Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (22 page)

Tom stood up. He didn’t mean to, but he suddenly rose out of his chair and stood towering over Edward. There was an instant of complete silence. When Tom spoke his voice was soft. “Don’t talk like that about Mrs. Rath again,” he said.

Edward stared up at him and said nothing. His face was white, perhaps with anger, perhaps with fear. Tom hadn’t meant to lunge out of his chair so fast. Slowly Tom sat down. “Now listen,” he continued quietly. “I frankly don’t believe Mrs. Rath ever promised you anything. She didn’t make promises like that, and if she had, she would have told me. But I’m willing to admit that you had a right to expect something, and that perhaps she said things which encouraged you. It’s quite possible that as she grew older she grew confused and thought she had more than she did. Now get one thing straight: she didn’t have much to leave anyone. By the time the estate is settled, and the mortgage on this house is paid, there probably won’t be much more than the house and land. I intend to sell them if I can, and I intend to see you’re as well cared for as possible, but I’m not going to promise you anything now. You worked here of your own free will for a salary, and you’ll take what I can give you.
Until I can get things organized and sell the land, you can keep your room and have your meals here if you want, and if you mind your tongue. You will not be required to do any work.”

“I’ll get a lawyer!” Edward said. “I’ll sue! I’ve got proof she meant the house for me!”

“The will leaves it to me,” Tom said. “The only question now is whether you’re going to be reasonable and take what you can get, or whether you’re going to keep on like this and get thrown out of here tonight.”

“I’ll leave, but you’ll hear from me!”

I mustn’t get angry, Tom thought. He’s an old man. He had a right to expect something. Maybe she did make him promises, or at least, maybe he thought she did. I mustn’t get angry. “Calm down,” he said. “It’s not going to do either of us any good to get excited.”

“You’re cheating me!” the old man said. “Either you are or she did! She was crazy! She was filthy! She never took a bath. She was . . .”

“Stop!” Tom said. His voice was like the report of a gun. The old man drew in his breath sharply.

“Now get out of here,” Tom said. “Go down and pack your bags and call a taxi, and get out of here. If you’re not gone in an hour I’ll throw you out.”

“I’ll get a lawyer,” Edward said. “You think I can’t afford one. I can get the best. The house is mine, and I’ve got proof.”

“Get all the lawyers you want, but right now, get out of that chair,” Tom said. “And stay in the servant quarters until the taxi comes.”

Edward got up. Tom waited until he had left the room before going upstairs.

“What happened?” Betsy said. “You look upset.”

Tom lay down on the big double bed and stared up at the crocheted canopy stretching like a net overhead. “I got angry,” he said.

“At Edward?”

“Yes–I threw him out. He’s leaving in an hour.”

He told her about it then, and as he talked, her indignation grew. “Of course you got mad!” she said. “I would have hit him.”

Tom didn’t move. He felt limp and utterly exhausted. “I get angry too easily,” he said. “Tonight I had a real impulse to kill Edward. Often I feel as though I’d like to kill Ogden, at the office. It’s strange that I am permitted to kill only strangers and friends.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m awfully tired.”

“That was such a funny thing you said about killing strangers and friends.”

“I meant the war,” he said.

“Did you ever kill anyone?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, did you personally ever kill anyone? You’ve never talked to me about it at all.”

“Right now I’m too tired. I want to go to sleep.”

He stirred restlessly and shut his eyes. In the dim light from the window, Betsy lay looking at his big hands lying quietly folded on top of the covers. “I cannot imagine your killing anyone,” she said.

There was no answer. Betsy lay looking at him for several minutes before trying to go to sleep. How strange, she thought, to know so little about one’s husband. I wish he would talk to me about the war, but I should know better than try to make him. After all, a good wife isn’t supposed to ask her husband questions he obviously doesn’t want to answer.

I
T TOOK
both Tom and Betsy a long while to get to sleep that night. They lay in the dark, separate and silent. Neither of them commented when they heard a taxi drive up to the house and the front door slam. For some reason, each felt a necessity to feign sleep. Downstairs the old grandfather’s clock which had marked the passage of Tom’s boyhood continued to mourn the loss of each hour.

Only a few minutes after Tom had finally got to sleep, he was awakened by a piercing scream from the next room. He leaped out of bed and, followed by Betsy, ran to the room where the two girls were sleeping, and snapped on the light. Janey was sitting bolt upright in her bed, crying. Tears were running down her face. Betsy
ran to her and picked her up. “What’s the matter, baby?” she said. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Janey said nothing. She hugged her mother tightly with both arms, and gradually her cries subsided into sobs. In the bed on the other side of the room, Barbara slept peacefully, oblivious to any disturbance. Betsy took Janey into the room she and Tom were using and put her down on the big bed. Tom put the lights out, and he and Betsy lay there in the dark, with the child between them. Janey’s sobs stopped. She gave a long, shuddering sigh and, still clinging tightly to her mother, went to sleep.

I wonder what she dreamed, Tom thought. What does a child have nightmares about? Did she dream that wild beasts were chasing her, or about drowning, or falling through space? What does a child fear most?

“Betsy, are you still awake?” he whispered. The steady, mingled breathing of mother and child was the only answer.

When Tom awoke in the morning, he felt drugged, as though he had been drinking heavily. No one else was in the big bed. Glancing at the familiar face of his wrist watch, he saw it was almost nine-thirty. He jumped to his feet. “Betsy!” he called. “I’ve missed my train!”

She was nowhere in the room. In his pajamas, Tom ran downstairs, through the living room and the dining room to the big old-fashioned kitchen, where Betsy was washing dishes. “I’ll be late to work!” he said. “I’ve got to get another draft of the speech done!”

She looked up and smiled. “It’s Sunday,” she said.

“Oh,” he replied ruefully, “I forgot.” He stood in the middle of the big kitchen, a little confused. Bright sunlight streamed through the window. “Where are the kids?” he asked.

“Outside. That old rock garden is a wonderful place for them to play.”

“I think I’ll go upstairs and catch another nap,” he said.

“Don’t you dare! I’ve been up since seven o’clock unpacking, and now we’re going to church! And before that we’re going to make a list of all the things we have to do.”

“There isn’t enough paper,” he said. “Not in the whole world.”

He went upstairs. The first thing he saw was his old mandolin in its battered black leather case, lying on top of his bureau where Betsy
had put it after unpacking it. He stood looking at it a moment, then drew the instrument from its case. It was covered with dust, and the strings were rusty and slack. Slowly he tightened one of the strings, strumming it gently with his thumb. It snapped suddenly. Tom shrugged, put the mandolin back in its case, and glanced around the room. In one corner was a built-in bookcase with a wide empty shelf at its top. He reached up and put the mandolin there. Then he walked quickly to the bathroom. There was dust in the bottom of the bathtub. Impatiently he washed it out and let the tub fill while he shaved, bending almost double to see himself in the mirror.

“Hurry up!” Betsy called.

When he got downstairs, he found a plate of bacon and eggs waiting for him at one end of the big, marble-topped kitchen table. At the other end Betsy was seated, determinedly writing on a pad. “We’ve got to get more stuff out of the car and unpack the rest of the boxes the truck brought,” she said, “and we’ve got to get the girls enrolled in school.”

“I’ve got to call Sims and tell him about Edward,” Tom said. “He should know, in case he makes any trouble.”

“I’ve got to clear out Grandmother’s closets,” Betsy said. “Her clothes are still there. And if you want the television set in the living room, you better see about getting it hooked up.”

“The main thing for me to do,” he said, “is to get the information we’ll need to make some sort of decision on your housing project. I’ve got to get a copy of the zoning regulations, and we’ll probably have to find out the procedure for getting an exception to them. We ought to have at least three contractors look the place over and give us bids on rebuilding the carriage house and putting in roads. God, Betsy, there’s so much! I can’t go to church today. I’m going to stay here and write letters.”

“You’re going to church!” she said. “We’re going to church every Sunday. From now on.”

“You go,” he said.

“Why won’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling embarrassed. “You take the kids and go to church, and I’ll stay here and write letters.”

Betsy put her pencil down, picked up the plate from which he had just eaten his eggs, and put it in the sink. With her back turned
to him she said, “Tommy, I’m asking you a favor. Go to church with me and the kids.”

“All right,” he said.

“Even if you’re bored,” she said, “try it. Maybe someday it would help you to stop worrying all the time.”

“I don’t worry all the time!”

“All right. But try it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been miserable for a long time. I used to think it was that damn little house, and it was partly, but it was more. We can’t just go on being scared all the time, Tommy. Sometime it will have to stop.”

“If you want me to go to church, I’ll go,” he said. “I didn’t know you were miserable all the time.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Sure.”

“There seems to be something hanging over us, something that makes it hard to be happy.”

“I know,” he said.

“It isn’t your fault. It’s just something we both have to wrestle with.”

“I’m all right,” he said.

“I’m all right too. I just feel I’d like to go to church.”

“Okay,” he said. “Before we go, I’ll call Sims.”

“There isn’t time.”

Reluctantly Tom went upstairs and put on a blue suit. When he returned to the kitchen, Betsy was combing the children’s hair. The two girls wore fluffy white dresses and Pete was in gray flannel shorts and a brown jacket. “Why do we have to wear party clothes to go to church?” Barbara asked.

“We just do,” Betsy said. “Get in the car.”

After leaving the children at the Sunday school in the annex of the Episcopal church, Tom followed Betsy into the church itself. They sat in a back pew, and Betsy knelt gracefully to pray. Her face was drawn and serious. Tom glanced away from her, feeling somehow that he was invading her privacy. An unseen organ started to hum melodiously, and an acolyte appeared before the altar and lit fourteen candles with a long, silver-handled taper. All around Tom the pews were filled with elderly ladies, many of whom knelt. Tom glanced at Betsy and saw she was still on her knees, her eyes closed,
her face rapt. How beautiful she is, he thought. He knelt uncomfortably beside her and shut his eyes.

An hour later, when Tom got home, he went right to the telephone and called Sims. When Sims heard about Edward, he swore, the oaths sounding strangely cultivated and precise as he spoke them.

“Do you think he can make any trouble for us?” Tom asked.

“It depends on what he calls ‘proof’–if he has anything in writing he might make things difficult. If he tried to contest the will, it could drag on for months.”

“If it were a long delay, it could break me,” Tom said. “I’ve got to turn this place over fast–the longer we hold it, the less money anybody’s going to have. Perhaps I could settle with him out of court.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s counting on,” Sims said. “I wouldn’t consider it. I know damn well your grandmother meant you to have everything–we talked about it countless times. I’d hang on and see what kind of case he’s got. Let him find out how hard it is to go to law before you talk to him.”

“Is there anything we can do while we’re waiting?”

“Not much,” Sims said. “Actually, I won’t be able to help you much from now on. The whole thing will be up to the Probate Judge–I’ve already sent him a copy of the will. He’ll be the one who will have to rule on any claims Edward puts in.”

“Who is he?”

“Bernstein–Saul Bernstein. He has an office on Main Street, I think–I hear he’s lived in South Bay all his life. It might pay you to drop in and see him.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of guy he is?”

“None,” Sims said. “Never met him.”

Tom thanked Sims and hung up. He decided to write Bernstein for an appointment. It was curious to think that so much depended on a man he had never met.

I
T WAS
nine o’clock Tuesday morning. Judge Saul Bernstein, a small stout man with a large mole on his left cheek, climbed the stairs to the third floor of the Whitelock building, the second biggest office building in the town of South Bay. Puffing a little, he walked into the bare, linoleum-floored room which was his office and smiled at his secretary, a thin girl bent intently over her typewriter. “Good morning, Sally,” he said. “How are you feeling today?”