Q & A

by M. Allen Cunningham

  “Never.”

  Dad’s at the desk an arm’s-length away. The telephone sits atop Dad’s file cabinet, and he’s been at his desk all the while, a witness, while Kenyon stands with the receiver to his ear, listening, babbling, fiercely aware of everything Dad can hear.

  Now Kenyon drops the handset back into its cradle, a muted chime as it falls. His scalp is tingling, his face feels somewhat stretched, as if someone’s been pulling his hair. Otherwise he’s fairly numb, not quite trembling, not quite alarmed.

  He turns toward the window, digs out a cigarette.

  Softly Dad says, “More than an interview, by the sounds of it.”

  Kenyon lights his smoke, draws deep, shakes his head. “Very strange. That Winfeld character, the fellow I first played against—he’s made some…wild claims, apparently.”

  “The District Attorney’s involved, did you say?”

  “Somehow, yes. And the Journal American, they’re running a story on the whole thing tomorrow.”

  The calming column of smoke inside of him, Kenyon turns now, ready to find Dad’s face looking back. And there he is, the old man in shirtsleeves at the desk, a white paper in his hand, his reading glasses lowered to the end of his nose. And the look in his face shows his wish to understand.

  Dad says, “They wanted you to—”

  “They wanted me to comment because Winfeld, he’s told the D.A., apparently, that he lost to me on purpose. That the producers talked him into it.”

  Dad’s hand sinks to the desk, the paper laid by. He straightens in his chair.

  “It’s a little confusing,” says Kenyon. “I don’t understand. Why would he lose if he knew the answer?”

  “Very odd, yes.”

  “What was to keep him from just answering correctly? It makes no sense. And for that matter, why would he claim, for everyone to know, that he was given all the answers?”

  “He says they gave him the answers?”

  “Apparently, yes, that’s his other claim. But why would he say that? Why would he want everyone to know? I mean if it were true …”

  But presently, as he drops to his chair, as he sits and smokes with Dad mirroring his thoughtful silence, Kenyon senses a momentary weight easing off, the lifting of a small cloud, the arrival of a relieved and peaceable clarity of mind. He’ll be OK. What did he ever do wrong? It’s a story in the paper, that’s all. And what harm is Sidney Winfeld? As for the D.A.’s involvement, that’s a matter of due diligence. Surely that’s all it is.

  “I just realized,” says Dad. “I happen to know him.”

  “Winfeld? Who?”

  “Frank Hogan. The D.A. He’s a Columbia man.”

  Kenyon smiles, shrugs. He leans and stubs his cigarette into the glass ashtray on the windowsill. “Anyhow,” he says. “It’ll sort itself out.”

  It’ll sort itself out. Of course it will. Hasn’t he come through the worst of it already? Standing in that booth, piping out the answers, sweating and pretending. What could be worse than that?

  SIDNEY

  Didn’t Sidney tell them? Didn’t he say it? Hasn’t he been saying it all along? For more than a year he’s been saying it, but would they hear it from him? Oh no, he could tell them more than a year ago, but they weren’t gonna have it, not from Sidney Winfeld, and then this Higgenfritz comes along, which who the hell is Higgenfritz after all?—the guy appears out of nowhere and who the hell is he supposed to be?—never even been on TV, wasn’t even a contestant, was never more than a standby—and on a different show, different network—never had to answer a single question on the air, not one, but he’s some kind of truth-teller, by some dumb luck he stumbles on somebody’s notepad left lying backstage, by dumb luck looks at the little paper and finds all the answers written down before the show’s even started and tells the same story Sidney’s been telling all along but whereas Sidney is just a bug in their ears, just a nuisance like, this Higgenfritz is some great truth-teller come down from on high to take the wool from everybody’s eyes.

  Sidney’s at the newsstand now and here’s the paper, my god, right here on the Front Fucking Page the words BIG QUIZ SHOWS FIXED, CONTESTANTS CLAIM, right there under the Journal American eagle, the bird with the banner flying out from its claws which the banner reads An American Paper for the American People. For years Sidney’s been reading the Journal, years, and never until today has he noticed those words, which by god they’re a good set of words for this particular story because after all this is Big-Time, this is bound to go very big since the American people, don’t they deserve to know the true nature of their television programs, those smiling faces those audiences all that cheering and applause those studio orchestras and continuity cards and isolation booths? Well here it is, Sidney Winfeld’s own message finally brought to the American People courtesy of the New York Fucking District Attorney—and how’s that for all you numb-fucks who wouldn’t listen more than a year ago? OK, OK, so it took Higgenfritz to corroborate, so-called, OK, so what, anyhow the story is out now, out out out and those production studio twits those network ignoramuses they won’t get this ugly genie back into their little lamp, not anytime soon, not until the American people get to have a look around at the real and actual nature of things in show business. BIG QUIZ SHOWS FIXED—there it is, says it right there in plain old big-letter English and Sidney can hardly believe it.

  It’s first thing in the morning and the paper’s stacked nice and fat right there on the newsstand counter—even displayed on the stand-up rack.

  Sidney picks one up, turns it to show Bert behind the counter in his smudged apron. “You seen this, Bert?”

  “Sidney! I was gonna ask you the same thing!”

  “Seen it? Me? I’m quoted! Right here. I’m the reason for it!”

  “No kidding?”

  “No joke, Bert. You’re gonna hear more on this too, don’t you doubt it.”

  “OK, Sidney, well, you’ll want to be having a copy, I suppose. For posterity and all.”

  “I’ll take five copies, Bert. Here’s a dollar. No, no, keep it. You keep it now. It’s a good day, Bert.”

  BIG QUIZ SHOWS FIXED,

  CONTESTANTS CLAIM

  NEW YORK, Aug. 28, 1958—New York County District Attorney Frank S. Hogan said Wednesday that testimony by big-money quiz contestant Sidney Winfeld brings television’s biggest quiz show into the D.A.’s newly opened investigation of TV quiz programs. Mr. Hogan’s quiz show probe was instigated last week, after former “Dotto” contestant Terrence Higgenfritz presented evidence of that program’s rigging: a page from a fellow contestant’s notepad on which she had written out the answers beforehand.

  Mr. Winfeld, who won $50,000 on N.B.C.’s hottest property, alleges that producers gave him answers prior to each of his eight appearances on the air. He said he was then instructed to miss a question that “any schoolboy could answer” in order for Kenyon Saint Claire to defeat him.

  Mr. Saint Claire, who proceeded to win $129,000, was reached at his Columbia University office for comment yesterday: “I’m sad and I’m shocked,” he said. “I don’t know what to say except that I thought I won honestly. It’s silly and distressing to think that people don’t have more faith in quiz shows.” He added that during his nearly three-month winning streak on the program, he was never directed by the producers in how to answer or subjected to any pressure.

  Meanwhile Mr. Hogan commented: “I’m convinced we have a lot more digging to do,” suggesting that the probe was only beginning. “TV viewers,” he said, “certainly have a right to be angry about the misrepresentations, if what is suggested is true.”

  cont’d. on page 2

  But back home in the narrow kitchen slapping down the paper on the table for Bernice to see, well, it ain’t exactly a hero’s welcome, and seeing her pick the paper up and seeing the change in her face, which she looks to be almost sick,
for all practical purposes almost ill so Sidney wonders if she isn’t gonna lunge to the kitchen sink any second.

  “Honey,” he says. “What’s the matter? What is it?”

  “I didn’t know,” she says, but stops herself, stops herself and breathes like she needs to swallow something down. “I knew you’d gone to the District Attorney, but I didn’t know…” She pinches the paper’s edge—never has liked the feeling of newsprint in her hands—pinches the paper’s edge and lifts it to one side of her to show him the headline as if he hadn’t seen it already. “This I didn’t know was coming.”

  “You didn’t know? But how didn’t you know? I went to the D.A., so what did you think?”

  “It’s a surprise, Sidney. I’m rather surprised is what I mean to tell you.”

  She’s having her morning yogurt, the baby asleep in the other room, the bassinet at the foot of their bed, and they’re talking in quiet tones, and the yogurt it’s a pooled white spiral in her bowl, and now one corner of the newspaper is resting in the yogurt, soaking there, a tiny discoloration seeping into the whiteness around the paper’s darkening corner, she doesn’t notice.

  “But this is good,” he says. “Bernice, this is a good thing.”

  “How can you mean that, Sidney? You can’t want this. This is public knowledge now. How is this good?”

  “It’s justice, honey. They can’t just…they can’t do whatever they want and nobody’s the wiser, you see?”

  “But it says about you right here, Sidney, it says ‘producers gave him the answers prior.’”

  She’s all but gray now, her bottom lip is trembling, which he can’t yet say for certain if she’s angry or sad.

  “Sure,” he says. “That’s true after all. That’s the truth so that’s what I told them. The show was fixed, that’s the point, Bernice. Why the surprise? You knew it was fixed all the time, honey.”

  “I knew, Sidney. Me. Me and you. Here in the privacy of our home we both knew. But I didn’t know it would come to this: I didn’t expect that everybody, everybody else would know it too, any old stranger out there...”

  “That’s news, honey. That’s how it works, it’s public information. I’m not ashamed, why should I be, I’m the only person willing to tell the truth, why should we be ashamed of that?”

  He moves close to her now, bends and embraces her as she sits, presses himself against her chair with arms stretched out around her and saying “Shhh, shhh,” and kissing her hair which smells of the baby, “this is no cause to worry now, honey. This is good, we are good.”

  “Why?” she mutters, kind of crumbling in his arms, still confused, the paper still drooping from one hand. “Why good? Why do you say that, Sidney?”

  “Because don’t you see, Bernice, it’s my story. It’s my name there in the paper. This is Sidney Winfeld standing up to say the truth, it’s my name they’re speaking, not some other guy. Don’t you see?”

  “Sidney, these television men, they could really hurt you, honey, they could just snap their fingers and … and you a new father with our baby girl to care for.”

  “No, Bernice, because it is not their story anymore. This is my story now. They won’t take it away. Not this time. Not from us, honey.”

  From the bedroom now the baby begins to cry.

  COMMENTATORS

  “Never before in history, one could argue, have individuals been so acutely conscious of the extent to which personhood is performed. …‘Our culture demands total transparency, at the same time that it demands near-constant performance,’ the philosopher Michel de Certau writes… ‘So, how can you know a person?’”

  “You have to make allowances for the fact that everything we see tonight is real. There’s a lot of polishing we still have to do. But that’s what this exercise is all about.”

  LIVING ROOM

  “I really like him. I can’t stand the guy. I could eat her up. He’s such a pain. I’d do anything he asked. She deserves a good slap around the face. Bighead. He’s lying. She’s just pretending to feel pity. He’s going to find life really tough. What a wanker. She’s an angel. He’s so conceited, so proud. They’re such phonies, those two. Poor thing, poor thing. I’d shoot him this minute, without batting an eyelid. I feel so sorry for her. He drives me bloody mad. She’s pretending. How can he be so naïve. What a cheek. She’s such an intelligent woman. He disgusts me. He really tickles me.”

  KENYON

  In the earliest hour, Kenyon Saint Claire walks the length of Washington Square, heading back, the newspaper tucked under one arm. Daylight hasn’t quite stretched above the buildings yet, all the streets a smoky purple, most everyone still indoors. At the corner of West 4th and Broadway a crisp morning wind confronts him, the end of summer inside it. Somehow the sidewalk here is blanketed in small yellow leaves by the thousands. Honey locust, always the first trees to go. There’s a pale swirl at his ankles with every step.

  BIG QUIZ SHOWS FIXED, CONTESTANTS CLAIM

  Stock-still at the newsstand on Washington Place, he’d read the whole thing through, turning the pages to the harsh light of the vendor’s bulb.

  … With the opening of the investigation by Mr. Hogan, C.B.S. was quick to scuttle “Dotto,” its most popular daytime show.

  Meanwhile, in the face of Sidney Winfeld’s claims of behind-the-scenes manipulation on N.B.C.’s own wildly successful quiz program, that network’s executives and the show’s production staff are flatly denying any foul play.

  “It’s a tired old story and it’s already been laid to rest. We’re disappointed to see such baseless accusations being made all over again,” said Raymond Greenmarch, of Mint & Greenmarch Productions, Inc., the show’s originating company.

  When asked to comment on whether Terrence Higgenfritz’s “Dotto” notebook corroborates Mr. Winfeld’s claims, Mr. Greenmarch said, “I don’t see how that has anything to do with our program. That is a different network, different show entirely. That is solely C.B.S.’s concern. Should it cast doubt upon the whole of television? I don’t think it should.” Would TV viewers agree with that perspective? Mr. Greenmarch: “I believe they would. Our viewership is very loyal and they have no reason whatsoever to doubt the genuineness of our programming.”

  To read these mistruths—to see Greenmarch’s words in plain newsprint, all the while hearing Greenmarch’s voice in your head—it’s much like those glaring studio lights again, those Klieg lights—Krieg lights, war lights!—burning down on you through the isolation booth glass. That flayed-open nakedness under the brutally concentrated wattage: aimed, fixed, and focused. How that made you shrink. How it made you move and gesture, sweating all the while, how it made you search out the answer, the fake answer in the liquefying heat of pretend, how it made you say the words, the fake words, exactly as you’d practiced.

  … Mr. Greenmarch added that his company and N.B.C. are working in full cooperation with the District Attorney’s office. …

  Now Kenyon climbs the steps to his door. He’ll show Ernestine the paper—he’s already told her the story was coming—and they’ll talk it over. He’ll leave for the studio soon, his morning appearance on the TODAY Show, but they still have time. They’ll talk it out.

  In the kitchen the coffee is hot, but she’s not there. He checks the terrace. No, she’s gone back to the bedroom. Newspaper in hand, he steers himself down the hall, hears the hissing of the pipes before he gets there. Her bathrobe is thrown across the foot of their bed. The bathroom door stands ajar, steam escaping.

  For a moment Kenyon stands just outside that door, still in his coat, newspaper in hand.

  I don’t know what to say except that I thought I won honestly.

  He doesn’t want to bother her, but she knows he went to get the paper. He’d told her this was coming.

  It’s silly and distressing to think that people don’t have more faith in quiz shows.
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  And here he is, newspaper in hand.

  He steps forward and taps at the door. “Knock knock.”

  From inside the spray she says, “Oh, you’re back.”

  “I’m back.”

  “And?... Is it out?”

  He nudges the door, pokes his head around, and finds her shape blurred behind frosted glass, glaucoma of color and steam in a field of pink tile. Her voice, too, is muffled behind the opaque screen.

  “Kenyon? Is it out?”

  “It’s out,” he says. And he stands looking at her, or trying to, and already in the humidor of the bathroom the newspaper seems to be wilting in his hand.

  “What does it say?” she says.

  He can make out the shape of her arms. She’s raising them to her head, running her hands through her hair. Then she seems to turn her head, to look at him through the distortion of glass, her own face a watery mask.

  And him? What must he look like through the glass?

  “Well,” he says. “It’s what we expected, pretty much.”

  “Is it big?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Pretty big. Front page. You can read it yourself. I’ll leave it in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, are you going?”

  “I’d better…” he says. “I’ll see you this afternoon. Love you.”

  And before she can answer, he’s moving through the bedroom toward the hall and then, remembering, turning just long enough to whip a tie from the rack on the back of the closet door.

  Then he is going—he’s out of the house and down the steps and heading up the street, knotting his tie as he walks. He’ll have to shave at the studio. He’ll be early enough. Hopefully not too early. Hopefully they’ll let him in, somebody. He checks his watch. No, no, he’s far too early. It’s still barely daylight. Goodness, he’s out of sorts. What was he thinking, charging from the house like that? He thought they’d talk it through. He’d fully intended … Now he’s practically on the run, like a fugitive…