Anyone Got a Match?

by Max Shulman

  In the control booth Jefferson Tatum, watching Dr. Silenko on the monitors, cackled gleefully, slapped his knee, and turned with a smirk to Dr. Andrew McAndrews. “How do you like them apples, Doc?” he crowed triumphantly.

  McAndrews, unruffled, smiled. “Very old apples, Mr. Tatum. Very old and very expected.”

  Clendennon tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “She’s making quite a case, Dr. McAndrews. Not that I’m worried or anything, because I feel sure you’ve got all the answers.”

  “Bullshit!” said Jefferson Tatum.

  “Well put,” agreed McAndrews. “Mr. Tatum is correct: I don’t have all the answers. And that’s what keeps me ahead of the game: I know what I don’t know.”

  “But you do know more than Dr. Silenko?” asked Clendennon nervously.

  “Rest easy,” said McAndrews soothingly to Clendennon.

  “Yeah, rest easy,” echoed Jefferson. “And hush up. I want to hear what the pretty lady doctor’s saying now.”

  All fell silent and watched the monitors. Dr. Silenko had moved to another table and was showing cages of mice dying of bladder cancer induced by butter coloring. As though to television born, she kept the tempo of her presentation rapid and crackling. While the prop men switched exhibits, she moved from table to table, demonstrating the horrendous results of additives, pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones. Occasionally she turned away from her exhibits, sat on a stool, faced the camera, and delivered a statement that trembled with tightly capped passion. Other times she was light and dry. Once, for three fulminating minutes, she relinquished the camera to Dr. Levine, who attacked water as nobody had attacked it since Noah.

  Ira Shapian stayed in the background until it was time to give the doctor the one-minute signal. With an imperceptible nod, she acknowledged Ira’s sign. She started her peroration—unhurried, unfrantic. Nor did she become overhasty when Ira flashed her the half-minute warning. When he made the throat-cutting gesture, indicating she was off the air, her argument was completed, her points were well and forcefully made, each one.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Ira. “Fine job. Now I’m going to get Dr. McAndrews to do his rebuttal. He’ll work in that set over there, the one with the drape. Would you be good enough to stand close by? As soon as McAndrews is finished, I want to put the two of you together for a quick interview.”

  “Right,” said Dr. Silenko.

  Ira rushed to the control booth. “Sonny,” said Jefferson, fervently grasping Ira’s hand, “I want to tell you—”

  “Tell me later,” said Ira, yanking loose. “Dr. McAndrews, come with me please.”

  He escorted McAndrews to a set containing a drape and three stools. “Want a lectern?” asked Ira. “Got notes?”

  “No notes,” replied McAndrews.

  “Fine. You sit on this stool. I’ll sit on that one. There’s a station break on now. Then comes a commercial, and then I’ll introduce you. When you’ve finished your rebuttal, there’s another commercial. After that, I’m going to wind up the show by putting Dr. Silenko beside you and pitching a question or two.”

  “Good … And may I say, Mr. Shapian, I’ll never know how you managed to turn this chaos into such a smooth operation.”

  “It’s called television, Doctor, but thanks.”

  Ira felt a tugging at his sleeve. “Excuse me, Ira,” said Clendennon, his face mild, his eyes burning with tightly held excitement. “I know you’re on after the next commercial, but could I see you for just a few seconds?”

  “This better be damn important,” said Ira, following Clendenon to a quiet corner.

  “Honey lover, would I bug you at a time like this if it wasn’t?”

  “So?”

  “Take a look at McAndrews sitting there.”

  “So?”

  “See how his eyes dart around? See how he soaks up everything? See how fascinated he is?”

  “So?”

  “He’s been like that all day. Ira baby, my radar tells me—and it’s never wrong—that this distinguished Nobel Prize winner, this kindly, craggy, reassuring, heart-warming, gentle—”

  “The point, Clendennon! For God’s love, the point!”

  “Don’t you see it, Ira baby? This eminent physician, loaded with years and honors, is stage-struck! He is hooked by show business! And look how great he looks in makeup!”

  “Aha! Now I dig. We do a new hospital series. We find some surly kid with hairy arms to play the intern, and hire McAndrews to play the wise old chief of surgery.”

  “We will send Ben Casey and Kildare to the showers!” cried Clendennon. “This man makes Sam Jaffe and Ray Massey look like a pair of cutpurses!”

  “Clendennon, you’ve done it again!”

  “So you’ll con him into it, huh, Ira baby?”

  “Depend on it.”

  “It’s you and me, kiddie,” said Clendennon, embracing Ira, “all the way to the top!”

  “To the top!” echoed Ira. “Now be a doll and let me go to work. Right after the show, I promise you, I will turn the good doctor over my knee and give him such a gentle colonic he’ll never even feel it.”

  “You are a great human being,” said Clendennon with reverence. He administered a final squeeze to Ira’s shoulder and returned to the control booth.

  Ira reached his stool as his camera light went red. “You have just heard a powerful case made against food by Dr. Clara Silenko, a scientist of unquestionable eminence,” said Ira to the audience. I have with me now another scientist at least as eminent—in fact, a Nobel Prize winner in Medicine—whose views are completely the opposite of Dr. Silenko’s. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dr. Andrew McAndrews.”

  “Good evening,” said McAndrews, pleasant, twinkling, comfortably erudite, wholly reassuring.

  “Doctor,” said Ira, “you heard Dr. Silenko. Do you have some answers?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, “I have some answers. But I have a lot more questions than answers.”

  “For example?”

  “For example,” said Dr. McAndrews, “if you are the boss of a multimillion-dollar food company, what sense does it make to go around poisoning your customers? Next question: if female hormones used to fatten cattle induce sterility, how do you account for the population explosion? Next question: if flies and mosquitoes develop an immunity to DDT and other pesticides, why can’t people do the same? Next question: if Americans are consuming poisons in ever-increasing amounts, why are we getting bigger, stronger, smarter, and longer-lived?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Ira, “but it’s Dr. Silenko’s contention that, compared to the year 1900, we are undoubtedly living longer, but most of us are walking around half-sick.”

  McAndrews chuckled. “Most of us, Mr. Shapian, are walking around with a Blue Cross card in our pockets, or some other form of group insurance. When we get an ache, we go to a doctor. Why not? It’s free, isn’t it? So that makes us a medical statistic—just the fact that we visited a doctor’s office.… Now back in 1900, the only people who went to doctors were the very rich and the very nearly dead.”

  “Hmm,” said Ira. “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Here’s something else to think about: Let’s take Dr. Silenko’s indictment of pesticides. I won’t argue that there haven’t been a handful of deaths caused by pesticides, probably not as many as have been caused by aspirin, but, as I say, I won’t argue. I will only make these points: in the north of Italy when pesticides were introduced after the war, crop yields increased by one thousand percent! Yes, young man, those are the actual figures. And here’s more: Spain, which since the beginning of time, has been an importer of food, has become an exporter of food since they started using pesticides! Mr. Shapian, it is the business of chemistry to take intelligent risks. Yes, there is danger in pesticides—for that matter, there is danger in pie, in bathing, and in air-conditioning—but I say when you balance the benefits against the hazards, when you consider that every day there are millions more people who must
be fed, pesticides are not only a risk science must take, but a positive duty science dare not shirk!”

  Clendennon, sitting in the control booth, watching McAndrews’ potent counterattack, beamed all over his face.

  “Ah, shaddup,” growled Jefferson Tatum.

  Clendennon folded up his smile and tucked it in his conniving heart.

  Dr. McAndrews, legs crossed, speech folksy, facts marshaled in long, serene ranks, continued his gently lethal rebuttal. Ira moved back out of camera range, figuring this wise old man needed no assistance. Behind the cameras, listening to every word, stood Dr. Clara Silenko, her handsome face a mask of battle. Ira took pains not to get too close to her.

  “Now folks,” said Dr. McAndrews, “let’s take a look at antibiotics, which Dr. Silenko holds up as such a ghastly threat to life and limb. Of course, there is a tiny percentage of people allergic to antibiotics—we all know that—but do you have any idea what the adding of antibiotics to cattle and poultry feed has done for the production of edible protein? The increase is amazing. Fantastic! And this is a hungry world we live in, folks. Just because one man in fifty thousand gets a rash from aureomycin, should we go back to the good old days when half our farm animals died? And even the ones that lived were scrawny runts, compared to what we’re getting today.

  “And here’s something else to mull over: Dr. Silenko showed us some pretty horrible sights, like cages full of mice dying of bladder cancer they got from eating butter colored with AB Yellow. Now, I don’t doubt for one minute that Dr. Silenko gave those mice cancer by feeding them butter. But what else did she feed them? There’s the question: what else did they eat besides butter? Any of you folks out there know a human being who goes through life eating nothing but butter? Me, personally, I’m going to be seventy years old next birthday and I never yet met a man who ate nothing but butter. Maybe if Dr. Silenko fed her animals a balanced diet, the kind you and I eat—and I include butter—well, maybe her experiments would have come out a whole lot different.”

  Ira held up one finger, warning McAndrews he had one minute left. The doctor acknowledged with a slight nod.

  “One last point,” said McAndrews. “First, let me state clearly and emphatically that Clara Silenko is a woman of sterling character and flawless medical credentials. I specifically exclude her from the group I’m about to name.… But don’t you find it interesting that most people who write books and give lectures on health foods have one thing in common—a prison record?”

  Ira signaled one-half minute.

  “A few are doctors who have been arrested for malpractice; most are quacks who never saw the inside of a medical school. For every honest woman like Clara Silenko, there are a hundred pitchmen and snake oil peddlers. They’re dealers in overpriced foods, phony machines, worthless cookware, but mostly they’re dealers in fear. Be smart, friends. Don’t swallow their sucker bait.”

  The final commercial went on. “Thank you, Dr. McAndrews,” said Ira. “If you’ll sit just where you are, I’ll bring in Dr. Silenko and we’ll wind up the show right after this commercial.”

  Ira hustled to Dr. Silenko’s side. “Doctor, would you mind taking that stool right over here?”

  Grimly, silently, she allowed Ira to escort her to a stool next to Dr. McAndrews.

  “Good evening, Clara,” he said amiably.

  “Hi, Killer,” was her reply.

  Ira sat on the third stool and tried to think. In fewer than sixty seconds—no, in fewer than forty-five seconds now—he was going to perform the single most decisive act of his life. He was going to burn his bridges to commercial television beyond any hope of restoration; he was going to make his name anathema for all time wherever men gathered to use the public airwaves for profit. It was his Rubicon, his blastoff, his moment of truth.

  Was he afraid? He did not know. His face, covered with tv makeup, could not show paleness. The hollowness in his belly seemed neither vaster nor smaller than when he first heard Gabriel’s tape recording and made the fateful decision. He felt no hesitancy, and yet no eagerness. He had no clearly defined impulse either to advance or retreat.

  But it was now academic whether he was afraid or not. The red light on the camera glowed brightly; the assistant director’s finger was aimed at him like a spear. Even if he wanted to reconsider—did he? did he not?—there was, in any case, no time.

  “When doctors disagree,” said Ira to the camera, “what are we poor laymen to believe? Dr. Silenko, are you prepared to amend anything you said?”

  “Not in the slightest!” she declared.

  “Dr. McAndrews?” said Ira.

  “I’ll play my hand,” said McAndrews firmly.

  “Is there no area where you two great scientists can reach any common conclusion at all?”

  “None!” they replied in unison.

  Ira took a breath: now came the bombshell. “I recollect one occasion when you two were in agreement,” he said. “You both, I believe, were members of the Surgeon General’s Panel on Smoking.”

  “Oh, well, you’re talking about cigarettes now, not food,” said Dr. McAndrews. “Cigarettes are, of course, poisonous.”

  “And carcinogenic,” added Dr. Silenko.

  “Yes,” said Dr. McAndrews, “and unquestionably our biggest single cause of heart disease.”

  In the control booth Clendennon was leaping wildly at the switches, tripping over himself, ripping his black suit on knobs and handles, tangling limbs with Jefferson Tatum.

  But too late, too late. It had all gone out over the air.

  “Thank you, doctors,” said Ira softly. “This is Ira Shapian saying good night for—and to—the Star Spangled Broadcasting Network.”

  Ira slipped off his stool. Making a wide circle to avoid the personages exploding out of the control booth, he opened the side door of the gym and dashed into the cold night.

  Chapter 20

  While driving from Acanthus College to Boo’s beach house, Ira underwent three dramatically distinct shifts of emotion. During the first third of the trip, he felt only pride—the pride of rediscovered manhood. It had taken real guts to close the telecast the way he had elected to close it. His job with Star Spangled was, of course, forfeited, and so was any possibility of working anywhere else in commercial television. He had branded himself an outlaw tonight, and never again would any lush tv berths be offered to him.

  Yes, thought Ira as he drove the first miles to Boo’s beach house, he had committed an act of indisputable courage, and all the more courageous because courage had been so long missing from his life. But now he felt assured that his native bravery had been only narcotized, not murdered, and he was properly full of self-esteem.

  Pride, then, was the first of the three emotions that possessed Ira on the way to the beach. After the initial third of the trip, the second emotion took over: cool lucidity.

  At last he perceived the consequences of what he had done this night. There was no choice now but to implement the plan which had heretofore been less a plan than a miasmic dream. He had to get a divorce, marry Boo, and go to work for Linus Calloway in Birmingham. That was the clear and single course of action open to him.

  For the next several miles Ira’s mind, clicking efficiently, explored ways and means. First, Boo would have to be told what had happened. She had spent the evening at the beach house where there was no television set, so she had not witnessed Ira’s bridge-burning. Very well, he would fill in the details; he would describe the act and its sequelae.

  He chose his words carefully. “Boo,” he would say, coming at once to the point, “tonight I got myself fired from the Star Spangled Broadcasting Network. Moreover, I so arranged matters that I can never again be part of commercial tv. I did all this for two reasons: first, because I wished to reclaim my soul while still I could; second, and more important, because I love you. We will be married now, my angel. I will take that job with Linus Calloway in Birmingham. I will walk tall again. I will rejoice in my work, and I will exult in
the purity and strength of you. We have traveled a long, anguished road, my beloved, but our fearful trip is done. This is journey’s end, the happy culmination of eighteen years when, more often than not, the flame of hope seemed quite extinguished.”

  Yes, nodded Ira, good words. Powerful, lovely words. Boo would be oh, so pleased.

  He continued composing his speech: “My darling, kiss me on the mouth and tell me au revoir because I must return now to the Stonewall Jackson Hotel to ask for a divorce from—”

  Now, suddenly, the third of Ira’s three emotions seized him—clammy, paralyzing panic. Fighting for composure, he repeated the last line of the oration he proposed to make to Boo: “My darling, kiss me on the mouth and tell me au revoir because I must return now to the Stonewall Jackson Hotel to ask for a divorce from—”

  The panic deepened, even clammier and more paralyzing than before. It was all Ira could do to hold the car on the road, for the incredible, terrifying, shattering fact was that suddenly he could not remember the name of his wife!

  Ridiculous! Ridiculous! Ridiculous! he told himself, sweating frantically. I’ve known the woman for twenty-five years. Of course I remember her name! I know it as well as my own. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. Let me think! Let me think!

  He thought. Mary? No, that wasn’t it. Edna? Elsie? Esther? Eleanor? Elspeth? No, none of those were even close.

  He thought some more. Jane? Lottie? June? Alice? Jennie? Celeste? No, still not close.

  Maybe if he could get the first letter of the name, it would come to him. But what was the first letter? He tried “D.” Dorothy? Daisy? Dinah? Daphine? Drosophila?

  Drosophila? That was a fruit fly, for Christ’s sake! But wait a minute! Maybe there was a clue here. Fruit fly. The letter “F” twice. Could that be significant? Florence? Frances? Fanny? Felicia? Fifi? Faith? Fred?

  Fred? He was going nuts, that’s what he was going. Still, could there be a better reason for a man to go nuts than forgetting the name of his own wife? If such there was, it did not spring to mind.