Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Hopkins was not an introspective man, but in recounting all this to the psychoanalyst, he had said, “I always felt sorry for my father because my mother treated him so badly. She never gave me much time, either, except when I did something she thought was outstanding. Whenever I got a particularly good report card, or won anything, she’d take me up to her room to have tea alone with her. ‘We’re two of a kind,’ she used to say. ‘We get things done.’ I suppose I got the impression from her that achievement means everything.”

Hopkins had felt quite proud of his efforts at self-diagnosis and had been surprised when the psychoanalyst had disregarded his suggestions in favor of much more bizarre “explanations of neurosis.” He had said that Hopkins probably had a deep guilt complex, and that his constant work was simply an effort to punish and perhaps kill himself. The guilt complex was probably based on a fear of homosexuality, he had said. To Hopkins, who had never consciously worried about homosexuality, or guilt, this had seemed like so much rubbish, but he had tried to believe it, for the psychoanalyst had said it was necessary for him to believe to be cured, and Hopkins had wanted to be cured, in order to make his wife happy.

The trouble had been that every time he left the psychoanalyst’s office the temptation to return to his own office and bury himself in work had been irresistible. At the end of two years he had become the youngest vice-president of United Broadcasting and had told his wife he simply wouldn’t have time for psychoanalysis any longer.

It had been shortly after this that he had rented an apartment to use for business meetings in New York and had drifted into the habit of staying away from his home, which had then been in Darien, for weeks at a time. His wife had not objected. She had gone in for horses for a while and, tiring of that, had become a relentless giver of parties. After Susan had been born in 1935, she had abruptly stopped the parties and had thrown herself into motherhood with abandon, firing the nursemaid who had taken care of her son and surrounding herself with avant-garde parents who discussed their children the way psychiatrists discuss their patients. Hopkins had never complained — he had been too grateful to her for letting him alone and, as he saw it, making up for his deficiencies as a parent.

Things had gone pretty well until 1943, when Robert, their son, had been killed in the war. Hopkins had hurried home when his wife telephoned to tell him and had tried to sympathize with her, but all she had said was, “You never knew him! You never knew him!” Hopkins had stayed with her for three days, at the end of which time he had returned to his office and thrown himself harder than ever into his work.

“Slow down!” the doctors had been saying regularly ever since. “You’ve got to slow down!” But Helen, his wife, had stopped saying that to him. After Robert had been killed, she had gone for a brief time to a sanitarium, leaving Susan, her daughter, with the servants. After returning from the sanitarium, Helen had started to give parties again, and had begun to plan the great show place in South Bay, and had bought the yawl, and had seemed happier than she ever had in her life.

“This traffic!” Hopkins said now, as he sat in his limousine and looked out the window at the pedestrians on the sidewalk, who were making better time. “This traffic is terrible!” He sat back and consciously tried to relax, but it was impossible. A policeman blew his whistle sharply, and a taxi driver ahead started to curse. Hopkins shut his eyes. It was ridiculous to worry, it was unproductive. It would be better to think of the future, of things to be done. There was, for instance, the mental-health speech to revise. Hopkins took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “Miss MacDonald,” he said, “it looks as though we’re going to be stuck in this traffic for quite a while. Would you mind taking dictation?”

“THEY WANT TO USE the top of the tower for sky watchers,” Betsy said to Tom when he returned from work Friday night.

“What?” he asked in astonishment.

“It’s Civilian Defense — they’re making a plan for Civilian Defense here. They want to use our tower for airplane spotters until they get a permanent place for themselves.”

“Oh, Lord,” Tom groaned.

“Don’t you approve?”

“I guess so,” he said. “I don’t know, it sounds so absurd. What do they want us to do?”

“Just let them use the tower for a few weeks. It’s the highest place in South Bay, they said, and has the best view. Why is it absurd?”

“It’s not,” he said. “I’m just tired, and I don’t like thinking about another war. I have a million other things to do.”

“Sit down and have a drink,” Betsy said. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

That night Tom lay awake a long time worrying about Maria, about old Edward’s claim on the estate, about zoning laws, and about the meeting he was to have with Bernstein in the morning. When he awoke he felt exhausted and so irritable that the high-pitched voices of the children at the breakfast table annoyed him. “Be quiet!” he said sharply to Janey when she said, “Daddy, can I have the milk? Can I have the milk? Can I have the milk?” She looked so hurt that he hastily added, “I’m sorry,” gave her the milk, and himself kept quiet for the rest of the meal.

“I’ll drop you off at Judge Bernstein’s office,” Betsy said after he had finished his second cup of coffee. “I’ll take the kids with me and enroll the girls at school.”

“I don’t want to go to school,” Janey said. “I never want to go.”

“It’s not so bad,” Barbara said thoughtfully. “I only hate it a little.”

“Can I go?” Pete asked.

“Nobody has to go for another month,” Betsy said.

They got in the car and drove slowly to the main street of South Bay.

“Now don’t take any nonsense from him,” Betsy said as Tom got out of the car in front of the building in which Bernstein had his office. “We ought to have our first ten houses for sale next spring, and if we’re going to do that, we should start right away.”

Bernstein was sitting behind his scarred pine desk when Tom came in. He glanced up at Tom sharply — somehow he hadn’t expected Mrs. Rath’s grandson to be so tall. “Sit down, Mr. Rath,” he said cordially. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to get some idea of how long it will take for Mrs. Rath’s estate to go through the Probate Court,” Tom said, “and I want to learn about zoning laws around here. We’ve got an idea we may want to put up some kind of a housing development.”

“I see,” Bernstein said, and waited.

“How long does it generally take for an estate to be settled?”

“Not long, if there are no complications. A man by the name of Schultz was in here to see me a few days ago. Edward Schultz. Name mean anything to you?”

“He used to work for my grandmother. I want to do what I can for him, but I have to wait until the estate is settled.”

“Mr. Schultz tells me he believes Mrs. Rath meant the entire estate to go to him,” Bernstein said quietly.

“That’s absurd! My grandmother talked to me about him shortly before she died.”

“Apparently he believes he’s entitled to the house,” Bernstein said dryly.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Why do you suppose he thinks he has a claim?”

“I think he must be a little crazy,” Tom said. “I don’t know — I feel pretty badly about this. Mrs. Rath was ninety-three years old when she died, and possibly she gave him some reason for hoping she would leave him everything.”

“Do you think she could have promised him the estate in return for his services for the rest of her life?” Bernstein asked mildly.