Q & A

by M. Allen Cunningham

  “Am I permitted to hear the song again, please?”

  “Yes, I think we can play it again. May we hear the aria again?”

  Nevermind that during his service Sidney was stationed in the Porte de la Chapelle, practically in view of Saint Denis for six weeks. Again the music fills his earphones, the woman’s voice. Not so different from Bernice—she’s done some singing of her own, classical like this and not at all bad. They don’t know cultivated, him and Bernice? Who says they don’t?

  “All right Sid, you have to tell me two more things—the character’s name and the aria’s name.”

  “‘Cara nome’ is the name of the aria.”

  “You’re right. You need one more, the character’s name, for twenty-one points.”

  “Sung by a girl. Gilda.”

  “Right again, and you have twenty-one!”

  Applause, applause.

  “Sid Winfeld, will you come out? Mister Saint Claire, come on out here. Gentlemen, this is terrific, we’ve played three games and we’ve got another tie. What an exciting show of knowledge you’ve given us.”

  Out at the podium for another three-shot, Sidney can see in the professor’s face he didn’t expect this. Well, they don’t tell you everything around here. They’re shaking hands like good old sports and Mint’s saying, “Can you both come back next week? Sid Winfeld?”

  “Yes, sure, Mister Mint.”

  “Mister Saint Claire, can you come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Next week you’ll play again, this time for two thousand dollars a point, which puts as much as forty-two thousand dollars at stake between you. Goodnight Sid Winfeld. Goodnight Kenyon Saint Claire. And congratulations.”

  And it’s back to the darkness in the wings for Sidney and Professor while Shepherd does the last commercial, and as they’re walking amid the applause Professor turns and murmurs a little something—hard to hear, but to the effect of you sure put up a mighty fight, only Sidney just says, “Yes, excuse me, I need to find Mister Greenmarch.”

  AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS

  If you had your Winky Dink Kit and played along with us, well, there’s no reason for any of us to miss all the fun.

  It’s so easy to get your Winky Dink Kit, and you know something, the fun starts as soon as you get your Kit.

  Of course, you can watch the program without a Kit, but you can’t really be a part of the program without it.

  And you can’t have the same fun that the boys and girls who have their Winky Dink Kits do have.

  Now, I know you’re used to watching television shows, you just sit back and watch all the other shows, but not this show.

  This show you really get a chance to be a part of, because it’s different. You get a chance at home to play right along with us.

  But to be a part of the show, you must have your Winky Dink Kit.

  You send fifty cents, boys and girls—got that?—with your name and address, and send it to Winky Dink, Box Five, New York nineteen, New York.

  Now I do hope you’ll all get your Winky Dink Kits right away and have fun with those boys and girls that do have their Kits, because you really can’t have the same fun if you have no Kit.

  KENYON

  The outside world is something of a shock—the cold night air, the whoosh of cars, all the anonymous faces around Rockefeller Center even at this hour. To come out of the NBC building onto the sidewalk on West 50th is to come out of a daze. Something has just happened, though it seems impossible to say what. Though saying what seems important.

  Kenyon starts moving right away, down the cold sidewalk toward Fifth, still sodden in his suit beneath the overcoat, winding his scarf, hunching his shoulders, hurrying to keep his heat. He lights a smoke as he goes. He’ll walk to 42nd at least, maybe farther, before taking the subway. He needs the low-level shock of the city, its nightwalkers, its stacked windows careening up into dark, all the looming proximity of those secretive lives.

  Lacky had seen his surprise and smiled, clapping Kenyon’s shoulder. “What a showing Kenny! A helluva showing!”

  They were standing in the brightly lit hall off the studio, stagehands and assistants swirling, not the time or place for discussion, but Kenny simply said, “I’m a little confused, Sam.”

  “Confused? What’s confused? That was a helluva contest! Now come back next week and show us more of that old IQ, huh?”

  My IQ? Kenyon thought to say. We both know that’s not what this is about. But he held his tongue. Lacky beaming pure beneficence, projecting how all’s gone according to plan, how successfully they’ve extracted the desired performance.

  Kenyon is walking very fast, a minor ache in each long stride, outpacing something, pursuing something, not sure. He’d made peace with the answers, it was the way of television, he could accept that—they were his answers in the end, after all, he’d done his reading, god knows, he’s a teacher, that settled it. And they’d expected a performance—the mumbling, the counting, the kerchief—he’d known this and obliged. But that there was still so much he hadn’t known, so much they had not told him. … He had been performed by them, that was it. They’d left him so surprised. And by such a simple trick: by keeping him in the dark.

  They have him, he sees now. They have him and they will surprise him again, surely, in order to feed his reaction to the cameras. This will be, as long as it lasts, unsteady ground—Kenny at their mercy, with viewers watching everywhere. Through his mind in a single rush comes the voice of the Dane—you would play upon me you would seem to know my stops you would pluck out the heart of my mystery you would sound me from the lowest note to the top of my compass …

  He’s reached the corner at 42nd Street now and, crossing, he comes to stand on the broad concrete apron before the library. There in the streetlight are the twin lions atop their pedestals, great temple guardians aglow in the white repose of stone. Between them the upward sweep of the steps that carry you to the three doors beneath the engravings on the high entablature: “To history literature and the fine arts—for the advancement of useful knowledge—to serve the interests of science and popular education.” The building is very still amid the motion of the city. Inside, the books are at rest, awaiting the discovery of those who will come by morning.

  It may be that night is the province of television. Morning, though, is still something else.

  Kenyon, on his second smoke and wound up, all damp around the collar, continues on toward the Empire State Building. He’ll catch a train at Herald Square, but he needs the eight or nine blocks still ahead of him. He’s decided he’ll ring up his parents once home. They’re at the farm this week. They didn’t see the program and he wants to talk to them while that’s still the case. It seems important somehow. It’s late, and maybe they’re in bed already, but he will.

  “Kenny!” says Dad’s voice. “Oh Emily, it’s Kenny.”

  “I’m not waking you, I hope.”

  “No chance of that, son. We’ve been answering the phone every few minutes. Everyone saw you, it seems.”

  “So you know the outcome.”

  “Not that it surprised us, Kenyon. We had no doubt you’d do well.”

  “A tie, yes. Three actually.”

  “Son, you’re a cause célèbre! It’s remarkable. Had you any idea how many would watch?”

  “The outcome, you know, there’s no outcome yet.”

  “And is the money what they’re telling us it is, fifteen hundred dollars per question or some unthinkable sum?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Oh, just everybody! They’ve all been calling. Earl Jordan, Betty Vincent, the Fletchers, the Singleys, Fadiman—who else, Emily? Doctor Addison. Addison was totting up the numbers while he watched.”

  “Well, it’s fifteen hundred a point, actually.”

  “Oh, and every question
at a point?”

  “Uh, no, some are worth eleven.”

  “Dear God!”

  A gasp, a pause, Maynard Saint Claire’s mouth drifting from the receiver to report faintly to Kenyon’s mother.

  “It’s … it’s strange, Dad. It’s a high-pressure kind of situation.”

  “Whose money is it? Where does it all come from?”

  “Advertisers, you know …”

  “That’s an awful lot of eggs to sell.”

  “Pharmaceuticals mostly.”

  “Those numbers, you can hardly add them up!”

  “Next week we start at two thousand a point. To break the tie.”

  “Wondrous strange! Two thousand next week, Emily. Your mother says—we both say—we hope you win it all, of course. Who’ve you been playing against?”

  “Don’t know much about him. He’s a college student. He’s had quite a run. Seems to know everything.”

  “Well, you’ve made an impression, there’s no doubt.”

  “It’s a game. You know. High-pressure or not, it’s a game. I’ll need to remember that.”

  “Wisely so, son. But we have no doubt you’ll do well.”

  “Even if I win, it’s funny … even if I win, well, no one stays champion forever.”

  Another pause. Dad’s familiar slowness when he listens. The taking in, the reflecting, the thoughtful, almost hesitant reply. “Mm, yes. Winners, losers, that’s the jargon of sport. What really counts, as you know, is the impression one makes. You’ll always do fine with that, Kenny.”

  And if the impression one makes is not one’s own?

  “Thanks Dad.”

  “From what I know of it all, I should think you’ll be good for television.”

  But oh, Dad, the dark wings, the isolation booth, the blinding light’s dissimulation. If I am good for television, can television be good for me?

  “I don’t mean to keep you up. I just got in and thought I’d call. How’s the farm?”

  “Well, last of your mother’s squash is in … trees are all turned … we’re using the furnace at night. The Gantley place is sold, did we tell you? Bought by a builder who’s come in and taken out all the trees along the drive. Can you picture it? They wanted to put in grass and they did, all in a single morning. They bring the grass out in rolls, have you seen this? They just roll out the lawns and done!”

  Q:

  How awful is it?

  A:

  Two thousand dollars a point—the climb

  of the money on and on, the lights

  ablaze, the orchestra blaring …

  And there are no one- or two-point

  questions on those cards.

  They never tell you this.

  Q:

  No, no, I mean, how awful is it

  to live in a world where

  everyone believes in you?

  A:

  ---------------------------------

  3.

  FIFTEEN MILLION

  December 1956

  SIDNEY

  “Feel this one, Sidney. Here. Feel it. Oh, aren’t they just gorgeous?”

  “They’re very fine, Bernice.”

  “Do you feel that? Oh, did you ever know something so soft? Mother had one of this type, I seem to remember.”

  And here is where, before, Sidney would’ve said Then let’s ask your mother why don’t we and Maybe she’s still got it you never know and Why do we need a new one?, which their circumstances and all—though he never did like charity, he’d have felt the responsibility to say such things. Instead, now he follows as she runs her hand along every fur on the rack and when she says, “Oh, how will we ever choose?” he doesn’t even hesitate: “You choose, Bernice. It’s all yours, your choice, whichever one you want, don’t think of the price.”

  She turns, smiling, and brings her body close. “Sidney, you spoil me, honey.”

  “That’s good, honey, that’s exactly what I want.”

  He smells her now, breathes her in deep. She’s doused herself in that scent—Je Suis Fois or whatever it’s called, the little cut-glass mister she brought home the other night, the one which she let him watch while she spritzed herself in the nude and rubbed it in. An aphrodisiac, no question, because he was harder inside her than ever—she said so—and then the sheets and both their bodies smelled so sweet with the scent all night.

  So what if he is, after all—spoiling her. She bought the silver fox coat only two weeks ago, but right now she’s positively glowing, all giddiness, like a girl, and Sidney can hardly believe what that does to him inside. He hasn’t seen her like this since before her father died, which all their problems seemed to start soon after. Josef Winks that old pushover always slipping his precious daughter money even knowing how Sidney objected, even after Sidney sat the old man down and made clear he wouldn’t have it, because generosity and gifts was one thing but so was consideration for a husband’s feelings on the matter—and when it came to Josef dolling out straight cash it was more than a fellow could be expected to stomach. But even a speech like that couldn’t change a thing, which the next time Sidney caught her stuffing a roll of bills into the kitchen jar he all but flushed them down the toilet, Bernice shouting How dare you! acting sick at his ingratitude telling him, “You’re practically terrified of money, Sidney, that’s the problem with you!” Coldest voice he’d ever heard from her. And for the first time it made him wonder would the way they were raised come between them in the end?

  Then the old man passed and Sidney put his foot down with her mother: jewels and silverware and furs he could abide up to a point, but no more straight handouts—not from the mother especially. Which, her mother did back down, and finally Sidney and Bernice had those fights behind them.

  Except then Bernice started up about kids—another subject that terrified him, she said…

  Well, here they are at Saks surrounded with furs and Bernice is bringing her body very close and there’s a whole new look in her face—nothing like those months of grieving after her father’s passing and her flat stare all the times she pressed herself on Sidney like he would do her a service. No, her eyes are so different now he can hardly believe and she whispers close, “I want the white one, Sidney, the ermine. The swing coat. Can I have it, baby?” and down there her hand is moving where their bodies touch, the fingers playing so nice on his stiffness, and she says, “And something soft for you after that.”

  Q:

  Mister Winfeld, do you remember that

  preceding your loss you had a meeting

  with Mister Greenmarch?

  A:

  Yes sir.

  Q:

  What happened at that meeting?

  A:

  Is this the day I lost, sir?

  Is that what you’re referring to?

  Q:

  When you were told that you

  would lose. Let us fix the date

  when you were told you would lose.

  A:

  This would be on the fourth

  of December, nineteen fifty-six.

  This was the day before the

  program, the usual Tuesday meeting.3*

  SIDNEY

  Sidney knew this was coming and now here it is. No tonic water and cherry today, Mr. Greenmarch too preoccupied for little preliminaries. Sidney on the green corduroy sofa and Greenmarch on his feet and between them, on the coffee table, a teetering pile of files and records, and though Sidney knows he shouldn’t he goes ahead and asks. “What’s all this, Ray?”

  “Documentation,” says Greenmarch flatly. “Memoranda. Trendex reports. All pertaining to the span of your life on the program.”

  “So I’m over. That’s it for me.”

  “Are you surprised? It can be a shock, we realize. After a winn
ing streak like yours.”

  Sidney won’t be ruffled. He waves a hand. “Don’t look so serious, Ray. These files, this isn’t … it ain’t a police report.” Important to show he’s professional. He saw it coming after all—and he got his ten grand advance last week, it was in the bank by the following morning.

  Greenmarch stays grim. Already everything about him—that stern face, his tie done up and jacket on, the square of his shoulders as he crosses the office to the wheeled blackboard—it all says non-negotiable.

  “Here’s the thing, Sid.” Chalk in hand, Greenmarch bends and starts a diagonal line going upward across the board. “Trendex shows you’ve been very good for the program. September and October’s reports reflect an upward movement. But now…” From the center of the board Greenmarch’s line levels off—a canceled heartbeat. Flat horizon. “Now November’s ratings clearly show a plateau.”

  “I’m over.”

  “It’s the cyclical nature of entertainment, Sid. A program like ours, people don’t want one winner forever.”

  “I get it, Ray.”

  “It’s good to see that you understand. The viewers, they need rises and falls.”

  “My turn to fall, sure. I get it.” He got the ten grand anyhow. And more to come. And there’s the arrangements still to be made: future appearances, a retention agreement and such like.

  Greenmarch, retrieving the blue question cards from a drawer in his desk, comes to sit in the leather chair by the sofa. “So let’s hash out how it’s gonna happen, shall we?”

  Still no mention of the tonic water.

  “Oh, and Sid, that incident with your wife last week—I’ve been meaning to apologize. You understand, of course, why we couldn’t have her in the studio. And I realize, I do, that she was very upset, rightly so—it wasn’t very gracefully handled on our part.”

  Bernice was livid, hurried offset for wearing the silver fox coat, just minutes before the broadcast. Greenmarch himself met her in the hall, she said, where the three production assistants held her under guard as she put it. And that smarmy little producer, he tells me it’s my coat, my coat is just too beautiful he says, for the purpose of the program he says, people know I’m Sidney Winfeld’s wife he says, and how will we explain such a coat on the wife of our poor ex-GI? Greenmarch offered her the greenroom, but she was in too big a tizzy and told him no, she’d prefer to go. Sidney found her out front after the broadcast, standing on the cold sidewalk, still furious. For more than two hours she’d waited there in the wind, smoking, and right away she poured all the poison into his ear—the humiliation, the indignation, the third-class horror of the situation: Who are these people, Sidney? They think they can run anybody’s life? In his pocket was the check, still wet from Greenmarch’s fountain pen, and when he told her she quieted down, the rage in her face giving over to confusion, and said, somewhat breathlessly, I’m still not sure I like them any better.