteen and half his size. Frank had never in his life threatened his son with a punishment he hadn’t carried out. Frank had set a good example. Raphael didn’t know what an empty threat was.

  “Okay, Ralphie,” said Frank evenly. “I’m tired, I’ll go up and lie down. You stay down here and cool off, understand? ’Cause that thing is for roasts and slicing cabbage for slaw. That’s all. Don’t you forget it.” Strangely relieved that this scene had been resolved in some way, any way, Frank backed up to his bedroom and locked the door.

  Keeping the knife in his right hand, Raphael collected provisions with his left—not the cookies and potato chips with which most children would run off to a tree and sulk, but a serious stock for several days: bread, frozen steak, and anything that would keep—dried beef, hard cheese, crackers. At no time did he put the knife down to make this process easier, nor would he go upstairs, so he was stuck with the few clothes of his in the laundry room. It pained him that these were still unwashed. Raphael was an excruciatingly clean child, so he took a new toothbrush, toothpaste, and a generous quantity of soap. All this he wedged tightly into his backpack. He looked around. Flashlight. Matches. Sleeping bag. And there was a jar in the kitchen where Nora threw the change that collected in the bottom of her pocketbook. Nora had always considered this “free” money, since there was no accounting for it, and usually spent it on paints. He knew she was generous with dimes and quarters for this reason, so he took the whole jar and set it on top of his load. Lastly he pulled the roll of Nora’s canvases out of its hiding place, set it across his pack, and pulled the flap tight.

  At the front door, Raphael took the key to the house off his chain and laid it pointedly on the table beside him.

  Errol spared his audience this detail, and many others; the boys were just swapping stories by the swimming hole, after all. Yet for his own home movie Errol slipped this one in. Leaving the key was so like Raphael, even now. It made such a fine gesture; but he surely had another copy, and had every intention of sneaking back while Frank was at work once in a while rather than go too long without a shower.

  Raphael knew where he was going. Perhaps he’d known early he would need such a resort; in any case, he’d never obeyed his father’s edicts about the mills, surely handed down more to frighten than to protect him. There was little to do in North Adams, and he knew these places well. Cleveland Cottons was his favorite.

  So Raphael Sarasola hiked through the streets of North Adams at midnight by the light of dim stars, listening to Nora’s paint change jingle in its jar. At a side entrance to the plant, he pulled back the boards he’d loosened years before and stepped carefully into the cavernous ruin with his flashlight. With each step he could hear rustling on either side of him, and he shuddered. Curled up in his sleeping bag that night, he kept the knife at his side, reaching for it from time to time when he heard a scamper too near his corner, sometimes frightening animals away by shouting clearly into the factory’s first floor, “Go upstairs. Don’t come down.” Down. Down. It echoed.

  The crew were surprised that Raphael went to school the next day. “High school, too,” Errol told them. “And college. He’s a grad student now.”

  “That seems weird to me,
” said Gabe. “This guy doesn’t seem like a company man. Is he smart?”

  “He’s clever. I don’t know if he’s smart. He hasn’t needed to be. He’s pretty.”

  “He couldn’t have gotten by on his face at thirteen, though.”

  Errol shook his head and smiled. “I thought I made it clear, Nathan. We’re not slouches, are we? None of us looks too bad?”

  “Nah. We’re a fine, healthy group of boys.”

  “And you don’t have much trouble dating women.”

  “’Course not. I’ve had my dry periods, but—”

  “Sarasola never had a dry period with women since he was three years old. Nathan, you don’t understand. By thirteen this boy was a knockout. And now—”

  “Now, what?”

  Errol laughed. “He makes us look like poster kids.”

  “Sounds kind of sickening.”

  “Yes,” said Errol quietly. “You feel it in the pit of your stomach, a face like that.” He smiled wryly. “Women feel it elsewhere.”

  It was March when Raphael left home. He discovered that, with his sleeping bag and an oil-drum fire on which he cooked the steak from his pack the first evening, he could stay warm; warm enough. However, one steak and even crackers and hard cheese wouldn’t keep him well fed through the week. He had just enough food to think out his dilemma, well or poorly. Well, and he remained at Cleveland Cottons. Poorly, and he inevitably returned home, where the knife would be taken from him and there was no telling. Raphael didn’t know for sure that his father would kill him, but now that his mother had walked out the door and driven away to work in diners there was no telling.

  At school Raphael Sarasola was a mystery. He was not exactly popular, but he attracted a lot of attention. The boy wasn’t quiet but silent; there was a difference, and his classmates were aware of that. He wasn’t shy, but spoke to few people. He never extended himself to make a friend, though when students approached him, they found him surprisingly personable, even amusing. Yet when they left him alone he kept to himself, and no one had the sense that doing so caused him any displeasure.

  Had the boy looked different, his peers might have grown tired or suspicious of his standoffishness, labeled him “strange,” and had done with him. However, Errol knew beauty to be as powerful for children as for adults; chances were they maintained a distance from him more out of awe than out of disdain.

  Teachers, too, developed an odd deference toward him sooner or later. Raphael would never raise his hand in class but, whenever he was called on, smoothly delivered the correct answer, in a full, clear voice, lower and less piping than other children’s. Yet they learned not to call on him too often, for when they did, a grit of irritation would grind into his voice, a steely patience would level his tone. His teachers would shiver, and leave the boy alone.

  In the course of this particular March week of eighth grade, however, his behavior subtly changed. Each day he made a deliberate foray into the unknown world of social relationships. Unfamiliar with the traditional give-and-take of friendship, Raphael just asked for things. Point-blank. While his classmates were disconcerted when he made these requests, they were far more so when they gave him all he asked for.

  The day after he fried his first and only steak, Raphael walked directly up to the boy who sat in front of him in Language Arts, while students were lingering on the field after lunch. “I have a problem,” said Raphael. “I need something to eat.”

  “What?” asked the boy dully.

  “I need something to eat,” he repeated evenly. “I can’t explain now. I’ve only got crackers and cheese. They won’t last long.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you heard me make a lot of bad jokes?”

  “I haven’t heard you say much of anything.” The boy, Louis, was beginning to enjoy this. “You forgot your lunch money or something?”

  “I have a little money, but I have to save that for emergencies.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me what this is all about?”

  “Later.”

  Louis scrutinized his classmate, who was now discovering the power of secrets. Louis gave him a dollar. This was not a loan but a down payment. Raphael was being paid for his story. Accepting the money, he nodded and walked away. After all, his story was worth a dollar. Maybe two.

  The next day Raphael learned another lesson. He tried the same approach on the student who sat behind him in Language Arts. The transaction took even less time, and rather than one, he got five dollars and a candy bar. But the student behind him in Language Arts was a girl.

  After school he renovated Cleveland Cottons. Steeling himself, he methodically swept out rat turds and infestations of cave crickets. He pulled boards off the windows, picked out shards of broken glass left in the frames, and stretched clear plastic neatly over the rectangles without a wrinkle, fixing the edges with a staple gun, whose purchase he had given priority over food. He dragged out a cabinet, which he weighted with bricks to keep his food away from animals. Gradually he picked up cast-off furniture and cable spools until a couple of rooms downstairs looked habitable.

  Yet cleanliness and even civilization were not enough, ingenuity was not enough. Raphael was an aesthete, his mother’s son. Having picked up four bags of white sheets for a small price at the Salvation Army, Raphael went to work with his staple gun. Over the windows he draped elaborate white curtains, swept back and luxuriously folded. He upholstered in the same way, stapling pleat after pleat, trapping material into cushions over wooden chairs, skirting his spool tables, covering his rusty cabinet until the light grew dim and Raphael went out to pace the streets, munching what he had scavenged at lunch that day, planning under the moon. When he returned at night and ducked once more under the boards, the cavernous interior of the textile mill was lit up with blue light and the drapery over the windows shone; the newly upholstered furniture glowed and floated over the black floor. Still, the skirts of white shifted and fluttered, and Raphael kept his knife by his sleeping bag, listening to the scuttering as he fell uneasily to sleep. Later that week Raphael may have been the only boy in the history of that town to shoplift not soda or candy or water pistols but rat poison.

  In the mornings Raphael woke early and bathed in the river that ran by the mill. Shivering, he’d build a fire in the oil can and do his homework. Raphael understood that his performance in school shouldn’t falter. Raphael knew a lot of things, he was never sure from where. As mysteriously as he knew about rents in Boston, he also knew about social agencies. Frank wouldn’t alert anyone to look for him—Raphael wasn’t sure that Frank actually hated his son, but without Nora there he simply wouldn’t want one anymore. Teachers, however, had to be kept in the dark, and the student body was going to be a major project.

  He experimented again on Louis. Living in secret wouldn’t work. Too many kids played in the mills. Too many kids would notice boards were missing from the windows. And he needed allies. While secrecy was winning, confidence was more so. Silently Raphael led his classmate to his hideaway.

  Louis was thrilled. To him Cleveland Cottons was paradise, for Louis didn’t have to wash at five in the morning in cold water or wear the same clothes all the time or eat stale leftover sandwiches from the school cafeteria for dinner day after day. Louis had a doctor, a dentist, electric lights, and a TV. Yet Raphael didn’t try to disillusion the boy about his life here.

  “God, you could bring girls here, have parties—”

  “Only,” Raphael warned, “if I can stay here.”

  “So what’s the scam?”

  “The authorities can’t know about this. And I’m going to need help with some things. More than food. I want to put this place into shape.”

  “Looks pretty good to me already.”

  “I’m not talking about putting little dried-flower arrangements on the coffee table, Louis. You don’t understand. There are animals that li
ve here, Louis. I want them out.”

  “Animals?” Louis lived in a sweet little house with shutters and a kitchen with new linoleum. It took him a minute. “Oh,” he said, and paled as he looked quickly around.

  “Relax. They come out at night. While I sleep.”

  “Heh-heh,” said Louis. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Exactly. So I plan to gut this place. When I’m through you’ll be able to invite your grandmother here for coffee and pecan sandies, but I’m going to need help.”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  Raphael responded with no hesitation. “Nothing.”

  Louis shook his head incredulously and smiled. “You got balls, Sarasola.”

  Raphael shrugged.

  “So what do you need?”

  “Alcohol.”

  Louis laughed. “So you can get so wasted you don’t care about rats, right?”

  “I need to be able to work at night. I’ve designed some lamps out of jars with cotton wicks, and alcohol burns clean. I need several gallons of methyl alcohol. It’s cheap. Your father runs a drugstore.”

  “You got it, then.”

  So, Raphael mulled over after Louis had gone: Tell the truth. Ask point-blank. Promise nothing. Raphael smiled. It was amazing.

  Errol skipped over much of this by the swimming hole in order to get to the upcoming part of the story, which would interest his audience more. The whole movie, though, line by line, frame by frame, was coming at him in a rush. It intrigued Errol the way he heard the boy speak at thirteen. So precise. So controlled. So correct. The way he spoke now, of course. Yet Errol didn’t believe this speech was a failure of his imagination. Style like Raphael’s didn’t develop overnight. Frank was a slob, but Nora must have taught her son to speak well; Frank had taught him to speak little. It was a striking combination.

  Raphael had no intention of turning Cleveland Cottons into the local clubhouse. Boys would make appointments, and sometimes were denied entrance even then and would have to try another time. Whenever visitors arrived they brought offerings—food, wine, and poison, like polite dinner guests—which he accepted with a nod of his head and no embarrassment. In fact, it was the boys themselves who felt grateful; if he suggested that what they’d brought would be useful to him, they glowed.