(1961) The Chapman Report (2 page)

Lifting her gaze from the roses, staring across the expanse of green front lawn, through the thick foliage that protected her from all but herself, Kathleen could still see the last of the familiar gray sightseeing bus as it moved slowly away and down the hill. She did not have her wrist watch-it was Albertine’s day off, and she had slept poorly, and taken a pill at dawn, and then overslept, so that there had been barely enough time to slip into a brunch coat and dress Deirdre for school. But now she knew, by the bus, that it was after nine o’clock and that she must do what she had promised Grace Waterton the night before she would do.

Reluctantly, she started back into the front outer vestibule, moving between the graceful, fluted columns, past the tall potted cypresses, and entered the cavernous, empty, elegant house, resisting and resenting the hour that lay before her. Once in the kitchen, she turned off the stove, poured herself a steaming cup of coffee, and

took it unsweetened to the white formica dinette table. Setting the coffee down, she found a package of cigarettes in the cupboard above the telephone. With the cigarettes and manila folder Grace had left her in one hand, and the telephone in the other, she returned to the table.

After the first sip of warming coffee, she devoted herself briefly to the ritual of the morning’s initial cigarette. Inhaling deeply, then exhaling, she felt momentarily soothed. Even her slender fingers, nicotine-stained where they held the cigarette, trembled less as she continued to smoke. After a while she crushed the half-burned cigarette in the porcelain ash tray bearing the faded legend “Imperial Hotel, Tokyo” that was still on the table where Boynton had always kept it to remind him of past glories. She wondered why she did not replace the ash tray with one that would irritate her less, but she knew that it was because she did not have the nerve.

The coffee was now merely warm, and she drank it down all at once. Thus fortified, she at last opened the manila folder. There were two sheets of paper inside the folder. On the first, neatly typewritten by Grace, were the names of a dozen members of The Women’s Association and their telephone numbers. Scanning the names, Kathleen recognized everyone as a friend or acquaintance or neighbor. Despite this, she still postponed the assignment of telephoning each.

When Grace had dropped off the folder the evening before, Kathleen had immediately felt helpless before the older woman’s charging and aggressive heartiness. Grace Waterton was in her late fifties. Her gray hair, set several times weekly by a male hairdresser, resembled a tin wig. She was tiny, churning, and verbose. After her children had married, she had gravitated for two years between a swami in Reseda and a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, and abandoned both for the presidency of The Women’s Association, which had become her entire life. In some bank, somewhere, there was a vice-president named Mr. Grace Waterton.

Although Grace had finally intimidated Kathleen into accepting the folder, Kathleen had tried to object. She was exhausted, she pleaded, and busy. Besides, she had not seen any of the women for several months, not since the last Association meeting, and the telephone calls would necessarily be long and involved. “Nonsense,” Grace had said in her strident, no-nonsense tone of voice. “This is business, and you treat it as such. Just tell each one you’ve got a dozen more calls to make. Besides, I think it’s good for you. I don’t

like it, Kathleen, the way you’ve been holing yourself up like a hermit. It’s not healthy. If you won’t get out to see people, at least talk to them.”

Kathleen had not wanted to tell Grace, or anyone, that it was not what had happened to Boynton that had made her a recluse -or possibly it was, but in a way and for reasons different than they realized. When she had been married, and he was home, as so often he was, she desired only to be out of the house, to be lost in the noisy chaos of companionship, though it was against all her natural instincts. But in the year and four months since she had been alone, escape was not necessary. She had reverted to, and luxuriated in, the lonely independence that she had known, and loved and hated, before marriage.

Suddenly, she had been aware that Grace was speaking again and that her visitor’s voice had softened slightly. “Believe me, Kathleen, dear, we all know what an ordeal you’ve been through. But no one will help you if you don’t help yourself. You’re still young, beautiful, you’ve got a lovely daughter-a whole life ahead, and you’ve got to live it. If I thought you were really unwell, darling, I’d be the first to understand. Of course, I can get someone else to make the phone calls instead of you. But we need you. I mean, like it or not, you’re still one of our most important and influential members. And you can see why I have to pick twenty of our most respected members to make these calls. I mean, it simply makes the alls carry more weight. Believe me, Kathleen, we need a full turn-oat, and everyone on our side-especially if the churches object to this meeting. I don’t know if they will, but there’s talk.”

Until then, Kathleen had not, absorbed as she was in the effort to avoid an unpleasant task, fully comprehended, or even listened to, the real purpose of the meeting. When she inquired again, and Grace explained it to her briskly and proudly (yet not fully able to conceal her excitement at the daring and naughtiness of the whole affair), Kathleen had been even more disturbed. She was in no mood to join a company of women in listening to a man discuss the sexual habits of the American female, no matter how clinically. Worse-for then came the sudden realization of what the lecture would lead to-she was not prepared to disclose her private secrets to a band of strangers, to disrobe figuratively before a group of leering male voyeurs.

The whole thing was insane, ill-making, yet so great was Grace’s enthusiasm-“it’ll make our community famous; that’s why Mr.

Ackerman arranged it”-that Kathleen instinctively realized any objection would not be understood and would make her sexually suspect. So she had resisted no longer and had decided to bide her time.

Now, hastily lighting another cigarette, she was confronted with the damnable folder. She removed the list of names to examine the sheet of paper beneath it. This was a mimeographed publicity story -dated the following day “for immediate press release”-and it was signed by Grace Waterton. This release, Grace had explained, would give Kathleen all of the pertinent facts when she was telephoning to notify members of the special meeting two days hence. Dragging steadily at her cigarette, Kathleen read the press release.

“On Friday morning, May 22, at ten-thirty o’clock,” the mimeographed story began, “Dr. George G. Chapman, world-renowned sex authority from Reardon College in Wisconsin and author of last year’s bestselling A Sex Study of the American Bachelor, will address a full membership meeting of The Briars’ Women’s Association. For two weeks following the meeting, at which Dr. Chapman will discuss the purposes of his current study of the married female, Dr. Chapman and his team of assistants, Dr. Horace Van Duesen, Mr. Cass Miller, Mr. Paul Radford, all associated with Reardon College, will interview the members of the Women’s Association who are, or have been, married.

“For fourteen months, the celebrated Dr. Chapman and his team have been traveling through the United States interviewing several thousand married women of widely varied educational backgrounds who represent every economic, religious, and age group. According to Dr. Chapman, the women of The Briars will be the last that he and his associates will interview before collating their findings and publishing them next year. “The purpose of this inquiry,’ says Dr. Chapman, ‘is to bring into the open what has so long been hidden, the true pattern of the sexual life of American females, so that, through statistics, we may scientifically illuminate an area of human life long kept in darkness and ignorance. It is our hope that future generations of American women may profit by our findings.’

“Mrs. Grace Waterton, president of The Briars’ Women’s Association, has already expressed her awareness of the honor in a telegram to Dr. Chapman and promised a one hundred per cent turnout at his briefing lecture. Subjects will offer themselves for interview on a voluntary basis, but Mrs. Waterton predicts that after

hearing Dr. Chapman, and learning that the actual personal interviews are even more anonymous than those in the past conducted by such pioneer investigators as Gilbert Hamilton, Alfred Kinsey, Ernest Burgess, Paul Wallin, few of the Association’s 220 married members will refuse this opportunity to contribute to scientific advancement. The Association, which has its own club house and auditorium in The Briars, was established fifteen years ago and is dedicated to social and charitable works, as well as to beautifying the western area of greater Los Angeles.”

Having finished reading the release, Kathleen continued to gaze at it with distaste. Irrationally offended by the words, she asked herself: What kind of Peeping Tom is this Dr. Chapman anyway?

She had heard of him, of course. Everyone had heard of him. The sensationalism of his last book (all the women she knew had read it avidly, though Kathleen had disdained even to borrow a copy), and the progress of his current study, so-called, had enlivened the pages of newspapers and periodicals for several years and had served to bring his portrait to the covers of at least a dozen magazines. One day, she supposed, Chapman would be a freak symbol of his decade and its obsessive concern with sex, just as Emile Coue was representative of a different curiosity in the nineteen-twenties.

But what, Kathleen wondered, would make a grown, educated man want to devote his life to prying into the secret sex histories of

men, women, and children? The unceasing persiflage about “scientific advancement” could serve only to disguise beneath noble purpose an unhealthy and erotic mentality, or, as bad, a coarse commercial mind determined to capitalize on the forbidden. In fairness to Dr. Chapman, Kathleen remembered reading that he kept none of his considerable earnings for himself. Nevertheless, in this culture, a well-known name was equal to any annuity and might be cashed in at any time. Besides, he probably preferred notoriety to wealth.

Maybe she was being harsh with him, Kathleen reflected. Maybe the fault was her own, that she had become prim and old-fashioned, if one could really become old-fashioned at twenty-eight. Still, ha conviction was unshakable: a woman’s reproductive organs belonged to herself and to herself alone, and their use and activity should be known to none beyond herself, her mate, her physician.

Frowning at the necessity of having to promote something in which she did not believe, something so obviously unpalatable and indecent, Kathleen ground out her second cigarette. She brought the typed column of names and numbers back before her, lifted the receiver, and began to dial the numerals listed after Ursula Palmer’s name.

Ursula Palmer was an aggressive clarifier, inquirer, pinpointer. When she asked how-are-you, she meant to know, exactly, how-you-were from morning to night, and yesterday, too. No vague generalities, no misty expositions, ever satisfied her. In the world scrutinized by her luminous, large brown eyes, all had to be tangible, known, understood.

Now, one hand still resting on the space bar and keys of her typewriter and the other holding the receiver to her ear, she continued -as she had for the last several minutes-to plague Kathleen with concrete questions about Dr. Chapman’s expedition into The Briars.

“Really, Ursula,” Kathleen was saying with repressed exasperation, “I don’t have the slightest idea why Dr. Chapman picked us for his last sampling. I only know what’s on the publicity release in front of me.”

“Well, then, read it to me,” said Ursula. “I just want to get all the facts straight.”

Ursula could hear the distant paper rustle in Kathleen’s hand, and she listened, eyes closed to concentrate better, as her caller’s husky voice read the words over the telephone. ‘When Kathleen had finished, Ursula opened her eyes. “I suppose,” she said into the telephone, “that covers it. Poor Dr. Chapman. He’s going to be disappointed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what’s he going to learn from this cold bunch of biddies that he doesn’t already know? I can just see him asking Teresa Harnish her favorite position. Two to one she tells him it’s being the wife of an art dealer.”

“I don’t think we’re any different from women anywhere.”

“Maybe not,” said Ursula doubtfully.

“Can I tell Grace you’re coming to the meeting?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

After she had hung up, Ursula Palmer regretted that she had irritated Kathleen, as she sensed that she had and always did. It was too bad, because she sincerely respected Kathleen and wanted her friendship. Of all the women whom she knew in The Briars, it was Kathleen alone, Ursula felt, who was her intellectual equal. Moreover, Kathleen possessed that indefinable air-that thing that made a woman a lady, a kind of well-bred repose known colloquially as class. To this, or part of this, was added the glamour of wealth. Everyone knew that Kathleen had inherited a small fortune from her father. She was independent. She did not have to work. Once, in one of her monthly features for Houseday, Ursula had written of the average well-off suburban wife and used the person of Kathleen as the model. She envied Kathleen her striking appearance: her shining black hair, bobbed short and smart; her provocative green eyes; the small tilted nose; the full crimson mouth-all this and the Modigliani neck set on a tall, boyish, graceful figure.

Swinging her swivel chair back to the typewriter, Ursula cast a sidelong glance at the wall mirror across her library and made a silent pledge to diet seriously again. Yet, studying herself in the glass, she knew that it was hopeless. She was not meant to look like Kathleen Ballard. She was big-boned, from cheeks and shoulders to hips, and she would always weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Once a drunk at a party had told her that she resembled an overweight Charlotte Bronte. She was sure that this was because she parted her dark brown hair straight down the middle. Anyway, she liked the literary allusion. For a woman of forty-one-and a mother, she remembered (reminding herself to write Devin this weekend and wondering why she could never picture his father)- she was well preserved, and vain about her small hands and shapely calves. Besides, Harold liked her this way. And, besides, she was Sappho, not Helen of Troy, Sappho of the Muse, not of Lesbos, and what she had would last longer.