by Sloan Wilson
A thousand petty shabbinesses bore witness to the negligence of the Raths. The front door had been scratched by a dog which had been run over the year before. The hot-water faucet in the bathroom dripped. Almost all the furniture needed to be refinished, reupholstered, or cleaned. And besides that, the house was too small, ugly, and almost precisely like the houses on all sides of it.
The Raths had bought the house in 1946, shortly after Tom had got out of the army and, at the suggestion of his grandmother, become an assistant to the director of the Schanenhauser Foundation, an organization which an elderly millionaire had established to help finance scientific research and the arts. They had told each other that they probably would be in the house only one or two years before they could afford something better. It took them five years to realize that the expense of raising three children was likely to increase at least as fast as Tom’s salary at a charitable foundation. If Tom and Betsy had been entirely reasonable, this might have caused them to start painting the place like crazy, but it had the reverse effect. Without talking about it much, they both began to think of the house as a trap, and they no more enjoyed refurbishing it than a prisoner would delight in shining up the bars of his cell. Both of them were aware that their feelings about the house were not admirable.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with us,” Betsy said one night. “Your job is plenty good enough. We’ve got three nice kids, and lots of people would be glad to have a house like this. We shouldn’t be so discontented all the time.”
“Of course we shouldn’t!” Tom said.
Their words sounded hollow. It was curious to believe that that house with the crack in the form of a question mark on the wall and the ink stains on the wallpaper was probably the end of their personal road. It was impossible to believe. Somehow something would have to happen.
Tom thought about his house on that day early in June 1953, when a friend of his named Bill Hawthorne mentioned the possibility of a job at the United Broadcasting Corporation. Tom was having lunch with a group of acquaintances in The Golden Horseshoe, a small restaurant and bar near Rockefeller Center.
“I hear we’ve got a new spot opening up in our public-relations department,” Bill, who wrote promotion for United Broadcasting, said. “I think any of you would be crazy to take it, mind you, but if you’re interested, there it is. . . .”
Tom unfolded his long legs under the table and shifted his big body on his chair restlessly. “How much would it pay?” he asked casually.
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “Anywhere from eight to twelve thousand, I’d guess, according to how good a hold-up man you are. If you try for it, ask fifteen. I’d like to see somebody stick the bastards good.”
It was fashionable that summer to be cynical about one’s employers, and the promotion men were the most cynical of all.
“You can have it,” Cliff Otis, a young copy writer for a large advertising agency, said. “I wouldn’t want to get into a rat race like that.”
Tom glanced into his glass and said nothing. Maybe I could get ten thousand a year, he thought. If I could do that, Betsy and I might be able to buy a better house.
2
WHEN TOM STEPPED OFF the train at Westport that night, he stood among a crowd of men and looked toward the corner of the station where Betsy usually waited for him. She was there, and involuntarily his pace quickened at the sight of her. After almost twelve years of marriage, he was still not quite used to his good fortune at having acquired such a pretty wife. Even with her light-brown hair somewhat tousled, as it was now, she looked wonderful to him. The slightly rumpled cotton house dress she was wearing innocently displayed her slim-waisted but full figure to advantage, and although she looked a little tired, her smile was bright and youthful as she waved to him. Because he felt it so genuinely, there was always a temptation for him to say to her, “How beautiful you are!” when he saw her after being away for the day, but he didn’t, because long ago he had learned that she was perhaps the one woman in the world who didn’t like such compliments. “Don’t keep telling me I’m pretty,” she had said to him once with real impatience in her voice. “I’ve been told that ever since I was twelve years old. If you want to compliment me, tell me I’m something I’m not. Tell me that I’m a marvelous housekeeper, or that I don’t have a selfish bone in my body.”
Now he hurried toward her. “Hi!” he said. “It’s good to get home. How did things go with you today?”
“Not so well,” she replied ruefully. “Brace yourself.”
“Why, what happened?” he said, and kissed her lightly.
“Barbara’s got the chicken pox, and the washing machine broke down.”
“Chicken pox!” Tom said. “Do they get very sick with that?”
“No, but according to Dr. Spöck, it’s messy. The other two will probably get it. Poor Barbara feels awful. And I think we’re going to have to buy a new washing machine.”
They climbed into their old Ford. On the way home they stopped at a drugstore, and Tom bought Barbara a toy lamb. Barbara was six and wanted nothing but toy lambs. When they got to Greentree Avenue, the little house looked more monotonous than ever, and Tom saw that the front lawn needed cutting. Janey, followed by his son, Pete, ran to meet him as he opened the front door. “Barbara’s got the chicken pox, and we’re all going to get it!” she said delightedly. “Mother says so!”
Lucy Hitchcock, who lived next door and who had been staying with the children while Betsy drove to the station, was sitting in the living room watching a puppet show on television. She got up to go, and while Tom was thanking her, Janey saw the parcel he was holding in his hand. “What’s that?” she demanded.
“A present for Barbara because she’s sick.”
“Did you bring anything for me?”
“No. You’re not sick yet.”
“That’s not fair!” Janey said, and began to howl. Without making any inquiries, Pete began to howl too.
“Barbara’s sick!” Tom said.
“You always bring her presents and you never bring me any,” Janey retorted.
“That’s not true,” Tom said.
“No television!” Betsy said. “If you children don’t stop this nonsense immediately, no television for a week.”
“Not fair!” Janey said.
“This is your last chance!” Betsy said. “Be quiet.”
“. . . fair,” Janey murmured.
“All right, that does it,” Betsy said. “No television for a week!”
Redoubled howls came from Janey and Pete, until Betsy relented on condition that they both be quiet for the rest of the evening. Mournfully the children followed Tom upstairs. He found Barbara in bed, with her small face already a mass of sores. “Did you bring me a present?” she asked eagerly.
He gave her the parcel. “A lamb!” she said delightedly when she unwrapped it. “Another lamb!”
“I didn’t want another lamb anyway,” Janey said. “Lambs are silly.”
“They’re not silly!”
“Quiet! Not another word!” Betsy said, coming into the room with a glass of water and medicine for Barbara.
Tom went downstairs and mixed a Martini for Betsy and himself. When Betsy came down, they sat in the kitchen, sipping their drinks gratefully while the children played in the living room and watched television. The linoleum on the kitchen floor was beginning to wrinkle. Originally it had been what the builder described as a “bright, basket-weave pattern,” but now it was scuffed, and by the sink it was worn through to the wood underneath. “We ought to get some new linoleum,” Betsy said. “We could lay it ourselves.”
“I heard about a new job today,” Tom said. “Public relations. United Broadcasting Corporation.”
“How much does it pay?”
“Probably a good deal more than I’m getting now.”
There was an instant of silence before she said, “Are you going to try for it?”
“I might.”
Betsy
finished her drink and poured herself another. “I’ve never thought of you as a public-relations man,” she said soberly. “Would you like it?”
“I’d like the money.”
Betsy sighed. “It would be wonderful to get out of this house,” she said.
3
THE NEXT MORNING, Tom put on his best suit, a freshly cleaned and pressed gray flannel. On his way to work he stopped in Grand Central Station to buy a clean white handkerchief and to have his shoes shined. During his luncheon hour he set out to visit the United Broadcasting Corporation. As he walked across Rockefeller Plaza, he thought wryly of the days when he and Betsy had assured each other that money didn’t matter. They had told each other that when they were married, before the war, and during the war they had repeated it in long letters. “The important thing is to find a kind of work you really like, and something that is useful,” Betsy had written him. “The money doesn’t matter.”
The hell with that, he thought. The real trouble is that up to now we’ve been kidding ourselves. We might as well admit that what we want is a big house and a new car and trips to Florida in the winter, and plenty of life insurance. When you come right down to it, a man with three children has no damn right to say that money doesn’t matter.
There were eighteen elevators in the lobby of the United Broadcasting building. They were all brass colored and looked as though they were made of money. The receptionist in the personnel office was a breathtakingly beautiful girl with money-colored hair–a sort of copper gold. “Yes?” she said.
“I want to apply for a position in the public-relations department.”
“If you will sit down in the reception room, I’ll arrange an interview for you,” she said.
The company had a policy of giving all job applicants an interview. Every year about twenty thousand people, most of them wildly unqualified, applied for jobs there, and it was considered poor public relations to turn them away too abruptly. Beyond the receptionist’s desk was a huge waiting room. A rich wine-red carpet was on the floor, and there were dozens of heavy leather armchairs filled with people nervously smoking cigarettes. On the walls were enormous colored photographs of the company’s leading radio and television stars. They were all youthful, handsome, and unutterably rich-appearing as they smiled down benignly on the job applicants. Tom picked a chair directly beneath a picture of a big-bosomed blonde. He had to wait only about twenty minutes before the receptionist told him that a Mr. Everett would see him. Mr. Everett’s office was a cubicle with walls of opaque glass brick, only about three times as big as a priest’s confessional. Everett himself was a man about Tom’s age and was also dressed in a gray flannel suit. The uniform of the day, Tom thought. Somebody must have put out an order.
“I understand that you are interested in a position in the public-relations department,” Everett said.
“I just want to explore the situation,” Tom replied. “I already have a good position with the Schanenhauser Foundation, but I’m considering a change.”
It took Everett only about a minute to size Tom up as a “possibility.” He gave him a long printed form to fill out and told him he’d hear from the United Broadcasting Corporation in a few days. Tom spent almost an hour filling out all the pages of the form, which, among other things, required a list of the childhood diseases he had had and the names of countries he had visited. When he had finished, he gave it to the girl with the hair of copper gold and rang for one of the golden elevators to take him down.
Five days later Tom got a letter from Everett saying an interview had been arranged for him with Mr. Gordon Walker in Room 3672 the following Monday at 11:00 A.M. In the letter Walker was given no title. Tom didn’t know whether he were going to have another routine interview, or whether he were actually being considered for a position. He wondered whether he should tell Dick Haver, the director of the Schanenhauser Foundation, that he was looking for another job. The danger of not telling him was that the broadcasting company might call him for references any time, and Dick wouldn’t be pleased to find that Tom was applying for another job behind his back. It was important to keep Dick’s good will, because the broadcasting company’s decision might depend on the recommendation Dick gave him. In any one of a thousand ways, Dick could damn him, without Tom’s ever learning about it. All Dick would have to do when the broadcasting company telephoned him would be to say, “Tom Rath? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d want to go on record one way or the other on Mr. Rath. He’s a nice person, you understand, an awfully nice person. I’d be perfectly willing to say that!”
On the other hand, it would be embarrassing to tell Dick he was seeking another job and then be unable to find one. Tom decided to delay seeing Dick until after he had had his next interview.
Walker’s outer office was impressive. As soon as Tom saw it, he knew he was being seriously considered for a job, and maybe a pretty good one. Walker had two secretaries, one chosen for looks, apparently, and one for utility. A pale-yellow carpet lay on the floor, and there was a yellow leather armchair for callers. Walker himself was closeted in an inner office which was separated from the rest of the room by a partition of opaque glass brick.
The utilitarian secretary told Tom to wait. It was extremely quiet. Neither of the two girls was typing, and although each had two telephones on her desk and an interoffice communication box, there was no ringing or buzzing. Both the secretaries sat reading typewritten sheets in black notebooks. After Tom had waited about half an hour, the pretty secretary, with no audible or visible cue, suddenly looked up brightly and said, “Mr. Walker will see you now. Just open the door and go in.”
Tom opened the door and saw a fat pale man sitting in a high-backed upholstered chair behind a kidney-shaped desk with nothing on it but a blotter and pen. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His face was as white as a marshmallow. He didn’t stand up when Tom came in, but he smiled. It was a surprisingly warm, spontaneous smile, as though he had unexpectedly recognized an old friend. “Thomas Rath?” he said. “Sit down! Make yourself comfortable! Take off your coat!”
Tom thanked him and, although it wasn’t particularly warm, took oft his coat. There wasn’t anyplace to put it, so, sitting down in the comfortable chair in front of Walker’s desk, he laid the coat awkwardly across his lap.
“I’ve read the application forms you filled out, and it seems to me you might be qualified for a new position we may have opening up here,” Walker said. “There are just a few questions I want to ask you.” He was still smiling. Suddenly he touched a button on the arm of his chair and the back of the chair dropped, allowing him to recline, as though he were in an airplane seat. Tom could see only his face across the top of the desk.
“You will excuse me,” Walker said, still smiling. “The doctor says I must get plenty of rest, and this is the way I do it.”
Tom couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to say than “It looks comfortable. . . .”
“Why do you want to work for the United Broadcasting Corporation?” Walker asked abruptly.
“It’s a good company . . .” Tom began hesitantly, and was suddenly impatient at the need for hypocrisy. The sole reason he wanted to work for United Broadcasting was that he thought he might be able to make a lot of money there fast, but he felt he couldn’t say that. It was sometimes considered fashionable for the employees of foundations to say that they were in it for the money, but people were supposed to work at advertising agencies and broadcasting companies for spiritual reasons.
“I believe,” Tom said, “that television is developing into the greatest medium for mass education and entertainment. It has always fascinated me, and I would like to work with it. . . .”
“What kind of salary do you have in mind?” Walker asked. Tom hadn’t expected the question that soon. Walker was still smiling.
“The salary isn’t the primary consideration with me,” Tom said, trying desperately to come up with stock
answers to stock questions. “I’m mainly interested in finding something useful and worth while to do. I have personal responsibilities, however, and I would hope that something could be worked out to enable me to meet them. . . .”
“Of course,” Walker said, beaming more cheerily than ever. “I understand you applied for a position in the public-relations department. Why did you choose that?”
Because I heard there was an opening, Tom wanted to say, but quickly thought better of it and substituted a halting avowal of lifelong interest in public relations. “I think my experience in working with people at the Schanenhauser Foundation would be helpful,” he concluded lamely.
“I see,” Walker said kindly. There was a short silence before he added, “Can you write?”
“I do most of the writing at the Schanenhauser Foundation,” Tom said. “The annual report to the trustees is my job, and so are most of the reports on individual projects. I used to be editor of my college paper.”
“That sounds fine,” Walker said casually. “I have a little favor I want to ask of you. I want you to write me your autobiography.”
“What?” Tom asked in astonishment.
“Nothing very long,” Walker said. “Just as much as you can manage to type out in an hour. One of my girls will give you a room with a typewriter.”
“Is there anything in particular you want me to tell you about?”
“Yourself,” Walker said, looking hugely pleased. “Explain yourself to me. Tell me what kind of person you are. Explain why we should hire you.”
“I’ll try,” Tom said weakly.
“You’ll have precisely an hour,” Walker said. “You see, this is a device I use in employing people–I find it most helpful. For this particular job, I have twenty or thirty applicants. It’s hard to tell from a brief interview whom to choose, so I ask them all to write about themselves for an hour. You’d be surprised how revealing the results are. . . .”