Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Dull. That was the word she usually used for Greentree Avenue, but tonight she rejected it. If this were just a dull place, I wouldn’t mind it so much, she thought. The trouble is, it’s not dull enough — it’s tense and it’s frantic. Or, to be honest, Tom and I are tense and frantic, and I wish to heaven I knew why.

Betsy sat up in bed and, in the dim light from the window, glanced at Tom. He was asleep and, at least for the moment, looked entirely serene. She fumbled on the bedside table, found a cigarette, and lit it. A feeling of black pessimism and self-reproach overtook her. With Betsy, such moods were extremely rare, but when she fell victim to them, every humiliating experience she had suffered since early childhood sprang to life, and all comforting thoughts fell from beneath her, as though she had been standing on a trap door. At such times, the big brick house on Beacon Street in which she had been brought up came back to her memory not as a cheerful place, with pine logs roaring in the living-room fireplace on winter afternoons, but as a cavernous building with a long dark staircase with a creak in every step which she had been obliged to climb alone early each evening, leaving her older sister, Alice, to bask in the warmth below. Betsy had had a rather lonely childhood — her sister was eight years older than she, and her parents had been quite old when she was born and had lacked the energy, if not the will, to give much time to a small child. Almost from the beginning, Betsy had been a rather adult child. She had rarely cried, and although she had been terrified by the shadows on the wall of the stairs and the darkness in the hall above, she had never confided her fears to anyone. Instead, she had hummed to herself determinedly while going up to bed, with lips compressed and fists tightly clenched as she edged along the shadows and into the blackness of the hall, where anything could lurk. Because her parents had not approved of night lights for children, she had slept in the dark, with her ears straining for the comforting sound of voices on the floor below and the occasional laugh of her older sister. Now, lying in the dark beside Tom, Betsy found herself half expecting to hear the sound of that laughter again.

“ Mark my words . ” her sister Alice had said. That had been much later, when Betsy had told her family she wanted to marry Tom. “ Mark my words ,” she had said. “If you get married now, you’ll regret it. You’re too young. Someday you’ll remember I told you that and wish you had taken my advice. Wait till after the war. A girl your age who marries a man just about to go in the service is crazy.”

“But I’ve known him for three years,” Betsy had said.

“But you don’t know how either of you will feel after he gets back.”

“We’ll always feel the same as we do now!”

How bravely the words came back to her! Why should I think of Alice now? Betsy thought. She leaned over to an ash tray and extinguished her cigarette. Beside her, Tom stirred restlessly in the bed.

Nothing’s wrong with our marriage, or at least nothing permanent, Betsy thought. We can’t be like a couple of children gaily playing house forever.

That’s the way it had been before the war— like children playing house , she thought, but even the sarcasm of the phrase couldn’t tarnish the memory. They had had only three months together before Tom went into the Army. How exciting those days had been! He had spent an absurd proportion of his savings on her engagement ring and a diamond-sprinkled wedding ring to match. At the time she had remonstrated with him, and it was curious to remember now that that jewelry, bought with a brave gesture of gallantry, had turned out to be the only shrewd investment they had ever made. The last time she had had the rings cleaned, the jeweler had offered her far more than Tom had paid for them, because diamonds had increased in value a great deal since the war.

That somehow seemed typical of the way everything had turned out, Betsy thought. The foolish gesture had turned out to be a shrewd investment, and most of their careful planning had led to nothing. I would like to go back to the beginning, and follow the years along, and find out what went wrong, Betsy thought. After she and Tom had been married, they had moved into a tiny apartment in Boston, and upon her request, Tom had immediately bought a Saint Bernard puppy and a white Angora kitten with blue eyes, because in the old house on Beacon Hill, her family had never allowed her to have pets. Now her clearest memory of those three months before the war was of the great clumsy puppy and the wide-eyed kitten and Tom and herself, all rolling and tumbling and playing together on the floor, with the sunshine streaming in the window on a big red and gold oriental rug someone had given them for a wedding present.

Like children playing house , she thought. During the first two days they lived in that apartment, she had ordered milk from two milkmen, because the second one had been a very aggressive salesman, and the icebox had been jammed with milk bottles until Tom straightened the matter out. The kitchenette had been fragrant with spices throughout those three months — she had experimented with almost every recipe in the cookbook. Meals had not seemed simply a chore to get through as quickly as possible then.

We weren’t too young to be married in those days, she thought — I think the trouble is that although only twelve years have gone by, we are somehow too old to be married now. I suppose that’s really why I want to move out of this house so much, Betsy thought — I don’t want a bigger place so much; I want that old three months before the war back. It’s as though Tom and I had been married twice, once before the war and once afterward, and what I want is my first marriage back.

“Now mark my words,” Alice had said.

Damn Alice , Betsy thought now. I’m still not sorry I got married, and I’m glad I didn’t take her advice. Ever since the war, poor Tom has just had to work awfully hard, and he has lots of worries on his mind. And I’ve been tired, what with taking care of the kids and all. We’re both exhausted most of the time — the Tired Thirties, the doctor called it once, the time when people have children, and have to make good at jobs, and buy houses, and all the rest of it. We’re both just tired out. That’s why nothing seems to be much fun any more.

There, I’ve said it, she thought, and it sounds absurd, but it’s true. Nothing seems to be much fun any more. There’s nothing wrong with our house, really, and nothing wrong with Greentree Avenue, or Tom or me. It’s just that nothing seems to be much fun any more, and that’s horrible, for when you’ve said that, there’s nothing more to say.

Why? she thought.

It probably would take a psychiatrist to answer that. Maybe Tom and I both ought to visit one, she thought. What’s the matter? the psychiatrist would say, and I would reply, I don’t know — nothing seems to be much fun any more. All of a sudden the music stopped, and it didn’t start again. Is that strange, or does it happen to everyone about the time when youth starts to go?

The psychiatrist would have an explanation, Betsy thought, but I don’t want to hear it. People rely too much on explanations these days, and not enough on courage and action. Why make such a complicated thing out of selling this house? We don’t like Greentree Avenue, so we’ll move. Tom has a good job, and he’ll get his enthusiasm back, and be a success at it. Everything’s going to be fine. It does no good to wallow in night thoughts. In God we trust, and that’s that.

Betsy’s fists were clenched, and her lips pressed tightly together, just as they had been when, as a little girl, she had gone up through the shadows to bed, determined not to admit her fear or her jealousy of her sister, sitting by the fire and laughing below. She glanced at Tom, and seeing that the blankets had slipped from his shoulders, she carefully covered him up. Then she went to sleep, and when she awoke in the morning, she was as energetic and cheerful as ever, humming a tuneless song under her breath as she got breakfast and drove her husband to the station.