(1961) The Chapman Report (26 page)

“Yes. They were designed by Dr. Chapman and custom made for maximum concealment. Dr. Chapman studied choir screens.

Georgian screens, even Chinese imperial jade screens, before he decided upon this. He’s very thorough, you know.”

Ursula nodded, and inspected the dark-brown leather pull-up chair, with wooden arms, that faced the screen, and the table with ceramic ash tray beside it.

“Right here,” said Benita, indicating the chair. Ursula settled herself in the chair, purse in her lap. As she did so, she noticed for the first time a square leather box, small and maroon, at her feet.

She nudged it with a sandal. “What’s this?” “The SE box,” said Benita. “Special Exhibits.” At once, Ursula remembered Dr. Chapman’s reference to it during the lecture. He had said that there was a category of questions to which the subject replied after reacting to exhibits from the mysterious box. “Oh, well,” said Ursula, “as long as nothing jumps out and makes a pass-“

“I assure you-” said Benita, distressed, but then she saw that Ursula had been joking, and she smiled foolishly. Anxious to avoid any further exchange, she went to the screen. “Mrs. Palmer is here, Dr. Van Duesen.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Palmer,” said the disembodied, precise voice from behind the screen.

“Hello, there,” replied Ursula cheerfully. She looked up at Benita and whispered, “What’s he got back there?”

“He’s seated at a card table with several pencils and a questionnaire. Nothing more.”

“No special brainwashing equipment?” “Really, Mrs. Palmer, it’s all quite simple.” “May I smoke?”

“Of course,” said Benita, and then she added more loudly, “Well, I’ll leave you two now.”

She went out the door, shutting it softly behind her. “Just make yourself comfortable,” said Horace’s voice. “Whenever you’re ready-“

“In a few seconds. I’m trying to find a cigarette.” She found one in her purse, lighted it, then took out her pad and pencil and held them ready. “Okay,” she said, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Very well,” said Horace’s voice. “Try to answer all the questions to the best of your ability, and as accurately as possible. Take time to think. And, of course, say as much as you wish to say. If something is not clear to me, I’ll let you know. If a question is not clear

to you, let me know. And be assured, please, that the answers I mark are put down in Solresol and will be seen by no one except Dr. Chapman and his associates.”

“I have a poor memory,” she lied, “so you’ll have to give me a little time.” She had to allow for her note-taking. Quickly, she began to jot down her interviewer’s name and background and some of his last speech.

“Of course,” said Horace’s voice.

“Fire away, Gridley.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then, evenly, without accenting word or phrase, Horace’s voice resumed.

‘Tour age, please?”

“Must I? Forty-one.”

“Your educational background?”

“High school. Two years of junior college. I went no further because I wanted to write. I’m a writer and editor.”

“Place of birth?”

“Sioux City, Iowa.”

“How long have you lived in California?”

“We moved here when I was three.”

“What is your current religious affiliation?”

“Episcopalian.”

“Would you characterize yourself as a regular churchgoer, an irregular one, or one who seldom or never attends?”

“Umm … I’d say-make it irregular.”

“Irregular?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Now then, your marital status?”

“Meaning what?”

“Are you presently married?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Were you married before?”

“Yes. Once. For three months.”

“What was your first husband’s occupation?”

“He wrote advertising copy when I met him. He intended to be come president of the company. He became unemployed instead He drank, slept, and read want ads through our entire marriage.”

“Children?”

“One. Devin. He’s all I got out of my first marriage. He’s nine teen now. Studying engineering at Purdue in Indiana.”

“Oh, yes … Have you had children by your present husband?”

“No.”

“How long have you been married to this husband?”

“Sixteen years.”

“His occupation?”

“Accountant. He just opened his own firm.”

“And you say you’re a writer and editor? Are you active now?”

“Very much so. I represent a New York magazine out here.” She was writing down his questions. Her own answers, she could fill in later.

“Now-” said the voice.

“Would you hold it a moment?”

“Certainly.”

She caught up on her notes. “All right.”

“We’ll begin with a series of questions on your pre-adolescent period. These may be the most difficult for you to remember. You can have all the time you require.”

Ursula waited impatiently. Who gives a damn about pre-adolescence? Not Foster, not the public, and not herself. Ursula wanted to skip all preliminaries, reach the provocative part of it, the part that guaranteed a cover line.

“Can you recollect at what age you first masturbated to orgasm?”

Ursula frowned. This is for Houseday? “Who ever did a thing like that?” she said with forced lightness.

“It’s usual in pre-adolescence, between three and thirteen, and not unusual after.”

This was ridiculous, even offensive, and at once she remembered when. Perhaps it had not been the first time, but it was the time she remembered clearly. There had been company that night, the resonant older voices from the living room, a thin wafer of light shining Through the slit of door into her bedroom, and she wide awake in her new polka-dot flannel nightgown. “I was just trying to recall it,” she said at last. “I must have been seven or eight-no, make it eight.”

“Can you describe the method?”

The half-forgotten memory, now high-lighted by the stark frame of maturity, repelled her. How could this immature trivia be of any use to anyone? Nevertheless, the disembodied voice had disembodied ears, and they were waiting. In a firm, businesslike tone of voice, she described what she had done at eight.

The questions on pre-adolescent behavior went on in this vein for ten minutes, and Ursula found it difficult to hide her impatience.

All of this was a waste of precious time, in terms of Houseday’s million readers, and Ursula’s answers became testier and testier. At last, having revealed that she had menstruated at twelve, she was relieved to graduate to premarital petting. She had too few pages of notes, but now she was sure that she would make up the lack.

“How would you define petting?” she heard Horace ask.

This was interesting-it would fascinate mothers and daughters who read Houseday-and she considered it. “Why, I suppose everything that might arouse you, short of actually doing anything final.”

“Yes, but perhaps I had better be more exact.”

He defined the component parts of petting. For Ursula, who had never seriously thought about these acts before-at least, not that she could definitely recall-the explicit vocabulary of science made it seem vulgar and unlovely. Nevertheless, she recorded the discussion. Foster must be served. The public, also. Anyway, her typewriter would make it more palatable, sand it down, buff it, varnish it, until the little word Galateas would be acceptable in any family living room.

He was inquiring if she had ever achieved satisfaction through petting.

“You mean the first time?”

“Yes.”

“In high school, when I was a senior. I suppose you want to know how old I was? Seventeen. Does that mean I was retarded?”

No comment from the screen on her jocularity. Instead: “What was the method?”

That damn method, again. Curtly, she explained.

“Where was this done?” he asked.

“In his car. We parked in the hills, and got in the back seat. I thought I loved him, but then I changed my mind and-well, we just petted.”

There was note-taking on both sides of the screen, and then the questions and answers continued, and, at last, they reached the subject of premarital intimacy.

“Three partners,” she was saying.

‘Where did these take place?”

“The first two in their apartments. And with the last one in motels.”

‘Were any one of these the men you finally married?”

“The second affair-he became my first husband.”

“But no premarital experience with your present husband?”

“God, no. Harold wouldn’t think of doing a thing like that before. The first affair was a college kid, when I was in school. Then -well, my other husband, the one who wrote copy-we were in the same office-it was my first job. The last one was after I had to go back to work-I was his secretary-for a short time.”

“Did you reach orgasm on any of these occasions? If so-“

“No,” she interrupted.

“During these intimacies, were you partially clothed or in the nude?”

“Nude.”

“When did these intimacies most frequently occur-morning, afternoon, evening, night?”

“Well, I suppose you’d call it evening.”

“Most often, was an artificial means used to prevent conception?”

“Yes.”

“Did your partner use a contraceptive, or did you, or did both of you? Or did your partner practice Noyes’ theory of male continence?”

“The men always used contraceptives.”

“Now, returning to the actual act, in regard to method-“

Ursula’s upper lip was’ damp: heaven protect the poor working girl. And then she realized that her fingers were gripping the pencil so hard that they seemed bloodless, and that she had not made a single note in five minutes. Desperately, she tried to relax, to remember, to write.

“… name the one of these most frequently employed by you?”

She named one in a voice strangely not her own. She wrote and, writing, wondered what Bertram Foster would think.

When Ursula Palmer emerged into the sunlight of Romola Place at twenty minutes after two, she felt slightly let down and concerned, as she so often felt after sex and almost never after writing. The feeling was something that she could not precisely define. It seemed that there was more to be said that had not been said, though exactly what she could not imagine. The questions had covered every possible experience, and she had replied to all honestly. Yet, now, there was a hangover of an insoluble business uncompleted, and it was bothersome, for she was not sure if it involved the questions about sexual behavior or the behavior itself. The good part of it, of course, was the notes. Toward the end, she had

been professional and put everything to paper, and already she could see that-with discretion and imagination-it would write well.

Her original intent had been to hurry home after the interview and transcribe the entire adventure while it was fully alive in her mind. But, at the moment, standing before the building entrance, she suddenly had no desire to relive the interview so quickly. It could wait until evening or tomorrow morning. She felt the need to be outside, among people, and not alone with the notes.

Remembering that she was almost out of stamps, she decided to cross the street to the post office and buy a roll. After that, she would see. There were a dozen household chores she had neglected since Foster’s arrival. She crossed the street and was about to climb the concrete steps to the post office when she saw Kathleen Ballard appear at the top of the stairs and descend.

She waited. “Hello, Kathleen.”

“Why, Ursula-“

“I was just across the street-delivering a rich and entertaining discourse on What Every Young Girl Gets to Know.”

Puzzled, Kathleen looked across the street, then back at Ursula, and then her eyes widened. “You mean you’ve had your interview already?”

“I had it,” said Ursula dryly.

“Oh, I’m dying to hear everything. I don’t mean anything private, but what goes on, what they ask-“

“You’ve come to the right party. You are speaking to a veteran of the Chapman cabal rites.”

“They’re interviewing me Thursday afternoon. Is it awful?”

Ursula did not want to discuss it, yet she did not want to lose Kathleen. “Let’s find someplace to sit,” she said. “Do you have time?”

“Deirdre’s in dancing class. But I don’t have to pick her up until three-thirty.”

“Well, then, I’ll give you the Palmer Abridged Version, skipping lightly over adolescent sex play and sundries, and concentrating mainly on coitus-yes, my dear, that’s the word this season; learn to love it-coitus, marital, extramarital, and sort of marital.”

“You mean they actually make you-” Kathleen’s eagerness had given way to anxiety.

“They make you do nothing,” said Ursula crisply. ‘We’re all volunteers. Remember? Like Major Reed’s yellow fever guinea pigs.

All right, let’s walk over to The Crystal Room. According to my prescription, this should be taken with something on the stomach.”

Those healthy, dull young women, Cass Miller thought. Slouching beside the card table, one leg crossed over the other, his pencil found the question he had just asked. “Have you ever engaged in premarital intimacies?” His pencil hooked the cypher into the blank square, and the cypher meant, to four of them, “No.” This, of course, ruled out the next dozen questions.

These young women were all of a type, Cass decided, as he gloomily stared at the long sheet. Coast to coast, it was the same. In the East, the type was small and keen or horsey and well mannered, with dark bangs and big bosoms and legs that were good for lacrosse. They had been to Bennington and Barnard and would marry Ivy League boys, who would later drink too much at lunch, and they merged into Perfect Hostess, Tennis Anyone, Bermuda, and Normal Outlook. In the West the type was well dressed, tall and thin, with tangled boyish hair more sun-bleached than blond, and flat breasts and bony spines and bottoms. They had been to Stanford and Switzerland and would marry intense young professional men, and they merged into Conjugal Partnership, Golf Lessons, Santa Barbara, and Outdoor Living.

He had caught one of the latter. Cass’s eyes scanned what was already written. Mrs. Mary Ewing McManus. Twenty-two. University of Southern California. Born in Los Angeles. Lutheran. Regular churchgoer. Presently married. First husband. Two years. Husband an attorney. Housewife.