1. Park Avenue
For the third time Ed has started at the bottom. It is May, 1955. Park Avenue and 55th street, New York City. The gold plated sign in the reception area reads “Dougall, Crossley and Associates.” A glossy pamphlet on the table explains that the firm does management consulting in marketing and organization. It lists its prestigious clients. Some of them, General Electric, ATT, Bulova Watch, are familier to Ed. Most not.
He’s become a probational staff member, the lowest rung in the “professional” division. He talked his way into the job a month earlier. He doesn’t fit in. Even if he wanted to, he hasn't a clue how to belong. But who gives a rap? It‘s a paying job. It had been impossible to find new work in TV, not that he had really tried. He landed here after finally acknowledging that his idleness was torturing his wife Fran, exactly the reverse of what she deserves. He doesn't think of it as permanent.
The firm is a perfect port in a storm. Its major medical plan an anchor. The work Novocain. His job is to focus fully on deciphering and reorganizing reams of information. He reports to Florence Krayling. She supervises the “Tabulation Department.” He buries himself in each assignment without needing to know or much care what’s happening elsewhere in the firm. Occasionally a result pokes his curiosity. Silently he scorns its business related activities. He doesn't even understand what “marketing and organization” actually entail.
He sits in the “bullpen”, a bland rectangle occupied by two other staff members behind identical steel desks. Gif Stanton sits immediately to his right. Thin and trim, Gif, like all the other beginners, is several years younger than Ed. “Gifford” is how they were introduced. Ed has never run into such an odd name. And his Upper-East-Side manner is off-putting. But more than the others he is friendly and helpful. A veteran, with six months under his belt, Gif has been happy to show Ed the ropes.
On pleasant days they lunch together on a Central Park bench a few city streets to the north. Gif is a fountain of information, a promising organizer. He’s sharp-eyed on the firm’s cast of characters, who fits where on the totem pole. He knows their backgrounds, business and personal. Their talents and quirks. Their prospects. His tittle-tattle and humor occasionally tug Ed up from his personal despair. Today is such a day.
Ed works hard to keep his mind off what confronts him at home. Six months earlier his wife, Fran, gave birth to a beautiful baby girlin an uneventful delivery. But immediately after the delivery the medical staff raised an alarm. Her system digestive system has mysteriously shut down. The hospital’s chief surgeon, Leon Lichtman, a specialist on such problems, is summoned to perform an emergency procedure.
Lichtman emerges from the operating room. A bear of a man, he leads Ed to a remote corridor, forces him against a wall, just a few inches between them. Ed, a new father at 29 is unable to grasp, much less accept, what Lichtman tells him: “She had a massive growth. It was hidden by her pregnancy so it got that way without anyone knowing.” A pause. “I got it all out. But you and I need to sit down in my office to talk before you talk with anyone else, especially the family.”
In the office Lichtman wrestles with Ed’s dilemma, and his own. “Ed, you have to deal with this. I need to give it to you straight. It’s gone too far. She’s going to die. I’d say she has about a year, about 12 months. There’s nothing that anyone can do to save her. Nothing.”
Ed, stunned, silent, head throbbing, heart drumming, unable to even conjure a sensible question. Lichtman cold and caring. He offers additional urgent advice. Ed should understand that the most important thing is to keep her comfortable during the coming months. He must decide immediately whether it’s better for Fran to know her fate, or just be told simply that the operation worked. And if he does decide to keep the news from her, he must decide whether the same should apply to family and friends.
Lichtman becomes emphatic. His clinical detachment evaporates. “I’ve seen it too many times. The minute you tell the family they plague you with demands to do something. You’ll be barraged. They’ll want to try all kinds of painful treatments that cannot work. You have to accept the facts. Cancer in such a young woman is absolutely incurable no matter what anybody says. There are quacks out there making false promises. You’ll hear about Hoxley, about nitrogen mustard. There are research docs who think they have a cure. They don’t. Letting any of them loose will only make things worse for her. It’ll be outright cruelty.”
Lichtman calms down. He tells Ed that Fran will be discharged in a few weeks. That outside of temporary colostomy she’ll be able to resume her regular life. For a while. They agree to meet again the next day. He leaves Ed sitting there with the impossible task of accepting what he has learned.
Ed calls his the TV agency he’s working to tell them about the operation although certainly not about the prognosis. His boss, Sandy, normally strongly reactive, hardly hears. He has news of his own. The network had just abruptly killed, cancelled, all three of the agency’s TV programs. Their production company is toast. Ed is out of a job.
He’s also free to be solely a father and husband to a doomed wife.
Three weeks later he takes Fran and their new baby home from the hospital. Mindful of Lichtman’s warnings, he decides not to torture her. He won’t tell her she will soon die. She will be happier is she doesn't know. Nor will he tell anyone who might let her know. Certainly not relatives. He is going to bear the knowledge alone.
He hunkers down into silent suffering. After a short recovery period she returns to work. Both of them love their new baby. Ed can spend all his time with the little family. Their mothers generously pitch in when both need to be away.
Fran soon returns to directing BAM’s children’s theater program. She agrees to direct an amateur production of Carousel at the Amalgamated Housing Coop in the fall. Paralyzed by events, Ed fitfully looks for work. He doesn't try hard. He prefers being with Fran as much as possible.
The months fly by. He can no longer bottle it in. He must tell someone. He must look for a cure. He finally flies to St. Louis and confides in Sol Silvermintz, a cousin and physician. Sol sympathizes but cannot offer a solution. He agrees that there is no hope for Fran. He also persuades Ed that his seemingly inexplicable lackluster job search must be unbearably dismaying to her. Sol is forceful about this.
Ed has no business experience. TV jobs are scarce. He looks at want ads. He applies on a whim to a Dougall, Crossley and Associates advertisement in the New York Times. Fortuitously Hank Giles, the Associate who begins the interview process, recalls Ed’s adequate part time work for them during his college years. Hank goes to bat for him with a Vice President, Robert Montgomery. Montgomery is unsmiling and stiff. He has gone from submarine captain in the war to chief of finance and personnel in this small seemingly snobbish firm. He is justifiably resistant. Ed lacks the background they want. And hearing Ed’s earlier experience in a more glamorous field, he suspects (correctly) that Ed may decide not to stay. But Ed’s patron is persuasive. He gets the job. The company hopes he is stepping onto their career ladder. Ed sees it as an alien but convenient resting place.
Time does not heal. Nevertheless Ed is lulled into semi-denial. Fran’s fate sometimes fades for hours, even days at a time. He feels guilty whenever he realizes this. He is pondering such a lapse when Gif’s voice jolts him back to the office around him.
Gif mutters “Ed. God! Just look at her will you”. Their supervisor, Florence, sits staring vacantly toward them through her glass paneled wall from an otherwise windowless office. Heavy makeup can’t salvage her alcohol bloated face. She nods drowsily. She is not on Gif’s high high-prospect list. Ed doesn’t share Gif’s obvious contempt. He doesn't care about Florence’s middling competence. What counts is she’s not demanding. If anything, he feels sorry for her. For all he knows she must be as lost as he is. As they watch she answers her phone.
Yesterday she had assigned Ed to the straight-pin project. Straight pins! A client actually paid the company a fee for him to do this. Following her instructions he patiently deciphers bits and pieces of written reports. He inserts codes on multi-paged hand written interviews, many nearly illegible, conducted in the field by the firm’s “junior associates”. Next, after rewriting for clarity, he copies the edited and coded items on to different parts of spreadsheets. The client apparently needs to know what store buyers say about the ideal size and color of straight pin packaging, the best number of pins per package, the ideal packaged price, desired advertising support, and various other unbelievably mundane metrics about an equally mundane product, all of this according to geographic region and sales volume of various retailers. Buried in the work he spends an extra hour making sure he has gotten everything right.
Every few days he receives another batch of interviews, each about a different product or industry. The task requirements, accuracy, consistency, completeness, come easy. The work is medicinal. He is detached, floating in limbo. Occasionally, like a mosquito bite itch, his mind forces him to speculate about the purpose of his work. Today he notices that one particular pin company’s package design is praised in almost all the interviews. He sees how that might be useful to the client. But most of the time he is disinterested. Tea bags, kraft paper, construction equipment, straight-pins, electrical generation, pianos, gas turbines, advertising campaigns, branch operations. None of them matter. None will make things right for him. He wants Fran whole again. He wants out of all this business stuff. He wants to return to the TV production, the world of make believe.
Gif again. “Uh oh. Here she comes”. She hangs up the phone. Comes into the bullpen. Stands over Ed’s desk. He tells her he has not quite finished the straight-pin material. He assumes she has another assignment. He’s wrong. She says: “Mr. Montgomery wants to see you his office.” The man who reluctantly agreed to hire him wants to see him. Is he out of a job again?
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