All Is Vanity

by Christina Schwarz

  “And I’d just seen that show where they tell you about the insurance scams where people deliberately make you have an accident,” she went on, “which of course isn’t really an accident then, so I was afraid I was being conned or maybe about to be carjacked, so somehow I pulled Ivy out of her car seat with one hand, while holding Marlo by the wrist with the other, and kind of propelled myself out with both of them to leave the car for the carjacker—except part of me is outraged because I thought the one good thing about driving a Tercel was that I’d never be carjacked: who would want to carjack me?”

  “So you were carjacked?”

  “No, no. I was just hit by a careless woman with overstyled hair in a Navigator, but the trunk of my car crumpled like a rag. Like a potato chip bag.”

  Was that an effective image? A potato chip bag? I jotted it down on a paper towel. Would it be better using a specific brand? How about a bag of Fritos?

  “So Miss Cell Phone finally hangs up and slides down from her SUV. ‘What are you doing?’ she yells at me. Now she’s slapping the air with the phone. I just stare at her. I don’t understand what she’s getting at. ‘You just backed into me,’ she says. I’m still just standing there like an idiot. And, of course, everyone’s honking at us by now. I look around. No witnesses are coming forward. ‘What are you doing, backing up in the middle of the street?’ she demands. ‘See, that’s what I mean,’ I say, although I haven’t said a word up until now and so can’t possibly have meant anything, ‘what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. Why would I back up in the middle of the street?’ ‘I don’t know why you did it,’ she says. ‘Can I read your mind?’ ”

  “So she’s not going to pay for the damage?” I asked.

  “Nope. Also, get this—she lives just a block away from our new house.”

  “How did that come up?”

  “It didn’t. I saw her in her driveway this afternoon. She lives in the house where they were filming that commercial for long distance last week.”

  Given that no one had been hurt, I felt no moral qualms in seeing this accident as a fortuitous beginning for Lexie, a symbol of the old life destroyed so that the new could take its place.

  “Maybe you should get an SUV,” I suggested.

  “Ugh. No!”

  But there were plenty of arguments in its favor.

  It took Letty and Lexie only five days to make a purchase.

  M—

  It’s a Ford Explorer. I know, I know, I know—no sense of civic responsibility, selfish beyond belief, etc., etc. But if you’d seen that behemoth looming behind little Ivy, you’d understand. I mean, like you said, it’s irresponsible of me to put my children at risk, just to uphold some moral principles. If we can’t keep other people from buying these things, we have to buy one ourselves or be squashed like bugs. I’m convinced now that this is why all these mothers I see climbing down from them at Ralphs buy them.

  We did, after all, need a bigger car. That’s obvious. And even though the Explorer costs more than we’ve ever spent on a car, it’ll pay for itself eventually, as you pointed out. No more van rentals, for instance.

  In answer to the important question that no doubt plagues you: forest green, like the trim on the new house.

  L

  Lexie buys a Range Rover after she has an accident that seriously damages her Mazda 323. She isn’t very upset about having to replace her embarrassing car (one of its doors was held shut with a coat hanger). The Range Rover will look more appropriate than the 323 in front of her new house. It’s gray to match the shingles.

  And so, with charming houses in very desirable neighborhoods, children in private schools, and vehicles suitable for young, successful West Los Angeles matrons, both Letty and Lexie were well-equipped to embark upon their new and improved lives.

  Letty

  We canceled all but two of our credit cards before we tried for the home loan. I read somewhere that they count anything you can borrow against you, even if you don’t owe it yet. Afterward, though, when the offers arrived, stiff envelopes with low interest rates printed on the outside, and return addresses to places like Delaware and North Carolina, I checked the “yes” boxes. Why not? I thought. I didn’t have to use them. I would just have them, a little brightly colored bundle in a drawer like Hunter’s baseball cards, money we could use, if we needed it.

  With a new house, a new life, it seemed there might be things we would need.

  CHAPTER 14

  Margaret

  M—

  Packing proceeds! Transformation of life fully under way! Today I disposed of our “linen closet,” five milk crates, originally stolen in 1982 as receptacles for record albums. Noah has decided I’ve crassly given up a family heirloom. “But, Mom, I love those,” he said, looking mournfully out the window. I stacked them in a neat tower near the sidewalk, but some kid on a skateboard pushed them over, or else they spontaneously collapsed in passive protest at being discarded. I told Noah we shouldn’t be selfish; it was time we gave someone else a turn. So far, however, no one has leapt to claim such a treasure.

  Last weekend I finally traded the plastic Tom and Jerry cereal bowls (surprisingly valuable) for green milk glass ones at the flea market, and the children shook the dregs of their last box of Lucky Charms into them this morning. In the new house, we will eat only healthy breakfasts: fruit (purchased fresh from the farmers’ market), organic yogurt flecked with wheat germ. When I prepare this meal, I will already have showered and if I haven’t dressed, I’ll be wearing an attractive housecoat. I’m envisioning lavender waffle-weave with some sort of satin sash. The morning sun will bathe my Mexican-tiled countertops. The granite I put in the old house I now believe was a mistake—too sleek and modern looking—too “of its time.” This little store on Melrose sells tiles in antique-looking colors, muted blues, greens, and salmons, but treated with some kind of twenty-first-century, unchippable coating, so that you can set dishes microwaved to unnaturally high temperatures on them.

  I also bought an orange-picker at the flea market, so we’ll be ready when the oranges come. This will be some time after we plant the trees against the side fence. Which will be after we install the side fence. Which should be sometime next week. One cannot buy fruit north of Wilshire from the shopping carts of illegal immigrants, at least I’ve not seen any yet, so I’ve decided we’ll grow our own. The children can pick the oranges for juice, after their morning tai chi workout with Michael. I’m going to enroll him in a class that meets in Glenview Park at dawn next month and once he gets the basics down, he can teach the kids. This, in any case, is my plan, although it means that Michael will have to become an early riser, which may be too much of a transformation of life. Maybe there’s a sunset class and the orange picking could take place in the evening. I could get some kind of graceful pottery bowl, maybe a sort of Craftsman olive green, for the oranges to rest in overnight. A lemon tree would be good, too. And a lime. Possibly there’s room for a small orchard. I’m not sure. I assume there has to be a certain amount of space between trees for root growth. And branches.

  L

  Lexie pulls out of the narrow driveway of her old house for the very last time, one tire of her Range Rover rolling of necessity over the grass. Allie twists as far as she can under her seat belt, gazing sadly out the back window at what was once her dresser—a pile of pink gingham-papered cardboard boxes, now a ruin, sagging on the sidewalk. She is the kind of child who doesn’t like change. “Goodbye, Ozymandias,” she whispers. Silently, she promises the old house that when she grows up, she will return to buy it back.

  I hoped the reference to Shelley would appeal to the PEN/Faulkner judges, although Allie seemed a bit young to be conversant with the Romantics. Perhaps I would change it to “Oz,” a name she would surely know and a term that would still carry the echo of the monument in the sand, mans futile attempt at immortality, and so would constitute a subtle, sly wink to my more astute readers.

  M—

  I wai
ted a week to cut into a promising honeydew, left it to roll around on the mantel next to the dog leashes and the jar of pennies, the half-burned-down persimmon-colored candles (impossible color to replace!), the silver polish, three egg cups, one of Ivy’s shoes, a whisk broom, and a remote control that may belong to our former neighbors. Just a few of the items I’ve not yet found a place for. Anyway, I waited a week and this melon still has the texture and taste of a packing box. Of course, everything in this house either resembles or in fact is a packing box just now.

  I’m having some trouble keeping track of paperwork—work orders and bills and bank statements—things like that. Some mail hasn’t been forwarded yet; some bills were on a counter that no longer exists; some documents seem to be duplicates. I need to organize a system, but it’s so hard when there’s no table, no chairs, no pencils in evidence. I made these incredibly detailed lists of what was in each box as I packed, but I now I can’t find the lists. I may have packed them. So irritating! It doesn’t help that we’re all camping in the living room at the moment—the wood under the emerald carpeting upstairs turned out to need serious repairs, and Michael and I won’t have a bedroom until the addition—as yet not even started—is finished.

  The kitchen is completely gutted. To prepare breakfast, I squat over the toaster on the living room floor. It’s probably best that I’ve not yet purchased aforementioned lavender housecoat, since it would draggle in the plaster dust. Also, having difficulties choosing appliances, despite, or more probably because of, immense social pressure to buy one particular pricey brand of refrigerator (with double-sized freezer) and another particular, equally pricey, brand of oven. How much of a difference do the perfect cooling and heating elements make to the final quality of a meal? Although, when you’re redoing your whole kitchen and for a few thousand dollars more it can be exactly what you want, practically and aesthetically, it’s difficult to resist. Remember, even ten thousand dollars over thirty years is only ninety-one cents a day. Anyway, no refrigerator means no yogurt, organic or otherwise. Also, no kitchen sink is kind of gross, what with the chunks of food stuck in the tub drain.

  Love,

  L

  Shepherding her children from movie theater to ice-cream store, Lexie pauses in front of a window display of attractive office supplies, the kind one’s company does not purchase for one. Not that Lexie has a company, being a stay-at-home mother.

  “Mo-om,” Sas whines, pulling on Lexie’s hand with both of his. “C’mo-on.”

  Lexie, however, is transfixed by a canary yellow accordion folder, tied shut with a yellow satin ribbon.

  Lexie rarely buys things for herself. Always she thinks, Sas needs a calculator; Allie needs Cray-Pas. Not to mention shoes, movie tickets, and ice-cream cones. Miles likes to split half a bottle of wine at dinner. The money could be better spent on someone else. But she wants this.

  “Just let me look at one thing,” she says.

  Inside, there are felt-tip markers to test on a little pad of white paper. The children test, while Lexie asks a clerk, “The yellow folder? In the window?”

  It’s fourteen dollars. A ridiculous amount to spend on brightly colored cardboard. But it’s so pretty. And useful. And, after all, fourteen dollars is not so much in the scheme of things. She won’t buy a cone for herself. Then the folder will only cost twelve dollars and fifty cents.

  In the ice-cream store, she laughs at herself. She has forgotten they are rich now. She buys herself a black raspberry cone.

  At home, Lexie has a pile of magazine clippings, articles with titles like “Colluding with Color” and “How to Introduce Frogs to Your Garden Pond,” pictures of sunny rooms full of fresh flowers and large bowls of ripe, unbruised fruit, bunches of grapes unmarred by spiky stars of degraped stems. These are what she puts in the yellow file, instructions for making life better.

  Margaret,

  Michael and I drove the Explorer (some sort of light lit up on the dashboard—is it possible to be in four-wheel drive without knowing it?) to the furniture stores on Beverly Boulevard. Just to explore. I now understand Michael’s affection for his office, for I have fallen in love with a table. My darling is elderly and caramel-colored bird’s-eye maple in the shape of an octagon. It’s not by a known designer or anything—it’s what they call a “generic”—but I still think it’s what the articles call a “special piece.” You’re supposed to buy one or two special pieces and decorate the rest of your house around them.

  “Imagine,” Michael said, “the prongs of a fork clutched in a tiny fist.” He made small stabbing motions at the chocolate-whorled surface, which turns out to be an excellent method for attracting sales help.

  Here’s something. I’ve been in these stores before, but I have never attracted salespeople, except once when Ivy was screaming and Noah tracked dog poo onto the carpet—which was really not his fault. Anyway, somehow they can sense, these salespeople, when you are in a position to buy, as opposed to the times when you are using their showroom as a sort of free museum. In two stores, Michael and I were offered cappuccino. In another I saw a version of our former selves, the woman tentative, touching only the tip of one finger to the leather, frowning thoughtfully but unconvincingly at the wood and the chrome, the man, reaching for the price tags, flipping them over, actually emitting that classic whistle, albeit quietly.

  We are in a position to buy, but we won’t. I mean, special as this piece is, it is, in the end, only a surface on which to eat, and as such is ridiculously overpriced. We could furnish the whole house for the price of this table.

  L

  P.S. and while we’re tabling—thanks for the House and Garden articles! Definitely going to do the antique-table-to-vanity conversion for the master bath you highlighted. Also must find one of those worktables for the kitchen. I’d make my own bread if I had one of those.

  M—

  Club chairs. Where are all these clubs? Who belongs to them? Why do they all have the same chair? We went back to Beverly today to look again at the table and discovered the chair du jour. Right now, you cannot be wrong, you cannot be gauche, you cannot even be particularly snobby, if you buy one of these. People like Zoe and Brad (you remember them, marinated goat cheese, Baby Hannah in Baby Guess, smugly commenting on their peek at my plastic-laminated drawers in the privacy of their own car) are guaranteed to nod and approve. They will slouch in the leather seat and smile, welcoming us to the world of safe good taste. These chairs are not cheap, of course. But nor are they too expensive, and that is part of what makes them the ticket to decoratal correctness. You can buy designer versions, but you can also buy them used, rescued from an actual club in France, the arm leather smoothed by decades of French elbows. And you can buy high-end knockoffs in high-end chain stores. You can even order them from catalogs. Someday, you will see them in traditional furniture stores, stores that do not also sell iron candleholders and kilim-covered throw pillows. They will be covered in Naugahyde and squat next to the La-Z-Boys. Probably they will be La-Z-Boys, with footrests that shoot out when the sitter reclines. Then it will be too late. But not now. Now they are right, right, right. If you own one, it will effortlessly testify to your membership in the vast club of those who know better; the tasteful, not the show-offs, the progressive, not the radical (don’t forget the leather).

  Why are floor lamps so expensive? Does it have something to do with wiring? If we buy the table, we’ll have to get dining room chairs. Of course, we’ll have to get dining room chairs no matter what table we buy.

  God, I know—what were our parents thinking, renting instruments for us filled with other children’s spit? Yes, certainly, I’d love to get a piano for the new house. Although, I worry that it may already be too late for Marlo and for Hunter. I gather from Jeanette that children begin lessons at four now, and maybe earlier, perhaps as soon as they can sit up straight on the bench. I suppose this encourages their fingers to grow in the optimal curves, their hands to spread to cover an octave.


  Love,

  Letty

  Margaret,

  I told Michael what you said about the table being a work of art and an heirloom we can hand down to the kids, and he completely agreed. Its value will only increase. We were lunching late at a place on Robertson Michael’s assistant recommended, and we decided between the grilled oysters and the squid ink spaghettini with sun-dried tomatoes to go ahead and buy it. One nice piece, as a base.

  The setting may have clinched the deal. It was not the sort of restaurant I’m used to, which would be the kind where you slide a tray along the counter and pile sweet mayonnaisey pasta salads onto your plate until curls of macaroni topple off the rim, the kind that includes soup and a frozen yogurt sundae bar, all for $6.49 per adult, $3.49 per child, if you’ve carefully clipped your coupon and remembered not to leave it in the junk drawer at home. I felt like I was having an affair with my own husband, in large part because Michael valet parked.

  There was a giddy, honeymoon quality to our meal. We shared our appetizers. Michael consulted me before he ordered the wine. We took a walk—a walk!—before collecting our car. (Although I suspect this might have been to take full advantage of our valet parking. Is after-meal walking allowed when you valet park? I kept my head down until we were a block from the restaurant.) I think we both looked at one another and thought with relief and pride: “Here is a person who understands the advantage of a club chair.” And perhaps: “Here is an even more special person who appreciates a one-of-a-kind, bird’s-eye maple, octagon table.”

  I guess we’re going for the high-end knockoffs with the club chairs. That’s right, plural. Michael agrees with you that we really need two. Anyway, knockoffs or no, they’re lovely—comfortable without being oversized, traditional without being stuffy, leather without the cheese.