(1961) The Chapman Report Read online

  Until then, Kathleen had not, absorbed as she was in the effort to avoid an unpleasant task, fully comprehended, or even listened to, the real purpose of the meeting. When she inquired again, and Grace explained it to her briskly and proudly (yet not fully able to conceal her excitement at the daring and naughtiness of the whole affair), Kathleen had been even more disturbed. She was in no mood to join a company of women in listening to a man discuss the sexual habits of the American female, no matter how clinically. Worse-for then came the sudden realization of what the lecture would lead to-she was not prepared to disclose her private secrets to a band of strangers, to disrobe figuratively before a group of leering male voyeurs.

  The whole thing was insane, ill-making, yet so great was Grace’s enthusiasm-“it’ll make our community famous; that’s why Mr.

  Ackerman arranged it”-that Kathleen instinctively realized any objection would not be understood and would make her sexually suspect. So she had resisted no longer and had decided to bide her time.

  Now, hastily lighting another cigarette, she was confronted with the damnable folder. She removed the list of names to examine the sheet of paper beneath it. This was a mimeographed publicity story -dated the following day “for immediate press release”-and it was signed by Grace Waterton. This release, Grace had explained, would give Kathleen all of the pertinent facts when she was telephoning to notify members of the special meeting two days hence. Dragging steadily at her cigarette, Kathleen read the press release.

  “On Friday morning, May 22, at ten-thirty o’clock,” the mimeographed story began, “Dr. George G. Chapman, world-renowned sex authority from Reardon College in Wisconsin and author of last year’s bestselling A Sex Study of the American Bachelor, will address a full membership meeting of The Briars’ Women’s Association. For two weeks following the meeting, at which Dr. Chapman will discuss the purposes of his current study of the married female, Dr. Chapman and his team of assistants, Dr. Horace Van Duesen, Mr. Cass Miller, Mr. Paul Radford, all associated with Reardon College, will interview the members of the Women’s Association who are, or have been, married.

  “For fourteen months, the celebrated Dr. Chapman and his team have been traveling through the United States interviewing several thousand married women of widely varied educational backgrounds who represent every economic, religious, and age group. According to Dr. Chapman, the women of The Briars will be the last that he and his associates will interview before collating their findings and publishing them next year. “The purpose of this inquiry,’ says Dr. Chapman, ‘is to bring into the open what has so long been hidden, the true pattern of the sexual life of American females, so that, through statistics, we may scientifically illuminate an area of human life long kept in darkness and ignorance. It is our hope that future generations of American women may profit by our findings.’

  “Mrs. Grace Waterton, president of The Briars’ Women’s Association, has already expressed her awareness of the honor in a telegram to Dr. Chapman and promised a one hundred per cent turnout at his briefing lecture. Subjects will offer themselves for interview on a voluntary basis, but Mrs. Waterton predicts that after

  hearing Dr. Chapman, and learning that the actual personal interviews are even more anonymous than those in the past conducted by such pioneer investigators as Gilbert Hamilton, Alfred Kinsey, Ernest Burgess, Paul Wallin, few of the Association’s 220 married members will refuse this opportunity to contribute to scientific advancement. The Association, which has its own club house and auditorium in The Briars, was established fifteen years ago and is dedicated to social and charitable works, as well as to beautifying the western area of greater Los Angeles.”

  Having finished reading the release, Kathleen continued to gaze at it with distaste. Irrationally offended by the words, she asked herself: What kind of Peeping Tom is this Dr. Chapman anyway?

  She had heard of him, of course. Everyone had heard of him. The sensationalism of his last book (all the women she knew had read it avidly, though Kathleen had disdained even to borrow a copy), and the progress of his current study, so-called, had enlivened the pages of newspapers and periodicals for several years and had served to bring his portrait to the covers of at least a dozen magazines. One day, she supposed, Chapman would be a freak symbol of his decade and its obsessive concern with sex, just as Emile Coue was representative of a different curiosity in the nineteen-twenties.

  But what, Kathleen wondered, would make a grown, educated man want to devote his life to prying into the secret sex histories of

  men, women, and children? The unceasing persiflage about “scientific advancement” could serve only to disguise beneath noble purpose an unhealthy and erotic mentality, or, as bad, a coarse commercial mind determined to capitalize on the forbidden. In fairness to Dr. Chapman, Kathleen remembered reading that he kept none of his considerable earnings for himself. Nevertheless, in this culture, a well-known name was equal to any annuity and might be cashed in at any time. Besides, he probably preferred notoriety to wealth.

  Maybe she was being harsh with him, Kathleen reflected. Maybe the fault was her own, that she had become prim and old-fashioned, if one could really become old-fashioned at twenty-eight. Still, ha conviction was unshakable: a woman’s reproductive organs belonged to herself and to herself alone, and their use and activity should be known to none beyond herself, her mate, her physician.

  Frowning at the necessity of having to promote something in which she did not believe, something so obviously unpalatable and indecent, Kathleen ground out her second cigarette. She brought the typed column of names and numbers back before her, lifted the receiver, and began to dial the numerals listed after Ursula Palmer’s name.

  Ursula Palmer was an aggressive clarifier, inquirer, pinpointer. When she asked how-are-you, she meant to know, exactly, how-you-were from morning to night, and yesterday, too. No vague generalities, no misty expositions, ever satisfied her. In the world scrutinized by her luminous, large brown eyes, all had to be tangible, known, understood.

  Now, one hand still resting on the space bar and keys of her typewriter and the other holding the receiver to her ear, she continued -as she had for the last several minutes-to plague Kathleen with concrete questions about Dr. Chapman’s expedition into The Briars.

  “Really, Ursula,” Kathleen was saying with repressed exasperation, “I don’t have the slightest idea why Dr. Chapman picked us for his last sampling. I only know what’s on the publicity release in front of me.”

  “Well, then, read it to me,” said Ursula. “I just want to get all the facts straight.”

  Ursula could hear the distant paper rustle in Kathleen’s hand, and she listened, eyes closed to concentrate better, as her caller’s husky voice read the words over the telephone. ‘When Kathleen had finished, Ursula opened her eyes. “I suppose,” she said into the telephone, “that covers it. Poor Dr. Chapman. He’s going to be disappointed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what’s he going to learn from this cold bunch of biddies that he doesn’t already know? I can just see him asking Teresa Harnish her favorite position. Two to one she tells him it’s being the wife of an art dealer.”

  “I don’t think we’re any different from women anywhere.”

  “Maybe not,” said Ursula doubtfully.

  “Can I tell Grace you’re coming to the meeting?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  After she had hung up, Ursula Palmer regretted that she had irritated Kathleen, as she sensed that she had and always did. It was too bad, because she sincerely respected Kathleen and wanted her friendship. Of all the women whom she knew in The Briars, it was Kathleen alone, Ursula felt, who was her intellectual equal. Moreover, Kathleen possessed that indefinable air-that thing that made a woman a lady, a kind of well-bred repose known colloquially as class. To this, or part of this, was added the glamour of wealth. Everyone knew that Kathleen had inherited a small fortune from her father. Sh
e was independent. She did not have to work. Once, in one of her monthly features for Houseday, Ursula had written of the average well-off suburban wife and used the person of Kathleen as the model. She envied Kathleen her striking appearance: her shining black hair, bobbed short and smart; her provocative green eyes; the small tilted nose; the full crimson mouth-all this and the Modigliani neck set on a tall, boyish, graceful figure.

  Swinging her swivel chair back to the typewriter, Ursula cast a sidelong glance at the wall mirror across her library and made a silent pledge to diet seriously again. Yet, studying herself in the glass, she knew that it was hopeless. She was not meant to look like Kathleen Ballard. She was big-boned, from cheeks and shoulders to hips, and she would always weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Once a drunk at a party had told her that she resembled an overweight Charlotte Bronte. She was sure that this was because she parted her dark brown hair straight down the middle. Anyway, she liked the literary allusion. For a woman of forty-one-and a mother, she remembered (reminding herself to write Devin this weekend and wondering why she could never picture his father)- she was well preserved, and vain about her small hands and shapely calves. Besides, Harold liked her this way. And, besides, she was Sappho, not Helen of Troy, Sappho of the Muse, not of Lesbos, and what she had would last longer.

  She resumed banging away at the typewriter. She had another hour before she would have to leave for the airport to meet Bertram Foster and his wife, Alma. Although, in many ways, Foster was not her ideal of a publisher-his coarseness and vulgarity often made one wince, and his interests in the more commercial aspects of Houseday rather than the literary were sometimes disappointing -still he had been astute enough to select Ursula from among his many free-lance contributors and to promote her to Western editor of the widely circulated family magazine.

  Presently, having completed her précis, Ursula drew it from the typewriter and began to proof it. The précis was cleverly conceived, designed to cater to Foster’s financial prejudices and to improve Ursula’s own job. It covered her office’s activities the first half of

  the year. It emphasized small economies and big accomplishments. It suggested wider authority and coverage for her department, at little extra cost, and in a way that might be enticing to potential advertisers.

  “Dearest?” It was Harold’s voice.

  Ursula looked up as Harold Palmer came tentatively into the den carrying a breakfast tray covered with eggs, toast, coffee. “You’d better have something, or you’ll get a headache.”

  She watched absently as Harold set her dishes on the desk before her and then poured his own coffee. Although he had prepared breakfast almost every morning of their married life, and persisted in the custom even after they had employed a live-in maid, each time he made it appear as if he were going to do it this once as a favor. He was a tall, hesitant, inarticulate man, gray-faced and concave, and two years her junior. He had the appearance of, and in fact was, an accountant.

  He settled in the leather chair across from her. “Hadn’t you better be getting dressed?” he inquired, nodding at her quilted long robe as he stirred his coffee.

  “I’ve got my face on, and I’m dressed underneath. I just have to slip into a skirt.”

  “How long are they going to be here?”

  “Two weeks, I think. They’re going on to Honolulu.”

  “Now that’s the way to live.” He drank his coffee. “Maybe if I land Berrey today, we’ll be going to Hawaii ourselves next year.”

  Ursula’s mind had been elsewhere. “Who’s Berret?” she asked dutifully.

  “Berrey,” Harold repeated with shy understanding. “He owns the Berrey Cut-Rate Drugstores. There are ten in the area. It could do a good deal for me. I met him a couple times, when I was with the old firm.”

  The old firm, Ursula remembered, was Keller Company in Beverly Hills, a large beehive of underpaid accountants that Harold had been with since his graduation from the university. In an uncharacteristic burst of independence, he had left them three months before to open his own office. He had taken two small clients with him-but, Ursula observed wryly, it was she who was now paying the bills.

  “Well, good luck,” Ursula said.

  “I’ll need it,” Harold conceded worriedly. “I’m meeting him downtown at five. I may be a little late for dinner.”

  “Harold, please. You know we’re taking the Fosters to Panero’s. You’ve got to be on time.”

  “Oh, I will be. But Mr. Berrey is an important man-I can’t cut him short. It means a lot.”

  “Foster means more. You be here.”

  Harold did not contest this. He rose, slowly gathered the cups and saucers, piled them on the tray, and started out, as Ursula returned to her proofing. At the door he hesitated.

  “Ursula.”

  “Yes?” She crossed out the word detrimental on the page before her and wrote harmful above it.

  “I wish you could come down to the office. It still doesn’t have a stick of my own furniture. I’ve just been waiting for you.”

  “I will, soon as I can,” she said impatiently. Then, looking at him with a smile, speaking in a more gentle tone, she added, “You know how busy I’ve been. But I’ll make it.”

  “I thought maybe Friday-“

  “Friday I’m giving that enormous luncheon for the Fosters-all the publicity people, and actors …” Suddenly she clapped her bead. “My God, I promised Kathleen Ballard I’d go to hear Dr. Chapman Friday morning. How can I?”

  “Dr. Chapman? The sex expert?”

  “Yes-he’s lecturing at the Association. I’ll tell you all about it later. I’ve got to think.”

  Harold nodded and departed for the kitchen, where the colored maid, Hally, was defrosting the refrigerator. Ursula sat back in the swivel chair and shut her eyes. Dr. Chapman would have been a lark, but now he was a nuisance. She was a working wife, and she had no time to spare for this sex gibberish. She would simply call Kathleen or Grace and plead a previous business engagement. After all, Foster came first.

  Still, she was not satisfied. She rose, found cigarette and silver holder, joined them, and thoughtfully lighted up. She realized that she had looked forward to Dr. Chapman more than she had first imagined. Crossing the room, she halted before the wall of books, located A Sex Study of the American Bachelor, and pulled the heavy volume from the shelf. Slowly, she leafed through it, pausing here and there to absorb a graph of statistics or a long paragraph.

  Just as when she had read it the first time, she was fascinated-not by any relationship the numerals might have to her, but by the bedroom doors they opened into other lives.

  Even as she returned the book to the shelf, the title of the article was projected before her mind’s eye. It would read: ” ‘The Day Dr. Chapman Interviewed Me,’ by a Suburban Housewife.” Ursula herself, of course, would be the suburban housewife. It was perfect for Houseday. She would handle it lightly, humorously, teasingly, and yet with just enough provocative questions and answers to make it highly quotable. And better still, the interview with Dr. Chapman or one of his team would make a perfect conversation piece for the Fosters, reinforcing his image of her as competent and witty and yet The Eternal Feminine.

  Turning it over in her head, relishing it, she could visualize Bertram Foster’s happy leer as she fleshed out each detail in innumerable anecdotes of the private adventure. There was no doubt in her mind now. She must attend Dr. Chapman’s lecture and then volunteer for an early interview. Once Foster knew what she was sacrificing for him and the magazine, he would permit her to make a late appearance at his luncheon. She could picture her entrance-the center of all eyes, for all would know what had delayed her-and then see herself masterfully regaling employer and celebrated guests with the inside Sex Story. She was positive Foster would be more admiring than ever. It could lead to anything. Even to New York.

  The bus horn honked twice, loudly, beyond the window over the kitchen sink. And then, because engine trouble had detai
ned the bus earlier, the horn honked twice again.

  “Can you hold on just a minute, Kathleen?” Sarah Goldsmith said into the telephone. “It’s the school bus.” Capping her hand over the mouthpiece, she called to Jerome, her nine-year-old, who was finishing his cereal, and Deborah, her six-year-old, who was munching a cookie, “Hurry up now, it’s the bus, it’s late enough. And don’t forget your lunch boxes.”

  Sam Goldsmith, his mouth filled with a hot cake, dropped the business section of the morning paper and held out his arms as first Deborah kissed him and then Jerome. “Now remember what I told you when you get out there at recess,” he said to Jerome. “Hold the bat away from you and high-like Musial-and then cut down into the ball. You’ll see.”

  Jerome nodded. “I’ll remember, Pop.”

  Both children grabbed their lunch boxes, pecked hasty kisses at Sarah’s face, and headed for the front door, Jerome bounding, Deborah scrambling, until they were gone, the door slamming loudly behind them. Sarah stood on tiptoe, craning her neck to see through the high window. She watched Jerome and Deborah race across the paved parking area before the car port and climb into the bus. When it began to grind away, she lowered herself and took her hand from the mouthpiece.

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen. It’s like this every morning.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Now, about that lecture-you say everyone’s going to be there?”

  “That’s what Grace says.”

  “Well, all right. I don’t want to be the one who’s different. I suppose it is important.”

  “For ‘scientific advancement,’ to quote Dr. Chapman.” Kathleen paused a moment. “Of course, it’s all voluntary, Sarah. After you’ve heard him, you either pledge to be interviewed or you decline.”

  “I’ll do what the majority does,” said Sarah. “I read his last book. I think it’s a good cause. It’s just that-well, I suppose it’s sort of embarrassing. Is it really anonymous?”