(1961) The Chapman Report by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

interested. I don’t give a goddam about any Dr. Chapman, and I’m not doing a strip tease for some phoney scientist.”
    Although Naomi, however crudely, did voice some of her own sentiments, Kathleen felt by now a certain loyalty to her assignment. “You speak as if he’s a charlatan.”
    “Oh, I know. I’ve read about him-he’s Jesus H. Christ-and this is going to assure all married women they can hop in the hay as often as they please and not feel guilty because everyone else does it.”
    “That’s not it at all, Naomi.” Kathleen did not know Naomi as well as the other women. They had met several times, casually, on Naomi’s rare visits to the Association. But she had, from time to time, heard stories, and if they were even half true, Naomi was less than inhibited in her conduct with the opposite sex. Because Kathleen was dealing with someone unrestrained, she was trying to be overly cautious. She determined to give Naomi one more chance before writing her off. “Perhaps some of us have-have the same feelings you do about a survey like this. But I still tell myself Dr.
    Chapman’s record and intentions are the best, and the results can do some good.”
    “Will it cure crippled children, or keep women from growing old, or stop husbands from being thoughtless?”
    “No. But as Grace says-“
    “That old bag.”
    “Really, Naomi, she’s just trying. She says-and we know this-there’s too much ignorance about sex. Anything that can shed a ray of light will be healthy, normalizing. When we were kids, children knew nothing-“
    “Says you! Listen, Katie, girl, when I was twelve years-there was an uncle living with us, a lecherous bastard-my old man was a salesman, always out of town-and this uncle got me down one day, breathing wine in my face, and pulled my bloomers off-” She broke off suddenly, pained by the hated remembrance. “Oh, hell,” she said, “it’s none of your business. I don’t know what I’ve been saying. I got up with a splitting headache.” Her temples felt clamped in a vise, twisting tighter and tighter. The two pills she had taken just before the telephone rang had not yet had any effect.
    “If you don’t feel well-” began Kathleen.
    “I feel the way I always feel,” said Naomi. “I’ll be all right. I’m always at my worst at ten o’clock.”
    Kathleen, a secret veteran of sorrow, felt a surge of understanding and pity, and retreated. “Naomi, this is all silly. There’s nothing in the rules that says you have to be there. Dr. Chapman will have enough guinea pigs. You just duck it-“
    “Thanks, Katie,” said Naomi, wriggling erect in the now tepid water, “but I don’t think I will duck it. I’m not resigning from the human race yet.” More and more lately, she found, she would take a contrary, argumentative, angry stand about anything proposed, and then, after a while, reverse herself completely, as she knew that she would from the start. “You think I want that professor to get the wrong impression of The Briars? If he feeds himself off characters like Grace Waterton and Teresa Harnish, he’ll think we’ve got a celibacy cult out here. It would ruin the community. I’ve got civic pride. No, you better count Naomi in. I want to balance the picture.”
    “If you’re sure-“
    “Honey, I’m positive. I missed out on Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing because I was under-age. But I’ll make Chapman-one way or another, you can bet.”
    After she had hung up, Naomi realized that her headache was almost gone, but a residue of indefinable depression remained. Listlessly, she slopped away at her glistening body with a wash cloth. At last, she opened the drain, and as the water gurgled out, she lifted herself to her feet and stepped out of the sunken tub.
    Slowly drying before the full-length door mirror, she studied her small, near perfect figure with objective fascination. She had suffered and enjoyed a long affair with her body, an affair compounded of