Passion and Affect (16 page)

She was in the middle of a flat road, surrounded by mud-colored fields. If she got home before Richard, she could untape the note and he would never know that she had left. If she came back and he was there, he would be sitting in the study or in the living room with her note in his hand. It got later as she drove.

A light rain smudged the windshield. The sky darkened and large drops hit the windows on a slant. The road was shiny and slick.

“The next gas station,” she said aloud. “I'll stop at the next gas station.”

The sky was the color of tin. She looked at her watch and it was much later in the afternoon than she had thought. A sign on the road said “Gas five miles.” She drove until she could see a Gulf sign around the bend. She stayed on the right, and signaled to turn, but her hand stayed steady on the wheel and she looked at the road ahead through the spaces the windshield wipers cleared for her. Finally, she saw the Gulf station in the rear-view mirror.

She made a pact that she would stop at the next one. She swore she would. She was longing to turn back. Miles of gray road stretched in front of her. Her foot was tired on the accelerator. On the seat next to her was the new copy of
Closing Doors
. When she saw the sign announcing gas in three miles, she was filled with gladness and resolve. Coming up to it she could see that it was a brick station with a shingled roof. She downshifted carefully into third. It was Richard who had taught her how to drive a stick shift. He had been very patient. “It's the only way to drive, Pat. If you're going to drive a car, you may as well drive a real one,” he had said.

Her blinker signaled a right turn. There were no cars in back of her. Her hand went out and she turned on the radio up full, so loud that she could not hear the rain. Shifting into fourth she shot past the station and looked into the rear-view mirror only when she knew it would be a dot far off down the road.

the smartest woman in america

E
SSIE BECK
is sitting in a hotel room in Washington, D.C. The television is on with the sound turned down, for she feels quite close to the pulse of the news. Her hotel room is a comfortable one—it has none of the cheap, rough edges of hotel rooms—pale, soft, and expensive, and Essie is sitting in one of its soft, old-world chairs. Her feet, in flannel travel slippers, are resting on a table. With one hand she is making corrections on her lecture with a ballpoint pen. There are very few corrections to be made in this paper—she has been over it five times and is completely satisfied with it, although by this time it has the stale quality of home-baked pastry overadmired by its cook.

The mouths of the newsmen flap open and shut and they might be singing opera for all the interest she has in them. They have already reported that the Smartest Woman in America Competition is in its final stages and that tomorrow the contestants are to tape their lectures. Tomorrow, at 10:45. Essie will go to the Educational Television studio, where she will read her paper and be taped. This is the final leg of the competition, which she knows with a feeling of certainty, warm as the inside of a piece of toast, she will win. The only hook into her sureness is that she does not know who the other contestants are. It is a rule of the contest that the participants are not publicly announced, never see or confront one another, and in fact never know who the other contestants are until after the winner has been selected.

Another of the provisions is that during the final judging (which is done by televising the taped lectures to a panel of judges in the studio), the contestants must be on their various ways home, so that even then they cannot see themselves or their rivals. Several months ago, when the rules were sent to Essie, she expressed puzzlement.

“I don't really understand that,” Essie said to her husband, Stuart.

“It gives it a certain purity,” said Stuart. “I mean, what did you expect, Es? To get orchids for being the smartest woman in America? This isn't a quiz show, with prizes. It puts the competitive element on a higher plane.”

“I still think it's kind of odd,” Essie said.

“Intelligence,” said Stuart, pulling on his pipe, “is its own reward.”

It is a very dignified contest judged by two college presidents, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the head of the National Science Foundation, the education editor of
The New York Times
, a senior editor from a distinguished publishing house, and the head of the Ford Foundation. The five finalists are given a loose topic, made up by the panel of judges, and each composes a paper. This year's topic is “The Effect of Technology on the Human Spirit.” Essie, who teaches contemporary literature, has written on “Pollution and the Human Spirit in Contemporary American Fiction.” It is a splendid and capable paper. It is not out of any intellectual aggression that she knows she will win: she simply knows a good thing when she sees it.

Small, runty, and rooty, she looks like a young edition of an old, gnarled tree. She has wispy brown hair, cut short and efficient. Both she and Stuart, a lawyer, have sober, unimaginative faces. In this serious world they are not often amused, but an occasional cartoon in
The New Yorker
makes them laugh politely. The two of them hang together like icicles. They have never been asked, but if they were, they would say that love is not an issue relevant to the twentieth century. They will eventually have two children. Life is tidy and satisfactory and functional, like water—good in itself. Although they are healthy in the way wiry people are, they often look a bit seedy, as if they suffered from minor ailments such as falling arches and thinning hair. But they suffer from neither: they merely look as if they do.

Two nights ago, Essie and Stuart were sitting over coffee on Riverside Drive. The Sharps and the Robarts had been over for dinner and Alice Robart had done the dishes “to take some of the strain off,” though Essie insisted that the strain wasn't on. Then they left, and Essie and Stuart were talking about what the ghost of Hamlet's father means.

“I think it's just to bring the familial element into very strong focus,” Essie said.

“Well, it could be a kind of legal device. It lets the audience know that a wrong has been done and that Hamlet is in the right,” said Stuart. Whenever they discussed anything, they sat very eagerly, their upper torsos pressing against the table.

“But it also has to do with Hamlet's madness,” Essie said.

“Yes, dear. But in Shakespeare's time, they did believe in ghosts, so Hamlet's madness has nothing to do with that. It's on another level entirely.”

Essie bit at her cuticle. She is a reasonable woman. There was something to that.

Later, she sat in bed rereading
The Scarlet Letter
. Stuart sat on his side of the bed in striped pajamas, reading
Foreign Affairs
. He smelled of fresh towels.

“Say, Es. You're only in Washington for two days, you ought to splurge. Buy a dress where all the Senate wives get theirs.”

“It's no big event,” said Essie, but it wasn't a bad idea.

“Will you get your hair done?” he asked, loading his pipe. He always had a pipe before bed.

“Hair done? Good Lord, no. I haven't had my hair done in years, since college graduation.”

“You had your hair done when we got married,” said Stuart, puffing.

“That was different.”

“Well, but you'll be on television.”

“That,” said Essie, “is their business, not mine. Besides, why should I have my brain fried by a hair dryer. I couldn't possibly read under one of those things, with all those chattering women. As you said, this is a dignified event, not a quiz show. I'm supposed to look like a college professor, which is what I am.”

“You could have it done dignified,” Stuart suggested.

“Stuart,” said Essie, in the clipped twang she saved for being annoyed, “hairdressers can't be trusted. I see no reason why I should look like Lady Astor's horse just to read a paper on pollution and literature on television.”

“It's national…”

“I'm fine just the way I am. I'll just be who I am,” said Essie.

“It's just a thought, Es. It'll be like a little vacation for you.”

“It'll be just like being here, except I'll be in Washington.”

“Just a thought,” he said, knocking out his pipe.

The lights hang around like gnats, but gnats made out of neon or tiny two-hundred-watt bulbs. They seem to be pointed at her eyes, and she blinks behind the glasses she wears for reading and going to the movies. “Too much light off those glasses,” says a young man in a blue shirt, consulting his light meter. Next to him is a mustachioed man with a camera who is taking still shots for the newspaper.

“Have her sit down, like she's reading her lecture,” he says.

“Really, I think this is silly,” says Essie. An older man appears. He looks rather like the man who had been her dissertation adviser.

“Can you get her to sit and pose reading her lecture?” the man with the camera asks him.

“Mrs. Beck, I'm the director of this show. Can you sit and look as if you're reading your lecture, so the newspapers can have a picture?”

“I think it's really very silly,” says Essie.

“For the newspapers, Mrs. Beck.” He takes her elbow, as if she were a mental patient. “Can you put your head up, Mrs. Beck?” says the man with the camera.

“How can I read with my head up?” she asks, sharply.

“We won't be able to see your face. Anyway, you're not supposed to
read
. You're only supposed to look like it.” She looks up, but just. The man with the camera shoots. Little points of light concentrate in the middle of her eyes. Squinting, she takes a hard look at the director, wondering how she can get him to tell her who the competition is. Since he looks like her dissertation adviser, she decides he is the one to approach. She is thinking of a subtle way to ask, but the director interrupts.

“Now, Mrs. Beck,” he says. “I'll take you to the set. We had it decorated like a home library. It's very tasteful. Underdone. You'll be very comfortable.” He takes her by the elbow and leads her deeper into the studio, stepping over pythonlike cables and wormy strings of wires. Alone and abandoned amidst huge cameras, spotlights hanging like iron bananas, machines on dollies, drooping microphones and more wires is the “set,” a room with two of its walls hacked off, lined with bookshelves. The books are old leatherbound law reviews,
The Congressional Record, Diseases of the Skin
, Volumes VI through XLV, and an encyclopedia. There is also a desk with false drawers on the front and no back. She sits in the chair provided for her and looks out over the desk.

Several men appear, armed with light meters, cables, and sound boxes. Three more ride on huge moving cameras that poke their snouts at and away from her. Over her head, a man is sitting on a metal catwalk surrounded by sound equipment. The director hangs a wire around her neck. At the end of it is a little metal pencil that he tells her is the microphone. “Talk into it,” he says.

“Hello … hello,” says Essie.

“Is that coming up, Jimmy?” he yells.

“She has to say more,” answers a disembodied voice.

“You have to say more,” the director says.

“My topic is pollution and the human spirit in contemporary American fiction,” says Essie into the microphone.

“Not so close into the mike,” shouts Jimmy.

“You have to speak above it, Mrs. Beck. Not into it.”

“My topic is pollution and the human spirit in contemporary American fiction,” she says carefully above her metal pencil.

“O.K.,” says Jimmy.

“Now Mrs. Beck,” says the director, “we've timed your speech …”

She interrupts. “It's not a speech. It's a paper.”

“Your paper,” says the director. “We read it through, and it should take twenty minutes, give or take. Now the thing to remember is: don't rush, and just speak as you would normally.” He emphasizes the word “normally.” “I think you should read us several paragraphs just so we'll get the feel of your voice.”

Essie Beck gives him a professorial, puzzled look. The
feel
of her voice? As she begins to read, another man appears, carrying a doctor's satchel.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Beck. This is our makeup man. Put the lights full, Charlie.” The lights go up. Essie Beck squints.

“Not so full on the eyes,” says the director, checking out her glasses. The lights dim.

“I think,” the makeup man says, “we need a little powder. Just around the eyes and nose. And a little eye liner.”

“Wait a minute,” says Essie. “Am I supposed to read a few paragraphs or not?”

“In a minute, Mrs. Beck. Just a little powder,” says the director.

“This is not a quiz show. I'm a college professor, not a model.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Beck,” says the director, looking at her. “This is a very dignified competition, but it's still television.”

“If you don't have some powder, you'll come out like a shiny pumpkin,” adds the makeup man.

Essie Beck looks at him. “Oh, will I,” she says tartly.

“It's just a little,” explains the makeup man. “We have to do it—the lights and all. Really, everyone has to have it. Walter Cronkite has it. Even the President has it. All the other ladies we taped had it.”

“All right,” says Essie. “But just a little.” She suffers her face to be powdered. A slimy feeling runs across her eyelids as the eye liner is applied.

“O.K.,” says the makeup man grimly, stepping back. “Great.”

While they set the lights and position the camera, Essie wonders who “all the other ladies” are. She and Stuart have made calculated guesses: after all, the community of scholars is small and interwoven. They are pretty sure that one is Joan Splenny, the constitutional law scholar, and another is probably Sylvia Vesparrugio, the marine biologist. One of them, she is very sure, is Virginia Cadwalder, her old Radcliffe rival, a sociologist. According to the alumnae bulletin, Virginia Cadwalder appeared in the “People Are Talking About” section of
Vogue
, and it is Essie's belief that she is not a reliable academic.