Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (40 page)

“I’ll get some data together,” Tom said.

“You better get cracking. This should have been done two months ago.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tom said.

There was an instant of silence before Ogden said, “Now listen, Tom. You wrote a darn good speech for Mr. Hopkins–I know that. And I know you’re Mr. Hopkins’ personal assistant now, but that doesn’t mean you can forget about this mental-health committee. It’s going to grow. Mr. Hopkins can’t be worrying about it all the time. He’s got to be able to rely on you.”

Ogden paused, and Tom waited without saying anything.

“Up till now,” Ogden continued, “there hasn’t been much we could do, but in the future, things will be different. There’s a big administrative job to be done, and a big job of promotion. I of course won’t be the one to determine where you will fit into the structure–ultimately, that will be up to you. It will depend on what you’ve shown us you can do. But if you’re going to be Hopkins’ personal assistant,
you should get to the point where you anticipate his needs. Don’t wait for me to tell you.”

“I understand,” Tom said. His face was hot.

“Thanks for coming up,” Ogden said, and swung around in his swivel chair. Picking up the receiver of his telephone, he said, “Now, Miss Horton, you can put that call through to Denver.” He remained with his back turned while Tom got up and walked out of the room.

When Tom returned to Hopkins’ outer office, the first thing he saw was a pile of about fifteen thick leather-bound books on his desk.

“Mr. Hopkins asked me to give you those,” Miss MacDonald said. “They’re the company’s annual reports–there are two to a volume. He said he thought you’d like to go through them.”

“Thanks,” Tom said. He sat down, picked up one of the books, and leafed through it. The pages were full of graphs and statistics showing the progress of United Broadcasting. Of course, he thought–I should be studying these. I should have asked for them myself. I bet Hopkins knows these by heart. Anyone who seriously intended to make this company his career should study its history. I should be spending every spare minute on these. He tried to read one of the pages describing a complicated division of stock. His mind wandered–it was difficult material. I should be getting that work on the mental-health committee done first, he thought–my background reading should be done on evenings and week ends. Work in the office on Saturdays and do your background reading on Sundays–hundreds do it. He glanced at his watch. It was only eleven o’clock. Suddenly he longed for the day to be over–he was ashamed to find that for no particular reason he felt exhausted, and he wanted to go home and relax. An hour and a half until lunch, and then another five and a half hours before he could reasonably catch the train to South Bay. The big sweep hand on his wrist watch seemed to crawl with maddening slowness. Hopkins rarely left his office before seven o’clock, and Tom had sensed he was annoyed to find that Tom usually left earlier. It was embarrassing to have to compete with Hopkins’ hours–it was like taking a Sunday-afternoon walk with a long-distance runner. The stereotyped notion of the earnest young man arriving early and leaving late, and the complacent boss dropping in for a few hours in the middle of the day to see how things were going was completely reversed.

Tom rolled a piece of paper into his typewriter and began to write
a brief statement describing the origins of the mental-health committee. After finishing it, he glanced at his watch again. Almost an hour before lunchtime–it was ridiculous to be so restless. I’ll bet Hopkins never was a clock watcher, he thought.

“Don’t wish time away.”

The sentence came abruptly to his mind. Who had said that? It’s just an old saying, he thought. “Don’t wish time away.” Suddenly he remembered sitting with Maria in the abandoned villa so many years before, looking at this same wrist watch and counting each second the way a miser might count his money.

We didn’t wish time away, he thought. I’ve got to stop thinking about Maria. Time, he thought–I need more time. I’ve got to get this work done for the committee, and I’ve got to read the annual reports, and I must get our housing project going. I’ve got no business wishing time away.

Time, he thought: I wonder how much more time I’ve got? I’m thirty-three years old; that’s the halfway point, really–I’m probably halfway through my life. What am I going to do during the other half, ride the commuters’ train, and read annual reports, and write endless letters for Hopkins or someone like him, and pride myself on working every week end? Shall I make a full-time career of being Hopkins’ ghost? Is that what I want?

I don’t know, he thought–who the hell knows what he wants? It’s ridiculous to think of the next thirty-three years stretching ahead like an endless uphill road. Don’t wish time away.

There’s something wrong, he thought. There must be something drastically wrong when a man starts wishing time away. Time was given us like jewels to spend, and it’s the ultimate sacrilege to wish it away. He glanced at his watch and again found himself thinking of Maria. She had not liked the watch. “Take it off,” she had said. “I hate to hear it ticking.”

That had been in her room, only a few days before he had left Rome. “Tick tock!” she had said derisively. “Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick! I would like to break it! And the buckle scratches me.”

He had taken it off and put it on the floor beside the bed. The room had been very dark, and the luminous dial had glowed like the eyes of a cat.

“I can hear your heart beating,” he had said.

“Kiss me. I don’t want you to hear my heart beating.”

“I love the sound of your heart and the sound of your breath.”

Tom’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the telephone ringing on his desk in the United Broadcasting building. He picked up the receiver. It was Betsy. “Hello,” she said cheerfully. “Can you get home a little early tonight?”

“Why?”

“The PTA is having a meeting in advance of the public hearing on the new school. We ought to go–Bernstein says rumors about our housing project have got around, and we may get involved in the discussion tomorrow. We should get boned up on all the facts tonight.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it tonight,” Tom said. “I’m going to have to stay here and work late this evening. I may not be home until after midnight. And don’t count on me for week ends for a long while.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. I just have a lot of work to do.”

“Can’t you do it some other time? This meeting is
important.
”

“No. Don’t count on me. I’ll go to the hearing tomorrow, but I can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“All right,” Betsy said resignedly.

Tom put the receiver down and turned toward his typewriter. That school thing is important, he thought–I should be helping to work for it. How interconnected everything is! If we could get the school, maybe we could get the housing project through and really make some money. Then maybe I could find and help Maria, and maybe I could work something out with Hopkins. Maybe I could find a good honest job with him which would pay me a decent living, but not require me to work day and night, pretending I want to be some kind of a tycoon. What could I say to him? Could I say, look, when you come right down to it, I’m just a nine-to-five guy, and I’m not interested in being much more, because life is too short, and I don’t want to work evenings and week ends forever? Could a guy like Hopkins ever understand that? Damn it, Tom thought, I’m not lazy! If there were some cause worth working for, I might not mind so much. But what’s the great missionary spirit in United Broadcasting? It seemed to Tom suddenly that he had managed to get himself into a position which made it necessary to keep secrets from both his employer and his wife–that both, if they knew the
truth about him, would abandon him. Maybe that’s why I’m on edge all the time, he thought–I have to keep pretending. Maybe if I could tell Betsy about Maria, and if I felt that Hopkins really understood that I don’t want to get as wrapped up in my work as he is, then maybe I might relax. It’s no damn fun to keep the truth from people. And it’s not fair to them. Damn it, I’m really cheating Hopkins–by agreeing to become his personal assistant at all, I in effect promised him something I have no intention of delivering. Of course he’ll be angry when he finds out! And I’m cheating Betsy too. I bet she doesn’t like this kind of life any better than I do. It must not be much fun to have a husband as incommunicative as I’ve been. It’s funny how hard it is for us to understand each other! But how could I ever expect her really to forgive me for Maria and her boy? What would she say: “That’s all right, dear, don’t give it a second thought”?

I’m wasting time, he thought–I’ve got to get to work. The next thing to do, he decided, was to write some introductory remarks for Hopkins to use at the first meeting of the exploratory committee on mental health. “It’s very kind of you to accept my invitation to meet here to discuss one of the great problems of the day,” he wrote. “It is my hope that from this meeting will stem . . .”

O
N THE EVENING
of October 8, Tom and Betsy Rath went to the Town Hall in South Bay to attend the public hearing on the proposed new school. The town hall was stuffy, and the people filing in from the commuting trains looked bored. The chair on which Tom sat was hard, and he was tired. He squirmed restlessly. Why is it that important public issues always have to be decided in places like this? he thought. Somehow the hard chairs, the smoky room, and the rumpled coats of the weary commuters didn’t seem to be the right props for stirring decisions about anything. “How long do you think this meeting will take?” he asked Betsy.

At five minutes after eight, Bernstein, who had been appointed
moderator, walked out on a raised platform at the front of the hall. He foresaw an evening of bitter argument, and his stomach was already beginning to ache. Sitting behind a wooden table, he picked up a gavel and tapped it lightly. Gradually the big auditorium quieted down. “Good evening,” Bernstein said. “We have gathered here for a hearing on an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar bond issue which has been proposed for a new elementary school, and which we will vote on a week from today. The call for this meeting has been duly published in the newspaper, and I hereby make a motion that we dispense with reading it.”

“Motion seconded,” someone from the audience called.

“All in favor say ‘Aye,’ ” Bernstein said.

“Aye!” the audience thundered.

“Nay?” Bernstein asked.

“No!” a lone, derisive voice called, and the audience laughed.

“The Ayes have it,” Bernstein said, and thought, They seem good humored, but a crowd’s laughter can be a symptom of tension. He cleared his throat and said, “To begin the proceedings, Dr. Clyde Eustace, Superintendent of Schools, will tell why he believes a new elementary school is necessary.”

Eustace, who had been sitting in the front row, climbed to the platform. He was a large man, but his voice was surprisingly soft. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s very simple,” he said. “Although the present elementary school building is badly overcrowded, the welfare of our children is only one question to be discussed tonight. Another basic issue is whether this town should be allowed to grow any more. If you build houses you have to build schools. The main thing I want to point out is that if you decide to vote
no
on this school, you are voting against any further development of this community, and . . .”

A tall, gray-haired man in the front row stood up. “I’m willing to fight it out on those grounds,” he said.

Bernstein banged his gavel. “Dr. Eustace has the floor!” he said sharply.

Betsy glanced at Tom. “Who’s that?” she asked.

“Parkington’s his name,” Tom replied. “He was an old friend of Grandmother’s–they used to feud all the time.”

“Eustace doesn’t have to say any more,” Parkington persisted. “He’s named the basic issue.”

“Dr. Eustace will have the floor until I as moderator recognize
someone else, and I have not yet recognized you, Mr. Partington,” Bernstein said firmly, and banged his gavel again. “Dr. Eustace, please continue.”

Parkington sat down. Eustace went on to give many facts and figures about the need for a new school. He talked too long, and the tone of his voice became monotonous. As soon as he was through, Parkington stood up again.

“All right, Mr. Parkington, you may have the floor now,” Bernstein said.

“Let’s just go back to what Dr. Eustace said a few moments ago,” Parkington began in a deep voice. “If you vote
no
on this school, you vote against further development of this community–and, if I may say so, against further deterioration. What I’m trying to tell everyone here tonight is that’s exactly what you should do.”

“That’s bad for our housing project,” Tom whispered to Betsy. “Parkington’s nuts, but he’s pretty powerful around here.”

“This has always been a good town, a beautiful town,” Parkington continued passionately. “I was born and brought up here. I’ve never been able to understand why people move here because they like the place and then start to change it. This new school will send taxes up. That will drive the owners of big estates out. If the big estates are broken up, housing projects will come in. Housing projects bring more children than they do money. The average small house owner pays the town only about a third of what it costs to educate his children. Who’s going to make up the difference?”