Q & A

by M. Allen Cunningham

  He’s mostly silent, and she leaves him to it. When they speak, it’s discontinuous—spurts of observation, half-disembodied. Or their words concern the strict necessities of travel: stopping at the next nearest restroom, filling station, restaurant, finding a motel or inn for the night.

  He’s asked her not to look at the newspapers anymore. Not for the next few days. He doesn’t want to see them.

  She simply nods.

  Inquiry Says Saint Claire

  Eludes TV-Quiz Subpoena

  Hearings Are Recessed

  Until Nov. 2

  WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 1959—Congressional investigators charged today that Kenyon Saint Claire had dodged a subpoena for his appearance in the investigation of rigged television quiz shows.

  Representative Owen Marcus, chairman of the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, said that subcommittee investigators had been unable to find the Columbia University English Literature instructor. Mr. Marcus described the search for Mr. Saint Claire as “diligent” and said that the subcommittee had been aided by “others also interested.” Asked if the “others” included a United States Marshall, Mr. Marcus replied, “That’s another question.” He noted that the subcommittee would reconvene on November 2, the date on which Mr. Saint Claire must appear or face the full consequences of the law.

  Columbia University announced in New York that it had given Mr. Saint Claire a week’s leave. He did not appear for scheduled classes either Friday or yesterday. Inquiries then disclosed that he had been given the leave at his own request.

  Reporters have been unable to find him in New York, and there has been no answer at his home telephone number.

  They’ve meandered through Maine for two days, going as far north as Augusta, then turning south again coming down through Portland and crossing into northern New Hampshire. They’ve been sleeping in quaint little roadhouses along the way, the autumn colors seeming to blaze more brilliantly each afternoon, and now, six days since they set off in search of peace, they are on a country road somewhere near the Connecticut state line when Kenyon slows and pulls the car to the shoulder. He turns off the motor and gets out, steps around the car and stands at the edge of a grassy clearing, arms spread wide.

  High deciduous trees line the clearing. Their canopies, waving in the wind, are stupendously yellow and orange in the October sunlight, as if recently set afire.

  Ernestine gets out and stands beside him.

  “Do you see?” he says. “Total contrast!”

  Contrast, he means, to the city they left nearly a week ago. To everything preying on their thoughts during these days.

  He walks ahead into the field, the blowing grass pale green and rustling up to his knees, dampening his pant legs.

  “Someday I want to buy some land, Ernestine,” he says, not turning, still moving forward. “A place in the trees, just like this.”

  He keeps walking, wading toward the far center of the field, nothing but the great whooshing in his ears, and the call of birds. He continues past the center toward the line of trees. And maybe he’ll walk right into the forest.

  He feels, right now, like a man intending never to go back.

  “Kenyon!”

  He turns and there is Ernestine, far away now on the shoulder of the road, her hands cupped to her mouth.

  Between them the pale green expanse of the field is waving, waving.

  Again he hears his name, and then she’s saying something more, but her voice is half-lost amid the rushing leaves and grass. He hears father. She is saying something about his father. He lifts his knees again, moving back across the field toward her, returning.

  “Couldn’t hear!” he calls, from the center of the field.

  Again she cups her hands and cries out. And this time her voice arrives with perfect clarity: “You’re going to be a father!”

  Kenyon stands motionless in the field. Her words in his ears. He feels the wind very keenly, and remnants of mild warmth in the slant sunlight.

  Ernestine is watching him across the grass. They are entirely alone together in a world of color. And through a kind of ultimate transparency Kenyon can see, in the shape of her shoulders as she stands there awaiting him, the profound fact of her. How firm and patient and loyal a person can be. It overwhelms him now to think of the innumerable contingencies, synchronicities, and alignments that have by mysterious accumulation delivered them to this moment in time and in themselves. He cannot understand how they have come to arrive here, facing each other in this privacy so immaculate, so consequential—but he understands the moment. That he understands. It’s time to live this life, no more pretending.

  He walks toward her. She waits, unmoving as he comes, and he feels himself a man stepping out of a picture or through a window into the elucidation of time and the trees and his body and hers.

  He embraces her. For a long time they stand there in the noisy silence of the field, amid the fiery leaves.

  “A father,” he says.

  The word repeats and repeats in his mind.

  “Yes,” says Ernestine. “Here’s where it stops. No running anymore.”

  And he knows she’s right.

  “It’s your turn now, Kenyon. You’re ready for this.”

  Here’s where he stops. No more dragging Ernestine highway to highway, inn to inn. She always knew there could be no hiding, but she suffered him, trusting. And now he’s ready. They’ll turn around, he’ll go back and testify, that’s the first thing. Then he and Ernestine will raise their child in truth, just as Mom and Dad raised him.

  “Let’s go back now,” she says.

  He nods and then she squeezes his hand and kisses him hard.

  

  At the farmhouse door, Mom and Dad smile large and take them in, arms wide, hugely relieved but with never so much as a word about their worries these last seven days. Still, Mom insists they spend the night, and Dad concurs. Protective, parental, they’ve perceived the situation in its entirety and by instinct they act quickly to offer harbor. Their immediacy, their discernment amazes Kenyon anew. To have come from people like this.

  Before long it’s very late and the women have gone to bed. Kenyon is exhausted but he’d rather sit up with Dad than sleep. In the den they smoke together, and though Dad has said nothing on the subject, Kenyon begins: “I’ll be going down to Washington. To testify.”

  Silent, Dad just draws on his cigarette, listening with lifted brows.

  “First, though, I’ll need to go to the D.A. Fix the answers I gave him.”

  “I see.”

  “Set that record straight.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes, Dad, I have no idea—how it all happened. I just don’t know.”

  “You made a mistake, Kenny. A mistake only.”

  “Yes. I thought I could deceive you, everyone, so many people.”

  “You thought you could deceive yourself, son.”

  In the lamplight Dad’s eyes are glimmering—a deep, steady look—and Kenyon sees now, reflected in that focused glimmer, the liquid image of a man—himself—very small.

  He says, “Dad, tell me, did I really fall down the stairs?”

  “Hm?”

  “In the Bleecker house, when I was five or six. Did I really fall down the stairs, or is that just … just a story?”

  Dad’s eyes narrow now. He’s puzzled. “I don’t recall that. What do you mean, son?”

  “You know, there was that story in the family…”

  “I don’t remember you falling, Kenny. And I don’t remember a story.”

  “No?”

  “No. What makes you ask?”

  “Oh, a little memory I’ve had. Just a memory, I guess.”

  Only in the morning does Kenyon learn of the subpoena.

  “We thought it could
wait,” says Dad. “Last night wasn’t the time to tell you.”

  But this news is almost irrelevant now. Kenyon’s resolve to go to Washington is his own. He asks Dad to come with him. From his rocker by the fire, Maynard Saint Claire rises. He crosses the parlor carpet to the sofa where Kenyon sits. Pinching up the thighs of his pant legs, he sits down, wraps one arm around Kenyon’s shoulder, and pulls him close. With a single word he answers: “Proudly.”

  Saint Claire Alters Replies

  Given New York D.A.

  NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 1959—Kenyon St. Claire, big money television quiz show winner, made “substantial changes” yesterday in earlier statements he had given to the office of District Attorney Frank S. Hogan.

  Mr. Hogan declined to say whether the contestant admitted to receiving questions or answers prior to appearing on the program.

  Mr. St. Claire appeared voluntarily at Mr. Hogan’s office at 11 A.M. with his lawyer, Ruben Carlino. He spoke with Assistant District Attorney Joseph Stone for about an hour and with Mr. Hogan for several minutes.

  Shortly after Mr. St. Claire left Mr. Hogan’s office, the prosecutor met with reporters. The following points were brought out at this meeting:

  Mr. St. Claire made a complete statement in which he admitted that he had not told the complete truth in assertions he had made previously. It was indicated that Mr. St. Claire’s earlier statements were the same ones he had also made before the grand jury that investigated the quiz shows.

  A number of other quiz winners have called Mr. Hogan’s office and indicated a desire to change previous statements.

  The question of action by Mr. Hogan on the possibility of perjury is being considered.

  When Mr. St. Claire emerged from the District Attorney’s office, he appeared distressed. Observers speculated that he was about to cry or that he had already been crying.

  “I’m in a hurry,” he said. “I have classes. I can’t say anything at this time.”

  He hurried into a taxicab with Mr. Carlino.

  Mr. Hogan spoke of Mr. St. Claire sympathetically.

  “He’s been through a harrowing ordeal,” he said. “In my judgement he will give completely truthful answers to the Congressional committee.”

  Asked what he meant by “harrowing,” Mr. Hogan said he meant a “mental struggle.” But he would go no further on that subject.

  Mr. St. Claire will appear before the Congressional committee at Washington Nov. 2.

  KENYON

  Washington, D.C., November 2, ’59

  “Into the fishbowl,” said Ernestine.

  They were standing in the lobby just outside the crowded hearing room, just minutes ago—reporters, photographers, and cameramen swarming on all sides calling Kenny! Kenny!—but Ernestine leaned very close, her eyes held firmly on his, and looping her purse to her arm she reached up with both hands to fix his tie.

  “You’re ready,” she told him. “We’re all ready. So, into the fishbowl.”

  And here is Kenyon Saint Claire seated in the great stuffy room overpacked with spectators, and here are hundreds of cameras surrounding him, and they will televise the whole proceeding. And at one side of the room stand the big screen and projector, and so it is happening, even here in the capitol of this republic—his own life, his own self, his own work are transmuted into the moving image, luminous spectacle in the dark democratic hall—and this, all along, this transmutation is what he’s been a part of. All along. Even him!

  The public eye, he’s thinking, as he stands before the men of Congress, one hand raised and one hand on the book while they swear him in.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth?” etc.

  “I do.”

  The public I. …

  Let them see you.

  And then it’s begun. And in time the projector will play and the images recapitulate the whole thing, and Kenyon will turn his head and watch Dad, in his seat up front, as Dad watches with all the rest, the bright moving images—shadows and light shifting on the old man’s face…

  The camera eye … the camera I. …

  Tell them. Show them.

  Sworn and ready, Kenyon asks if he may read the statement he’s prepared. Chairman Marcus permits this. So Kenyon reads aloud, before the five-hundred in this hall, before the many millions more in living rooms across the country, before Dad and Ernestine sitting just there. He reads out the story of how he came to appear on the quiz program, how he agreed to Lacky’s arrangement of supplying him the answers in advance, how quickly the success of the show, his own success, grew past all reckoning, how the money got bigger and bigger and the letters poured in, the offers and solicitations. How he could almost tell himself then that it was all good and well, for he was setting a positive example—wasn’t he?—reflecting to the whole country the value of learning and education.

  But no, now he couldn’t help seeing how he’d created a false impression. How he’d represented knowledge as one’s ability to get the answers right always, always the answers, and always for more and more money. How he’d further solidified that false impression every time he appeared on the air—what an insincere and inauthentic performance he’d given. How he’d acted as somebody other than himself, and in his worst moments had believed it was all for the good. How the mass entertainment and technological spectacle cajoled him more and more toward self-deception.

  But then, at last, the quiz program was behind him and he’d moved on to his work with the TODAY Show, where finally, he’d thought, finally he could believe entirely in his role. But soon came the first exposure of Sidney Winfeld’s story in the papers—and all Kenyon could think about were the many thousands of letters people had sent him, good everyday Americans who believed in him and valued his television performances. How he couldn’t endure the thought of failing these people. How he couldn’t, in the end, ever seem to find an answer to his dilemma—though of course the answer was always simple.

  And so he had run away. He’d run from everything: from his work at the university, from television, from the newsmen that mobbed his door, even from his own family. Everywhere he turned he was wanted for a comment, an interview, a photograph, a few candid minutes on television. But he kept running. With his wife he drove up into New England. He was in a state of desperate confusion, and he was running from himself most of all. He’d been doing it for longer than he knew.

  And all this time, all along, the truth was the only answer. The only way. His own father had said as much to him. Very early on his father had said it, even though Dad couldn’t have known the nature of Kenyon’s deceptions. But finally now, finally, Kenyon has come, ashamedly and in humility and much too late, to see that his father was right. The answer, at last, was for Kenyon to admit to everything, to admit to his own self-deception, his own fear, his own wish to run away—to come home to himself and his family and to face these truths, and then to appeal to the people of America, to all those viewers who had trusted, praised, and encouraged him. And that’s what he hopes to do now with this statement: to promise them he’s learned his lesson well, and to appeal for their forgiveness.

  Finished, he breathes. His hands are trembling very badly—he had to lay the paper before him on the table as he read, so disruptive was this trembling.

  He feels his lawyer’s hand heavy on his arm, squeezing.

  He reaches for his water glass.

  Q:

  Mr. Saint Claire, I want to compliment you for

  the statement that you have just made.

  Those of us who have known a great deal about this

  problem over this period of time can, I think, appreciate

  more than the average person your remarks today.

  I do have a couple of questions I’d like to ask.

  Was there anything, in the lead up to your first appearance

  on the quiz program, tha
t caused you any concern?

  A:

  Concern about my own performance, you mean?

  Q:

  No. I mean concern about the way the program

  was run or the conduct of the producers.

  A:

  Well, beyond the answers being given to me, my one concern,

  as I recall, was about the nature of some of the questions.

  Q:

  The questions themselves concerned you?

  A:

  Yes. I’ll tell you what I mean. In one of my first meetings

  with a staff member—I forget who it was exactly—the man read a number of questions to me from cards, just as Fred Mint

  reads them on the show. These were examples of the types of things that might be asked on the show. I remember feeling some worry later on, going into my first broadcast, that some of the hardest of those questions could not be answered so readily. For example, I remember one question: “What was Shakespeare’s first play?” Well, there is scholarly disagreement about this. So there is no real answer.

  Q:

  Your participation in this program, Mr. Saint Claire, has vaulted

  you into the entertainment field. It is of concern

  to many of us on this committee, concerning entertainment

  generally—many of us wonder at times if it is necessary

  to have a phony or deceptive arrangement

  in order for one to gain this national popularity,

  particularly on television?

  A:

  I don’t know much about show business, about the entertainment business. As far as this program is concerned, sir, I wish it had been done honestly.

  Q:

  Do you mean to say, you wish you had performed it honestly?

  A:

  I wish it had been possible to do so, yes.

  Q:

  If it is our nature, as a society, as human beings, men and women, your nature and mine, to lie, to love to lie, to lie to others,

  to lie to ourselves, and to lie about whether we lie – if