Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Read online

  “Some good administrators don’t work all the time.”

  “A few–damn few. It’s the fashion nowadays for them to pretend they don’t work as hard as they do. After all, running any big outfit is incredibly hard work. You know what a good administrator has to do? He has to keep a million details in his mind all at the same time, and he has to know how to juggle people. Why do you think Hopkins is great? Mainly, it’s because he never thinks about anything but his work, day and night, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. All geniuses are like that–there’s no mystery about it. The great painters, the great composers, the great scientists, and the great businessmen–they all have the same capacity for total absorption in their work. I like Hopkins–I admire him. But even if I could, I wouldn’t want to be like him. I don’t want to get so wrapped up in a broadcasting business that I don’t care about anything else. And I’m afraid that in asking me to be his personal assistant, he’s trying to make me be like him, and I know that’s foolish. I never could do it, and I don’t want to.”

  “Aren’t you making this awfully complicated?” Betsy asked. “He’s offered you a better job. Maybe a raise will go with it.”

  “Maybe. But this is complicated! What it all comes down to is, what do we want? He asked me that tonight: what do I want? I tried to answer him straight, but I was too confused to think. He asked me whether money is important to me, and I said yes, but I forgot to say why. I want money to help us enjoy life, but that’s not what a guy like Hopkins wants. He doesn’t care any more about money than a good violinist does. He’s totally absorbed in his work–nothing else matters to him. You could pay him in medals or in beans, you could put him in the middle of the Sahara Desert, and he’d still find some way to go on working day and night. Something about the way he acted tonight scared me. It sounds crazy, but I think he wants to try to create me in his own image and I don’t want any part of it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Figure it out for yourself. Hopkins doesn’t need a personal assistant–he has three secretaries and Ogden and Walker helping him already, and he’s always been careful to keep his relationship with all those people anything but personal. The whole time I’ve known him, he’s never had the slightest personal interest in me. And now all of a sudden he wants me to be his personal assistant. Why?”

  “Because he likes that speech you did for him,” Betsy said.

  “Partly. But you know something? His daughter got married today–I read it in the paper on the way home. And his son got killed in the war–I’d heard that, and he told me about it tonight. I think the poor guy’s just lonely, and he’s trying to hire a son.”

  “If that’s the way he feels, it could still be pretty good for you,” Betsy said.

  “I don’t think so. When he found I couldn’t get to be like him, he might get sick of me–he might get sick of me pretty soon, anyway. You can’t tell. Playing with a guy like that is like petting a tiger–any time he wants to turn on you, he can. I don’t want to be in a position like that.”

  “What are you going to do, turn him down?”

  “No–that might hurt his feelings. As I say, this is like petting a tiger–you have to be awfully careful. And the funny part of it is, I’d like to be his personal assistant for three reasons: I might learn something, it would be a good recommendation for anything else I wanted to do later, and I like the guy. I think I better take the job, but I’m going to have to keep my fingers crossed–nobody can tell how it’s going to turn out. When he finds I have no idea in the world of trying to be like him, he may get mad–and then he may fire me altogether.”

  34

  AT QUARTER TO SEVEN the next morning Betsy came into the bathroom while Tom was shaving and said, “I don’t know what to do. Janey says she won’t go to school.”

  “She give any reason?”

  “No. She just woke up and announced that she wasn’t going. I told her that she had to, and she said she simply wouldn’t.”

  “Why don’t you let her stay home a day or two,” Tom said. “At her age it wouldn’t matter.”

  “If I let her stay home, Barbara will want to stay too–she’s not very happy about going herself. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to go even less than Janey does, but she’s different. She does what she thinks she has to do.”

  “I’ll talk to Janey,” Tom said.

  “The trouble is, I really don’t blame the child,” Betsy said. “It’s such an awful-looking school!”

  Tom wiped the soap off his face and walked to the bedroom his daughters shared. Janey was sitting on her bed, still dressed in her pajamas. Her face was set in a determined expression, and her hands were folded stubbornly in her lap. On the other side of the room Barbara was slowly getting dressed. Her face looked strained.

  “What’s the matter, kids?” Tom asked. “Janey, if you don’t hurry up and get dressed, you’re going to be late.”

  “I’m not going to school,” Janey said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m just not going.”

  “You have to go,” Tom said. “There’s a law. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to grow up without knowing anything.”

  “I’m not going,” Janey said. From her face he saw she was about to cry.

  “Did something happen at school yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Was someone cross to you?”

  “No.” She paused before adding, “I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “The hall.”

  “The hall? What do you mean?”

  Janey said nothing.

  “What’s the matter with the hall?”

  “Nothing,” Janey said.

  “I’ll take you to school today and you can show me the hall. Will that help?”

  Janey looked down at the floor, her face hopeless. She said nothing.

  “School is fun when you get used to it,” Tom said hesitantly. Still Janey said nothing.

  “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 fro
m 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.

  35

  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.

  “I’ve got some correspondence I’d like you to answer for me,” Hopkins said. “Miss MacDonald, you can give Mr. Rath the morning’s mail after I’ve looked it over and let him rough out the replies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miss MacDonald said.

  Hopkins returned to his inner office. An hour later Miss MacDonald brought Tom a wire basket containing about thirty letters. Some were requests from charities, some suggested various new projects for United Broadcasting, and others concerned complex business transactions already underway. On the latter Hopkins had written in his small, neat handwriting, “See me.” On some of the simple requests he had written, “Tell him no,” and on others, “Tell him yes.” On still others he had written, “Maybe–don’t commit us.”

  Tom was not surprised at all this–he knew that the stage after having a girl to take dictation is to have someone to do the dictating. He had often written letters for Dick Haver at the Schanenhauser Foundation. Calling one of the stenographers over to his desk, he began the letters for Hopkins’ signature. In reply to a letter from a newly formed charity on which Hopkins had scribbled, “Tell him no,” he said, “I was most interested to see the information you sent me, and I certainly agree with you that this is an important and worthy endeavor, but it is necessary for us to plan ahead on this sort of thing, and I’m afraid that we’ve already committed ourselves so heavily on other similar projects that we won’t be able to include this one on our list of contributions now. I certainly hope your program is successful, however, and at some later time we would be glad to give your needs thorough consideration. Sincerely, Ralph Hopkins, president, United Broadcasting Corporation.”

  When he had several similar letters typed up, he sent them into Hopkins’ office. To his surprise, they came back almost immediately with carefully inked corrections on them. Most of the letters had been made a little more gracious, a little more informal, but on the letter saying no to the charity, Hopkins had written to Tom, “Don’t agree with him that project is important and don’t wish him success. I never heard of this outfit. They might use my letter as an endorsement, and they might be phonies.”

  Tom glanced up, and, seeing that Miss MacDonald was looking at him smugly, he realized that she had been the one who had answered the letters before and that she was pleased to see his work needed correction. He called the stenographer to his desk agai
n and redictated the letters.

  A few moments later, Hopkins spoke to him through the interoffice communication box. “Come in and bring the rest of the mail,” he said. Tom picked up the letters on which Hopkins had written, “See me,” and entered the inner office. Hopkins was pacing back and forth, looking ill at ease. “The reason I’m having you start out on this mail is that I think it’s the best way for you to learn how I work and to get an idea of some of the projects we have underway,” he said. “Now, take that letter from Richardson at the Henkel Manufacturing Corporation. That’s a long story. They manufacture television sets which go out under various brand names. For some time we’ve been trying to work out a deal that will let us market our own sets–United Broadcasting Corporation sets. We’ve got two or three other companies interested in supplying the sets, but this is more than a matter of just getting bids. We’re trying to work out a deal where we tie in with some big retailing outfit. . . .”

  He talked on for a long time. To Tom, the whole subject seemed hopelessly complicated. “Anyway,” Hopkins concluded, “the point is, we’ve got to stall Richardson now without letting him think we’ve lost interest. Tell him that several other people here want to study the specifications he sent us and that he’ll hear from us in a few days.”

  Hopkins went on to discuss this and other letters, while Tom took notes. By the time Tom got back to his desk, his head was whirling.

  “Mr. Ogden called you,” Miss MacDonald said. “He wants you to call him back.”

  “Thanks,” Tom replied, and immediately called Ogden. “Oh, Tom,” Ogden said. “Can you drop in at about ten tomorrow to review what you’ve done for the mental-health committee?”