Arthur Hailey - Overload

"I know that," Cynthia said. "And while we're about it let me ask you something else. Did you-do you-have any guilt feelings?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Don't I read something once, when I was finding out how I could best help Karen, by a man named Milton Diamond. He's a medical professor in Hawaii who made a study of sex and disabled people. I may not have the words exactly right, but the sense of what he wrote was: the disabled have enough problems without having conventional guilt-laden values forced on them . . private sexual satisfaction takes precedence over public approval; therefore any guilt is wrong . . . and sexually, for disabled people, anything goes." Cynthia added almost fiercely, "So don't you have any guilts either. Wipe them out!"

"I'm not sure," Nim said, "if I can take any more surprises tonight. Just the same, I'm glad we talked."

"I am too. It's a part of learning, and I had to learn about Karen, just as you have." Cynthia continued sipping her scotch, then said meditatively,

"Would you believe me if I told you that when Karen was eighteen and I was twenty-one I hated her?"

"I'd find it hard to believe."

"Well, it's true. I hated her because she got all the attention from our parents and their friends. Some days, at home, it was as if I didn't exist.

It was always, Karen this, and Karen that! What can we do for dear, poor Karen? Never, What can we do for healthy, normal Cynthia? It was my twenty-first birthday. I wanted a big party but my mother said it was

'inappropriate' because of Karen. So we had a little family tea-just my parents and me; Karen was in the hospital then-a lousy tea, and a shoddy, cheap little cake. As for my birthday presents, they were just tokens because guess where all the available money was going, every cent. I'm ashamed to say it, but that night I prayed for Karen to die."

In the silence which followed, even through drawn drapes, Nim could hear wind-driven rain against the window. He had understood what Cynthia had told him, and was moved. Yet, in a corner of his mind he thought: Glorious rain. To a utilities man, rain, sleet or snow meant stored-up hydroelectric power for the dry season ahead. He pulled back his thoughts and spoke to Cynthia.

"So when did your feelings change?"

"Not for years, and even then slowly. Before that I went through my own guilt period. I felt guilty because I was whole and Karen wasn't. Guilty because I could do the things she couldn't-play tennis, go to parties, neck with boys." Cynthia sighed. "I wasn't a good sister."

"But you are now."

"As much as I can be-after taking care of a husband, house and kids. It was after my first child was born that I began to understand and appreciate my little sister and we became close. Now the two of us are dear, loving friends, sharing ideas and confidences. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for Karen. And there isn't anything she doesn't tell me."

Nim said drily, "I'd gathered that."

They talked on. Cynthia told him more about herself. She had married at twenty-two; one reason was to get away from home. Since then her husband had held a succession of jobs; his present one was as a shoe salesman.

Nim surmised that the marriage was barely adequate, if that, and Cynthia and her husband stayed together for lack of an alternative and the sake of their three children. Before her marriage, Cynthia had taken singing lessons; now, four nights a week she sang in a second-rate nightclub to supplement her husband's meager pay. Tonight was a non-singing night and Cynthia would stay with Karen, her husband taking care of their one child still at home. Cynthia had two more scotches while they talked; Nim declined. After a while her voice became slightly slurred.

At length Nim stood up. "It's late. I have to go."

"I'll get your raincoat," Cynthia said. "You'll need it, even going to your car." She added, "Or you can stay if you want. There's a couch makes up into a bed."

"Thanks. I'd better not."

She helped him on with the coat and, at the apartment front door, kissed him fully on the lips. "That's partly for Karen," Cynthia said, "partly for me."

Driving home, he tried to push the thought away as being predatory and disloyal, but it persisted: So many attractive, desirable women in the world, and so many available and willing to share sexual pleasures. Experience, instinct, her own unmistakable signals told him: Cynthia was available too.

Among other things, Nim Goldman was a wine buff. He had a keen nose and palate and especially like varietal wines from the Napa Valley, which were California's finest and in good years rated with the premium wines of France. So he was glad to go to the Napa Valley with Eric Humphrey-even in late November-though he wondered why the chairman had invited him along.

The occasion was to celebrate a homecoming. An honored, victorious, sentimental homecoming of one of California's most distinguished sons.

The Honorable Paul Sherman Yale.

Until two weeks earlier he had been a revered Associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

If ever a single individual merited the accolade "Mr. California," un-questionably it was Paul Sherman Yale. All that a Californian might wish or strive to be had been exemplified in his distinguished career, now drawing to a close.

Since his early twenties when-two years ahead of most contemporaries-he was graduated with honors from Stanford Law School, until his eightieth birthday, which he recently celebrated, Paul Yale had filled a succession of increasingly important public roles. As a young lawyer he established a state wide reputation as a champion of the poor and powerless. He sought, and won, a seat in the California Assembly and, after two terms there, moved up to become the youngest member ever elected to the state Senate.

His legislative record in both houses was remarkable. He was the author of early legislation to protect minorities and outlaw sweatshops. He also sponsored laws which aided California farmers and fishermen.

Moving on from the Senate, Paul Sherman Yale was elected the state's Attorney General, in which office be declared war on organized crime and sent some of its big-narne practitioners to jail. A logical next step was to Governor, a post he could have had for the asking. Instead be accepted President Truman's invitation to fill a vacancy on the U. S. Supreme Court. His Senate confirmation hearings were brief, their outcome a foregone conclusion since-both then and later-no breath of scandal or corruption ever touched his name, and another sobriquet sometimes applied to him was "Mr. Integrity."

While serving on the highest court, he wrote many opinions which reflected his broad humanity, yet were praised by legal scholars as being pure law." Even his dissents were widely quoted, and some prompted legislative changes. amidst it all, Mr. Justice Yale never forgot that he and his wife Beth were Californians and, at every opportunity, declared his continuing affection for his native state.

When, in due season, be concluded that his work was done, he resigned quietly and the Yales left Washington, typically without fuss, returning-as Paul Yale expressed it to Newsweek-"westward and home." He turned down the suggestion of a massive testimonial banquet in Sacramento, yet consented to a more modest welcome luncheon in his beloved birthplace, the Napa Valley, where the Yales planned to live.

Among the guests-at Yale's suggestion-was the chairman of Golden State Power & Light. Humphrey requested, and obtained, an extra invitation for his assistant, Nim.

En route to Napa Valley in the chairman's chauffeur-driven limousine, Humphrey was affable while he and Nim worked on plans and problems, as was usual on such journeys. It was obvious that the chairman had put his displeasure with Nim behind him. The purpose of their present journey was not mentioned.