ALTHOUGH THEY HAD slept no more than four hours, Paul and Horace, by unspoken agreement, had risen at daybreak to avoid the others. After dressing for their third day of interviews, they had waited briefly outside the dining room of the Villa Neapolis until the doors were opened at seven-thirty. During the next half hour, except for several transient couples hastily eating their breakfasts in order to get on the road before the heavy traffic, they were alone.
By eight o'clock, they had left the dining room without seeing Dr. Chapman, Cass, or Benita, and, relieved, they had made their way to the garage. The sun simmered in the cloudless sky like an oversized egg yolk frying. The moist grass on either side of the path was warming and would soon be dry, and Paul decided that it would be as hot as it had been on Monday. He lowered the canvas top on the Ford convertible, secured it, and then settled behind the wheel next to Horace.
He eased the car backward out of the stall, and finally, gear in low and foot teasing the brake, he guided the vehicle slowly down the steep private road that led to Sunset Boulevard.
At the stop sign, he glanced at Horace. "We're a bit early. Like to take a short drive first?"
"Whatever you say."
Paul wheeled the Ford east on Sunset Boulevard, and then proceeded at thirty-five miles an hour, slowing once as they approached the university campus (the ROTC boys were drilling smartly on the green), and accelerating again as he headed in the general direction of Beverly Hills. The speed of the open car generated a breeze, where there had been none, and the air brushed them as gently as a woman's hand. At the Bel-Air gate, on impulse, Paul turned sharply left.
"Have you ever been in here?" he asked.
"I don't think so," said Horace.
"You'd remember if you had. It's exactly like a drive in the suburbs behind Honolulu."
They were on Bellagio Road, a smoothly rising, curving, asphalt roller coaster. The thick ivy and bushes bursting through the wire fences, the miles of blue and red bougainvillea and red and purple fuchsia, hid all signs of habitation. The Monterey pine trees and sycamores guarding the road were aged and massive, and gave an impression of estate and belonging, such as the self-conscious, imported date palms of Beverly Hills had never been able to imply. Paul remembered his parents and thought of how they would have looked at these trees and then talked of the Old Country. The occasional mail boxes, usually wooden and quaint, were topped by names finely wrought in iron, several of the names celebrated. In a way, the mail boxes spoiled it, for they reminded the intruder that there was human life here, not wild life, and that the sensation of forest primeval was false.
Paul turned from the windshield to Horace, meaning to comment on the landscape, but he saw that Horace was completely oblivious to the surroundings. Horace sat slumped low, as if in a trance, arms crossed loosely on his chest, eyes staring blankly at the dashboard.
Paul had no choice but to recall the black morning that had begun after midnight. After Paul's disclosure of the interview with Naomi, Horace had remained on the bed, his face numbed as if by stroke, smoking incessantly, while he related the story of his marriage.
There was, that year before Dr. Chapman, a convention of gynecologists in Madison (Horace remembered), and Horace went up from Reardon to read a paper. The convention tried to accommodate guests in every way, and among the available conveniences offered was a secretarial pool. The girl assigned to Horace announced herself as Naomi Shields. Until he met Naomi, Horace had recognized the female as only a biological necessity, an exercise quite apart from important workaday routine. He had always been certain that he was fated to live and die a bachelor.
Naomi was something that he had never imagined a woman could be: lively, interested, beautiful, responsive. Also, and this soon proved a decisive factor, she was a young woman widely desired and sought after. The fact that she had eyes for Horace alone, gave him a special status among his colleagues, and a prideful satisfaction that he had never before felt. He began to endow Naomi with a value that superseded love. ("Of course, I speak from hindsight," he had conceded to Paul.) From the first, Naomi was prepared to give herself wholly to Horace, wholly and unconditionally, and it took every resource of Horace's Catholic upbringing to restrain him from taking advantage of the love-struck girl. As it was they were engaged merely five months ("Hardly enough to know each other," he had told Paul) before he brought her down to Reardon and made her Naomi Van Duesen.
From the earliest days, he enjoyed the idea of marriage. It gave him membership in a popular social group that he had not realized existed, and for the first time in his life he possessed a feeling of belonging to something more cosmopolitan, more enjoyable, more fulfilling than the faculty staff of Reardon College. The countless accessories of the nuptial state were what pleased the most: the pineapple duckling prepared at home, the frayed shirt collars turned at last, the collaborative shopping for refrigerator and blue parakeet, the addressing of Christmas cards, the continuing envy of male friends, the casino and scrabble and double acrostics together, the brassiere behind the bathroom door and the stockings drying over the tub and the toothpaste uncapped, the dividing of the Sunday paper, the buttons magically reappearing on pajamas and shirts.
But there was a price for these pleasures, these sanctioned intimacies, and it came due too often on the double bed.
His sexual needs, Horace had frankly admitted to Paul, were always less than average, as far as he could guess in those less literate pre-Chapman days. In the beginning, Naomi's tireless appetite thrilled him, made him swell with masculinity. But after a few months, there was no settling down, and her cease-less passion became not a pleasure but a duty that mocked him. Almost every night, she expected him, and what had been love soon became labor of love. The shadow of the dread double bed darkened each born day. Only the emergence of Dr. Chapman saved him. Dr. Chapman became a rescue as effective as any ever staged by the cavalry or Marines. When Dr. Chapman took him on as a spare-time aide and demanded night work, Horace cooperated in the secret project with a fervor that Chapman mistook for scientific enthusiasm. As a result, there was friction with Naomi, but soon enough she was made to understand that twice weekly would have to be their norm. Eventually, her agitation decreased, and toward the end, it disappeared altogether. Not until the terrible denouement in the back yard and the scene afterward, did Horace realize to what degree she had reorganized her life, and at what cost she had made the adjustment.
He severed the rotten thing from his life in one clean stroke. The house was vacated; the furniture sold. Every memento, every gift, every photograph save one (a softly diffused portrait of her in profile, taken in the second year of their marriage), was liquidated. Even the single last link of communication, the alimony payment, Horace reduced to the impersonal. On the third day of every month, an attorney in Rear-don, Wisconsin, mailed the check to an attorney in Burbank, California.
During the busy, arduous months of the bachelor survey, Horace managed to dedicate himself to the work and succeeded fairly well in erasing Naomi from his mind. But with the undertaking of the married female survey, this often became difficult—for, too frequently, a voice behind the screen reminded him of her voice, and more and more often the reply to his extramarital-activities question sounded intentionally sadistic as it came from behind the screen.
Horace dreaded The Briars from the moment the trip had been arranged. He had not minded being in Los Angeles during the male survey, but a sampling of married females made the proximity to Naomi unbearable. Perhaps, as he thought all along, he feared that he would see her again; or perhaps he feared that he would not. He could not define the true reason for his apprehension, but it painfully existed all the same. And then, Monday night, he had seen her. He had gone to the movie in Westwood and found a place three seats in from the center aisle. About twenty minutes into the main feature, a young woman came up the aisle, and she was Naomi. She did not see him and continued toward the lobby, but he saw her, and was deeply shaken, and later got extremely drunk.
In discussing Naomi's interview with Paul, Horace had been disturbed by the inevitability (at least in his own mind) of Naomi's presence among the two hundred volunteers. It was, he thought, as if some bad fate had attached itself to him and would not let him go. Paul, however, had regarded her appearance as less unusual. After all, more than three thousand women had been interviewed. The percentages were against it, as Paul had predicted earlier on the train, yet it was not so surprising that one of them might prove to be someone a member of the team would know, especially since she dwelled in the small community being sampled. Paul reminded Horace of the earlier incident in Indianapolis when he himself realized that he was questioning a married woman whom he had dated several times in school. Those things happened; they just happened. They were not allowed to happen too often in art, banished as straining credulity, but in real life they happened all too often. No, it was not the coincidence of it that had bothered Paul, but, as he told Horace, the odd fact that Naomi would offer herself to a survey of which her husband was a part. Surely she knew. Horace thought not. In the latter period of their marriage, she had not known for whom he was working spare time, since Dr. Chapman's second survey had not yet been officially announced. As to reading about his new profession afterward, that too was unlikely. Even when she read books, and those only early in their marriage, she had never had the patience for newspapers or magazines. It was hardly likely that she had changed. And if, occasionally, she glanced at a newspaper—well, Paul knew very well that the stories usually went on and on about Dr. Chapman but rarely mentioned even the names of the members of the team. Furthermore, it was unlikely that Naomi had ever revealed her married name to anyone in The Briars, so the other women would have no way of relating the Van Duesen on the Chapman team to her. No, as far as Horace could see, that part of it made sense.
Thus they had gone on talking until three in the morning, Horace doing most of the talking and Paul trying to placate and reassure him.
Remembering all of this now, in the early sun, as he drove the Ford through Bel-Air, Paul tried to discover in what way the memory of it still troubled him. His natural sorrow for a good friend, of course. But that was too simple. There was something more selfish. It was, he supposed, that all of this related directly to his bachelor state. It was possibly one more brick on the wall slowly rising that kept him from a woman, any woman, he might marry. On each brick, there was a digit, and one day this digit barrier would be too high and formidable to surmount. Naomi had been but a reflection of hundreds of other women whose intimate lives he had probed —the nameless numerals—telling him in the language of science that all there was to love and marriage was x number of means of petting, x number of positions, x number of orgasms. And perhaps, honestly, this was all that there was to it. If so, it made of marriage a bleak resort. Rather than that, he would prefer monastic isolation. Or was there more? What of the good, solid unions he had known, and the romantic fancies he had so long held? What of tenderness and things in common and procreation? Get thee behind me, Victor Jonas.
Paul swung his convertible to the extreme right of the narrow road, to allow an oncoming delivery truck to pass, and then he looked at Horace again. He felt a swell of compassion for his battered friend.
"Feeling any better, Horace?"
Horace removed his stare from the glove compartment and blinked at Paul. "I'll be all right... It was damn kind of you to let me bend your ear the way I did last night."
"Don't be silly."
"You know what I was just sitting here thinking? I was thinking why I really got so plastered Monday night.”
“Well, you saw her—"
"Yes, but it wasn't just seeing her. What happened was I saw her for an instant—it was the first time since that night—and that instant I knew I loved her as much as ever. It just grabbed me by the gut. It was awful, because I'm a reserved person, and there was no control in this. There she was, a dirty thing, and I loved her. After she was gone, I didn't care about what I did or said. I just wanted to see her. I didn't tell you this last night—I was ashamed—but I jumped out of my seat and went up the aisle after her like a crazy goon. She wasn't in the lobby or outside, and I went up and down the block, and other blocks, searching for her. I didn't find her. I decided to look her up in the telephone book and go see her. She was in the telephone book, all right. Then I was scared—there was a whole stranger I didn't know much about, the one on the grass with that kid—and I decided I'd better have a drink first. There were no bars around that part of Westwood. I asked someone in the street, and he said it was because of the university. Did you know that? So I drove to another section near some place called Pico and found a place and got stiff. I was in no condition to see her, and I was lucky even to get back to the motel. But I can't get it out of my mind, how I behaved. I thought she was done and dead, and I had it tucked away in an old compartment, forgotten, and then the resurrection, and what's left of me is in little pieces. I must be out of my mind. How can you love a whore?"
Paul kept his eyes on the road. "She's not a whore," he said slowly. "She's a woman who was your wife, and she's ill and needs help. And you love her."
"I do. But it would be a hundred hells."
"Maybe it would. Yes, I suppose it would." He read a metal road sign, and the arrow pointed left for Sunset Boulevard. "Well, it's almost curtain time. We'd better get back to The Briars."
Cass Miller stiffened in his chair as he heard Sarah Gold-smith's answer to his question, and he glared at the screen with hatred. The bitch, he thought, the filthy, cheating bitch.
He had said, "Now there will be a series of questions on extramarital relationships." He had asked, "Have you ever engaged in coitus with a man or men other than your husband?" So certain had he been of her reply that he had marked the Solresol symbol for "Never" without waiting to hear her reply.
She had answered, "Once."
Cass could not believe his ears. "I'm sorry. Did you say you have had one man, other than your husband, since you've been married?"
She had answered nervously, "Yes, one."
Cass had found it difficult to keep the disapproval out of his voice. "When ... when did this take place?" There must be extenuating circumstances. Long ago, certainly, when she was foolish, immature, drunk.
She had answered, "Right now."
The bitch. His head throbbed. Angrily, he erased what he had written, tearing a hole in the page as he did so.
She had made a fool of him, and he despised her. Usually, he was prepared for this, and on guard, but her appearance and her prior history had deceived him.
The interview had been scheduled for nine in the morning, and Cass had overslept and been late. Crossing to his office, from the conference room, he saw her being led in his direction by Benita. He saw that her sleek hair was in an old-fashioned bun in back, and that she wore proper glasses, and a neat, conservative, plaid dress. The glasses, the flat shoes, the maturity of her figure, the whole aspect of progressive, decent housewife, were what fooled him, but mainly the glasses.
After he had settled behind the screen, and she was ready—this Sarah Goldsmith—her history confirmed his respected opinion of her. Her answers were matter-of-fact, sensible. She was thirty-five, married twelve years. Her husband wasn't exactly a ball of fire, Cass had noted during the questioning, but probably this was exactly right for her. Married twelve years, two children, synagogue during the high holidays. A good wife and mother.
"When did this take place?" he had asked about her infidelity.
"Right now," she had answered.
Lousy bitch. He should have guessed. These were the worst, these doers of laundry, and bakers of bread, and dusters of furniture. The gingham harlots.
As he recorded the answer correctly now on the questionnaire, the old sore opened and festered, and the pain of it shot to his head.
His mother, what he remembered of her, had worn her hair in a bun, except that morning—morning!—he had returned home unexpectedly when he was not supposed to, having escaped the school grounds at recess over some imagined wrong, and he had raced home to seek her comfort. Her hair loose on her shoulders, he remembered, and those big mother's breasts, and the obscenity of her position with the skinny man who was not his father. Thinking of her, he could forever remember only that picture of her, and despise her until he was nauseated—that old woman on the bed with another man, that old woman who was a mother.
Once, long after, when he was in college and still haunted by it, he had checked to find out the year his mother was born, and what his own age had been, so that he could fasten on the exact year it had happened. From this he was astonished to learn that his mother had been twenty-nine when it had happened. This was incredible to him. For him the worst of it had always been that she was an old woman who was a mother, and now he had proved she was a young woman then, and had been an old woman only when he was grown (that long after summer when she was passing through town and had shamelessly visited his father on business). Yet, somehow, the facts had never changed it in his mind: she had been old when he had been young, and a mother, and a bawd—an immoral, base, dissolute bawd, fiendish and faithless to him in her obscenity.
On the other side of the screen, Sarah shifted fretfully in her chair, worrying the handkerchief in her hand. The interviewer had been silent so long a time. Had she said the wrong thing? No, Dr. Chapman had said that they wanted the plain facts. No one would see them, ever. The crazy secret language, the bank safes, the STC machine. Nevertheless, her anxiety mounted. Why hadn't she consulted Fred Tauber first? What if it got out, by accident? What would happen to them? She wished, more than anything in the world, that she had not mentioned the affair. Why had she consented to this? Why had she told the truth? Was it because she was proud of the secret bursting inside her, the pregnancy of a new freedom, and she wanted to speak it aloud to someone, anyone?
She heard his voice. It seemed uncommonly harsh. "Please pardon the delay," he was saying. "We have optional questions for every different circumstance. Since you've told me your extramarital affair is an act of the present day, I had to find the correct set of questions. Now if you are ready—"
She was suddenly scared. "I don't know," she blurted, "maybe I shouldn't—"
The male voice beyond the cane screen was instantly suave and solicitous. "Please don't be frightened, Ma'am. I know this is important to you, and honesty is difficult under the circumstances. But our interests are purely scientific. Nothing else. To us—to me—you are anonymous, a woman who had volunteered to help this good work. When you are done, in a very short time, other women will take your place in this room, and some will reveal facts that are, for them, as difficult or more difficult to discuss. At the end of the day, all of you will be so many illegible scrawls on so many sheets of paper. You must have absolutely no fear."
The words were comforting, and Sarah nodded dumbly. "All right."
"We'll get this over with quickly. This man you spoke of—how long has this been going on?"
"Three months."
"On the average, can you recall how many times you have performed the sex act with him per month?"
"Per month?"
"Well, per week, if that's easier."
She hesitated. How would the truth make her appear? Would it be degrading or normal and attractive? She thought of Fred, of herself awakened and renewed, and decided that she was proud. "Four times a week," she said.
"Four times a week," he repeated. His voice was oddly muffled. "Is your partner single or married?"
"He's ... he's married." But there must be no misunderstanding. She was no home-wrecker. "I'd better explain," she added hastily. "He's married but separated. His wife won't give him a divorce."
"I see."
His question had unsettled her. Of course Fred wanted a divorce. He had told her so many times. It was simply that his wife was being difficult. Otherwise, why would he be living separately?
"Can you enumerate one or more reasons for becoming involved in an extramarital affair?"
"I really can't say."
"Perhaps I can clarify the question." Cass began to recount the various reasons why married women often became adulteresses. ("When the subject is unable to give a direct reply," Dr. Chapman always maintained in his briefings, "it is useful to give them examples of answers made to the question by other women.") Cass had finished his fifth possible reason when Sarah interrupted.
"Yes, that one," she said.
"Which? The last?"
"Yes."
You weren't satisfied with your husband?"
She shivered. Why wasn't he satisfied with one answer? Why did he keep on like this? How could she tell him? How would he know? Did he know Sam? Had he lived with him for twelve years? Could he understand the corrosive monotony of each new month and year? Could he understand that but one life was given each woman, a single dowry to use as best she could, and if it were wasted, futilely wasted, there would be no other? "No, I wasn't," she said at last. "Something was missing. This just happened. I didn't look for it. It happened."
"During the first occasion on which you had sexual intercourse with this other man, were you the aggressor, or were you seduced by him, or was the mating a mutual act?"
How could she answer this truthfully when she herself did not know? But she must be fair to Fred, at all costs. He was no heartless and practiced Don Juan. Yet, neither was she a wicked Jezebel. She decided that the middle course was the most honest. "I suppose it was mutual," she said.
"Do you believe yourself to be equally passionate, more passionate, or less passionate than your husband?"
"My husband?" she repeated, surprised that they had returned to Sam.
"Yes."
"Oh, more passionate."
"And how would you compare yourself to the ... the man who is not your husband."
"We're the same, I guess."
"Very well. Now another multiple-choice question. To the best of your knowledge, would you say that your husband knows of your current love affair? You may reply: he knows because he was told, he knows because he found out, he probably suspects, he does not know. Which would you say?"
"He does not know," said Sarah flatly.
At the card table, Cass scratched in the answer. Does not know. Does not know. Anger welled high in his throat. This was the worst kind, the Pretending Esther, dressing the children, writing for samples, collecting green stamps, enacting motherly-wifely devotion, playing at typical housewife, cuckolding and humiliating—four times a week. He remembered The Book of his youth on the chiffonier. "Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith I have done no wickedness."
He passed his hand over his head and regarded the next questions. He would cut them short. He could not bear much more of this.
He resumed the cross-examination. Each reply fell upon him like a blow. He compared her voluptuous gluttony with her husband's asceticism. Cass's heart went out to her husband, poor overworked, exhausted fool, trying only to please some-one who would not be pleased.
For the husband, for himself, for Dr. Chapman, for the husband most of all, Cass wanted to know the extent of her perfidy. "How long do you both engage in the coital act?"
"It takes longer now."
"How much longer?"
Haltingly, she discussed the duration and longevity of evil.
Cass's forehead was perspiring, and he abandoned the chronology of the questionnaire completely. "Does the sight of your partner arouse you?"
"Not at all?"
"Not much."
"What does arouse you?"
There was a silence.
"Something must arouse you," said Cass impatiently. "What is it? You can tell me."
Her answer was barely discernible. "Sexual intercourse," she said.
"Simply that?"
"Going on and on," she said.
His pencil was poised over the sheet. He tried to visualize her as he had glimpsed her in the corridor. The hair in a tight bun, the ample female hips. And then he pictured her as he had really seen her: hair loose on her shoulders and massive naked thighs—that old woman on the bed with another man....
It was ten thirty-five, twenty minutes since she had left the Association building, when Sarah Goldsmith turned her station wagon south off Wilshire and drove the two blocks to Fred's apartment. She had told him that she would not be able to see him this morning, but after the interview, she had a sudden urge to be with him. Usually, she was careful, but this morning she allowed herself the caprice.
The interview had had a singular effect on her thinking. It had helped sort matters out. By articulating the history of her marriage and the history of her affair, she was able to see her choice more clearly. Until then, the question of choice had not come up. But now she saw Sam—and herself—factually. And Fred—and herself—truly.
She parked beneath the elms, crossed the quiet street, and went into the apartment building. In this wing there were only two tenants. A peroxide blonde of indeterminate years, and countless Siamese cats, who lived on the ground floor, and Fred, whose apartment was at the top of the stairs. Entering the cool foyer, and then starting up the stairs, Sarah was surprised to see a woman descending toward her.
Sarah's heart hammered. The woman could be emerging from only one apartment. For a moment, she loomed above. She was attired in an immaculate pique tennis outfit, a woman in her early forties, with gray-black hair meticulously waved, and sharp, regular, aristocratic features, and a long straight figure. She came downward, step by step, eyes unwaveringly on Sarah, and then, passing, staring straight ahead. Sarah had held aside, to make room, and now she resumed her climb. At the top of the stairs, Sarah glanced below. The tall woman was at the door, gazing up at her. Their eyes met briefly. Sarah's fingers tightened. The woman went out the door.
Confused, Sarah rushed to Fred's apartment and rapped on the door. She waited. In a moment, the door opened and Fred, in tennis jersey and shorts, was before her. She hurried to get inside.
"Sarah! What the devil are you doing here? I thought—”
“I had to see you. I finished early, and I wanted to." She gestured fretfully. "Who was that woman?"
"You mean you met her?"
"I certainly did. Shouldn't I have?"
"Oh, stop that. Don't be silly. It doesn't matter—only I've begged you to telephone first."
"Why? Who was she?"
"My wife."
"Your wife?" She had guessed it, but it was difficult to reconcile that juiceless, older woman with Fred's youthful vigor. "Does she do this often?"
"Do what? There's nothing. I told you we have nothing to do with each other. We have some community property. Once or twice a month she drops by to discuss business. Today she wanted to do it at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club."
"But what was she doing up here?"
"We hadn't finished talking. And she was thirsty.”
“For water?"
"Sarah—"
She felt the tautness give, and she was free of it. "I'm sorry," she said miserably. "Please, Fred, don't be angry with me."
She went to him, head on his shoulder, arms encircling his chest.
"I'm not angry," he said. "Only try not to do this again,
Sarah. I've nothing to hide. There's no one but you. But sometimes I'm out, or some friend is here, or today—she---"
"I won't, Fred, not again. I just wanted to see you."
He stroked her sleek hair. "That's good of you. I appreciate it. I want to see you as often as possible. What happened this morning? How was the child psychiatrist?"
"Psychiatrist?" She had momentarily forgotten her fiction, and then she remembered it. "Fine—very helpful. I ... I learned a good deal."
"Have you had breakfast yet?"
"That's not what I want."
He held her off. "What do you want?"
"I want to know you love me."
He drew her to him again, and spoke gently, lucidly, as one addresses a small child. "Of course I love you. But let's not ever spoil it by being rash. I want this to go on forever. The main thing to remember is—we must both be sensible." She gazed up at him. "Why?" she asked.
It was something she had never asked him—or herself—before.
Long after, Paul Radford would still relive the interview that took place between the hour of four and five-fifteen that tropical Thursday afternoon.
What had first intrigued him about her was the soft, low-keyed voice that filtered through the obstructing screen. There was a throaty quality about the voice that conjured up an association of words: reposeful ... sophisticated ... ladylike ... chaise longue ... lace ... boudoir ... ardor ... infinity. Someday, when they had the Zollman Foundation grant and their fabulous sex center, he would suggest to Dr. Chapman that a paper be prepared correlating feminine desirability to vocal timbre.
He wondered if the reality of her matched the promise of her voice. Again he thought, as he had several times before, that the dividing screen was an artificial nuisance, more inhibiting than encouraging.
Before him lay her history, through adolescence and the pre-marital stage. Except for certain puritanical overtones, and a tendency toward restraint, her life performance was not remarkable. Most of her early behavior was widespread and therefore, by their standard, eminently normal.
"Before we embark on a series of questions about the marital sex act," he said, "perhaps you'd like a brief break—smoke a cigarette?"
"If you please."
"Matter of fact, I'll have a pipe, if it won't annoy you?”
“Not at all."
He heard the unclasping of her purse, and he extracted his pipe and filled and lighted it. He lifted the questionnaire from the table and reviewed the beginnings of their interview, as he had several times before.
Her name was Kathleen Ballard. Her age was twenty-eight. She had been born in Richmond, Virginia, and removed to San Francisco when she was twelve—this would account for the slight Southern slur, attractive, on some of her words—and she had been educated at Roanoke College and the University of Richmond, and spent a short time at the Sorbonne, explained by the fact that her late father was high-ranking regular army. Like Paul himself, she was Presbyterian by heredity and indifferent by choice. She had recently joined a church in The Briars, but only so that her daughter might have Sunday-school activity. Her marital status was that of widow. Her husband of three years had been a jet test pilot and had met with a fatal accident over a year ago.
Paul had undergone a curious emotional conflict when he had heard the fate of her husband. His first reaction, spontaneous and uncivilized, was one of relief. Why relief? Because, he told himself, a woman like this must not be owned by any man and reduced to a commonplace chattel taken for granted. And besides, if she were free, it made his fantasies less immature. At once, the old dependable guilt overtook him. And for the feeling of relief he substituted the more acceptable and sanctimonious attitude of pity.
Now, drawing contentedly on his pipe, preparing to ask the series of questions on marital coitus, he suddenly related her last name to the test pilot recently dead. Ballard. And then it came to him that this might be the widow of the renowned Boy Ballard, a legendary figure whose name had so flamboyantly filled the front pages for several years. Of course, this was the great Boy Ballard's widow, and immediately Paul Radford felt embarrassed for his fantasies. He felt like a chimney sweep in the presence of Her Majesty. But another glance at the questionnaire reassured him. She was a woman.
He set the sheet on the table before him, settled his pipe in the ceramic tray, and cleared his throat. "Well, the pause that refreshes. If you're ready, I am."
"Yes, I'm ready."
"These questions will concern just the three years you were married. To begin with, what was the frequency of sexual intercourse with your husband?"
On the other side of the screen, Kathleen Ballard, in a cool, sleeveless, ice-blue linen dress, sat rigid and erect in the chair. She had just ground out the butt of her cigarette, but now she sought another in her purse.
"Let me think... " she said.
It was the moment that she had dreaded all these last days, but she was prepared. Meeting Ursula Palmer before the post office, Tuesday morning, had been fortunate. They had taken tea at The Crystal Room, and Ursula, with her keen reportorial mind, had explained the entire experience. In her car afterward Kathleen had located a pencil in her glove compartment, and, writing on the back of a pink garage receipt, she had jotted down as many of the Chapman questions as she could remember, especially those concerning marital life. As a result, she had been ten minutes late picking up Deirdre at dancing class. But that night, and the night after, she had kept the notes before her in the kitchen, and then in the bathroom and bedroom, thinking about the questions that she would be asked and thinking about her life with Boy.
Now, holding a newly lighted cigarette between faintly nicotine-scarred fingers, she wondered if Jim Scoville, official biographer, and J. Ronald Metzgar, keeper of the shrine, had been right, and she had been wrong. It was too late now for remorse. She was face to face with it—with that surprisingly kind and thoughtful person concealed behind that sensible screen—and there was no turning back. Besides, she was prepared.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but could you ask that question again, please?"
"The frequency of—"
"Oh, yes. Three times a week," she blurted.
"Would that be the average?"
"More or less, when he was home. He was away a good deal."
"Did you engage in petting before—"
She was ready for that one, too. "Yes, of course.”
“Could you describe—"
Hastily, she described it.
"How much time, on the average, did you devote to petting?"
She suffered a moment of panic. Ursula had left that one out. Or had she forgotten to note it? No, Ursula would forget nothing. Odd. She was so thorough. Maybe Ursula had not been asked the question. Why not? And why now? How much time, on the average? How could that be answered? What should it be? An hour? Too fanciful. Too pat. "Fifty minutes," she said.
Coolly, so she thought it must appear, she went on and on, with no hesitancy, with full confidence, from magnificent performances to incredible satisfactions, always the paragon of enlightened womanhood.
She had replied to a crucial question. There was a momentary silence, and she watched the screen and wondered if he approved.
"Now, as I have it here," said Paul, "you and your husband were intimate three times weekly, with fifty minutes devoted. to petting and an hour devoted to love. Do I have it right?"
The cigarette almost burned her finger, and she hastily rubbed it in the tray. Nerve filaments quivered tautly beneath her skin, and it was difficult to swallow. "Yes," she said loudly. Too loudly, she decided. "It's difficult ... to remember exactly."
More questions, too carefully worded, she thought. She wondered.
More answers, too recklessly given, he thought. He wondered.
"To what degree did you enjoy intimate relations with your mate—very much, somewhat, not very much, not at all?”
“I always enjoyed it very much. Isn't that normal?"
At ten minutes after five, Paul Radford noisily pushed back his chair to indicate clearly that the interview had been terminated. "Well, that gives us everything we need. Thank you very much."
"It was painless. Thank you."
He listened intently, and heard her remove the purse from the end table, heard the clack of her high-heeled pumps on the floor, heard the door open and close, and at last he was alone with the coded sex history of Kathleen Ballard, Widow.
Scowling, he took up the sheet, rose, and started around the screen. Twenty minutes stretched between now and the next scheduled interview. He decided that he needed a cup of black coffee in the conference room. Going past the screen into the forbidden female place, he halted a moment to contemplate the empty chair, recently vacated, and the ash tray with the remains of six or seven cigarettes. And then he saw on the floor, beneath the end table, a dark-green wallet.
He moved to the table, kneeled, and picked up the wallet. It was plainly feminine, and because no one else had been in the chair this morning, he knew who its owner must be. Unsnapping it, he pondered how she could have left it behind. Then he recollected when it must have happened. During the first minutes of the interview, he had heard her drop her purse. She had requested a moment to retrieve the scattered contents. Apparently she had overlooked the wallet.
Studying the billfold, now open, and knowing its owner, he justified his next action by telling himself that he had to be positive it was her own. The wallet contained a five-dollar bill, two singles, a Diners' book, and several gasoline credit cards. Opening the flap to the celluloid inserts, he found a driver's license, and then her photograph, or, rather, her photograph with a small girl child. This, he knew, was what he had been hunting for from the beginning.
He stared at the formal, wallet-sized picture, obviously the contact print for an enlargement. He was not surprised one bit. She was almost exactly what he had imagined. Prettier, perhaps, with a loveliness that held him breathless. For long seconds, he studied the marvelous face, the dark hair bobbed short, the Oriental eyes, the tip of the nose, and the sensuous mouth.
Quickly, he closed the wallet and snapped it tight. He would give it to Benita to return.
He slipped the wallet into his pocket, and there was the questionnaire still in his hand. The questionnaire, he thought, less real, less true than the face with lips like a thread of scarlet.
For a moment, he peered down at the sheet of paper in his hand. And then, in a single abrupt motion, half exasperation, half disappointment, he tore the sheet in two.
Why had she lied?
In the corridor, he saw Benita behind the desk writing a letter.
"Any coffee?" he asked.
"On the hot plate," she said.
He nodded and went on. He did not give her the wallet.
Kathleen Ballard stood before the Spanish grille panel of her bar, which she had slid back earlier, and now she dropped fresh ice cubes in the two glasses, uncomfortably aware of Ted Dyson's eyes upon her. Pouring the Scotch across the ice—she really shouldn't have another drink, she -knew—she was sorry that she had worn this black sheath. It left her shoulders bare and clung tightly to her thighs, and was too short. If it made her feel unclad, what was it making him feel?
Slowly, she stirred the drinks, forgetting that there was no water in them and that they need not be stirred. Yet, she had selected the dress with care, and earlier she had driven Deirdre over to the Keegan for the night, and, after the dinner was under control, she had dismissed Albertine two hours early and said that she would serve the meal herself. What had possessed her?
It was the interview, of course. She had faced the fact of it and the lie of it, these last hours since. The ordeal had been sick-making, with all those dreadful, ruthless questions, and, worse, she had misled the poor, earnest man like some psychotic liar. But it had been necessary to go through with the interview, to resolve a stand she had taken toward her past, and it had been equally necessary to prevaricate, if she were to live with that past. But the point was, and this she knew short minutes after the interview, she did not want to live with her past or make false terms with it. She wanted to start anew; she wanted to be normal. The questions had fashioned her goal: in a year or two from now, if she were asked them again, she wanted to be free enough, sufficiently liberated and un-ashamed, to answer each and all honestly. This had been her mood and temper driving home, and dressing, and waiting for Ted Dyson. Perhaps he was not her ultimate man, but he was a man, and she had not known one for a year, nearer two, perhaps ever. Lord, she was twenty-eight, and still not yet a woman.
Now, the two drinks in her hands, she left the bar and saw that Ted had, indeed, been watching her. He sat sprawled indolently on the low silk sofa, exuding cockiness, and she did not like it. In fact, there was the frightening feeling inside her that she did not like him at all. Although there was a sulky virility about him, there was also something angry, jittery, unwholesome, that reminded you of male carhops and juvenile hopheads you saw in the morning paper. Yet, he was an old friend, and he respected her, and his membership card re-minded you that he was of the elite who often dwelled in the news.
She set her drink on the tea table and then went around the table to the sofa. She held out his glass.
"Hi, oasis," he said thickly.
Bending toward him, she could smell the liquor on his breath. He had been drinking before he arrived, that she knew, and this was the fourth she had served him.
He accepted the drink with his left hand and suddenly grabbed her wrist with his right.
"Come on, Katie—sit down beside me."
"Not now, Ted. I've got the dinner—"
"To hell with the dinner. Let's talk."
Her stance was awkward, bent forward, her wrist clamped in his hard hand.
"All right," she said. "For a minute."
He released her, and she sank into the sofa. As she did so, the narrow skirt slid above her knees. Frantically, she tried to pull it down, but then saw that he was grinning at her, and that this was a ridiculous prudery. She settled back and found that his arm was behind her and his drink, somehow, on the table.
He drew her to him, and, with reluctance, she permitted it. "Cozy," he said. "You fit nicely."
"I hope so," she said, but felt his hand close on her arm and heard her heart quicken. "You wanted to talk," she added.
"Not much. Just a little." He focused on her woozily, and she did not like his face so close. "What gives with you, honey?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe you got a secret life I don't know—but the way you been, it's not normal."
That word again. It struck her like a spear.
"Who says I'm not normal?" she wanted to know angrily.
"Now, don't get sore. I just mean the way you act. Like one minute you want to be friendly, and then the next you don't. You torching for Boy?"
"You know better than that."
"Last time I was here, I wanted to stay, worst way. You brushed me."
"You were drunk."
"Not that drunk. You mean, if I weren't drunk you could love me?"
"People don't talk about that."
His eyes were strange. "Maybe that's what's wrong—I talk too much."
"I didn't mean that."
"Or maybe Boy's in the way, and we ought to kill him off for good tonight."
She felt his breath on her cheek. "Right now," he whispered.
He drew her roughly to him and pressed her head into the cup of his arm with his free hand, and put his lips on hers.
It was inevitable, she knew. It was what she had planned and dreaded. Now it was here. It was normal, and maybe if she didn't think, didn't think, let go and floated, let go to his lips and hands, maybe then she would soon be normal, too. His lips were wet and bitter, and he was breathing into her, and feebly she tried to respond, pressing her mouth to his, reaching to touch his neck.
For a moment, their mouths were apart. "Good girl—good," he muttered. He kissed her again, and she received it, eyes shut, feeling herself being maneuvered against his chest, feeling his hand on her back searching for and finding the zipper. "My girl—good girl," she heard in her ear, and wanted to fight, and still did not, but knew that he was pulling her down on the sofa, and that her dress was loose, and that he was stretched beside her.
She moaned, hating herself for hating this, and he mistook the sound for passion. Excitedly, he fumbled at the bodice of her black dress.
"Ted," she said, "Ted—"
"Easy, honey—in a minute."
She tried to wriggle away from him. "No, Ted—don't—”
“I want you, honey—I want you—"
"Ted, listen—"
But he wouldn't listen. She reached for his wrists, and held them, pushing them from her with all her strength.
"Honey, you need me—"
"I don't! Now, stop it!"
Astonished by her vehemence, he relaxed his assault and stared down at her, not moving.
"You were begging for it all night," he said viciously. "What's got into you?"
"Not you or anybody!"
He showed his teeth. "That's good whore talk."
Confidently, he reached for her loose dress again, and she slapped him stingingly. He recoiled, falling backward, gripping the tea table to keep from dropping to the floor. He straightened himself, and by then she was sitting up, closing her dress.
"What kind of creep are you," he said savagely, "leading a man on—"
"I didn't mind kissing, but when you try to treat me like one of your cheap call girls—"
"You mean only call girls give out? What's with you, anyway?"
"There's nothing with me!" She felt the edge of hysteria in her voice, and she wanted to cry.
"I'll say there's nothing. Boy, oh, boy—nothing at all; frigid as an icicle."
Her voice broke. "Get out!"
"You're damn right I will." He stood up, patting his hair.
"Honey, you're going to have to phone mighty soon if you want me or anyone for a return engagement—because if it's later, you're going to be a pitiful dried-up bag."
"Goddam you, get out!"
"Sure, sure." He shook his head and started toward the door. "I've heard of frigidity, but I never had a date with a deep freeze." He opened the door and turned. "Poor old Boynton. Now I can understand; I don't blame him for shacking up with all those other babes!"
"You bastard—"
She had the heavy glass ash tray in her hand, but before she could throw it, he was out the door and gone.
She had sat on the sofa, legs curled under her, for a long time, chain smoking and staring into space. She had reviewed this night, a hundred other nights, her entire life, and never had she felt more helpless.
At last, as the disaster receded and the grinding process of remembrance wearied, she got to her feet, made her way into the kitchen, and turned off the oven. She had no stomach for food and decided to prepare for bed and read until she was sleepy.
Mechanically, she had begun to sort the food that might be salvaged and put it in the freezer when the doorbell sounded. For a moment, she was gripped by the fear that it might be Ted, abject and apologetic. She hesitated. The clock read twenty after eight. Then something told her that it would not be Ted, now or ever.
She went to the entry hall, snapped on the front lights, and opened the door.
A tall man, strange to her, holding a green wallet, stood diffidently behind the welcome mat.
He smiled. "I hate to break in on you like this, Mrs. Ballard, but we know each other, even though we haven't met.”
“I'm afraid I don't know you," she said impatiently.
"I'm Paul Radford. I'm one of Dr. Chapman's associates.”
“Dr. Chapman? I don't understand."
"I know this is irregular, but—"
Suddenly, the expression on her face showed amazement, and then indignation. "We know each other? You mean—were you the one who interviewed me this morning?"
He nodded. "Yes. This isn't customary, of course, but I was afraid you'd need your wallet. I found it on the floor after you left."
He opened the screen and handed it to her. Coloring, she hesitated, then took it. Avoiding his eyes, she busied herself opening it. "Yes, it's mine," she said finally. "I suppose I should thank you, but I won't."
The apologetic smile left his face. "You're annoyed?"
"Don't you think I have the right to be?" she said heatedly. "I only went through with that stupid interview because I was told it was the right thing and because I was assured it would be anonymous. Now, the first thing I know, I have the interviewer in my house."
"Well, not quite. If you'll let me explain. It's still perfectly anonymous. I haven't the least memory of—"
"I think it's absolutely wrong. Your conduct is inconsiderate, unforgivable—the effrontery of it. I can't tell you how much it distresses me. Having you here staring at me, after all you've heard—it makes me feel unclean."
For a moment, taken aback by the cold anger in the lovely face, Paul was tempted to tell her that he knew nothing about her from the interview, except that she had lied. Instead, trying to understand that all of this was a part of what had happened at the interview, too, he said, "I'm sorry I've upset you. I can't tell you how sorry."
"Why did you come here then?"
He hesitated, considering what he would like to say and what he should say. Suddenly, he didn't care. "I saw your picture in the wallet," he said. "I guess I had to know if you really existed. I can't explain it any more than that. It was wrong, and I hope you can forgive me. Good night."
He turned on his heel and walked swiftly, in long, uneven strides, down the circular driveway.
Kathleen did not move from the doorway. She watched him until he had disappeared into the night and her anger had turned into shame.
She had once looked up the word frigid. It meant wanting in warmth or ardor. It meant more, too. To her, it was the ugliest word in the English language.
After a while, she shut the door. She went into the bathroom and took a sleeping pill. At least, she did not dream.