(1961) The Chapman Report

by Irving Wallace

  An unfamiliar voice, male, answered the phone, and Sarah asked for Mr. Tauber.

  “Just a moment, please,” said the voice.

  She sat on the edge of the hassock, in the study, telephone in her lap, rocking to and fro and wanting to wail. Her temples throbbed, and the back of her neck was agonizing.

  Minutes before, she had pleaded the powder room and escaped Grace, who had moved on to Sam and the Palmers, and stumbled into the dining room where Geoffrey was showing off the ham baked in bread to a professorial guest. She had whispered to Geoffrey that she must make a phone call in privacy, and he had cheerfully placed an arm around her bare back and led her to the study. Inside, he had nuzzled her neck with his mustache and told her that no one would disturb her if she pressed the lock from the inside. He had left, reluctantly, and she had shut the door and pressed the lock.

  “Yes?” It was Fred’s busy voice.

  “This is Sarah.”

  “Look, I’m tied up right now.”

  “They can wait. You listen to me.”

  Her tone of voice had given him pause. “All right,” he said slowly. “What is it?”

  “I know all about your damn television series, and Mexico, and going tomorrow. I’m at a party, and I overheard it. I just want you to tell me if it’s true. I just want to know it’s true. I want to hear it from you.”

  “Look, let me explain-one second-” He had apparently partially covered the mouthpiece with his hand. She tried to visualize what he was doing. He was explaining to the others that it was something private. They could stay put, and he would let out the extension cord and carry the phone into the bathroom behind the living room.

  He came on again. “All right, now I can talk. Look, Sarah, I didn’t dare call you-I was going to write you a note after tonight’s meeting-“

  “A note?” She knew that her voice was shrill and didn’t give a damn.

  “A letter, explaining-“

  “You knew this yesterday when I called. Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “There were people in the room.”

  “Your wife, you mean.”

  “All right. Yes.”

  “You should hear what I heard. It’s all over the place. She knows about us. She got you this series to get you out of town.”

  “Who told you that crap?” His voice was furious. “Nobody’s spending fifty thou on a pilot to get me out of town, not even my wife.”

  “Are you going to tell me she isn’t putting up a dime?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the sort. She’s one of the backers, of course. She’s a businesswoman. She knows what I can do. But there are others, too.”

  “She wants to break us up, and you’re letting her-for a lousy job.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with her. Sarah, be reasonable. I’m a man. I’m a director. I’ve got work to do. This is something that’s come up that I like, and I want to do it.”

  She rocked on the hassock, blind with hurt, wanting only to lash out, to hurt him. “All the time, your arty talk, looking down your nose at television, and the first piece of junk that comes along-“

  “Sarah, what’s got into you? I can’t believe this is you. Knowing me as you do, do you think I’d do anything I didn’t believe in? You’re just upset because you heard about it this way.” “I am, I want to cry.”

  “I told you I was going to explain. I was planning to leave time for it tonight. You mean a good deal to me. You’re the most important thing in my life-except for my work, I’m a man-I’ve got to work-but you’re everything else-“

  She loved him so, that broken face, that tender touch and voice, her life, her entire life.

  “… and I’ll be back in six weeks,” he went on. “We’ll be together as before.” “I can’t live six weeks without you. I’ll die.” “I’ll be back, Sarah.”

  “And after that? More trips? No-no, Fred, listen-we can’t go on like this. I’ve made up my mind. Nothing will change it.” Overlapping her words was the memory: she had made up her mind during the interview, or right after, discussing her life with Sam, then Fred, and bringing everything into clear focus. What had de—

  terred her from acting at once had been the children, the children and the wave of scandal that would wash her away from relatives and friends. But then she had determined to live her life as it must be lived. Eventually, she would have the children again. Eventually, she would regain the regard of relatives and friends. People remarried every day, and it was acceptable. Sam had the store and the twenty-one-inch screen. To hell with Sam. Because he was dead, must she also be entombed? “I’m going with you,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you at the airport in the morning.”

  “Sarah, you can’t mean that? You’re not making sense.”

  “I’m making sense-for the first time, yes-I’ll meet you.”

  “Your family-“

  “I don’t care. You’re my family.”

  “Sarah, I’m going down with a crew. There’ll be no women. I couldn’t-“

  “I’ll take the next flight, then. Where will you be?”

  “All over the place. I’ll be busy every minute.”

  “Where will you be? There’s got to be one place.”

  “The Reforma Hotel,” he said unhappily. “I wish you wouldn’t, Sarah. I wish you’d sleep on it, think about it.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t keep you from coming to Mexico, of course not-“

  “You can keep me from coming. Tell me you don’t love me. Tell me you don’t want me, ever again. Tell me that.”

  There was a momentary silence. “I can’t tell you that, but-“

  Someone was knocking at the study door.

  “I have to hang up now,” she whispered. “I’ll see you.”

  She returned the receiver to the cradle, set down the telephone, straightened the scarves so that they covered her tights, and opened the study door. It was Geoffrey holding up two drinks.

  “Scotch or bourbon? Your choice of weapons.”

  “Bourbon.”

  He extended the glass in his left hand, and she accepted the drink.

  “I thought you needed it,” he said.

  She smiled wanly. “Mata Hari doesn’t,” she said. “But I do.”

  The first guests had begun to depart at twelve-thirty, and by twelve forty-five Kathleen and Paul had taken their leave of the Harnishes and were headed toward Kathleen’s house a dozen blocks away.

  Kathleen had enjoyed the dinner, and so had Paul, both fully aware that this had been their formal social debut as partners. Now, remembering incidents at the party, they laughed, and Paul hardest at the memory of the Palmers so drunk, enacting an impromptu playlet of Dr. Chapman interviewing Lucrezia Borgia on her sexual behavior. Kathleen shook her head. “Imagine, if they had known you were I one of the interviewers.”

  “She would have gone ahead anyway. She was tanked.” Kathleen looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You weren’t offended?”

  Paul chuckled. “I wish I’d written that skit… . Hell, no. We’re fair game.”

  Turning into Kathleen’s street, they both fell silent as if by mutual consent. The thinnest slice of moon hung high above the Street lights, circled by dots that were stars sparkling on and off. On either side of the thoroughfare, casting weird silhouettes on the street, the rows of eucalyptus bowed respectfully, like ancient retainers. In the unstirred air remained the faint exotic odor of gardenia bushes.

  Paul bent the car into Kathleen’s driveway, and in a moment they were before her entrance. He turned the ignition key, and the motor test its voice to the cadence of the crickets in the grass.

  Kathleen pulled her mink stole about her, then folded her hands in her lap, and turned her face to Paul. “I’d ask you in, but it’s so late.”

  Paul’s eyes watched her face. “What did our host say? Romney’s portrait-the most beautiful face ever put to canvas? Someday, we’ll see, and then I’ll show you-not half as beautiful
as you, Kathleen.”

  “Don’t say things like that, Paul, unless you mean them.”

  “I love you, Kathleen.”

  “Paul … I-“

  She closed her eyes, red lips trembling, and he embraced her and kissed her. After a while, as he kissed her cheeks, and eyes and forehead, and hair, and found her mouth again, she took his hand in her own and brought it to her chest, and then pressed it down beneath the veiled bodice and inside her brassiere. Gently, he caressed the soft breast, then withdrew his hand and touched her hot cheek with his fingertips.

  “Kathleen, I love you. I want to marry you.”

  Her eyes were open, and, suddenly, she sat up, staring wordlessly at him. Her eyes were odd, almost frightened.

  “I’m supposed to leave Sunday,” he said, “but Dr. Chapman owes us vacations. I could ask to stay. We could fly to Las Vegas-or a church, if you like-“

  “No,” she said.

  Paul did not conceal his astonishment. “I thought-I’m trying to say I love you, all the way-and I thought-it seemed to me that you felt-“

  “I do, I do-but not now.”

  “I don’t understand you, Kathleen.”

  Her head was bowed. She did not speak.

  “Kathleen, I’ve been a bachelor a long time. I knew that when it finally happened, it would be right. I knew it-and I know it now. this moment here. You’re right, and I’m right, and I think we should be together for the rest of our lives.”

  She looked up. There was a secret misery in her face that he had not seen before. “I can’t now-I want you, but not now-and don’t ask me to explain.”

  “But this makes no sense. Is it your first husband?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it, Kathleen? This is the most important moment in our lives. There can be no secrets. Tell me what’s bothering you, just tell me-get it over with-and then we can have each other.”

  “I’m too tired, Paul.” She opened the car door, and before he could speak again, she was standing in the driveway. “I can’t answer you, because I can’t. Don’t ask for logic. I’m too tired now to talk-I just too tired.”

  She turned and went swiftly to the door. She inserted the key, and hurried inside, and closed it against him, not once looking back.

  Paul sat behind the wheel, unmoving, for many minutes. He tried to understand, but without information, without logic, without communication, there was no understanding. The incredibility of the situation overwhelmed him. For most of thirty-five years, he had sought this woman, this delicate, ethereal Romney portrait, and after the endless odyssey, the trial by loneliness, he had found her. Yet, he had found no one, no person, but an image that had neither substance nor reality. He could not possess, he realized, what did not exist. The weight of the disappointment crushed him. He turned the ignition key and started the car. Sick at heart.

  sick beyond breathing, he drove through The Briars toward the refuge of the only reality that held back no secrets, offered no disappointments-the refuge of numbers, cold and clear, even welcoming warm in their calm and orderly array.

  HAVING COMPLETED a short letter to Gerold Triplett in San Francisco, and a long letter to her mother in Beloit, Wisconsin, Benita Selby sat at her desk in the corridor on the second story of The Briars’ Women’s Association and tried to determine what she should undertake next. Since it was too early to clean out the desk, she decided that she would make the final California entry in her journal.

  With some difficulty, Benita worked the journal out of her handbag, cracked the booklet open on the desk, peeled the pages slowly, fleetingly admiring some gem of perception, until she reached the first of the few remaining blank pages.

  Taking pen in hand, she began to write under Saturday, June 6: “Well, toot the trumpets, the Last Day of Judgment is here. Because of several cancellations this past week, as expected, today will be an abbreviated day of interviewing. Dr. Chapman, Horace, and Paul are scheduled for four interviews apiece, from ten-thirty this morning until five-thirty this afternoon. That will conclude 187 interviews of married women in The Briars and 3,294 nation-wide in fourteen months. That will end the married female survey, as far as field work is concerned. Cass is still ill. He was miserable all yesterday, and this morning early he drove off to see his doctor again. Dr. Chapman is working in the conference room, preparing his notes for tomorrow morning’s network television program, Borden Bush’s The Hot Seat,’ in which he is the guest of honor who discusses his

  work with three experts in his line. The network says Trendex expects the largest morning audience this year. Dr. Chapman said to me, ‘It is very important, Benita,’ and he is giving it his all. The rest of us are free tomorrow to pack and do as we please, until the streamliner leaves Union Station at seven-fifteen in the evening. I will buy presents for Mom, Mrs. McKassen, who’s been so helpful, and the girls at school …”

  The sound of leather heels on the corridor floor stayed Benita’s penmanship, and she looked up to see Paul Radford approaching. He appeared overheated, carrying his suit coat on his arm, and unusually absorbed. Hastily, Benita” closed her journal and pushed it into the handbag.

  “Good morning, Paul. Hot, isn’t it?”

  “Murder.”

  “But at least not humid and sticky, like the East. I’d love to live here, someday-or maybe north, like San Francisco-wouldn’t you?”

  “I haven’t thought about it. Am I the first here?”

  “Dr. Chapman’s in the conference room. Cass went to his doctor. and-oh, Paul, someone’s waiting for you.”

  He had started for the conference room, but now he came back to the desk, surprised.

  “For me? Who?”

  “Mrs. Ballard.”

  He threw his coat over the other arm. “Where is she?”

  “I put her in your office. You won’t be using it for another half hour.”

  Paul moved toward his office. “Has she been here very long?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “See that we’re not disturbed.”

  He continued into the office. He expected to find her in the chair, but she was leaning against the wall, legs crossed and arms folded over her bosom, smoke curling from the cigarette between the fingers of one slender hand. She was staring at the side of the brown folding screen when he entered, and she greeted his entrance without a smile.

  “Kathleen-“

  “Good morning, Paul.”

  She wore a sleeveless magenta silk dress, and for that moment of elegant loveliness, he forgave her for upending a life of tidiness and making it one of chaos and turmoil. Yet, though she was present before him of her own initiative, he could not forget her enigmatic elusiveness of the night before. He tried to arrest the curve of rising hope. Through the restless night and bleak dawn, he had almost made the adjustment to a future that must perforce continue lonely. He would not permit himself another cycle of optimism because he would not suffer another fall into solitude.

  “If I’d known you were coming here-” he said.

  “I called the motel. You were out.”

  “I was walking.”

  “Then I phoned Miss Selby and came over.”

  He indicated the chair, noticing that there were already two cigarette butts in the ceramic tray. “Why don’t you sit down, Kathleen?”

  She passed before him, eyes on the brown screen, and finally sat. “Why do you use a screen?”

  “Dr. Chapman worked without one in the beginning, during the adolescent study, but finally decided that face-to-face interviews were too inhibiting for the subject. He thinks it’s better this way.”

  “I don’t think so. Perhaps, if there had been no screen between us-” she hesitated-“it might have been easier.”

  “Wouldn’t you have been embarrassed?”

  “At first, yes. But when a person is looking at you, it’s-” She halted and drew twice on her cigarette.

  “It’s what, Kathleen?” he asked.

  She ra
ised her head toward him. “I’m trying to explain something to you, Paul-something terribly important-and I’m trying to lead into it gracefully.” She shrugged. “I think that’s impossible.”

  “Does it have to do with the way you reacted last night?”

  “Yes, entirely.”

  “By the time the sun came up this morning, I’d decided that you wanted me a little, but not enough, not enough to be forever. I’m extremely possessive, Kathleen. I think you may have guessed that. It would have to be forever.”

  “How does one ever know before? How can one be sure?”

  “When you’ve waited as long as I have, you’re sure.”

  “You’re being unrealistic, Paul. I’ve been married. Once, I wasn’t, and then I was. There’s a tremendous difference. Momentarily, you think someone is right, and you say forever, but afterward, forever becomes-what?-it becomes snoring, and bad breath in the morning, and diarrhea, and menstrual cramps, and fights over money, and sucking your teeth, and hair curlers, and the same tired one in

  bed, imperfect, saying the same words, reacting the same way-forever. That’s forever, too.”