Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“If you’re a good girl and go nicely, I’ll bring you home a present tonight. I’ll bring you a surprise.”

“All right,” Janey said woefully. “If you’ll go with me.”

“I’ll take you down,” Tom said, and began to help her get dressed.

At breakfast Betsy said, “I can take her — you’ll miss your train if you go.”

“I’ll take a later train,” Tom said. “There’s something about a hall that bothers Janey. I want to see this school.”

Leaving Betsy at home with Pete, Tom put both his daughters in the car and started down the road toward the school. He remembered being driven down the same road by a chauffeur during his own boyhood, only they had not stopped at the public school; they had gone beyond it to the South Bay Country Day School, where both Tom and his father had gone. The tuition had been six hundred dollars a year, even in the nineteen twenties. Tom wondered what it was now. It was ridiculous to feel that he had to send his children to a private school, he thought. In Westport, the public schools had been just as good as the private schools.

The traffic got heavy as they neared the public school. It was a weather-beaten brick building of Victorian design set in the middle of a black asphalt-covered play yard, part of which had been marked off to form a parking area. The school and its yard was surrounded by a high iron fence, as though it were a zoo. Tom drove through a gate and found a parking place adjoining the play yard, where children of widely varying age were running, jumping, and shouting together. He and his daughters walked up the front steps of the school and entered a narrow, high-ceilinged hall, the walls of which were painted a dull chocolate brown. The indefinable smell of an old school building was strong — sweat, chalk dust, and an incongruous trace of cheap perfume.

Suddenly an electric bell rang, reverberating harshly against the bare walls. Immediately a horde of children rushed through the door which Tom had just entered and dashed down the hall. They continued to funnel in from the playground, jostling and pushing each other. The hall quickly became overcrowded, and someone said, “Don’t push!” in a high shrill voice. The children continued to jam in, and Tom felt a flash of claustrophobia. Janey clung tightly to his hand. She looked scared. “This is the hall,” she said.

“Yesterday she got knocked down here,” Barbara volunteered.

“It won’t happen again,” Tom said, his voice sounding false to himself.

“I guess I better go now,” Barbara said. “My room’s upstairs.” She let go of Tom’s other hand and was immediately swept away in the crowd. A few minutes later Tom caught a glimpse of her going up the stairs at the end of the hall, her small figure very erect.

“Stay with me,” Janey said.

“I’ll take you to your classroom,” Tom said. “Where is it?”

Janey led the way to a crowded doorway and paused. Inside, Tom could see a small room with many desks jammed together. With so many children jostling by, it was hard to stand still. Janey suddenly let go of his hand. “Thanks,” she said. He saw her go and sit at the very back of the room.

When Tom got outside, the fresh air felt good. He drove to the station and walked up and down the platform waiting for his train.

They shouldn’t have a school building like that, he thought. They shouldn’t have a school like that for anybody’s children. It wasn’t like that in Westport. It’s not just that I can’t afford to send my children to private school.

I wonder what kind of schools they have for the children of the poor in Rome, he thought. Suddenly he remembered how easy things had been for him in his boyhood. The old South Bay Country Day School had had ten or, at most, fifteen children in a class, and often the teachers had met with the pupils in the big living room of the old mansion which had been made into the school, and they had all sat in overstuffed chairs. How soft everything was made for me, he thought. Because his father had gone to the South Bay Country Day School, and because his grandmother had given generously to the school in the past, old Miss Trilly, the head mistress, had been especially kind to Tom and had once given a teacher a stern lecture for reprimanding him too harshly. Maybe it’s better for my kids to begin the way they are, he thought, as he paced up and down the platform of the railroad station. Maybe they’ll have less to learn later.

“ Rowdies! Young rowdies! They come from the public school! ”

He remembered those words being spoken in a high, slightly nasal, indignant voice by Miss Trilly — she had said them often. The public-school children had frequently invaded the playground of the Country Day School to play on the slides and swings. Occasionally they had picked fights with the Country Day children, and this is what had inspired old Miss Trilly’s anger.

“They’re from the public school! ” she had said, incorporating a sly slur in the words which none of her pupils had missed.

Tom wondered whether Janey and Barbara would ever sneak into the playground of the Country Day School to play on the slides and the swings, and whether Miss Trilly, or her successor, would say, “They’re from the public school! ”

It doesn’t really matter, he thought now, as he reached the end of the station platform and started to pace in the other direction. People are tough, even children. But good Lord, I ought to be able to do something. There’s no particular democratic virtue in jamming so many children into a school like that. Janey isn’t going to learn much by being knocked down in the hall.

Money, I need money, he thought. If they don’t build a new public school, I should be able to afford a private school. I should get everything but money out of my head and really do a job for Hopkins. I ought to be at work now. He glanced at his watch and saw it was quarter after nine — the train was late.

Money, Tom thought. The housing project could make money, but it depends on re-zoning, and Bernstein says we shouldn’t ask for that until they vote on a new school.

A new school, he thought — so much depends on that! Bernstein says there’s going to be a hearing on it and that a lot of people are against it. I should find out all the details. I should work for a new school, and I should work harder for Hopkins, and I should be making plans for our housing project. Where did I ever get the idea that life is supposed to be anything but work? A man’s work should be his pleasure — I shouldn’t expect anything more.

Far up the track the train blew its whistle. He joined a throng of men pushing to get aboard the train and, with chin on his chest, sat thinking about his daughters’ school.

TWO DAYS LATER, Tom moved into Hopkins’ outer office. He sat at a desk in a corner — it had been necessary to move Miss MacDonald’s desk and those of the two typists to make room for him. Hopkins’ office had not been designed with accommodations for a personal assistant. Miss MacDonald seemed flustered by the change. She sat at her desk nervously thumbing through correspondence, and whenever Tom said anything to her, she answered with an exaggerated politeness which was almost worse than the coldness which Ogden displayed. The two stenographers kept glancing from Miss MacDonald to Tom, as though they expected a battle to start between them. Tom missed his private office and his own secretary. In its exterior aspects, the change seemed more like a demotion than a promotion.

A half hour after Tom arrived at his new desk, Hopkins came out of his inner office. “Good morning, Tom!” he said briskly. “Good to have you here!”

“Good to be here!” Tom said. He had developed a hesitancy about whether to call Hopkins by his first name. “Mr. Hopkins” now sounded impolitely formal, and “Ralph” sounded brash. He avoided using either name whenever possible.