Chapter 6
Two-Two-Two
MATTHEW IS IN HIS OFFICE, standing at his window, bouncing on the balls of his feet, full of the success of his brick maker. He presented it this afternoon, and it was accepted for production, unanimously, with applause. He had, he allows himself to realize now, been fearing the presentation for weeks. He had feared that his star was dimming at Manning & Rafter, and he had begun to think about what he would do if — he almost thought of it as when — the brick maker was rejected. He really couldn’t afford to quit. He supposed that the only thing he could do would be to endure, to suffer whatever blows his ego would have to take, and stay on, go on, show up every day and do whatever was left to him to do, until he was dismissed, with salary continuance and health insurance and the vested portion of his retirement fund, or until he could afford to let himself be pushed into an early retirement. How long could he wait? Ten years? Could he survive so strong a daily dose of humiliation for that long?
Fearful though he was, he knew that he had reason to be hopeful. Christmas sales had been a surprise. With some exceptions, the electronic games and tricky toys that Matthew despises had not sold as well as everyone had expected and he had feared. Parents had bought simpler, familiar toys, and in most of the country the products of Manning & Rafter had sold out. Retailers wanted more for next year. Already they were calling for toys that would last, not only in the sense of enduring the mistreatment that kids were likely to give them, but in the sense of sustaining a child’s interest. Matthew hoped that the brick maker was the right toy at the right time, and so unfamiliar was he with hope that he didn’t recognize it: he thought he actually knew that the brick maker would succeed, and this self-deception made him confident, so confident that he made plans for the evening’s dinner, a very special dinner, at a restaurant newly reopened, a place called Two-Two-Two, with Liz, who would be meeting him there.
The presentation went beautifully. The board, convinced that simpler toys will make a comeback, expects the brick maker and many other toys that Matthew has championed in the past to succeed handsomely.
A smile forms on Matthew’s lips when, as always happens when he thinks about his brick maker, he’s reminded of the summer when it was conceived. Quite possibly this memory is the reason he’s drawn so often to think about the toy. According to the version of the story that he told at the presentation, Matthew was visiting some friends at a cottage they had rented in Westport, near Rhode Island; he saw some children making a sand castle at Horseneck Beach, and out of their improvised play came the idea for this toy, a set of molds for sand and, most important , a ramming device that packs the sand into the molds to make bricks that will interlock. With the bricks, a child can build elaborate and sturdy castles. Matthew feels a paternal pride for this toy: he’s proud of having had the idea that led to inventing it and proud of having, in the terminology used at Manning & Rafter, “mentored” the gadget through its development, and he gets a secret thrill each time he recalls the castle that inspired the idea, because in truth it wasn’t children he observed building it, but a woman, a blonde who was sitting on the wet sand at the water’s edge, molding bricks of sand in an empty juice container and building with the bricks she made.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 527, Mark Dorset considers Failure and Humiliation: Fear of; Fear: of Failure and Humiliation; “Inspiration”; Persistence; and Failure, Acceptance of from this episode.
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🎧 527: Matthew is . . .