Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Now as Judge Bernstein reread the letter he had received from Tom Rath and recalled the conversation he had just had over the telephone with Edward Schultz, the gnawing in his stomach grew worse and worse. Disputed wills were always painful, almost as painful as divorce cases. They brought out the worst in everyone, Bernstein knew from experience. On the surface this case was simple: a rich young heir was apparently trying to cut out a faithful old servant. Usually things turn out to be exactly as they appear on the surface, Bernstein had found, but not always. He wondered what young Thomas Rath was like — probably one of those commuters who did their shopping in Bermuda shorts, sporting a cigarette in a long holder, he decided — old Mrs. Rath would be apt to have a grandson like that. And this man Edward Schultz, who had sounded rather lunatic over the telephone, what sort of man was he? Which of the two men would be pleased by justice?

But more than a dispute over a will had been dropped on his desk that morning, Bernstein reflected. If Rath got the land, he apparently intended to try to subdivide it into one-acre lots. The Rath estate was in a “Triple A Zone,” where no estate of less than ten acres was supposed to exist. That meant that if Rath got the land, there would be a zoning fight. Bernstein had lived in South Bay so long that he could predict the intensity of any dispute, if not its outcome, and he thought, “Not a zoning fight now — all we need is a zoning fight now!”

Sometimes it was almost a disadvantage to have lived in a town so long, because Bernstein knew all the people in the local government so well that he could foretell how they would answer almost any question, and without moving from his chair could conduct a fairly accurate public-opinion poll, a process which was often disturbing. Now he imagined what the various leaders in South Bay would say if Thomas Rath asked the Zoning Board to let him divide his land. Old John Bradbury, chairman of the Zoning Board, would explode at the very thought. He would immediately tie the whole question up with the controversy over whether to build a new public school. “Twenty acres with one house will bring in one family which will use a private school,” old Bradbury would say exasperatedly. “Twenty acres with twenty houses will bring in twenty families, all of whom will expect the town to educate their children!”

And old Mr. Parkington, whose estate was near the south side of the Rath property, would have a double reason for apoplectic objections. As a member of the Zoning Board he had been one of the people who had instituted the ten-acre area in the first place, “to preserve the rural beauties of South Bay,” and for more than fifteen years he had conducted a personal crusade against any effort to change the zoning ordinances. His reaction to having land so near his own converted into a housing project would be picturesque, Bernstein reflected grimly, and hoped he wouldn’t have to see it.

The worst part of such a fight would be, Bernstein thought, that the arguments in favor of allowing Rath to subdivide his land would be as apoplectic as the arguments against it. Bob Murphy, who since 1931 had been a member of the Zoning Board, would use the case as an excuse to continue his unending battle against what he termed “the privileged few.” And old Mrs. Allison, the fourth member of the board, would undoubtedly agree with everyone on both sides of the controversy, but would end by voting for young Rath, because she would be almost sure to judge him the underdog.

If there had been a fifth member of the Zoning Board, Bernstein could have foretold how the case would go with little possibility of error, but there was no fifth member. The post was vacant and seemed likely to remain vacant for a long time. It had been vacant ever since Harold Mathews, a tight-lipped Yankee who had decided each case on its merit, had died a month ago, for every time anyone had been suggested to take Mathews’ place, a great fuss had been made by those who believed the new member would weight the board against them. Sooner or later a new member would have to be named, but meanwhile even Bernstein couldn’t predict how zoning cases would be decided. All he knew was that there would be a bitter fight, the very thought of which made his stomach ache worse than ever. How violent Schultz had sounded over the telephone! “ I want justice ,” he had said. I wonder how many murders have been committed, and how many wars have been fought with that as a slogan, Bernstein thought. When they say they want justice, they always want someone else to get the sharp end of it. Justice is a thing that is better to give than to receive, but I am sick of giving it, he thought. I think it should be a prerogative of the gods.

THAT TUESDAY MORNING Tom perfected the latest draft of the speech he was writing for Ralph Hopkins. The whole text, which was now about thirty pages long (“We can cut it later,” Hopkins said), had come to seem a sort of penance from which he would never escape, an endless tract, a meaningless lifework.

At noon Tom took the speech up to Bill Ogden. He thought he knew precisely what would happen next. Ogden would read it and say it was terrible. Tom would then rewrite it again and be asked to dinner in Hopkins’ apartment. Hopkins would say it was wonderful and tell him to do it over again, and this whole process would doubtlessly be repeated over and over again until September 15th, when Hopkins would presumably walk out on the speaker’s platform in some big hotel in Atlantic City and tell everybody how delighted he was to be there.

But it didn’t happen that way at all. Tuesday when Tom took the speech up to Ogden, Ogden laid it negligently among some other papers on his desk without even glancing at the first page.

“Thanks, Tom,” he said casually. “We’re going to take you off this now and give Gordon Walker a crack at it.”

Tom waited, thinking there would be some other assignment for him, but apparently there was none. Ogden picked up his telephone and placed a call to someone in San Francisco. Tom got up uncertainly, thinking Ogden would tell him to wait, but Ogden just sat there, holding the telephone receiver negligently to his ear, saying nothing. I shouldn’t dislike the guy so much, Tom thought. After all, he’s awfully good at his job. He went back to his own office and sat down. Why had they taken him off the speech? Did that mean he had failed at it? Or was it normal procedure to pass the speech around among several of Hopkins’ assistants? Tom didn’t know.

There was nothing for him to do. Only a few minutes ago he had dreaded the prospect of coming back to his office and starting to rewrite the speech, but now he would have welcomed it. There was nothing for him to do. How long would Hopkins pay him to sit in a neat little office, with a secretary outside, with nothing to do? Maybe that was the way Hopkins got rid of people. In this strange, polite world high in the sky above Rockefeller Center, maybe nobody ever really got fired. Maybe all Hopkins did was to give a man nothing to do, absolutely nothing to do, until he started to go out of his mind sitting uselessly in his office all day, and resigned. Maybe that was the polite, smooth way to get rid of a man nobody wanted.

It wouldn’t work, Tom thought. If they tried that on me, I’d buy magazines and just sit here having a good time, making nine thousand dollars a year. It wouldn’t be so bad to get nine thousand dollars a year for doing absolutely nothing. I’d find something to keep me busy. By God, I’d work on selling Grandmother’s land.

But that state of affairs wouldn’t last long — of course Hopkins would fire a man if he insisted on staying, after he had been given nothing to do for a few weeks. Giving a man nothing to do would just be a warning; it would be offering him an opportunity to get out gracefully.