The Chapman Report, page 33
“You did the right thing.”
“What about Deirdre?”
“I dropped her at school on the way and left a note for Albertine to watch for the carpool auto at noon and stay on until I returned. Have you had breakfast?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You’ve got to have something. Let’s find the kitchen.”
There were neither eggs nor bacon in the refrigerator, and the bread in the white metal box was several days old. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Kathleen dropped two slices of bread in the toaster, prepared coffee, and then washed and dried several dishes. As she worked, Paul settled himself on a dinette chair with a grunt and explained what had been happening.
Several times, since Horace had learned Naomi lived in The Briars, he had called upon her, but not once had he found her home. Last night he had tried again, and when again she was not present, he had parked before her porch, determined to await her return. After midnight, she had appeared on her lawn, drunk and mauled. Horace had carried her inside, revived her, learned the name of her physician, and called him. The doctor had come at once, and had reported that, except for requiring three stitches, her injury was mainly psychic. He had recommended that she be placed in a sanitarium and be given intensive psychiatric treatment. He had left the names of several analysts, and by daybreak, Horace, exhausted and confused, had telephoned Paul for his advice.
“What could I tell him?” Paul said to Kathleen as she served the buttered toast and coffee. “We’re strangers out here. And, knowing what I know of Naomi, it was something you just don’t play by ear. Of course, Dr. Chapman has the best medical connections, but Horace and I agreed that this was something we had best leave him out of. He’d have immediately worried about the newspapers. This was strictly Horace’s personal matter, to be handled as quietly as possible. Then I remembered Dr. Victor Jonas.”
Kathleen, seating herself across from Paul, remembered Dr. Jonas, too. Paul had spoken of him with affection on one of their first dates.
“And even though, technically, he was Dr. Chapman’s adversary, I knew Naomi’s problem was in his area and that he could be trusted. So I called him from the motel and explained the situation, and I met him here. And then I called you.”
“Is Dr. Jonas here now?”
“In the back, talking to Horace. I told Horace to accept whatever he has to say.”
There was little to add. They drank their coffee in silence. Kathleen remembered the time when her sister had been in the hospital to have her adenoids and tonsils removed, and after the surgery, while her sister was in the recovery room, she and her parents had gone down to a cafeteria and had sat in the early morning drinking coffee, and it had smelled like this. But then, placing it in time, she realized that it must have been her parents’ coffee that smelled like this. She would have had milk.
They heard footsteps, and Dr. Victor Jonas came into the kitchen. Paul tried to stand, but Dr. Jonas kept him down with a hand on his shoulder, acknowledged the introduction to Kathleen with a warm smile, and decided that he would pour himself some coffee. Consciously, Kathleen had to cease staring at him: his rumpled hair and suit, and the prow of a nose, made him seem so unprofessional and eccentric.
“Horace just went to look in on her,” said Dr. Jonas as he brought his coffee to the table and sat. “I think he understands what must be done.”
“Is there hope for her?” Paul wanted to know.
“Maybe,” said Dr. Jonas.
Paul and Kathleen exchanged a glance, he perturbed, she perplexed, for they had expected the usual confident ,social platitude which ranged from “of course” to “where there’s life, there’s hope.” Paul had momentarily forgotten, and Kathleen did not yet know, Dr. Jonas’ habit of candor.
“What does that mean?” asked Paul.
“Psychiatrically, there’s every likelihood that this thing can be cured. It’s really in their own hands, more in Horace’s, I’d say. If she’s to be helped, she’s got to understand that she can be helped, that this is an illness, the symptom of a deeper illness. But since she is the one afflicted with a wish to self-destruction, she’ll need a hand. So that puts it squarely up to Horace. He’s got to know that she’s not depraved but sick. Not so easy for him. He’s educated, oriented, but there’s an enemy, and that’s his old religious upbringing. If he decides that he wants her, that she’s worth saving for himself, then he’ll come around. And he can bring her around. Then I have the place for them and the man. In Michigan. It wouldn’t be too far for him.”
“Have you actually seen cures in cases like this?” Paul asked.
“Of course. I told you, nymphomania’s a symptom of something that can be healed. Reach down, touch it, treat it, and there’s no more reason for nymphomania.”
Kathleen felt the inner tremor of shock and hoped she did not show it. That word, always the word in a joke or rental novel, had now a frightening quality, for it was real, and Naomi, sedated, was real. Suddenly, Kathleen recalled the gossip and shuddered. The stories were true. But how could any woman behave that way? But then, he had said, she could not help it, she was helpless, she was ill.
“What are the causes?” Kathleen found herself asking.
Dr. Jonas finished his coffee. “They vary. In this case, from the little I’ve heard, I’d guess she wasn’t much loved as a child.” He felt his pockets for the corncob pipe and found it. “I’m oversimplifying, of course. But this hypersexuality could be one means of trying to get that love now, as an adult. But it doesn’t work, you see—no man, no hundred men, can give her what her parents failed to give her twenty-odd years ago.” He filled the pipe and lighted it. “I tried to explain this to Horace. I told him she’d grown up without tenderness, security, authority, without the feeling of having been a person of value, and so the problem grew as she grew, and then she tried to run away from it by this endless series of unsatisfying episodes with other men. When I was through, Horace said, `You mean, it’s not just sex she’s looking for; you mean, she doesn’t want all those men?’ and I told him no, she doesn’t. In fact, underneath, she’s deeply hostile toward men. That may have opened his eyes a little. And it’s true.” He looked at Kathleen and welcomed her again with a shy but reassuring smile. “Analytic treatment can help fill in what has been missing. It can make her learn who she is, and why, and that she is a person of value. It will restore her identity. These suicidal sexual episodes will cease.” He shrugged. “It’s up to the two of them.”
After a few minutes, Horace, wearily rubbing the bridge of his nose with the hand that held his glasses, appeared. He glanced at the three around the dinette table with a blank expression. Kathleen tried to smile, and at last Horace recognized her and greeted her.
“She’s still sleeping,” said Horace, “but she seems restless.”
“Naturally,” said Dr. Jonas. “That wasn’t exactly a picnic last night.”
Horace looked at Kathleen. “It’s good of you to come, but maybe I’d better be here until the nurse arrives. In case Naomi wakes up. I think I’ll call Dr. Chapman and have him take over for me.”
Horace found the Association number in his billfold, and then telephoned. He got Benita Selby on the other end and explained that he might be detained and wondered if Dr. Chapman could manage for him until noon. He listened then, nodding at the phone, seeming sadder than before, and finally said that he and Paul would be on hand for the first interviews.
Returning the receiver to the cradle, Horace faced Kathleen. “Well, they can’t spare me,” he said. And then, to Paul. “Apparently Cass is down with the flu again, so Dr. Chapman’s taking his list.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kathleen. “I’ll look after her.”
“If she wakes up,” said Horace, “explain that I’ll be here right after work, by six-thirty, if possible.”
Kathleen nodded. Paul and Dr. Jonas stood up. “I think she’ll sleep most of the day,” Dr. Jonas said to Kathleen. “You might look in every once in a while, to see if she’s comfortable.”
There was a mournful canine wail from the maid’s room. “Christ, the dog,” said Horace. “I forgot.” He looked helplessly about. “Who’s going to take care of it?”
“I will,” said Dr. Jonas promptly. “My boys can care for the dog until Mrs. Shields is on her feet.” He disappeared briefly through the service porch and then returned with the grateful cocker spaniel in his arms.
Kathleen followed the men to the front door. After Horace and Dr. Jonas had gone out, Paul lingered a moment. “Special thanks,” he said to Kathleen. “I’ll call you at noon to see if everything’s okay. May I see you tonight?”
“That would be nice.”
“Dinner?”
“I won’t have you leaving California flat broke. A hamburger at a drive-in would suit me fine.”
Paul smiled. “You’re not the type, but whatever you say.”
“Are you sure you know what type I am?”
“Pheasant under glass and caviar with a sprig of Edelweiss.”
“Sometimes, yes. But also hamburger with a sprig of grass roots.” She wrinkled her nose. “Have a good day.”
After she had closed the door, she went into the hall, tiptoeing as she sought Naomi’s room. Finding the bedroom, she peered inside. The shades were drawn, and the room was in semi-darkness. Naomi lay with her head resting on her curled arm.
Turning away, Kathleen had an image: a creature from her private mythology, from the neck up an angel, from the neck down, a strumpet. Quickly, she was ashamed of the image and banished it.
In the overdecorated living room, surveying the pieces, she realized that what had at first seemed studied chic, now appeared garish. The fine old Chinese porcelain lamps were not genuine but cheap San Fernando Valley copies, and the vases were not cut crystal but pressed glass. Suddenly, she felt ashamed for these discoveries, as if caught peeking into private drawers when the owner was away. Because she didn’t care about other people’s furnishings anyway, because she had no such snobberies, only the knowledge of what was tasteful and what was not, she turned from the pieces and sought a book.
In a few minutes, she had found a rental-library mystery and decided that it would help consume the morning. Arming herself with cigarettes, matches, ashtray, she made herself comfortable on the thick sofa, crossed her legs, carefully put her heels on the coffee table, and attempted to read. But it was difficult. Her mind had fastened on Paul Radford.
During the past week, she had seen him every day but one. She had never before felt so contented, so quickly, with a man. Yet the old worry hung over her like a naked sword. She would not dare to let herself think of it or of what might happen between them, before he left on Sunday. Now, as she invited him to wander through her head, she felt suddenly cheating and unworthy. She tried to think about the other women that she knew in relation to Paul. How would they manage him? Who did she mean? Naomi? Oh, God, no. But someone as…as cool and controlled, outwardly, as herself. Who was like herself? No one, really. Yet, there was Ursula Palmer. She was a writer. Paul was a writer. Things in common. More than that, Ursula was so in-control-of and self-assured. Those were characteristics required in a situation like this. None of the black uncertainty. She envied Ursula….
* * *
“Well,” said Bertram Foster at last, after having placed the glass of champagne on the coffee table before her, “I bet this is the first time you ever had bubbles in your nose at breakfast.”
“Yes,” said Ursula Palmer dutifully.
The day before, Foster had telephoned her to change the time of their meeting. He had complained that Alma simply would not give him a night off, even to work, and so he had arranged the next best thing. He had conspired with a studio to have her taken on a visit to a location shooting at Lake Arrowhead. She would be back by dinner. But, at any rate, this would give Ursula and himself all of Thursday morning and afternoon together. He had suggested that they begin by breakfasting early in his suite.
Ursula had felt better about the breakfast. Increasingly, the dinner date had troubled her. Breakfast had an uninvolved, unromantic, anti-sexual atmosphere. After all, who could be inspired to fornicate after Wheaties? But when she had arrived, morning attired, in her open-throat blouse and pleated light wool skirt, she had been dismayed to find Foster wearing a thin, polka-dot silk robe over his gray silk pajamas. His round face was freshly shaved and smelled of pine and talcum. And behind him, on the breakfast cart, was the open bottle in the iced bucket.
He held his glass aloft. “Piper Heidsick,” he said. “The best money can buy. Go ahead, go ahead—try it.”
He drank and watched over his glass as she brought her glass to her lips. Ursula tried to keep from grimacing. It tasted like something squeezed out of wet wood. “Delicious,” she said, and felt the heat of it rise to her temples.
“Umm,” said Foster, drinking. “Breakfast can wait.” He came around the table to her, set the glass down, and dropped heavily on the couch beside her. He peered owlishly at the cleft made visible by her open-throat blouse. “Well, Miss Editor,” he said, “where is it?”
For Ursula, the long-deferred, dread moment had finally arrived “Here,” she said, patting the large manila envelope beneath her purse. The completion of the notes on her sex history had been a miracle of ambition. Constantly during her typing of it, she had been delayed and held up by involuntary mental odysseys into her childhood, her years with Harold, her inadequacies as a sexual partner. In a busy, eventful life, where love had been sublimated to a lesser part of it, her shortcomings had never been fully faced or even partially apparent to her. But once concentrated in one place, as a separate biography of her behavior, this portion of her life loomed larger than heretofore, and its failures were evident and haunting. The distasteful task of reliving this segment of her biography, of knowing it would be soon seen by another, these facts as well as the knowledge that her husband was being serviced in his office by a German chippy, had made the last days unbearable. Several times the thought, unthinkable weeks ago, that the cover line and the job in New York were not worth the price, had crossed her mind, but in the end she had gone on and finished the loathsome assignment.
Now, unclasping the manila envelope, opening it, extracting the clipped pages of typed notes, she wondered if it would be less galling simply to sleep with Foster rather than let him peek into the bedroom and watch her perform through the years.
“It’s twenty-seven pages,” she said, and she handed it to him.
He held the notes in his hands, and held also a serious, businesslike face. “A real contribution,” he said.
“It’ll take a while to read, Mr. Foster. Maybe I could go for a walk and come back.”
“No. I want you here to discuss. Have champagne.”
Already he was eagerly reading. Ursula tried to avoid his face, but several times glanced sidelong at it and saw that this was the face that stared at stag films in darkened living rooms and avidly read the classic eroticism of John Cleland. Ursula swallowed her champagne, feeling sick at heart, feeling Belle Boyd delivering Harold’s secrets to the enemy, feeling betrayer of the only God-chosen private part of her life. (When you sold this, what else was left?)
She was aware that he was beginning to skip pages, hurriedly.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Foster?”
“The kid stuff—who cares? Where’s the grownup part?”
“You mean premarital?”
“Whatever you call it,” he said impatiently.
“Page eighteen.”
He found the page and began to read again. His eyes did not blink. He kept wetting his lips.
After a while, he looked at her. “So you put out before?”
“I was very young, Mr. Foster,” she said hastily, resenting her defensiveness but not wishing to give him license.
He read on and looked at her again, and she had the strange sensation that his eyes reflected not Ursula Palmer but a side of stripped beef. “You live and learn,” he said.
“What?”
“Position is everything,” he said, and he showed his teeth and winked. Her skin went cold.
He read on. She saw, from the corner of her eye, the pages steadily flipping. She judged that he was reading about her life with Harold. She despised herself and wanted to snatch the manuscript from his fat hand.
He held his finger on the page and shifted toward her. “He’s not so much,” said Foster. She met his eyes.
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
She was blinded by indignation. “He’s as good as anybody—as you or anybody.”
“Not by my book.”
Losing restraint, she fought back. “Why are men so conceited? They always think they can do better for a woman than her husband.”
“Loyalty, I don’t knock—but facts are facts.” His lardy lips spread. “Excuse me; maybe he improves with age.”
He resumed reading. She trembled with the outrage of it. This misshapen old lecher, with his soiled brain, derogating and mocking Harold, dismissing her whole married life with his filthy tongue.
He had turned a page, and now he brought it back again and reread it slowly. His lips silently formed the words. He held the page stiffly, not turning it. He began to speak without looking at her. “It says here, `Question: Do you—” His bloated face was turned toward her. “Come here,” he ordered. His finger was on the page. “Read this and tell me if I understand.”
Tensely, she edged beside him, inclining her head to follow his finger on the page. She felt his asthmatic breath on her cheek.
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
She pulled back, sitting upright. He stared at her. She wanted to burst into tears. His expression was queer. He was breathing through his mouth only.
“What does that mean?” he repeated.
Her voice was almost gone. “What it says.”
“What I think?”
“Yes, but… it’s different—”
“…Ah—” he wheezed.
