(1961) The Chapman Report (4 page)

She lifted the receiver, hastily dialed, then waited. There were three rings, and his voice was on.

“Hello?”

“It’s Sarah. I’ll be right over.”

She hung up, breathlessly went around the bed and into the bathroom. Pulling open the drawer beside the washbasin, she reached deep inside for the zippered blue kit. Emerging and going back to the dresser, her hand fondled the kit, feeling the rim of the large diaphragm and the small tube of vaginal jelly. She dropped the kit into her straw handbag, snatched a pink cashmere sweater from the drawer, and hastened through the house to the car port.

Mary Ewing McManus-she had been married less than two years, and she knew that it pleased her father that she retained the Ewing whenever she signed her name-sat on the rumpled bed, long, thin legs crossed beneath her blue silk nightgown.

“I think it’s just the most, Kathleen,” she said into the telephone. Twenty-two and uncomplicated, and in love with her husband, Mary could still be exuberant before ten in the morning. “You write a big exclamation mark after my name. I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world.”

“Fine, Mary. I wish everyone were so agreeable.” Mary was surprised. “Who wouldn’t want to hear Dr. Chapman? I mean, there’s always something to learn.” Mary Ewing had come to Norman McManus, in marriage, a healthy, cheerful, virginal young girl. Although raised with intelligence and affection, she had been, in ways, sheltered, and everything that followed her wedding night seemed new to her. She was as curious about the pathways of sex, about exploring its mysteries and learning its techniques, as she was about attempting new cooking recipes and learning to sew. One night, in the first year, after reading a chapter of a new marriage manual, she and Norman had spent the entire night, with mad hilarity and then silent excitement, testing their various erogenous zones.

“Dr. Chapman isn’t exactly going to be teaching anything,” Kathleen was saying. “It’s really a serious study he’s making.”

“Oh, I know,” Mary said in her important, adult voice. “It’s like being part of history, in a way-as if Sigmund Freud were coming to The Briars to talk about psychiatry or Karl Marx to discuss communism. It’s something to tell your children.”

“Well,” said Kathleen uncertainly, “I guess it is, in a way.”

“How’s Deirdre?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“She’s so pretty. I’m glad you called me. See you at the lecture.”

Hanging up, Mary placed the telephone on the bedstead. She felt thrilled about the invitation, like looking forward to Sunday, and she was suddenly eager to share the news with Norman. She cocked her head, listening, but heard the beat of the shower muffled in the bathroom behind her. When he was out of the bower, she would tell him.

She uncrossed her legs and fell back on the pillow, feeling alive in every limb and happy that the day was young and the night still ahead. The sounds of the shower persisted, and she thought of Norman beneath the cold spray. She could visualize him as she saw him when they often showered together. His funny scrub haircut, and the piercing dark eyes set in the square, handsome face, and his hairy chest and flat belly, and long, muscular legs. It was still a miracle to her that he had sought her out at that sorority party, three years before, and looked at none of the more attractive girls that night or any night since.

Mary Ewing McManus had no illusion about her own beauty. Even though her tangled, boyish brown hair made her resemble Wendy in Peter Pan-ox so Norman had remarked several times, with admiration-and even though she was a vivacious extrovert, unfamiliar with a single dark mood, she did not delude herself about her physical appearance. She was a tall, bony, athletic, long-striding girl. Her brown eyes were set too close together. Her nose, while straight, was excessively evident (in finishing school she had pinned a romantic drawing of Cleopatra over her bed when she had learned of Pascal’s remark that, had Cleopatra’s nose “been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered”). Her mouth was small, though her lips were full and her white teeth regular. She was flat-chested-no foam padding would hide this-and flat-bottomed. And yet, she did not feel unlovely. She had grown up the center of the household and the vast family beyond, always admired and clucked over. Her natural high spirits had made prettier girls seem pallid, and she had never lacked a boy friend. And when she had wanted a husband, Norman had appeared and supplanted childhood affection with mature love. From the moment of their meeting, Norman had become the center of her universe. Harry Ewing had objected at first, in his soft-spoken, decent way, protesting her youth and Norman’s poverty. (he had just been admitted to the California bar). Because she adored her father, she had listened attentively, but immediately set out to win him over. Since Harry Ewing could refuse his daughter nothing, he agreed to let her have her husband, knowing she would have him anyway. The only condition Harry set-and to this Mary and Norman quickly and gratefully acceded-was that the newlyweds move into the vacant upstairs suite of the Spanish stucco house and live under the Ewing roof until they could one day get on their feet and have their own home. Then, anxious to get his daughter’s marriage on a secure financial footing, Harry Ewing went further. Just when Norman had applied to several large legal firms for jobs, and when he was seriously considering going into a partnership with his old classmate, Chris Shearer, in a poorer section of downtown Los Angeles, Harry Ewing made his son-in-law a generous offer. Harry manufactured prefabricated building parts, and his legal department had four attorneys. One was leaving, and Harry tendered the position to Norman, with a starting salary of $150 a week.

Mary was overwhelmed by her father’s generosity, but Norman was less so. Somehow, he felt that he was giving up part of his independence for a dowry. Moreover, the prospect of becoming a real struggling trial attorney with Chris, in a district that needed help, seemed more challenging. But, after a brief day or two of vacillation and uncertainty, he was at last convinced that Harry’s opening was one that a hundred young barristers would covet (which, indeed, they would), that his concept of attorney-at-law among depressed peoples was romantic and impractical, and that, after all, Mary deserved the best. Carried away by his wife’s enthusiasm, Norman joined her father’s staff.

In the year and a half since, sensing her husband’s restlessness at being a desk and contract lawyer, Mary had tried to alleviate his boredom. Secretly, she had spoken to her father, imploring him to give Norman some of the courtroom work. Her father had promised that he would do so at the first opportunity. That had been several months ago. Nothing had happened since.

Now, turning on her pillows to look at the electric clock, Mary saw that it was twenty to ten. Her father would be down to breakfast already, and he would be done by ten. He would expect Norman to be ready, since they drove to the plant together every morning in Harry’s Cadillac. She had decided she had better remind Norman of the time, when suddenly the shower stopped.

Quickly, Mary sat up, slid off the bed, and padded barefoot to the bathroom door.

She pressed her head to the door. “Norm?”

“Yes?”

“It’s twenty to ten.”

“Okay.”

She remembered Kathleen’s call. “Guess who called.”

“What?”

“I said guess who called.” She raised her voice slightly. “Kathleen Ballard just telephoned. Dr. Chapman’s coming here to interview us.”

“I can’t hear you. Come on in. The door’s open.”

She turned the glass knob and went inside. The narrow bathroom was warm, and steam clung to the walls and mirror. Norman was in the center of the room, beside the bathtub, standing flat-footed on a large orange mat. His arms were lifted and his muscular back to her as he wiped face and hair with a towel. He was naked, patches of wet still on his back.

Staring at him as she shut the door softly behind her, she felt again the aching pleasure in her loins that she had known the night before. He had possessed her then, and it had been excruciating and marvelous. Now, suddenly, she heard her heart.

She tried to keep her voice casual. “I was just saying, Norm …”

He turned, smiling at her, and her eyes touched his lean body possessively and proudly. “Hi, darling,” he said. “I thought you were going to sleep.”

“Someone called,” she said breathlessly. “Dr. Chapman’s coming to lecture at the Women’s Association Friday.”

“Chapman?”

“You know, the Chapman Report on sex. He’s going to interview us.”

“Good for you. Don’t keep any secrets.” He handed her the towel. “Give me a hand with my back.”

He turned away as she took the towel. “Should I tell him you’re the best lover in the world?”

“It won’t hurt to let it get around.”

She touched the curve of his spine with the towel. “You are, you know,” she said.

“Now, how would you know?” he asked teasingly as he turned again to face her. “Or is that what you tell all your men?”

She stood very still, the towel poised ridiculously between them. “I love you, Norm,” she said.

His smile was gone. He reached out and drew her to him. The towel fluttered to the tile as she clutched his bare back, her eyes tightly closed. “I want you, honey,” he whispered against her hair “Yes,” she whispered, then remembered, and tried to pull away. “No, Norm, it’s late-Dad’s downstairs-” “To hell with Dad,” he said, kissing her neck. “Don’t say that,” she said almost inaudibly, before all speech was lost, and she could say no more. Slowly, she sank to the orange mat beside Norman; then, cradled in his arm, lowered herself to her back, hardly aware of the cool contact of tile on her shoulder blades and legs. Eyes shut, she felt the sure fingers at her gown, and the desired and beloved presence all-encompassing, and in a moment she gave herself completely to sensation, unable any longer to remember that her father was downstairs, waiting.

Once, during a supper party at Ursula and Harold Palmer’s, a dozen guests played the word-association game. When Ursula, who was reeling off the list of words to a male guest, came to antiseptic, the guest automatically replied, “Teresa Harnish.” This created great hilarity and extensive parlor analysis, with no serious conclusion reached beyond general agreement as to the aptness of the association. Later, the incident was repeated to Teresa, who had not been at the party, and the moment that she could she looked up the word in her dictionary. When she learned that it meant “opposing sepsis, putrefaction, or decay,” she was pleased, and made no further effort at comprehending the true meaning as it might be related to her.

Now, leaning against the shelves of her study that contained not books but exquisite representations of pre-Columbian statuary mounted on small marble bases, she listened to Kathleen reading her the details of Dr. Chapman’s impending arrival. At the age of thirty-six, Teresa Harnish was the perfect picture of poise and grace. Nothing harsh or real-sweat, for instance, or dirt or germs -had ever blemished her fair complexion, or so it seemed. Each blond, wavy hair was in place. The oval face, wide eyes, patrician nose, thin lips painted full, had the perpetual look of a startled chrysanthemum. Her height and figure were medium in every respect, and her raw-silk blouse, with dipping neckline, gray Bermuda shorts, and thong sandals were unwrinkled and unscuffed. Her appearance and manner gave her an air of remote and sophisticated intellectuality, which she enjoyed and fostered. Her breadth of reading knowledge was considerable, but her depth of understanding and originality of thought did not go beneath her flaw-less skin. She enjoyed conversation that alluded to the classical and was barely comprehensible, and she preferred her sexual activity neat and straight. If she emerged from either experience without being jostled or confused, she was satisfied. She thought Lord Byron vulgar, Gauguin disgusting, Stendhal ridiculous, and Rembrandt grubby. She rather fancied Henry James, and Thomas Gainsborough, and admired Louise de la Valliere and (somewhat guiltily) the poor Lady Blessington. She found it one of the burdens that marriage imposed to conform to her husband’s respect for such weightless abstract painters as Duchamp, Gris, and Kandinsky.

“Yes, Kathleen, I think it’s perfectly clear,” she said into the telephone at last, in an accent long cultivated that would have troubled a philologist (who might have located it as somewhere between Boston’s Beacon Hill and London’s West End). “Geoffrey and I think Dr. Chapman is a marvel, a monument to enlightenment.”

Geoffrey Harnish, bent over the huge, ornately carved Medici writing table nearby, absorbed in copying several oddments from Giorgio Vasari’s Delle Vite de’ piu eccelenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (the later Italian edition published in Florence in 1878) for a Pasadena customer interested in Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, glanced up sharply at the mention of Dr. Chapman’s name. Teresa cocked her head coyly, bestowing upon him a secret smile, and he lifted his bushy eyebrows with agreeable surprise. Dr. Chapman had superseded Vasari, and Geoffrey Harnish settled his small, compact frame back in the fragile chair to listen. He smoothed the side of his thinning sandy hair, stroked his magnificently shaggy, incongruous Grenadier Guard mustache, and vaguely wondered if Dr. Chapman might be induced to pen the foreword to his art catalogue advertising the forthcoming exhibit of abstract art, many of the canvases concerned with conjugality, by Boris Introsky.

Teresa had been listening, and now she was speaking to Kathleen once more. “Of course, Geoffrey and I read his last survey together-well, almost together-arid we were literally overwhelmed by the scientific approach to sexuality. The book was absolutely Olympian, my dear. Oh, there were faults, of course. Any person with some background in sociology would see that. And many did, as you no doubt remember. I think we objected most to Dr. Chapman’s handling of sex as entirely a biological fact, without relationship to other human characteristics. But then, Kathleen, we must be tolerant of this man’s problems. After all, how could one tabulate the pleasures of love or, as exciting, the first confrontation of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre?”