The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Returning home from the meeting, Tom receives a vague letter from UBC, arranging another meeting to “work something out” (55). Betsy promises to help Tom deal with the funeral arrangements and inheritance. In the UBC offices, Tom dwells on the “maddening” familiarity of the elevator operator. In the meeting, Tom negotiates hard for a higher salary. He accepts $9,000 a year and is hired with a six-month probation period. When Tom returns home, a man named Swanson Howard is waiting for him. He wants to buy the house which belonged to Tom’s grandmother. Tom promises to keep in touch. He and Betsy talk about their immediate plans. She is optimistic about their future, but Tom is less so. He feels they should stay in their current house, though Betsy is desperate to leave the neighborhood, which she considers dull. He goes to bed, but Betsy wakes him up to tell him about her idea: They could divide up grandmother’s 23-acre estate into smaller lots to be sold for a much higher profit. Betsy promises that she will learn all the technical and legal necessities, but Tom is reluctant to agree. Betsy accuses him of being a spoiled coward. Eventually, Tom agrees to try “this real-estate thing” (64), though he is thinking about his father’s failed efforts to manage the estate.

The next day, Betsy wakes Tom early. She wants to institute a “new regime” of eating breakfast as a family each day. She also wants to ban television and processed foods, and attend church each Sunday. Though she wants Tom to walk to the station, he insists that she drive him. Aboard the train, Tom wonders about his new job and Betsy’s new ideas. He recounts a phrase that helped him get through the war: “[I]t doesn’t really matter” (67). Before jumping out of a plane and parachuting into battle, he would have premonitions of violence and death. The mantra helped him to relax before each jump, followed by similar declarations of “here goes nothing [and] it will be interesting to see what happens” (69).

While walking from the station to his office, Tom is struck by the sight of a man in a brown leather jacket, which reminds him of an incident in 1943 when he killed an 18-year-old in a similar leather jacket. He is haunted by the incident, though he reassures himself that by killing an enemy combatant, he was only doing what he needed to do to survive and win the war. The mission was botched, the Germans ambushed Tom’s unit, and many of his comrades died. Tom led a small band of survivors, then escaped with Hank Mahoney in disguises taken from men they had killed. The 18-year-old was one of these men, whom Tom stabbed repeatedly even though the soldier was barely conscious. When Tom and Mahoney finally reached safety, they were considered “heroes.” Tom gave the leather jacket taken from the dead German to a young soldier named Caesar Gardella. Tom, remembering this, realizes that the mysterious elevator operator must be Caesar Gardella.

The realization prompts another memory for Tom, about an Italian woman named Maria with whom he had a brief extramarital affair while stationed in Rome. He remembers being frustrated about being immediately redeployed from Europe to the Pacific without any chance to return home, and he uses this circumstance to justify his affair in hindsight. Tom feared that he would be killed by a Japanese soldier and, in his final week in Rome, he and Hank spent their money on a debauched flurry of regrettable behavior. He met Maria in a bar and went back to her apartment in a tenement building. For a week, he and Maria lived in “a small, temporary world” which they built for themselves (81). Tom stayed even longer with Maria, totaling seven weeks together. Gardella was in Rome during this time and knew Maria.

On the day he finally departed, Maria warned Tom that she may be pregnant. He gathered $500 and left Maria for the Pacific, unsure whether the child would be born. While waiting for his next mission in New Guinea, Tom read through the letters from Betsy and thought about his pregnant mistress. Though Maria did not write to Tom, Gardella received updates about her and turned cold toward Tom. With his unit, Tom undertook a dangerous mission to take the island of Karkow. Many of the soldiers were very young. The thought of his unborn child was “curiously comforting.” In the chaos of the battle, Tom led his young recruits into the fray. Alongside Gardella, he watched as his own grenade accidentally killed Hank. He carried Hank’s body to safety, refusing to believe Hank was dead. Eventually, he found a priest to bury Hank and then returned to his men. Gardella was wounded in the battle and remained cold to Tom afterward, and Tom now wonders whether Gardella recognized him in the elevator.

Tom speaks to Dick Haver, who agrees to let him leave immediately to begin the new job with Hopkins. Privately, he tries to stop fretting about Gardella.

Tom visits his new office and secretary while waiting to speak to his superior, Ogden. He signs papers and learns how to use the “interoffice communication system” (100). Tom is given the title of Special Assistant to Mr. Hopkins and is invited to dine with Hopkins at Hopkins’s Park Avenue apartment. Tom is tasked with planning a speech that Hopkins will deliver to a convention of medical men. The aim of the speech is to encourage an audience to think that they simply must appoint Hopkins to a national committee on mental health. Meanwhile, Betsy plans to sell their current house.

Tom has dinner at the Hopkins apartment. He sips drinks with Hopkins as Ogden arrives. They eat a large dinner and then discuss the speech. Tom takes notes and agrees to draft a speech in the coming days. As Tom and Ogden leave the apartment, Hopkins ushers in a new group for another meeting. Tom and Ogden drink at the station bar as they wait for their train. At home, Betsy has cleaned and rearranged the house. She chides Tom for being cynical.

Tom and Betsy receive a call from their neighbor, Lucy Hitchcock. Lucy’s husband Bob has received a promotion, and she invites Tom and Betsy to celebrate the following night with cocktails. The invitation annoys Betsy for a variety of reasons, indicative of her broader dislike for Greentree Avenue. Everyone in the neighborhood views Greentree Avenue as “a stepping stone to the same kind of life on a bigger scale” (109). The anxiety about the party makes Betsy think about her childhood and her family. She thinks about the early stages of her marriage to Tom and the mistakes they made. Moving into a new house would, to Betsy, help to recapture the excitement and energy of the first months of their marriage. The fun seems to have gone from their lives, she decides.

Tom drafts the speech for Hopkins but Ogden rejects it as “awful,” so Tom resentfully redrafts it. Much to Tom’s surprise, Hopkins is delighted, but he still has suggestions. On the way home, Tom realizes that the litany of suggestions is a request to redraft the speech. Hopkins made the same demand as Ogden, Tom realizes, but did so in a more polite and encouraging way.

A week later, Tom meets Caeser Gardella in the elevator again. Tom anxiously, awkwardly makes small talk. He agrees to have a drink with Gardella in the future to catch up. After, Tom becomes concerned about Gardella’s intentions, particularly the prospect that Gardella may try to blackmail him. He tells himself to relax and works hard on redrafting the speech. Unexpectedly, Betsy sells the house for a good price, and the family must move out on short notice. The family arranges to move into the empty house that belonged to Tom’s grandmother. While packing, Betsy finds Tom’s old mandolin. He tells the Bubbley story to the children while Betsy packs.