“I just thought a hundred and fifty dollars was excessive for eighteen square feet of instantly scratchable plastic. I thought maybe we should complain to the manufacturer or the Better Business Bureau. That’s all. I wasn’t blaming you.”
“Oh,” I said. I opened my book. Luckily, I’d kept a finger in the page I’d been reading.
Ted returned to sighing over the ledger. “A baby would be cheaper than these birth control pills, unless it had to go to college,” he muttered, toting up a line of figures he’d inked neatly onto one of the sheets of scrap paper he filched in bulk whenever he visited the NYU library. “Aha, now here’s something! What would you say to doing without Parmesan? Isn’t it really just superfluous topping? And shampoo! Look here, if we replaced shampoo with plain bar soap and cut out the conditioner altogether—I don’t use conditioner as it is—” He glanced meaningfully at me, “look how much that would save in a year.” He circled the figure he’d written on the scrap paper and pushed it toward me. “Also, you know, don’t you, that it’s ultimately more expensive to turn your computer on and off all day than just to leave it running, right? We’ve discussed that.”
“Yes, we’ve discussed it.” I did, in fact, turn my computer off frequently. It was vexing to see those fish swimming serenely across the screen, reminding me that I’d not touched the keyboard in at least four minutes.
Our early departure demanded early holiday preparation, but, as I told my laptop and notebook when they reproached me with their stiff, closed covers, when everyone else was still Christmasing it up on December 25, I’d be virtuously back at work, refreshed by a period of celebration that had not been unnecessarily and enervatingly dragged across an entire month. And so, with a clear conscience, I paddled along in the exhilarating current of pre-Christmas New York, breathing in the Midtown air, permeated by what I imagined to be a Victorian charcoaly smell of chestnuts roasting and pretzels toasting on pushcarts, striding purposefully along with the rest of the crowds, and nearly weeping at the sight of the giant Rockefeller Center tree, that had, precisely because it had struggled upward so long and so well in some small, upstate backyard, been sacrificed merely to please shoppers. I was not a shopper. Months ago, I’d justified my chutney experiment by telling Ted the jars would make good—and inexpensive—gifts. My results were somewhat thin; some ingredient, as Ted said, had not “chutted properly.” But we agreed this was no matter, since no one actually consumed such gifts. Even Ted thought, however, that the jars alone looked too stark for presentation, despite the holly leaves I’d sketched on the label with my green wax pen.
I was not a shopper but I was a scavenger, and a few afternoons spent perusing the Hanukkah refuse bundled in recycling bags along the sidewalks produced paper of various colors and textures and five yards of ribbon, string, and twine. In Washington Square I collected a boxful of twigs. Then I spent two pleasant days listening to carols on the radio, tearing the wrapping paper into strips, sewing the strips around the jars with large, loose artistic stitches, and attaching a crown of twigs to the rims with Scotch tape. I hid the tape under a bow and hung cranberries strung on thread in the “branches.”
“Like a little tree,” I said proudly, presenting one to Simon the night before we were to leave.
“Looks hard to pack,” Ted said, and the three of us spent the rest of the evening unhooking the cranberry ornaments and untaping the twigs, which we placed in a separate box ready for reassembly in Los Angeles.
“Wow, Margaret! This is great,” Letty said, shifting Ivy on her hip to reach for my “tree.” Some of the twigs had broken in transit and their edges looked raw in the hard, clear Los Angeles light. “What is it?” This was our traditional remark upon receiving gifts from one another, ever since I’d given her a poem composed in runes for her ninth birthday. “I don’t have anything for you yet, though.”
“The only thing I need,” I said, holding up both hands as if to prevent her from bombarding me with presents, “is a few chapters of this stupid novel.”
“It’s not going well?”
Ivy was pulling at one of the cranberry ornaments. “Here, sweetie,” I said, prying her little hooked fingers away, “let me take that.” Letty expertly replaced the prohibited cranberries with a plastic crescent that began to heave forth “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at a dragging pace. Ivy was not fooled. She dropped the moon and leaned away from her mother, reaching with both hands for the better toy, the object she observed Letty and I wanted for ourselves, a jar wrapped in refuse with dirty sticks taped to its lid.
“Trade you the chutney for the child,” I said, and, setting the jar on the seat of Letty’s Tercel, I reached for Ivy, who came to me willingly and was instantly distracted by something around the area of my mouth, possibly my teeth.
We were waiting for a real estate agent outside of a Cape in Brentwood. Letty’d explained that Brentwood was closer to Michael’s office, but we both understood that no one moved to Brentwood for the sake of proximity. Although Beverlywood had a prettier name, Brentwood was brighter. The lawns had that brilliant, jeweled, somewhat stiff lushness characteristic of well-tended Los Angeles landscapes, where each vibrantly colored plant reserves a distinct spot all to itself, often with a ring of brown earth around it, unlike in the East, where various shades of green leaves, runners, mosses, and blades tend to rat together. It smelled clean, too, with eucalyptus leaves tanging the blue air. A newlywed could announce with pride that she’d just bought a house in Beverlywood, but later she would have to spin a list of extenuating circumstances—her children’s close friends, a $200,000 addition, nearby aged parents—to justify staying there. Personally, I would feel vaguely ashamed to admit I lived in Brentwood, but then, thanks to Ted, I have socialist tendencies. Most people declare that address with a silver note of triumph in their voices.
“Now remember,” Letty said, half to me and half to herself, when a white Grand Cherokee zipped into the driveway, “this is way overpriced. We’re not planning to buy. We’re just taking a look at what’s out there.”
The door swung open and a tiny woman slid carefully off her perch to the ground.
“Letitia!” she exclaimed, hurrying toward us in a pair of suede shoes of the type that make valuing comfort over attractiveness fashionable. “So glad you decided to keep going with this project. Peri Scott,” she said, turning to me. She grinned for a moment at all three of us to solidify the atmosphere of good cheer and then drew from her purse a pink, reptile-skinned pouch, from which she drew one of her cards and handed it to me. “Peri” was short for “Periwinkle.” “Now don’t,” she cautioned, raising one finger, “hesitate to tell me if this is not at all the kind of thing you’re looking for. At this point, I’m just trying to learn what you’re all about.”
“Good,” Letty said.
“Yes,” I said. “We want to see what we’re all about, too.”
Letty gave me a tiny frown, but Peri said, “Exactly!” She brought her hands together and then opened them out, like a blossoming flower, as she spoke. “I like to think of home buying as a process of self-discovery. What could be more personal than your home, the place where you’ll raise your family?” She shook Ivy’s hand playfully, and then reached into her bag for a tissue to wipe her fingertips. She could not be blamed for this. I, too, had noticed that Ivy was going through a stage in which her hands were continually sticky though she’d had no access to sugary substances. “Shall we go inside?”
“A foyer,” Letty breathed into my ear, as we stepped into the coolness. The house had been shut against the sun, and Peri flitted around, roughly tugging open the Roman shades.
Tiny gray veins and sketchy corners had been painted on the rose-tinted entryway walls to suggest marble blocks. To the left was the living room, really too small and with a ceiling too low to do justice to the two squat columns that had been erected with artistic randomness in the space.
I kissed Ivy’s soft head to keep from smiling, but kept my eyes
on Letty, waiting for a private moment, when we could exchange sardonic glances. Who could possibly want this house? But Letty was trying to fold back a corner of white carpeting with the toe of her sneaker. “Do you know what kind of flooring is under here?” she asked.
Peri frowned and flipped the pages of her specification sheets. “I’ll ask,” she said. Skillfully, she drew our attention to the French doors that opened onto a tiny side patio, draped in pink bougainvillea and furnished with an iron bistro table and two chairs. “Isn’t this precious? I would have my coffee out here every day. You know, after the kids have left for school, when the house is quiet?”
Letty had been encouraging the bougainvillea in her yard for years, but the dogs kept digging it up.
We passed back through the living room into an awkward, poky room on the other side of the entry. “Formal dining room,” Peri said, “and then here,” she announced, with a grand, Carol Merrill sweep of the arm, “is the kitchen. Completely renovated.”
The kitchen, with its shiny black counters and shiny black floor, resembled the lobby of the Daniel Hotel. Letty opened an oven door. “Double ovens,” Peri said. “And, of course, the Sub-Zero and the Miele are included.”
Ivy pressed a sticky palm against the refrigerator door. Her fingers made a squeaky sound as I pulled her hand away.
“What’s a mee-lee?” I whispered in her ear and she laughed at the feel of my breath.
“This kitchen can almost cook for you,” Peri said. “And look, around here is a breakfast nook.”
I scrubbed at Ivy’s prints with my shirtsleeve, but they only smeared.
Letty tapped an experimental finger on the door between the kitchen and the laundry room. Finally, she looked at me. “Hollow,” she mouthed.
I felt more relaxed then as we went upstairs and tried not to look too closely at the wedding photos of the strangers who, presumably, had only hours before dragged themselves out from under the chocolate brown duvet in the dark master suite. Letty exclaimed over the double sink and the Jacuzzi tub and the slate-walled shower, but I knew she was only being polite.
“You have to see the grounds,” Peri said, herding us down the stairs. She ushered us along a back hall and out the door into what was, as I’d suspected, only a yard. “Great possibilities, don’t you think? I’d put a terra-cotta patio here,” she said, pacing the area directly behind the house. “And then … well, I don’t know how you feel about pools.” She looked expectantly at Letty.
“A pool would be nice,” Letty admitted.
“I have to warn you, it can be a detriment when it comes to resale. But I say, why live in southern California if you don’t have a pool? I had one put in and use it every day. Sometimes twice. I figure it’s already paid for itself, since I don’t have to keep up a gym membership anymore. Of course, we still belong to the club, but that’s more for social reasons and the tennis. Plus, we’d already paid the initiation fee, which is really the killer, isn’t it?” She looked at us as if we understood.
“That’s how they get you,” I ventured, which turned out to be an appropriate response, because she lifted her eyebrows and nodded.
Even I could imagine the “grounds” as Peri saw them: the four children, plus a friend or two, frolicking wholesomely in the water, the littlest ones encircled in life rings or water wings, or whatever floating aid children used now; multiethnic adults, freshly showered, stylishly attired, the women pedicured, the men in sandals, all spread on lounge chairs beside the gas barbecue and sipping from sweating highball glasses in fun, garish colors. If one had a pool, one would have the kind of friends who knew how to choose wines and grill swordfish.
My father understood neither. “Who invented fire?” he grumbled from the concrete strip that stretched between the back door and the garage, while he pumped a miniature set of bellows ineffectually over the coals. “It was a bad idea.”
Inside the house, my father was content to sit before the ubiquitous southern California gas-fed fire that spurted festively around a ceramic log at varying heights in response to the turn of a dimmer switch, but when cooking outside, he believed it was important to use “real coals.” “Otherwise, what’s the point?” he would say. Of course, in his quest for authenticity and mesquite flavor, he often failed to make food edible, which some might argue was the larger point.
I was chopping garlic, waiting for the first possible moment when Ted and I could leave for Burbank to pick Warren up at the airport.
“Honey, are you sure you want to waste time with that chopping? I’ve got the powdered stuff somewhere in here.” My mother, who was enamored of time-saving substitutions, began rummaging through the junk drawer that also served as her spice cabinet.
In the far corner of the kitchen, Ted was scuffling with the blender. My parents, apparently needing to define Ted for themselves in reassuring ways, had years ago arbitrarily decided that he knew how to mix drinks. He may once have offered to open a bottle of wine.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Something your mother found in a magazine.” He slid a soggy McCall’s toward me along the counter with one elbow. Ted was always embarrassed to call my mother’s discoveries, which usually included ingredients like grenadine and coconut cream, by their names. “When did you say Warren was coming?”
When Warren arrived, we would outnumber them.
“We’re off to get Warren,” I said, holding the screen door open for Ted with my back. My parents had dragged the plastic patio chairs over to the grill and were both just sitting, staring at the flames, as if the driveway were a ski lodge.
“Mmmm, thank you.” My mother reached for the pink-filled glass Ted held out to her. “Isn’t it early yet? Why don’t you two have one of these?”
“You try them,” I said. “If you’re still alive when we get back, we’ll have another with you.” I set the guacamole I’d made on the arm of my mother’s chair and a basket of tortilla chips on the arm of my father’s. “Isn’t there something about a watched grill?”
“That’s only pots,” my father answered, taking a tentative sip from his glass.
“We thought we’d take a little drive first,” Ted said. “Take a look at downtown Glendale and Burbank. See if there’s anything new.”
My parents nodded and smiled. They’d also decided that Ted adored driving. “Take the Skylark,” my father said, shifting in his chair to dig the keys from his pocket. “It’s zippy.”
We drove aimlessly for a while, picking out houses we’d like for ourselves. I told Ted about the places Letty and I had once constructed out of cardboard boxes and filled with cardboard furniture.
“We made half-inch boxes of Kleenex,” I said, “with little Kleenexes inside. And tiny rolls of toilet paper. When Letty’s parents were building a guest room over their garage, we also tried to make miniature furniture out of scraps of wood. I probably spent three weeks filing away at one chair leg, trying to make it perfect.”
“How did the chair turn out?”
“All right,” I said. “A little wobbly. It was a Louis XIV. I upholstered it with blue polyester from the hem of my mother’s bathrobe.” I looked out the window at the ficus trees with their huge, sidewalk-buckling roots. I’d never lied to Ted like that before. Yes, I’d told him I was making progress on days when I’d not even opened the computer, but that wasn’t lying so much as reassuring. On other days, the book was truly moving forward, and my subconscious, I reasoned, was constantly refining it. Those were vague, indeterminate lies. What did “going all right” mean, after all? Maybe it was “going all right”; maybe this halting slog was the way all novels got written. But I’d never finished that chair.
Neither of us had. We’d sat on Letty’s back stoop day after day, filing and sanding, sometimes making tiny nicks with a saw, each working away at a single, two-inch leg. We talked the whole time, of course, about other things, about kids in our class and episodes of The Partridge Family. We had fun. But we couldn’t make th
ose chairs. Somehow, that summer, we’d become too old for the suggestion of reality that would have satisfied us before. We were using real materials, after all, real wood and real tools, not cardboard and tape. It had to be right. It had to look real, and try as we would, we were not skilled enough for that.
What scared me now was remembering how well I’d envisioned that chair when I’d held the stump of wood in my hands. I’d imagined, in fact, whole roomfuls of furniture fashioned from those plywood bits. Nevertheless, I hadn’t been able to make them appear. Thinking of that chair, I realized I’d believed that I could fashion a novel, too, simply because I could envision its existence. But like my chair, though I whittled and sanded and scraped, the novel refused to chut. Scenes that were fluid and vibrant in my head clunked stolidly on the page. And just as Letty and I would have had no idea how to attach the legs to a base and the base to a back, had we ever constructed such essential chair elements, I now had no notion of how to attach bits of story together, even were I able to write them in any way close to the way I experienced them in my mind.
I doubt Ted would have drawn such a connection. But I felt a new reluctance to admit even to trivial failure, even with him. Serious failure seemed all too close at hand.
“Let’s go to the airport,” I said. “We might as well meet Warren at the gate.” And so we drove on with a purpose, which in itself made me feel somewhat more optimistic. Perhaps I was too close to the novel. When we returned to New York, after I had stood back from it and gained some perspective, it would go better.
It was easy enough to push the novel from my own mind, but harder to steer my family from it.
Warren always sat in the back because traffic made him nervous. “So how’s the book coming?” he asked, leaning into the space created by the elbow rest between the two front seats. We weren’t even out of the parking lot yet. “Are you about halfway done now?”
All Is Vanity Page 14
