(1961) The Chapman Report (32 page)

Paul kept his eyes on the road. “She’s not a whore,” he said slowly. “She’s a woman who was your wife, and she’s ill and needs help. And you love her.”

“I do. But it would be a hundred hells.”

“Maybe it would. Yes, I suppose it would.” He read a metal road sign, and the arrow pointed left for Sunset Boulevard. “Well, it’s almost curtain time. We’d better get back to The Briars.”

Cass Miller stiffened in his chair as he heard Sarah Goldsmith’s answer to his question, and he glared at the screen with hatred. The bitch, he thought, the filthy, cheating bitch.

He had said, “Now there will be a series of questions on extramarital relationships.” He had asked, “Have you ever engaged in coitus with a man or men other than your husband?” So certain had he been of her reply that he had marked the Solresol symbol for “Never” without waiting to hear her reply. She had answered, “Once.”

Cass could not believe his ears. “I’m sorry. Did you say you have had one man, other than your husband, since you’ve been married?” She had answered nervously, “Yes, one.”

Cass had found it difficult to keep the disapproval out of his voice. “When … when did this take place?” There must be extenuating circumstances. Long ago, certainly, when she was foolish, immature, drunk.

She had answered, “Right now.”

The bitch. His head throbbed. Angrily, he erased what he had written, tearing a hole in the page as he did so.

She had made a fool of him, and he despised her. Usually, he was prepared for this, and on guard, but her appearance and her prior history had deceived him.

The interview had been scheduled for nine in the morning, and Cass had overslept and been late. Crossing to his office, from the conference room, he saw her being led in his direction by Benita. He saw that her sleek hair was in an old-fashioned bun in back, and that she wore proper glasses, and a neat, conservative, plaid dress. The glasses, the flat shoes, the maturity of her figure, the whole aspect of progressive, decent housewife, were what fooled him, but mainly the glasses.

After he had settled behind the screen, and she was ready-this Sarah Goldsmith-her history confirmed his respected opinion of her. Her answers were matter-of-fact, sensible. She was thirty-five, married twelve years. Her husband wasn’t exactly a ball of fire, Cass had noted during the questioning, but probably this was exactly right for her. Married twelve years, two children, synagogue during the high holidays. A good wife and mother.

‘When did this take place?” he had asked about her infidelity.

“Right now,” she had answered.

Lousy bitch. He should have guessed. These were the worst, these doers of laundry, and bakers of bread, and dusters of furniture. The gingham harlots.

As he recorded the answer correctly now on the questionnaire, the old sore opened and festered, and the pain of it shot to his head.

His mother, whit he remembered of her, had worn her hair in a bun, except that morning-morning!-he had returned home unexpectedly when he was not supposed to, having escaped the school grounds at recess over some imagined wrong, and he had raced home to seek her comfort. Her hair loose on her shoulders, he remembered, and those big mother’s breasts, and the obscenity of her position with the skinny man who was not his father. Thinking of her, he could forever remember only that picture of her, and despise her until he was nauseated-that old woman on the bed with another man, that old woman who was a mother.

Once, long after, when he was in college and still haunted by it, he had checked to find out the year his mother was born, and what his own age had been, so that he could fasten on the exact year it had happened. From this he was astonished to learn that his mother had been twenty-nine when it had happened. This was incredible to him. For him the worst of it had always been that she was an old woman who was a mother, and now he had proved she was a young woman then, and had been an old woman only when he was grown (that long after summer when she was passing through town and had shamelessly visited his father on business). Yet, somehow, the facts had never changed it in his mind: she had been old when he had been young, and a mother, and a bawd-an immoral, base, dissolute bawd, fiendish and faithless to him in her obscenity.

On the other side of the screen, Sarah shifted fretfully in her chair, worrying the handkerchief in her hand. The interviewer had

been silent so long a time. Had she said the wrong thing? No, Dr. Chapman had said that they wanted the plain facts. No one would see them, ever. The crazy secret language, the bank safes, the STC machine. Nevertheless, her anxiety mounted. Why hadn’t she consulted Fred Tauber first? What if it got out, by accident? What would happen to them? She wished, more than anything in the world, that she had not mentioned the affair. Why had she consented to this? Why had she told the truth? Was it because she was proud of the secret bursting inside her, the pregnancy of a new freedom, and she wanted to speak it aloud to someone, anyone?

She heard his voice. It seemed uncommonly harsh. “Please pardon the delay,” he was saying. “We have optional questions for every different circumstance. Since you’ve told me your extramarital affair is an act of the present day, I had to find the correct set of questions. Now if you are ready-“

She was suddenly scared. “I don’t know,” she blurted, “maybe I shouldn’t-“

The male voice beyond the cane screen was instantly suave and solicitous. “Please don’t be frightened, Ma’am. I know this is important to you, and honesty is difficult under the circumstances. But our interests are purely scientific. Nothing else. To us-to me-you are anonymous, a woman who had volunteered to help this good work. When you are done, in a very short time, other women will take your place in this room, and some will reveal facts that are, for-them, as difficult or more difficult to discuss. At the end of the day, all of you will be so many illegible scrawls on so many sheets of paper. You must have absolutely no fear.”

The words were comforting, and Sarah nodded dumbly. “All right.”

“We’ll get this over with quickly. This man you spoke of-how long has this been going on?” “Three months.”

“On the average, can you recall how many times you have performed the sex act with him per month?” “Per month?”

“Well, per week, if that’s easier.”

She hesitated. How would the truth make her appear? Would it be degrading or normal and attractive? She thought of Fred, of herself awakened and renewed, and decided that she was proud. “Four times a week,” she said.

“Four times a week,” he repeated. His voice was oddly muffled. “Is your partner single or married?”

“He’s … he’s married.” But there must be no misunderstanding. She was no home-wrecker. “I’d better explain,” she added hastily. “He’s married but separated. His wife won’t give him a divorce.”

“I see.”

His question had unsettled her. Of course Fred wanted a divorce. He had told her so many times. It was simply that his wife was being difficult. Otherwise, why would he be living separately?

“Can you enumerate one or more reasons for becoming involved in an extramarital affair?”

“I really can’t say.”

“Perhaps I can clarify the question.” Cass began to recount the various reasons why married women often became adultresses. (“When the subject is unable to give a direct reply,” Dr. Chapman always maintained in his briefings, “it is useful to give them examples of answers made to the question by other women.”) Cass had finished his fifth possible reason when Sarah interrupted.

“Yes, that one,” she said.

“Which? The last?”

‘Yes.”

“You weren’t satisfied with your husband?”

She shivered. Why wasn’t he satisfied with one answer? Why did he keep on like this? How could she tell him? How would he know? Did he know Sam? Had he lived with him for twelve years? Could he understand the corrosive monotony of each new month and year? Could he understand that but one life was given each woman, a single dowry to use as best she could, and if it were wasted, futilely wasted, there would be no other? “No, I wasn’t,” she said at last. “Something was missing. This just happened. I didn’t look for it. It happened.”

“During the first occasion on which you had sexual intercourse with this other man, were you the aggressor, or were you seduced by him, or was the mating a mutual act?”

How could she answer this truthfully when she herself did not know? But she must be fair to Fred, at all costs. He was no heartless and practiced Don Juan. Yet, neither was she a …a wicked Jezebel. She decided that the middle course was the most honest. “I suppose it was mutual,” she said.

“Do you believe yourself to be equally passionate, more passionate, or less passionate than your husband?”

“My husband?” she repeated, surprised that they had returned to Sam. “Yes.”

“Oh, more passionate.”

“And how would you compare yourself to the … the man who is not your husband.” “We’re the same, I guess.”

“Very well. Now another multiple-choice question. To the best of your knowledge, would you say that your husband knows of your current love affair? You may reply: he knows because he was told, he knows because he found out, he probably suspects, he does not know. Which would you say?” “He does not know,” said Sarah flatly.

At the card table, Cass scratched in the answer. Does not know. Does not know. Anger welled high in his throat. This was the worst kind, the Pretending Esther, dressing the children, writing for samples, collecting green stamps, enacting motherly-wifely devotion, playing at typical housewife, cuckolding and humiliating-four times a week. He remembered The Book of his youth on the chiffonier. “Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith I have done no wickedness.”

He passed his hand over his head and regarded the next questions. He would cut them short. He could not bear much more of this.

He resumed the cross-examination. Each reply fell upon him like a blow. He compared her voluptuous gluttony with her husband’s asceticism. Cass’s heart went out to her husband, poor overworked, exhausted fool, trying only to please someone who would not be pleased.

For the husband, for himself, for Dr. Chapman, for the husband most of all, Cass wanted to know the extent of her perfidy. “How long do you both engage in the coital act?” “It takes longer now.” “How much longer?”

Haltingly, she discussed the duration and longevity of evil. Cass’s forehead was perspiring, and he abandoned the chronology of the questionnaire completely. “Does the sight of your partner arouse you?” “No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not much.”

“What does arouse you?”

There was a silence.

“Something must arouse you,” said Cass impatiently. “What is it? You can tell me.”

Her answer was barely discernible. “Sexual intercourse,” she said.

“Simply that?”

“Going on and on,” she said.

His pencil was poised over the sheet. He tried to visualize her as he had glimpsed her in the corridor. The hair in a tight bun, the ample female hips. And then he pictured her as he had really seen her: hair loose on her shoulders and massive naked thighs -that old woman on the bed with another man… .

It was ten thirty-five, twenty minutes since she had left the Association building, when Sarah Goldsmith turned her station wagon south off Wilshire and drove the two blocks to Fred’s apartment. She had told him that she would not be able to see him this morning, but after the interview, she had a sudden urge to be with him. Usually, she was careful, but this morning she allowed herself the caprice.

The interview had had a singular effect on her thinking. It had helped sort matters out. By articulating the history of her marriage and the history of her affair, she was able to see her choice more clearly. Until then, the question of choice had not come up. But now she saw Sam-and herself-factually. And Fred-and herself-truly.

She parked beneath the elms, crossed the quiet street, and went into the apartment building. In this wing there were only two tenants. A peroxide blonde of indeterminate years, and countless Siamese cats, who lived on the ground floor, and Fred, whose apartment was at the top of the stairs. Entering the cool foyer, and then starting up the stairs, Sarah was surprised to see a woman descending toward her.

Sarah’s heart hammered. The woman could be emerging from only one apartment. For a moment, she loomed above. She was attired in an immaculate pique tennis outfit, a woman in her early forties, with gray-black hair meticulously waved, and sharp, regular, aristocratic features, and a long straight figure. She came downward, step by step, eyes unwaveringly on Sarah, and then, passing, staring straight ahead. Sarah had held aside, to make room, and now she resumed her climb. At the top of the stairs, Sarah glanced below. The tall woman was at the door, gazing up at her. Their eyes met briefly. Sarah’s fingers tightened. The woman went out the door.

Confused, Sarah rushed to Fred’s apartment and rapped on the door. She waited. In a moment, the door opened and Fred, in tennis jersey and shorts, was before her. She hurried to get inside.

“Sarah! What the devil are you doing here? I thought-“

“I had to see you. I finished early, and I wanted to.” She gestured fretfully. “Who was that woman?”

“You mean you met her?”

“I certainly did. Shouldn’t I have?”

“Oh, stop that. Don’t be silly. It doesn’t matter-only I’ve begged you to telephone first.”

“Whv? Who was she?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife?” She had guessed it, but it was difficult to reconcile that juiceless, older woman with Fred’s youthful vigor. “Does she do this often?”

“Do what? There’s nothing. I told you we have nothing to do with each other. We have some community property. Once or twice a month she drops by to discuss business. Today she wanted to do it at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club.”

“But what was she doing up here?”

“We hadn’t finished talking. And she was thirsty.”

“For water?”

“Sarah-“

She felt the tautness give, and she was free of it. “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “Please, Fred, don’t be angry with me.”