Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (45 page)

“Come in the house with me.”

She propped herself up on her elbows slowly. “No. I’m not sure what we should do. Maybe you should take a few weeks off and fly over to Italy and see Maria. When you came back, we could decide what’s right.”

“I don’t want to go to Italy. I want to stay here with you.”

“Perhaps I should go off by myself for a few days. It might help me to get things clear in my mind.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s get Mrs. Manter to take care of the kids for a week. We could buy a new car and take a drive up through Vermont together.”

“I don’t know. Give me some time to think. Go in the house–I’ll be in after a while.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Please.”

“All right.” He kissed her gently and walked slowly through the moonlight toward the shadows of the house. Just before he went inside, he turned and saw her walking forlornly through the long grass toward the distant row of pines, like a ghost in the moonlight. He started to go after her but thought better of it. After sitting in the living room and smoking a cigarette, he went to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of her. Restlessly he went to the kitchen and put some ice in a glass. He poured a drink, carried it upstairs, and lay down on his bed. Maybe when I finish this drink she’ll be back, he thought, and sipped it slowly. He had just drained the glass when he heard the car start. He dashed down the stairs and ran outside. In the moonlight he saw the old Ford back violently out of the carriage house. He ran toward it, but before he got there, it jerked ahead, its lights flashed on, and with its engine roaring in second gear, it careened down the hill. The thought of his father speeding down that same hill toward the waiting rocks at the turn so many years before gripped his mind, and he started running. Ahead of him the red tail light winked in the night. Abruptly it disappeared as the car rounded the first turn. There was no crash. He climbed the great red rocks glistening in the moonlight and could see the car continuing down the road more slowly. He watched until it vanished into the darkness. After standing there a long while to see if she would come back, he returned to the house and lay fully dressed on the bed. There was nothing to do but wait. Maybe she’ll telephone and tell me what she plans to do, he thought, but the only sound was the somber striking of the grandfather clock downstairs.

I
T WAS
two o’clock in the morning when the telephone finally rang. He leaped to answer it. “Hello,” he said. “Is that you, Betsy?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “The car broke down.”

He started to laugh with relief. “That’s a good old car,” he said. “It won’t take you away from me.”

“I was trying to get home–I was trying to get home as fast as I could. I just wanted to get away by myself and drive for a while. I got everything figured out in my mind and was on my way home when the engine made an awful noise and stopped.”

“Where are you?”

“A little way beyond Westport.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“The police station. The car broke down on the Merritt Parkway. I was walking along the road trying to find a telephone, when a patrol car stopped and picked me up. I showed them where I had left the car, and they wanted to see my driver’s license and registration, I don’t have them with me.”

“Tell the cops to have the car hauled to a garage, and we’ll turn it in on a new one tomorrow. And take a taxi home as soon as you can.”

“I don’t know if the cops will let me go.”

“That’s ridiculous. Are there any charges against you?”

“They say they’re just holding me for driving without my license and registration, but they seem to think there’s something suspicious about me. I guess I’m not very well dressed at the moment. They keep asking me where I got this blood stain on my sleeve and how my blouse got torn.”

“They probably think you’ve been in an accident,” he said, laughing.

“Don’t laugh. I want to come home. I feel awful and I want to come home.”

“Let me talk to the cops,” he said.

“Just a minute.”

There was a short delay before a gruff voice said, “Sergeant Haggerty speaking.”

“My name is Rath, Thomas Rath in South Bay,” Tom said. “I want you to call a cab for my wife and let her come right home. If there’s any difficulty about it, I’ll have Judge Saul Bernstein here get in touch with you immediately and straighten it out.”

“No difficulty,” the voice said. “We just thought it was peculiar, girl walking along the road alone late at night like that. We just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

“Everything’s fine. Please have the car towed to a garage and call her a cab.”

“Be glad to. You a friend of Judge Bernstein’s?”

“Sure am.”

“Give him my best when you see him–name’s Haggerty. And tell your wife to bring her license and registration with her after this when she goes out driving alone late at night.”

“I will. Let me talk to her again, will you?”

“Okay,” Haggerty said. “Just a minute.”

“You’re out of hock,” Tom said when Betsy came on the line. “They’re going to call you a cab. Come home. I can’t wait to see you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’ve been an awful fool, Tommy. I know that.”

“Anybody can forget a driver’s license,” he said. “Hurry home and we’ll talk then.”

He went outside and sat down on the front doorstep. The moonlight was still bright on the long grass and on the water of the Sound, lying ruffled by a rising morning breeze. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke float lazily off in the moonlight. After about a half hour, he heard a car approaching. Bright headlights flashed across the driveway, and a taxi stopped in front of the house. The back door swung open, and Betsy jumped out. She ran immediately to him. Neither of them spoke. The silence was broken after about thirty seconds by the taxi driver clearing his throat. Tom paid him. When the taxi had gone, he turned to Betsy. “Don’t let’s go in yet,” he said. “It’s too nice a night out.”

They walked over to the stone wall and sat with their backs against it. He kissed her. “There are some things I have to say,” she said. “Don’t kiss me again, or I’ll never say them.”

“Nothing has to be said now.”

“This must be said. Tonight while I was driving alone, I realized for the first time what you went through in the war, and what different worlds we’ve been living in ever since. I’m sorry I acted like a child.”

“I love you.”

“You’re right about helping your boy in Italy. Of course we should do all we can.”

“I love you.”

“He should have a good education and everything he needs. Do they have trouble getting enough food and medicine and clothes over there? We should find out what he needs and send it. We shouldn’t just send money.”

“I love you more than I can ever tell.”

“I want you to be able to talk to me about the war. It might help us to understand each other. Did you really kill seventeen men?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it now?”

“No. It’s not that I want to and can’t–it’s just that I’d rather think about the future. About getting a new car and driving up to Vermont with you tomorrow.”

“That will be fun. It’s not an insane world. At least, our part of it doesn’t have to be.”

“Of course not.”

“We don’t have to work and worry all the time. It’s been our own fault that we have. What’s been the matter with us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I expected peace to be nothing but a time for sitting in the moonlight with you like this, and I was surprised to find that this isn’t quite all there is to it.”

“I disappointed you.”

“Of course you didn’t. I was my own disappointment. I really don’t know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness–they were pursuing a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the side lines watching that parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing a gray flannel suit. Then I met Caesar, running an elevator. He’s the one who knew about Maria–he went through most of the war with me. There was Caesar in his purple uniform, staring at me in my gray flannel suit and reminding me, always reminding me, that I was betraying almost everyone I knew.”

“I wish I could have helped you.”

“You did help me–you and Caesar. I needed a great deal of assistance in becoming an honest man. If you hadn’t persuaded me to play it straight with Ralph, I would be thinking differently now.
By a curious coincidence, Ralph and a good deal of the rest of the world have seemed honest to me ever since I became honest with myself. And if I hadn’t met Caesar, I don’t think I ever would have had the courage to tell you about Maria. I would have gone on, becoming more and more bitter, more and more cynical, and I don’t know where that road would have ended. But now I’m sure things are going to be better. I’ve become almost an optimist.”

“I’m glad we’re going to have a week to ourselves. Where are we going in Vermont?”

“I know a place where we can rent a cabin by a lake a thousand miles from nowhere. The foliage on the mountains will be beautiful this time of the year. If we get a few more days of Indian summer, it may not be too late for a swim. The nights will be cold, and we’ll sleep by an open fire.”

“Do you love me?”

“A little.”

“Don’t tease me. Do you like the way I look?”

“You’re beautiful. You never used to like to have me tell you that.”

“I want to hear it now. Often. Tell me again that I am beautiful.”

“Every time I look at you, you are a delight to me. Every night when I get off the train and see you, I want to tell you that. I haven’t for years, because you told me once that you would rather have other compliments.”

“I guess when I decided to be a fool, I had to play it big.”

“You’ve not been as foolish as I,” he said, and pulled her down beside him in the fragrant grass and kissed her. A sudden puff of wind set the long ends of the grass shivering all around him. She shuddered. “You’re cold,” he said. “I’ll take you in now.”

“No. Hold me tight.”

“You’re trembling. Why?”

“I don’t know. I feel as though we almost died and have just been rescued.”

“We’re not going to worry any more. No matter what happens, we’ve got a lot to be grateful for.”

“When I think of all you’ve been through, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be. The dead don’t have the last laugh. It’s the children left by the dead and the survivors who laugh last, and their laughter is not sardonic. Ever since you came back to me tonight, I’ve been remembering a line from a poem that used to sound ironic and bitter.
It doesn’t sound that way any more. Tonight, for a little while at least, I feel it’s true.”

“What is it?”

“ ‘God’s in his heaven,’ ” he said, “ ‘all’s right with the world.’ ”

A
T ELEVEN-THIRTY
the next morning Judge Saul Bernstein got a telephone call from Tom Rath. “I’m just about to leave town for a week, but I’d like to drop down and see you first,” Tom said. “I want your help on a very personal problem.”

“Come ahead,” Bernstein said. “I’ll be expecting you.” He hung up and tried to concentrate on the tax form he was completing for a client. Tom’s call troubled him. He had had many people telephone to ask immediate help on “a very personal problem,” and the approaching trip Tom mentioned was also a bad sign. To Bernstein it all sounded like the usual preliminaries to a divorce case. Divorce cases always saddened Bernstein, and the thought of Betsy and Tom Rath dissolving their marriage especially bothered him. He liked them and he thought that with three young children they had no business splitting up. I wonder what I might do to talk them out of it, he thought, and felt a few warning twinges of pain in his stomach.

Ten minutes later when Tom walked into his office, Bernstein was surprised to see that for a man presumably on the verge of divorce, he appeared indecently cheerful. “Good morning!” Tom boomed heartily. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bernstein said uneasily. “What can I do for you?”

“Mind if we go into your inner office?” Tom asked, glancing at Bernstein’s secretary.

“No,” Bernstein said. “Go right ahead.” His stomach began to ache quite badly now. People who wanted to go to the inner office even before naming the nature of their business quite often wanted to
discuss divorce. He followed Tom into the small book-lined room, and they both sat down.

“I came to you with this because it would be a little embarrassing to discuss with strangers, and I’m sure you’ll understand,” Tom began.

“I hope so,” Bernstein said dubiously.

“The situation is simply this. During the war I had an illegitimate child in Italy. He’s been on my mind a lot, but I haven’t been absolutely sure of his existence until recently. Now I want to send his mother a hundred dollars a month for his support–they’re in real need. When this housing project of ours goes through, I’m going to establish a trust fund, but right now I want to take it out of income. I think it would be less awkward for everyone concerned if we set up some mechanism for having the checks sent regularly by a bank, or perhaps you could do it.”