(1961) The Chapman Report (25 page)

Dr. Jonas’ voice was hardly audible. “The Zollman Foundation?”

“Yes”

“He wants to buy me out?”

Paul hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Paul shrugged. “Because if you can be bought out, you will be. And if you can’t be, I’ve retained your friendship.”

Dr. Jonas continued to teeter on the swivel chair. The only sound in the room was the squeak of its unoiled spring. That, and for Paul, his own heart. He watched and waited. The crack. Would it show?

There was a knock on the door.

Dr. Jonas looked off. “Yes?”

The door opened slightly, and Peggy’s freckled face poked into the room. She glanced from one to the other. “No cuts or bruises? No knockdowns?”

“No,” said Dr. Jonas.

“Well, now, you’ve both had enough. I’ve got a snack on the table. Victor, you bring your guest in before he faints from undernourishment.”

“All right, dear.”

Peggy’s head disappeared. Dr. Jonas rose to his feet, and Paul stood up. They went through the bungalow door into the yard. The fog was thicker now. Great flaxen curls of vapor obscured the moon. The wet yard was dark except for the light from the kitchen door. Both men entered the corridor of yellow light on the grass.

Dr. Jonas took Paul’s arm. Paul turned his head, and he saw that Dr. Jonas was smiling. “Let’s put it this way, Paul,” he said. “Let’s say, you’ve retained my friendship.”

Efficiently, Peggy Jonas cleared the dining-room table of the plates and the large platter that still held a third of the warm pizza pie. Paul and Dr. Jonas ate their Danish rolls and drank their coffee. Not once during the time at the table had Paul or Dr. Jonas returned to their discussion of the survey. The conversation had been inconsequential and pleasant. Peggy, with a wonderful gift for mimicry, had synopsized the old motion picture that she had seen on television. Dr. Jonas spoke of the bull fights the entire family had recently witnessed in Tia Juana, and each of them had a theory about the cult that had adopted the sport in the United States, agreeing only that there was a certain snobbery involved, like proudly parading the first name of some slob of a bartender. Paul spoke of a vacation that he had once enjoyed, during the period when he had taught at the private girls’ school in Berne, with the remarkable Basques in and about San Sebastian.

When the coffee was served, Dr. Jonas asked Paul if he ever intended to write again-the only allusion to any part of their talk in the rear bungalow-and Paul told him of the Sir Richard Burton literary biography begun some years before and abandoned for the collaboration on A Sex Study of the American Bachelor.

Now, as Peggy went into the kitchen, Dr. Jonas said, “I wonder if you’ve heard any rumors about the new clinic a group of us are opening in Santa Monica?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Quite interesting,” said Dr. Jonas. “What I’m telling you is confidential, until the project is announced shortly. The building is under construction right now, a beautiful spot overlooking the ocean. It’s going to be used to mend sickly and broken marriages, just as the Menninger Clinic treats mental health.”

Paul was intrigued. “What will you do there?”

“Well, I’m going to head it up. We’ll have a large staff of psychiatrically oriented marriage counselers. We’ll circularize the entire country, eventually. Minimum fees for help, treatment, care. It’s nonprofit. We have endowments. Then, besides the actual face-to-face work, we will undertake a broad program of education.” He smiled. “This is the road I’m taking-to the goal we talked about.”

“It sounds too good to be true-for what it is. When do you kick off?”

“In about four months. When the building is ready. We have

our staff almost organized. There are still a few key openings.” He glanced keenly at Paul. “You made me an offer. Now I’d like to return the favor. Only this isn’t to buy you out. It’s to reform you. More important, we can use you.”

“I’m damn flattered-really.”

“Are you interested?” Dr. Jonas waited, then added, “And you’d still find time for travel-and Sir Richard Burton.”

Paul entertained the vision briefly: solid and useful man’s work on the island of Southern California, and with time to go off and write. Yet, much as he liked the vision and the person who was creating it, the stigma of treason and traitor was stamped across the fancy. This was the rival camp. He was treating. with his leader’s enemy, a benevolent and enlightened enemy, but an enemy. Moreover, Dr. Chapman had conjured up a vision also: the shining academy in the East, devoted to sexual behavior, international in scope, bathed in wealth and fame, and himself the second in command. Dr. Chapman had not failed him yet, and he would not fail Dr. Chapman now.

“As I said, Victor, I’m flattered,” he heard himself saying. “But I just couldn’t. Dr. Chapman has been a good friend, and generous. I’m devoted to him. More important, I believe in him.”

Dr. Jonas nodded. “Okay. My loss. Let’s not worry it.”

Paul consulted his watch. “I didn’t know it was this late. Five more minutes and you’ll be charging me rent.” He pushed away from the table. “I’ve got to be on deck at nine tomorrow morning.”

“How long will this last sample run?”

“About two weeks.”

Dr. Jonas pursed his lips. “I sometimes think about those interviews of yours-“

“In what way?”

“Publication of the report is the ultimate harm-I mean, the permissive effect your data has, the sudden undermining of long-taught ideas about right and wrong, making wrong things right, because they prevail. That’s the ultimate harm. But those interviews tomorrow-” He shook his head slowly.

“It’s all extremely clinical, like an X-ray technician busily at work.”

“Not quite. Those women come in to see you. Sick or well, most have everything in order, properly in place, properly repressed, properly forgotten, and they function. And then you start hammering those questions. Each is a shaft, hurtled into a dark place, churning, overturning, impaling a fear. All order disappears. Like atoms triggered and bumping in wild chaos. You’ve started an uncontrolled chain of unwholesome and noxious forces. And you don’t follow through, stay with the subjects, help them put everything in place again, in an orderly if different fashion. You set off the chain reaction and then let the women go, and I sometimes wonder, Go where, to what? What are they like afterward, what becomes of them?”

Paul was on his feet. “I’m sure it’s not so bad as all that.”

“I hope not,” said Dr. Jonas without conviction.

And what bothered Paul most, that one moment, was that he was without conviction either.

IT HAD BEEN a long morning, Dr. Chapman reflected as he chewed the last of the corned-beef sandwich and sipped the lukewarm coffee in the paper cup.

He sat at the head of the polished table, in the upstairs conference room of The Briars’ Women’s Association, and Paul and Horace sat to his right, and Cass to his left, all finishing the sandwiches Benita had brought in for them.

Dr. Chapman watched Paul, who was reading the sports page of a Los Angeles morning paper as he ate, and he wondered exactly what had transpired between Paul and Dr. Victor Jonas.

Dr. Chapman had waited up an hour past his usual bedtime, the night before, to hear from Paul, but near midnight, dozing off in the motel chair, he had finally given up and gone to bed. In the morning, they were all together before breakfast, and he had not wished to question Paul in front of the others. Going to their

cars, h& had touched Paul’s elbow, and they had fallen behind and were momentarily alone. He had inquired, in an undertone, about Dr. Jonas, and Paul had shaken his head and said he did not think there was much hope there. Benita, arms filled with folders, had dashed in and interrupted, and Paul had promised to give a full account after dinner.

They had arrived at the Association building around half past eight. The rooms, prepared the day before, were ready, and between ten minutes to nine and nine o’clock when the first three women arrived, Paul, Horace, and Cass had been in their respective sound-proof offices, waiting.

The results of the morning’s sampling were beside Dr. Chapman’s paper plate. Six lengthy questionnaires with the Solresol answers penciled in, so that each page appeared to have been sprinkled with alphabet soup and shorthand symbols. Crumpling his napkin, Dr. Chapman dropped it on his plate and picked up the half-dozen sheets. The completeness of them, the solidity “of these sex histories, always reassured him. They gave him a feeling of accomplishment, of going ahead, of adding to the world’s knowledge. Often, at moments like this, the word immortality danced inside his head, and that gave him pleasure and, at last, displeasure (for his life was dedicated to the common weal, and personal vanity was too petty), and always he pushed it from his mind.

He scanned the top questionnaire and went slowly through the others, interpreting the foreign language known only to the four. The answers were the customary ones, although here and there a reply arrested his attention. After several minutes, Dr. Chapman placed the questionnaires beside his plate again. “Very good,” he said. “No discards.” He glanced at his watch. It was seven minutes before one o’clock. “Well, gentlemen, back to your stations. The women’ll be here any minute.”

Wearily, Cass rubbed his forehead. “Damn migraine,” he complained.

“Less than two weeks to go,” said Horace. “Just think of those poor analysts.”

Paul pushed back his chair. “It hasn’t been so bad. We may even miss it when we’re done.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Cass. “I wasn’t built for life in a gynecocracy.”

They started for the door.

Somewhat winded, Ursula Palmer reached the top of the staircase. She leaned against the wall to catch her breath. Her gold wrist watch told her it was a minute before one o’clock.

All the way from her house to Romola Place she had been thinking of Bertram Foster’s exciting offer. Fantasy had crowded fantasy: Time-“the miracle drug that has revived Houseday and doubled its circulation is California-born Ursula Palmer, a classical beauty with a salary of $100,000 annually”; Vogue-“U. Palmer, far and away the woman of the year”; Winchell-“Ursula P., hear tell, has taken over a palatial Bucks manse”; Mike’ Wallace-“and next week we have a real treat for you”; New Yorker’s Talk of the Town-“decided to drop in on the cocktail party, and we had to push through layers of celebrities paying homage to the sacred object, Truman Capote, Jean Ken, John Huston, Dean Acheson, Cole Porter, Leland Hayward, Fanny Holtzmann, the Duchess of Windsor, to find at last, behind her desk, champagne goblet in hand, that striking, brittle female publisher who …” Not until Ursula entered the cool Association building did she remind herself that it had not happened yet, but that it would and could if she kept her eyes and ears open and recorded the story properly.

Now, composing herself, she felt a guilt pang at not having told Harold of Foster’s offer. She had instinctively avoided revealing the news, because it might create a scene. Occasionally, and in no predictable manner, Harold would redden in anger and stiffen and be disagreeable. His infrequent obeisance to Manhood. She could face such a scene, should it occur, and win, but she wanted no showdown over something that was not yet a reality. Once this interview was over, and she gave Foster her notes, she was sure that it would be settled. Foster’s childish eagerness to see the unadorned notes irked her only briefly. It was little enough, she decided. Look at all those famous actresses. At one time or another, they had been forced to display more than notes of their sex lives.

The thought of notes reminded her of her job. She opened her purse, took out the small pad-two pages already filled with “a suburban housewife’s” feeling on the morning of The Interview-and then located the pencil. Hastily, she wrote: “Wore lace silk blouse, powder-blue skirt, because felt consciously feminine, like schoolgirl first date; left house twenty minutes nine, arrived minute early; thoughts: never talked sex anyone except husband, not even all him, can I tell to stranger-knees weak as mounted

steps.” Her knees weren’t weak, of course, and her thoughts had not been about the interview but rather about the result of it, but these notes were what Houseday readers would expect.

She tucked pad and pencil back into her purse, briskly turned the corner, and proceeded up the corridor. Ahead she could see a pale, angular girl, in a gray suit, waiting behind a desk that had been moved into the corridor.

Ursula reached the desk. “How do you do. Am I late?”

Benita Selby shook her head. “No, the other two women arrived just before you.” She inspected an open ledger. “You’re Mrs. Ursula Palmer?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be in office C, at the end of the hall. The interviewer is ready for you.”

Benita Selby placed an ink check after Ursula’s name and rose. She started to the rear with Ursula following closely.

“What’s the interviewer’s name?” asked Ursula.

Benita seemed surprised. No one had ever asked that before. “Why, Dr. Horace Van Duesen.”

“What’s his background?”

“He’s eminently qualified, I assure you.”

“I’m certain of that.”

“He’s been with Dr. Chapman almost from the beginning. He was on the bachelor survey, too.”

“What was his specialty before that?”

“Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Reardon College.”

“Good God, deliver me,” said Ursula, but Benita did not see the joke.

They had reached the office. Benita opened the door, and Ursula went inside. Ursula remembered the small room, painted aquamarine. It was here that the Association mimeographed its monthly bulletin. A large folding screen, almost six feet in height, its five panels or leaves open, divided much of the room, hiding what was behind. Ursula observed the screen closely. The upper half of each panel, inside the wooden frame, was made up of basket-woven cane, and the lower half of solid walnut. The panels were joined, top to bottom, by piano hinges, obviously to obscure any view through the cracks.

“Your own screen?” Ursula asked Benita.