Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“We don’t go as far as Westport,” the conductor said.

“I’m getting off at South Bay.”

“Westport tickets are no good on this train,” the conductor said. “You’ll have to buy a ticket to South Bay.”

“But South Bay is on the way to Westport,” Tom objected.

“I don’t make the rules,” the conductor said.

Tom paid for a ticket to South Bay. The whole damn world is crazy, he thought. Grandmother is hurt and probably dying, and she brought me up, and I should be thinking only the kindest thoughts about her, and I can’t.

She’s dying, he thought. She’s lived ninety-three years, and it’s all been a free ride. She’s never cooked a meal, or made a bed, or washed a diaper, or done a damn thing for herself or anybody else. She’s spent at least three million dollars, and her only comment has been that money is boring. She’s had a free ride for ninety-three years, and I’m damned if I’ll cry about the end of it.

Yet to his astonishment he suddenly felt like crying. She doesn’t want to die, he thought. I’ll bet the poor old lady’s scared.

Suddenly he remembered a night soon after his mother had died when a particularly violent thunder squall had struck the old house. Although he had been fifteen years old then, he had been afraid to stay in his room alone. He had gone to his grandmother’s room, and she had played double solitaire with him half the night. If she wants me to, I’ll stay with her, he thought. I guess Betsy can get along without me for a few days.

As soon as the taxi let him out at the front door of the big house, old Edward opened the front door for him. “The doctor’s in the living room, Mr. Rath,” he said. “He was hoping to see you before he went.”

“Tell him to wait,” Tom said, and raced up the stairs to his grandmother’s room. The door was closed. Cautiously he opened it, in order not to awaken her if she were asleep. There was her big four-poster bed, with the old-fashioned crocheted canopy. The old lady was lying in the precise center of the bed, propped up on pillows. She was looking out the window at the Sound, where a fleet of small sailboats was racing in the distance. She turned her head quickly and smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “They’re trying to take me to the hospital.”

“I’ll talk to them,” he said.

“My leg broke. I didn’t fall and break it — it just broke, and then I fell.”

“I’m sorry, Grandmother,” he said. “We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m going to die, and I prefer to die here. I detest hospitals.”

“I’ll talk to the doctor,” he said.

“Never mind that. I want you to make sure they don’t take me to the hospital. They keep giving me drugs, and I don’t want to wake up in some iron cot with a lot of supercilious nurses telling me what to do.”

“I’ll do my best,” Tom said.

“The Senator died in this bed, and I want to die here too.”

“I’ll talk to the doctor now,” Tom said.

“Stay here. There’s plenty of time. I’ve got lots of things I want to tell you and I may be asleep when you come back up. Do you know I’ve left everything I’ve got to you?”

“I didn’t, Grandmother,” he said. “I’m very grateful.”

“There’s not much,” she said. “For the last ten years I’ve been living off capital. And there’s a small mortgage on the house. You won’t get much.”

“Try to sleep now,” he said. “We can talk about business later.”

“We might as well get it over with now. Did you know that most of your grandfather’s estate was lost long ago?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“How did you know?”

“I guess you must have told me. I think I’ve always known it.”

“I’m sorry things have happened this way,” she said. “The Senator and I had so much. I’ve always been sorry we couldn’t do more for you.”

“You’ve given me a great deal,” he said.

There was a long moment of silence during which she seemed to be breathing with difficulty, but she kept her eyes intently on his face, and he saw she didn’t want him to go.

“I want you to do something for Edward,” she said. “He has to be kept in his place, but he’s been loyal. He’s old and should be provided for.”

“I’ll try, Grandmother,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “How do you think the house looks?” she asked drowsily.

“Beautiful.”

“I have tried to keep it up for you,” she said. “The west wing. ”

The sentence trailed off, and Tom saw she was asleep. After waiting a few minutes to be sure, he went downstairs. His grandmother’s doctor, an elderly man named Worthington, was waiting.

“I’m afraid your grandmother isn’t very well,” he began.

“How long do you think she can live?”

The doctor took off his glasses and started polishing them with his handkerchief. “She’s broken her thigh,” he said, “and I think the pelvis may be fractured too. She took a bad fall. She says her leg just snapped and she fell, and it may actually have happened that way. We won’t be able to tell about the pelvis till we take her to the hospital and get her X-rayed.”

“She doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” Tom said. “Is there really much point to it?”

“We’ve got to get X rays,” the doctor replied, sounding shocked. “And we can’t give her proper care here!”

“Won’t she die pretty soon, anyway?”

“She will if she doesn’t get proper care!” the doctor said angrily. “With the proper care, we might be able to keep her going for quite a little while.”

“She’ll be miserable in a hospital.”

“I’ll call an ambulance,” the doctor said. “There’s no question that she has to go.”

“I don’t think she’ll allow you to take her.”

“We’ll fix it so she won’t know a thing about it,” the doctor said. Picking up a black bag, he climbed the stairs to the old lady’s room. Tom didn’t try to stop him. So she’s going to wake up in an iron bed in a strange room after all, he thought.

FLORENCE RATH DIED only eight days later, complaining not so much of a broken thigh and a fractured pelvis as of the refusal of the doctors to obey her.

“They know they can’t cure me, so why don’t they send me home?” she asked Tom every day, and he was never able to invent a plausible answer.

Perhaps on the theory that she might be sent home if she made herself unpleasant enough, she made as much trouble as possible and constantly insulted everyone.

“The nurses are so common! ” she said loudly to Tom, “and the doctors aren’t much better. They all look like a lot of druggists! ” She made the word sound like an unpardonable obscenity.

For the entire eight days, she constantly demanded services of everyone. Every few minutes she called a nurse to ask her to smooth her covers, or to change the water in the many vases of flowers with which she had surrounded herself. She asked doctors to make telephone calls for her and even asked one elderly physician to go out and buy her a paper. The night nurse simply disconnected her call bell.

Never once, however, did the old lady complain of pain or show any fear of death. She made no attempt to solicit pity, and it would have been impossible to feel truly sorry for so imperious a figure. Tom wasn’t much surprised to find that in spite of the demands and insults she hurled at them, the doctors and nurses loved her. Tired and harried as they were, they ran errands for her and sat listening to the endless stories she told of the exploits of “The Senator” and Tom’s father, “The Major.”