Ray agrees to pay for the twins’ college education after Ma confronts his opposition and prepares to work for the money herself. His eventual contribution of $4,000 helps Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey attend college, but the agreement is not a simple expression of support: it follows a dispute over who controls the family’s finances and Ma’s willingness to face work she fears. The episode turns a question of tuition into a test of authority, dignity, and the twins’ prospects beyond the household.

Background and opposition

Ray initially opposes the twins’ college plans. He says the family cannot afford two tuition bills and insists that he, as the person who pays bills and manages savings, is the one qualified to judge what the family can afford. His argument also reflects his distrust of college life: he believes many professors are Communists and many students use drugs. Rather than treating college as the necessary next step after high school, he sees work, military service, or a shipyard trade as more practical alternatives.

Ray points to his own Navy service as a model and argues that the twins could enlist rather than face the draft. He also suggests that he might get them jobs as apprentice pipe fitters, electricians, or welders at Electric Boat, where some positions carry deferments. In his view, building submarines is useful work that supports the war effort and provides for a household. His alternatives make the disagreement larger than a dispute about tuition: he wants the twins’ futures to follow routes he considers useful and financially responsible, while Ma insists that college is the goal.

Ma’s challenge and the agreement

Ma challenges Ray during supper, saying that his reasons do not address the central issue. Ray responds angrily, striking the table and accusing the twins of taking from the family. He leaves the house and, after returning, speaks to them only in clipped remarks while refusing to speak to Ma for days. The college question thus becomes entangled with a household pattern in which Ray uses anger and silence to exert pressure.

In the arguments that follow, Ma says she will find work if necessary to pay for the twins’ education. Ray predicts that no one will hire her; she tests that claim by applying for a maid’s job at Howard Johnson’s. The application carries real anxiety for her. She is afraid of taking orders, making mistakes, and having strangers judge her because of her cleft lip. The restaurant nevertheless invites her to interview and offers her the job that afternoon, with a start date the following Monday.

On the morning she is due to begin, Ma prepares breakfast in her uniform while visibly nervous. Ray tries to dissuade her by emphasizing the unpleasantness of cleaning other people’s messes. Ma stops the taunting and makes clear that the twins will go to college. Only when the prospect of her working outside the home becomes immediate does Ray agree to provide $4,000 for their educations and let her stay home. His decision resolves the immediate tuition dispute, but it comes after Ma has taken the step he had said she could not take.

Cost and consequences

Although relieved not to enter the outside workforce, Ma feels ashamed about failing to show up for the job. She asks Dominick to return her uniform to Howard Johnson’s. At the desk, an employee makes a joke at her expense. Dominick does not object; later, furious, he kicks Ray’s Fairlane hard enough to break his toe. He recognizes that his anger is directed at Ray, not the car or the employee. His failure to defend Ma in the moment and his later outburst mark the lasting emotional residue of the transaction: money has been secured, but the family has not emerged from the conflict unhurt.

Ray’s $4,000 is only part of the twins’ college resources. Student loans and the money they earn from part-time jobs also help fund their education. The account therefore does not present Ray’s agreement as making college effortless or wholly paid for; it establishes a contribution that, alongside borrowing and work, enables them to go. The twins do attend college, and after their first year away they return home for the summer. They find seasonal jobs with the Three Rivers Public Works Department, work that gives them paychecks and keeps them out of the house during the day.

Significance in the family story

The agreement is a conditional opening toward independence. Ray’s money helps the twins leave for college, yet the route to it reveals how Ma’s wishes are constrained by his control of the household finances and by his power to decide whether she can work. Her application turns an argument into a concrete choice: rather than accept Ray’s judgment that college is unaffordable, she is prepared to earn the money herself. Ray’s reversal preserves her place at home while securing the twins’ education, but it does not erase the demand that she prove her resolve.

Dominick’s later recollection also revises his youthful understanding of Ma. In the moment, he experiences Ray’s behavior as an injury to her and responds with anger; he also recognizes that Ma’s determination has made the twins’ college plans possible. The episode places their education within a family history of protection and control: college offers a way beyond the home, while the means of reaching it are negotiated inside the very power structure they hope to leave. The $4,000 is therefore both practical help and evidence of the cost Ma and Dominick associate with obtaining it.