Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“Are you thinking of going into government?” the old lady asked unexpectedly.

“No — I’m thinking of going into business.”

“Your great-grandfather was very successful in business,” she said. “At one time he owned a fleet of twenty-eight vessels. Are you going into shipping?”

“No,” Tom said. “This will be a little different, Grandmother. There’s nothing definite about it yet, but I’ve mentioned it to Dick Haver, and I thought you ought to know.”

“I’m sorry you have to go into business,” she said soberly, “but I suppose it’s necessary. Business is such a bore — The Major never could stand it, and neither could The Senator. But I suppose it’s necessary. Come, let’s talk about something more cheerful. How do you think the place looks?”

“Fine,” he said.

“I can’t afford to keep the lawns up, but the house itself is in as good repair as ever.”

“It looks beautiful.”

“I hope that when I go, you and Betsy will be able to live here,” she said. “I’m trying to keep it up for you. I don’t want you to mention it to a soul, but I had to take a small mortgage on the place to have the roof fixed and to have an oil furnace put in. Edward is getting old, and he can’t shovel coal any more.”

A furnace, Tom thought — I’ll bet that the price of a furnace for this place would send all three of my kids through a year of college. He felt the old double, contradictory anger rising in him, the familiar fury at his grandmother for dissipating money which ordinarily would come to him eventually, and the accompanying disgust at himself for lusting after an old lady’s money. He tried to feel the gratitude which, after all, was due the person who had brought him up, and paid for his education, and treated him with kindness and love.

“She’s selfish, but I could forgive her that,” Tom remembered his mother saying about the old lady. “What I can’t forgive is the arrogance, and the deliberate pretenses she inflicted on her son, and everyone around her. Poor Steve was raised on lies. ”

His mother hadn’t been talking to him when she had said that; she had been talking to a minister who visited her quite often after her husband’s death, and the minister had noticed that Tom, who was only twelve years old then, had come into the room, and he had said, “Hush — the boy’s here. How are you, Tom? It won’t be long before you’ll be going to high school!”

Now Tom wondered whether he should try to work with the old lady’s lawyer to straighten out whatever might be left of her estate. When he had come home from the war, he had, after tortuous examination of his own motives, asked his grandmother whether he could help manage things for her, and she had turned him down abruptly. She had never mentioned money to him in all the years he had lived with her, except to say that it didn’t matter, that it was a frightful bore.

“If you want any help, let me know,” he said now. “I don’t think it’s wise for you to be taking out mortgages — there might be ways to avoid it.”

“The bank was very helpful,” she said. “I haven’t got many more years to go, and I think the lawyer has arranged for me to be taken care of quite nicely. The important thing is to keep this house in shape for you and Betsy.”

“I doubt whether we’ll be able to afford such a place,” he said. “Not many people can these days.”

“Nonsense!” she replied. “You’re going into business, aren’t you? Perhaps you’ll be able to improve it. The Senator always wanted to put another wing on the south side of the house. Come, and I’ll show you where.”

She walked with astonishing agility and pointed with her cane to show just where the billiard room should go, and a glass-walled conservatory for raising orchids.

There were really four completely unrelated worlds in which he lived, Tom reflected as he drove the old Ford back to Westport. There was the crazy, ghost-ridden world of his grandmother and his dead parents. There was the isolated, best-not-remembered world in which he had been a paratrooper. There was the matter-of-fact, opaque-glass-brick-partitioned world of places like the United Broadcasting Company and the Schanenhauser Foundation. And there was the entirely separate world populated by Betsy and Janey and Barbara and Pete, the only one of the four worlds worth a damn. There must be some way in which the four worlds were related, he thought, but it was easier to think of them as entirely divorced from one another.

THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY Tom left the Schanenhauser Foundation at ten-thirty in the morning to keep his appointment with Walker. It was not necessary for him to give any excuse for leaving his desk, but he felt vaguely guilty as he told his secretary he probably wouldn’t be back until noon. He walked quickly up Fifth Avenue and across Rockefeller Plaza, so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he hardly noticed the people he passed. When he got inside the United Broadcasting building, a starter wearing a fancy, silver-braided cap directed him into one of the waiting gold-colored elevators.

“Floor please?” the elevator operator said. He spoke in a deep voice with a slight Italian accent. Tom glanced at him. The man was wearing a plum-colored uniform and had his back turned toward him. He was a stout, dark-complexioned man about thirty years old with thick black hair only partly covered by a plum-colored cap shaped like an army overseas cap. Across the back of his thick neck, just visible above his collar, was a long, thin white scar. There was something startlingly familiar about the slope of his narrow shoulders and the deep voice. Tom stepped to one side to get a better look at him, but the elevator was getting crowded, and he couldn’t see the front of the man’s face.

“Floor please?” the elevator man repeated as people filed into the car. “Floor please?”

“Thirty-six,” Tom said. The man turned toward him, and their eyes met. The elevator operator’s face was fat, almost round, and he had a thin, incongruously dapper mustache. His eyes were black and unblinking. He stared at Tom for several seconds. There might have been a quickly suppressed flicker of recognition, but Tom couldn’t be sure. The face seemed impassive. Tom looked away. The elevator doors rumbled shut, and the machine shot upward. There was an instant of silence before it stopped, and the doors rumbled open. Tom started to get out.

“This is twenty,” the operator said in his deep voice.

Tom edged back into the elevator. When he got out at his floor, he felt oddly flustered. Down the hall he saw a men’s room and went there to wash his face and comb his hair before going to see Walker. It was absurd to attach such importance to a chance encounter with an elevator man. Even if it were someone he had known, what possible difference could it make?

A few minutes later Tom found Walker reclining as usual in his adjustable chair. Sitting in front of Walker’s desk was a handsome, angular man whom Walker introduced as Bill Ogden. Ogden shook hands with Tom rather stiffly and said almost nothing during the remainder of the interview. Apparently he was there simply as an observer.

“We’ve gone over your qualifications and are now prepared to talk in more specific terms,” Walker said, smiling cheerily. “I think I should begin by saying that this isn’t just an ordinary job in the public-relations department we’re considering. What we’re looking for is a young man to work with Mr. Hopkins, the president of the company, on a special project. ”

He paused, apparently expecting Tom to say something. “That sounds very interesting,” Tom said.

Walker nodded. “As a matter of fact, this position wouldn’t really be with United Broadcasting at all, except in a purely technical sense,” he continued. “You would be working directly for Mr. Hopkins on an outside project completely unrelated to the company. One reason we think you might be suited for the job is that you would be working quite closely with the foundations. We hope that the project will eventually be sponsored by the foundations.”