Ask the Right Question

by Michael Z. Lewin

  I nodded.

  “Well, I believe that was meant to represent the fertility treatments I underwent for her. A little mixed up but not without method, wouldn’t you say?”

  I didn’t say.

  “Welcome to the family, Mr. Samson. I know this is a lot to absorb all at once. You will need time to decide. I suggest this. I give you the check and drop charges. When you deposit the check we will assume you have accepted these terms and will return the films the police will give you when the charges are dropped?”

  “You would want no other guarantee?”

  He shrugged. “What guarantee can I have? A piece of paper signed by you does riot seal your mouth. Eloise says you are trustworthy. We will have to trust her judgment. Just what we failed to trust before.” He looked at her tenderly. I looked too and her expression seemed not to have changed from fatigued placidity.

  “I’ve made some commitments—it may take a little time to get out of them.”

  “Mr. Samson, a beggar cannot choose. I am begging you to spare us the social upset of a scandal. I cannot force you to keep silence. Avoidance of scandal is worth a good deal to us. But nobody cares fifty thousand dollars’ worth about us, except us.”

  “It’s not a matter of the money.”

  “Then all I can say is that I would appreciate your making up your mind and dispatching this business promptly.”

  “May I speak to Eloise alone?”

  “Of course.” He turned on his heel and left the room. Eloise, my client, my pale frail client. Former client. “Did you really get put in jail?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I appreciated her sympathy.

  “I didn’t expect you to do that.” Her sympathy wasn’t sympathy. It was a degree of revulsion. It hurt me. I do not consider myself sordid.

  “You’re not responsible for what I did or do. And if I hadn’t, you would never have been treated to this explanation, you mustn’t forget that.”

  “I won’t. I’m sorry.” We sat in silence.

  Finally I said, “What about all this? Are you satisfied?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No other information you want?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “The other side of the coin, would you object if I went on a little longer? Object not as a client but as a person.” She didn’t accept the compromise.

  “Yes,” she said hotly. “Why should you go on? It’s not your family, it’s mine. I’m happy now, happier than I’ve been in … ever!” Then she added gratuitously, one might say childishly, “If it had been me, it would have been more like five thousand dollars. You better take it before he changes his mind.”

  “Perhaps you will be a better businessman than your father.”

  “Maybe I will.” She turned away. I left before she turned back. I was afraid of seeing dollar signs in her eyes.

  I went to the hall door and opened it for Leander Crystal. He was waiting for me, sitting on the stairs to the second floor. He smiled self-consciously and got up. It was the first time he had smiled at me. I liked it; it was human.

  We went back into the living room where Eloise still sat. From his pocket he pulled a small piece of paper with blue lines on it.

  “I said I’d give you this,” he said, and the voice was noticeably tired.

  I put it in my pocket without reading the numbers. I didn’t want to look crass.

  “If there are any more questions I can answer for you, things you feel you must know—”

  He was interrupted as the door across the living room flew open and Fleur Crystal appeared. The door through which she had disappeared in fear the last time I’d seen her.

  No fear now. She balanced herself carefully, holding onto the door frame with one hand and surrounding a little glass with the other. The glass’s contents might have been iced tea, but I didn’t see any lemon.

  “So there your are,” she screamed. “You mother-fucking bastard!” She laughed. “Did he tell you? Did he tell you?”

  Crystal went to her and tried to lead her back to wherever she had come from. She was not docile, but with his hands on her she did not quite resist.

  “Please,” she whined, “let me tell him!” Crystal shot a look at me and I recognized my cue. I headed for the living-room door and beyond it, the front door. I mastered the intricacies, but not before hearing another piercing screech. I left with the words “artificial insemination” ringing in my ears.

  I was still glad Crystal had smiled at me. I understand him better now, and I knew he was tired, very tired.

  So was I. I went home.

  But I couldn’t stay inside. It was a decent day. I carefully took my jacket off and without looking in the pocket put it at the very back of my closet. I took out some sneakers and spent the afternoon shooting baskets in Brookside Park. Later I concentrated very hard on not thinking about Crystals. I succeeded pretty well until about 2 a.m. One of those thinking nights, not a sleeping night. Everything I had suppressed came back at once, deep dark ramblings. They were fierce. They gave me an ache in my stomach, which, though not hunger, I tried to quieten with milk. I didn’t have enough in. It took me quite a while to find an all-night grocery. Then I drank too much.

  When I got back I threw up. Then I slept like a baby. Till one in the afternoon. Why not? I was rich. Wasn’t I?

  24

  By the time I pulled myself out of bed, I’d finally figured out why I wasn’t running full speed to deposit the check.

  The basic problem, the thing which kept me from walking the block and a half to the bank, was the transgression on, the usurpation of, my professional pride.

  I try to avoid false pride in life. But I’ve spent some seven years establishing what I do and how I go about it. It may be something akin to scratching and pecking, but if I didn’t like what I do I wouldn’t do it. So when someone steps in and does it for me—and I haven’t asked—it doesn’t go down like a chocolate malt.

  There were other things I wasn’t entirely satisfied about. Little inconsistencies—or possibilities of inconsistencies. The temptation to accept something as true because someone has told it to you is an occupational hazard in my line. To do something properly you’ve got to cross-check facts and try to see how implications play off against each other.

  I missed the three o’clock closing for the bank

  At 3:28 I got a call from Miller at Police HQ. He had just come on duty.

  “What’s your trick?” he wanted to know. “That poky lawyer was here, dropped all charges and asked that all the film you shot be given to you.”

  “It was just a little misunderstanding. The night watchman mistook me for the night maid and didn’t realize his mistake until after he jumped on my back. Then to make it look good he knocked me out and took lots of pictures.”

  “The negatives and a set of prints are here when you want them. Sorry, I can’t chat. I’m on the verge of arresting a notorious trespasser.” He hung up.

  It was a cool but pleasant day. I took a walk to the police station.

  On the way I passed three banks, all closed.

  Miller played it cute all the way.

  He left the film and prints for “Donald Duck.” I was lucky—my boy Numb Nuts was on the desk and he pulled out the envelope as soon as he saw me.

  But I had no time to stop and marvel.

  The phone was ringing when I got back to the office. It wasn’t Eloise. It wasn’t anybody. It was a lawyer I work for asking if I would serve some papers for him. Without thinking I said no, that I was on a case. A concept which interested me, because it meant I was employing myself.

  I read for a while. Around dinner time I decided that I couldn’t go on with this “I will go on; I won’t go on; I will cash the check, I won’t cash the check” stuff.

  As a bold stroke. I decided to let the whole matter stew for a few days.

  During dinner, canned lamb stew, I reflected on the fact that I now had two sets of prints from the film, and
I considered cashing the check, sending the negatives and one set of prints to Crystal, and working from the other set of prints anyway.

  I rejected that as unprofessional.

  After dinner I started looking over the pictures again.

  Twelve hundred and forty-one of them. That didn’t last long. It was just the sort of thing I hadn’t done with the medical records. But what expert could I send these to?

  Then I thought about the medical records and checking notes. I wondered who Fleur’s doctor was, the new one after Fishman was dumped. I wondered if I should ask Crystal. He’d said I could.

  But I decided definitely not to ask him. I either bought his story or I didn’t.

  I mailed a letter to New York City, asking for a copy of Eloise Crystal’s birth certificate.

  I considered asking my woman what I should do. I mean, what’s a woman for? I went to see her on the way to mail a letter to New York. But it would have taken a lot of explaining to bring her up to date. I couldn’t quite bring myself to force the explanation on her. What with the other things we had to talk about. Thanks to a great act of will, while I was with her the whole thing slipped my mind.

  25

  At eleven the next morning I was in the library. Looking up artificial insemination and sterility.

  Britannica: “This is insemination of a breeding female by other than natural mating.… It was used long ago by the Arabs in horse breeding. Fowls, rabbits, dogs and other animals have been bred by artificial insemination. Beginning in 1940 the practice, became widespread in the United States particularly with dairy cattle.… The semen may be collected in a number of ways.… In most stud bulls, the artificial vagina method … is preferred.”

  And on sterility: “Involuntary failure to reproduce (infertility) occurs in 10 percent of married couples in most populations that have been studied.…

  “‘He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord.’ (Deuteronomy 23:1).…

  “Correction of female infertility is more successful [than correction of male infertility]; mechanical problems can sometimes be corrected surgically and it is even possible to induce ovulation by giving human gonadotrophin.…”

  Americana: “… A wife may be inseminated artifically with semen from a donor selected by a physician. This may be done when the husband is sterile or has an inheritable defect that he does not want to transmit to his children. The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1962 approved artificial insemination for couples with ‘intelligence and emotional stability’ and urged uniform state laws to protect the legal rights of ‘test tube babies.’”

  Stedman’s Medical Dictionary: Nothing.

  Collier’s Encyclopedia: “Since about 1920 artificial insemination has been resorted to in many cases of sterility.… The practice is not universally adoptable because of emotional and religious objections.”

  Which proved? The thing could have taken place exactly as advertised with regard to artificial insemination. I had hoped to find that nobody thought of artificial insemination for people till about 1956. Only thirty-five years out.

  I wanted to prove I was being lied to. Because I don’t like being lied to. Which would be incentive enough to go on with it all. Despite the respect I’d acquired for Leander Crystal I felt he must be lying to me. Basically because I didn’t think what I knew was worth fifty thousand dollars, not even in scandal. I would have been more like Eloise. I might have settled for five thousand dollars.

  What I would do was go on long enough to prove whether or not I had been lied to.

  I would explore no new avenues. Go over notes, OK. Make visits to people I was already committed to visit. Check the records I had solicited from Miller and tell him what I had. Read my mail. And maybe have a look over the pictures I got from Crystal.

  And if nothing came up, in a week, I would deposit my check and make a withdrawal and …

  I went off for lunch at Joe’s. In the middle of my second burger I nearly drowned in an urge to run to my nearest bank. What matter that it was Saturday. I would bang on the door until someone let me in. When I was going down for the third time, I ordered lemon meringue pie, chocolate ice cream, black coffee and decided to give it three days, max.

  26

  Mrs. Forebush was her old self. I wondered just what she did in that Fiftieth Street house. Whether she ever went out, how she got her food. The nearest grocery store is at Forty-ninth and Washington Boulevard, three goodly blocks away. On second thought, I figured she managed.

  When we were seated in Indianapolis’ Victorian Room I gave her the story as Crystal gave it to me. I had thought about trying to bowdlerize it, but decided that if fifty thousand dollars bought my silence, Eloise’s welfare bought hers. I didn’t mention Crystal’s offer of cash.

  When I finished she said, “Fleur never was what you call stable. I guess it all makes sense now.” She was examining me with great care to see whether that was what I thought.

  “I guess it does.” I said and tried to examine her back.

  “But I don’t see the problem. The child was born in wedlock, and was Fleur’s child, that is all that was required.”

  “It’s maybe it was having told a lie without having any way to confess to it in the end,” I said piously. “One thing that has happened to me, I have developed a considerable personal respect for Leander Crystal. He’s an unusual man.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “He owns this house, you know. He lets me live here rent free and gives me sort of a pension.”

  “You told me. When did you move in?”

  “Almost as soon as poor Estes died. Fleur and Mr. Crystal went to New York two days after the funeral and he made arrangements for Red Bull Homes to have me moved here two days after that.”

  “Do you know when he bought the house?” I bought a house once; it was a lot of trouble.

  “No, but it had been lived in. I think he kicked the tenants out or at least they left in a hurry. They left a lot of food and china and things like that. Woolworth-type china.” She looked appraisingly at her own china display case. “See that flowered bowl. It’s Minton, you know.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “And the food. Some of it was funny vegetables. Artichoke hearts and endives. But what can you expect from a foreigner? She was a foreigner, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. How do you?” She looked at me sharply as if my words carried some sort of criticism, which I guess they did. Real Indiana people are not friendly to the notion of foreigners. People from the bordering states—Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky—might be relatives. But other states they hesitate over. Foreign countries are just another world when they are convinced that their Indiana world is the best one.

  I once traveled through Indiana with a man from England who was “doing” the whole country, collecting Americana. We stopped briefly at the old James Whitcomb Riley house on Route 40.

  Everybody who goes to school in Indiana learns about James Whitcomb Riley.

  We thought to buy postcards and when we took them to the cashier the lady listened to my friend and said, “You a furriner?”

  He did a double take and nodded. “Guess I better report you to the police,” she said.

  We both did double takes and after an hour-long ten seconds she gave a half smile and said, “I was just kidding. Hope you have a real nice trip.” The trip did get nicer.

  With Mrs. Forebush I had let my prejudice against Indiana’s prejudice get the better of me.

  “I know she was a foreigner, young man. I ought to know. There was an Immigration Department man who came here every June for five years asking about her. Started in 1955. He said she hadn’t registered in January like aliens have to. And that this was her last known address. I remember him because each year the same man came around asking the same questions. Each year it was as if I’d never spoken a word to him the year before. Sometimes I wonder what the written word is f
or. Couldn’t they have made a note on her card or something? Then one year he stopped coming. I guess they found her.”

  “I guess.”

  “But Mr. Crystal has been very good to me.” She said it in that way which indicates that a conversation is nearly over.

  “The only other thing I wanted to ask you, Mrs. Forebush, it may be on the personal side, but I wondered. When I talked to Fleur she said that you’d had hopes of marrying Estes Graham someday.”

  She grew a bit sad, but no longer bored. “I really don’t know that I should talk about this to you. My relationship with Estes Graham was an unspoken thing, a lovely thing. I guess I did expect to marry him at one point. I would have begun to think of it about the beginning of the war, three years after Irene died. He was a man consumed with his own energy, a vibrant man, even then, and he was seventy years old when the war began. But when the children began to die he did too. First Windom in 1942, then Slugger—that was the second son, Sellman—when he died in 1944 we both just knew that he would never marry again. Then when Little Joshua went it just crumpled him up. One day he called me in and told me he had put a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stocks in my name so that if he died, I would be taken care of.

  “A few weeks later he had a stroke. I think he expected to die, not too long after that. Maybe if the youngest child, Fleur, had been a boy things would have been different.

  “In 1946 Mr. Crystal came to Indianapolis to go to Butler and get his college degree on the GI Bill. And as soon as he arrived he called on Estes. He was a friend of Joshie’s in the war, you know. And when Mr. Crystal started showing some interest in Fleur, well … I think Leander Crystal is responsible for Estes’ living another six or eight years.

  “I don’t know many young people. And there will never be another Estes Graham. But the only one I know who ever came close was Leander Crystal.” She paused for a moment. And looked at me with a wetness in her eyes. “I always sort of thought of Eloise specially. As if she were the child I might once have had.”