“So now we’re talking about sixty-four hundred, which is what you got left after the house, and your wife takes forty-eight hundred of that. Right? So here’s sixteen hundred for car, clothing for you, entertainment, club dues, recreation, commutation expenses and, theoretically, interest and principal payments on your loans, plus medical, dental, personal, legal... and you come to me with this impossible situation and say that there’s nothing you can change, and I’m supposed to make up a miracle for you? You’re brighter than that!”
“I thought a fresh viewpoint might—”
“I’m sorry. What good is it yelling at you? You’re the man in the trap. Can you knock off at least the club?”
“We use it as little as possible, but they come up from New York and they expect—”
“O.K., O.K. How about this money you’ve been paying into the pension plan? Can you get your hands on it?”
“Theoretically I could borrow what I’ve donated at no interest. If I left the firm, it would be turned over to me, the exact amount I’ve put in.”
“How much is the total?”
“About nine thousand now.”
“Could you borrow it?”
Ben studied his fist again. “I have the right to. But if I exercised that right, it would have to be because of some... very obviously expensive and disastrous thing, such as a child in an iron lung or something. If I just borrowed it, it would be evidence that I can’t live on my salary.”
“But you can just barely get by on it right now, man, provided you have no more trouble!”
“I’m supposed to live on it,” Ben said miserably.
J. J. Semmins threw his yellow pencil against the far wall. It bounced back and rolled under his desk. “I get so sick of this same deal all the time,” he said. “Hundreds of you bright guys are in this trap. The big shots you work for made theirs so long ago that they think they’re paying you a king’s ransom. They want you to live big on it, advertise how good they are to work for. They’ll make certain the guys in the factories take home fat money, because the unions have put the fear of God into them, but the bright guys right under their noses, they’ll pay them twenty-five thousand and then put the pressure on so you spend all but a couple dimes paying your taxes and living as fat as they could have lived twenty years ago on the same money. Then, if you crack, it’s your fault. If you demand more money, you’re unreliable. If you start shopping around for more money, you’re labeled disloyal. Thirty-five would be about right for you, Weldon. You could reduce those debts down to zero and start a little savings program. Taxes would take a bigger bite, but you’d have about the right amount left. Go ask them for thirty-five. If they won’t give it to you, shop for it.”
“That’s a joke I can’t laugh at. Sorry.”
“There’s another choice. Sell the house. Grab that nine thousand in the retirement fund. Pay your debts, drop your insurance, and go to Florida or someplace and buy a gas station. You’ll live longer. You’d be surprised to learn how many guys in your shoes have done just that. They’ll tell you they got sick of commuting and conforming and so on. They won’t admit they got starved out. But they did, and it’s a shameful thing. Big business needs the guys they’re driving away because they’re too chinchy to pay them what they think they’re paying them. You’re the forgotten man, Weldon. Go anywhere in the country and beef about not being able to live on your salary, and you’d have them rolling in hysterics. Nobody will ever be sorry for you. You’ll get all the sympathy of a man with two black eyes. But from where you and I sit, it is a tragic, unnecessary thing, and we both know it. But it’s a story that won’t sell.”
Ben managed to force a smile. “Like the small-town bank clerk back in the ’twenties, trying to act like a substantial citizen on nineteen dollars a week.”
“And a lot of those guys took it as long as they could before they grabbed the money and ran.”
“I guess I can at least thank you for... confirming the situation, Mr. Semmins.”
“I won’t bill you, buddy. I don’t have the heart.”
“But—”
“Let’s have no arguments, please. What will you do?”
“Try to squeak by, I guess. Cut every corner we can. Try to hold on. You see, the stakes are big.”
“Sure,” Semmins said. “You sit in this great big poker game and you’ve got twelve dollars and you sit there, folding every hand, waiting for a royal flush, and while you’re waiting they ante you to death. Isn’t there some guy over there who is interested in you enough to sit down and go over these records with you?” He sighed. “I suppose not. All I can say is good luck.”
Ben Weldon reported this to Ginny, but he did not let her see the depth of his feeling of helplessness. He made it light, in so far as he was able, and, as Christmas hung over them, an ominous tinsel avalanche, they vowed all manner of economies as though it would be great fun. Economies can be fun for the recently wed: a romantic game, with the long walks to save bus fare, the happy magic of finding a quarter in the gutter, the painstaking budget to squeeze out the $4 a week to put in the savings account — against the future house, car, baby.
For those longer wed, economies can be a game if there is a special goal — the new house or the cruise or the swimming pool. But when it is part of a struggle to survive, and there seems to be no end to it, and you do not know when some small and expensive disaster may wipe out all your efforts — then there is a corrosive and destructive quality to it all. It can be a dreary battle, waged with the presentiment of defeat.
And there is not really too much you can do. You can put an end to the habit of bringing fond and silly gifts to your wife, little things you happened to see in store windows. You can avoid taxis as much as possible, give up the tenth-of-a-cent bridge game on the train, avoid all lunch dates that threaten to be expensive, try to get a little more wear out of the business suits between dry cleanings, give up the relaxing ceremony of the before-dinner drink. And you can begin a practice you have always avoided, the sly and delicate art of fudging the expense account. He found that he could show a small profit on each trip. Twelve dollars, seventeen dollars. It made him feel like a petty thief, but he told himself it was a practice hallowed by tradition.
Yet, with all these practices, he felt as if he were engaged in an exercise in futility. He was the captain at the wheel of the small boat, The sea was rushing into the hold. Every now and then he could rush down and bail for a few moments with a teacup before returning to his duty station.
There was a more serious aspect to it, one that he could not dare admit to himself. He had attempted to build an impenetrable wall between the increasing tensions of his personal life and the demands of his career.
There was an afternoon meeting ten days before Christmas, and as they were waiting for Brendan Mallory, who would conduct it, Ben Weldon heard Charlie McCain, saying, “—got them to promise to deliver it Christmas morning, a little M.G.A., robin’s-egg blue, and Kath’s eyes are going to bug like a stomped frog—”
Midway through the meeting Weldon was staring off into an equitable world where Ginny was driving her brand-new little M.G.A. down a sunny country road, the wind ruffling her blond hair, her eyes adance—
“Sir?” he said, falling abruptly back into here and now.
Mallory looked at him oddly and said, “You do have the break-even figures on Western Products, Ben?”
“Right here,” he said, flushing, and opened the folder to the summary his staff had prepared for him and began to make his report.