(1961) The Chapman Report

by Irving Wallace

  But there was a price for these pleasures, these sanctioned intimacies, and it came due too often on the double bed.

  His sexual needs, Horace had frankly admitted to Paul, were always less than average, as far as he could guess in those less literate pre-Chapman days. In the beginning, Naomi’s tireless appetite thrilled him, made him swell with masculinity. But after a few months, there was no settling down, and her ceaseless passion became not a pleasure but a duty that mocked him. Almost every night, she expected him, and what had been love soon became labor of love. The shadow of the dread double bed darkened each born day. Only the emergence of Dr. Chapman saved him. Dr. Chapman became a rescue as effective as any ever staged by the cavalry or Marines. When Dr. Chapman took him on as a spare-time aide and demanded night work, Horace co-operated in the secret project with a fervor that Chapman mistook for scientific enthusiasm. As a result, there was friction with Naomi, but soon enough she was made to understand that twice weekly would have to be their norm. Eventually, her agitation decreased, and toward the end, it disappeared altogether. Not until the terrible denouement in the back yard and the scene afterward, did Horace realize to what degree she had reorganized her life, and at what cost she had made the adjustment.

  He severed the rotten thing from his life in one clean stroke. The house was vacated; the furniture sold. Every memento, every gift, every photograph save one (a softly diffused portrait of her in profile, taken in the second year of their marriage), was liquidated. Even the single last link of communication, the alimony payment, Horace reduced to the impersonal. On the third day of ever}’ month, an attorney in Reardon, Wisconsin, mailed the check to an attorney in Burbank, California.

  During the busy, arduous months of the bachelor survey, Horace managed to dedicate himself to the work and succeeded fairly well in erasing Naomi from his mind. But with the undertaking of the married female survey, this often became more difficult-for, too frequently, a voice behind the screen reminded him of her voice, and more and more often the reply to his extramarital-activities question sounded intentionally sadistic as it came from behind the screen.

  Horace dreaded The Briars from the moment the trip had been arranged. He had not minded being in Los Angeles during the male survey, but a sampling of married females made the proximity to Naomi unbearable. Perhaps, as he thought all along, he feared that he would see her again; or perhaps he feared that he would not. He could not define the true reason for his apprehension, but it painfully existed all the same. And then, Monday night, he had seen her. He had gone to the movie in Westwood and found a place three seats in from the center aisle. About twenty minutes into the main feature, a young woman came up the aisle, and she was Naomi. She did not see him and continued toward the lobby, but he saw her, and was deeply shaken, and later got extremely drunk.

  In discussing Naomi’s interview with Paul, Horace had been disturbed by the inevitability (at least in his own mind) of Naomi’s presence among the two hundred volunteers. It was, he thought, as if some bad fate had attached itself to him and would not let him go. Paul, however, had regarded her appearance as less unusual. After all, more than three thousand women had been interviewed. The percentages were against it, as Paul had predicted earlier on the train, yet it was not so surprising that one of them might prove to be someone a member of the team

  would know, especially since she dwelled in the small community being sampled. Paul reminded Horace of the earlier incident in Indianapolis when he himself realized that he was questioning a married woman whom he had dated several times in school. Those things happened; they just happened. They were not allowed to happen too often in art, banished as straining credulity, but in real life they happened all too often. No, it was not the coincidence of it that had bothered Paul, but, as he told Horace, the odd fact that Naomi would offer herself to a survey of which her husband was a part. Surely she knew. Horace thought not. In the latter period of their marriage, she had not known for whom he was working spare time, since Dr. Chapman’s second survey had not yet been officially announced. As to reading about his new profession afterward, that too was unlikely. Even when she read books, and those only early in their marriage, she had never had the patience for newspapers or magazines. It was hardly likely that she had changed. And if, occasionally, she glanced at a newspaper-well, Paul knew very well that the stories usually went on and on about Dr. Chapman but rarely mentioned even the names of the members of the team. Furthermore, it was unlikely that Naomi had ever revealed her married name to anyone in The Briars, so the other women would have no way of relating the Van Duesen on the Chapman team to her. No, as far as Horace could see, that part of it made sense.

  Thus they had gone on talking until three in the morning, Horace doing most of the talking and Paul trying to placate and reassure him.

  Remembering all of this now, in the early sun, as he drove the Ford through Bel-Air, Paul tried to discover in what way the memory of it still troubled him. His natural sorrow for a good friend, of course. But that was too simple. There was something more selfish. It was, he supposed, that all of this related directly to his bachelor state. It was possibly one more brick on the wall slowly rising that kept him from a woman, any woman, he might marry. On each brick, there was a digit, and one day this digit barrier would be too high and formidable to surmount. Naomi had been but a reflection of hundreds of other women whose intimate lives he had probed-the nameless numerals-telling him in the language of science that all there was to love and marriage was x number of means of petting, x number of positions, x number of orgasms. And perhaps, honestly, this was all that there was to it. If so, it made of

  marriage a bleak resort. Rather than that, he would prefer monastic isolation. Or was there more? What of the good, solid unions he had known, and the romantic fancies he had so long held? What of tenderness and things in common and procreation? Get thee behind me, Victor Jonas.

  Paul swung his convertible to the extreme right of the narrow road, to allow an oncoming delivery truck to pass, and then he looked at Horace again. He felt a swell of compassion for his battered friend.

  “Feeling any better, Horace?”

  Horace removed his stare from the glove compartment and blinked at Paul. “I’ll be all right. … It was damn kind of you to let me bend your ear the way I did last night.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “You know what I was just sitting here thinking? I was thinking why I really got so plastered Monday night.”

  “Well, you saw her-“

  “Yes, but it wasn’t just seeing her. What happened was I saw her for an instant-it was the first time since that night-and that instant I knew I loved her as much as ever. It just grabbed me by the gut. It was awful, because I’m a reserved person, and there was no control in this. There she was, a dirty thing, and I loved her. After she was gone, I didn’t care about what I did or said. I just wanted to see her. I didn’t tell you this last night-I was ashamed-but I jumped out of my seat and went up the aisle after her like a crazy goon. She wasn’t in the lobby or outside, and I went up and down the block, and other blocks, searching for her. I didn’t find her. I decided to look her up in the telephone book and go see her. She was in the telephone book, all right. Then I was scared-there was a whole stranger I didn’t know much about, the one on the grass with that kid-and I decided I’d better have a drink first. There were no bars around that part of Westwood. I asked someone in the street, and he said it was because of the university. Did you know that? So I drove to another section near some place called Pico and found a place and got stiff. I was in no condition to see her, and I was lucky even to get back to the motel. But I can’t get it out of my mind, how I behaved. I thought she was done and dead, and I had it tucked away in an old compartment, forgotten, and then the resurrection, and what’s left of me is in little pieces. I must be out of my mind. How can you love a whore?”

  Paul kept his eyes on the road. “She’s not a whore,” he said slowly. “She’s a w
oman 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.”