All Is Vanity

by Christina Schwarz

  Letty

  I didn’t understand, at first, when Margaret told me she would loan us her advance. I know we’re close friends, best friends, but still it sounded crazily excessive, a far larger favor than I would ask even of my parents. I told her it was impossible, of course. I laughed in that uncomfortable way one does when one doesn’t know how to respond. Obviously, Michael and I couldn’t accept such a gift. Still, she insisted and insisted. It was almost as if she were as desperate to give it to me as I was to have it.

  I emphatically did not want Margaret’s money, but obviously, I did want money from somewhere and I had come to see over the past few months that there was no other source. As I edged past the exits, Ventura Boulevard, the 101, Victory and Sherman, creeping farther and farther into the Valley in search of a gross of grape-flavored licorice whips for a post-premiere party, I started to think this was not such a crazy notion, after all. If Margaret and Ted could spare the funds for a while, wasn’t I just letting pride bully my family out of relief, if I refused to accept their loan?

  At the same time, I didn’t take Margaret completely seriously. It wasn’t like she was standing in front of me, cash in hand. We would see what would happen, when she actually got the check. It would do no harm to accept it now; I could always thank her and refuse later, if some other way presented itself. “Thank you,” I said. My hands trembled with giddy relief on the wheel. “I’ll pay you back.” She started to answer, but the phone cut out. I let it drop from my shoulder to the floor and, as the tension of the past months began to dissolve, cried as well as I could while maintaining my stutter-step among the fast lanes.

  Margaret

  I didn’t have time to hunt and peck through the agent world, nor was I confident that Simon would be helpful, given my recent failings at In Your Dreams and the disparaging tone I’d detected in his mention of my aborted novel. I found Sally Sternforth’s number in Ted’s address book. The agency she worked with was small, Ted had once explained to me, but prestigious.

  “You might remember,” I said, when I’d got Sally on the phone, “that I mentioned I was working on a novel?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Something about breakfast in Vietnam, wasn’t it?”

  I batted aside the familiar onslaught of humiliation and exasperation. I had no time for self-indulgent feelings now. “I’m calling,” I went on, “because I finished my manuscript.” I hoped this piece of information alone would elicit an offer to introduce me to her agent. It did not.

  “Oh. Well, good for you,” she said.

  I thought of Letty and her desperate need. I could not allow tepidness to deter me. I gathered myself, as if I were about to leap over a gorge. I closed my eyes.

  “Yes, well …” I began, the running start. “I was wondering … that is, would you be able to … I mean, would you mind …”—I sprang off the cliff—“recommending me to your agent?”

  The wind swirling up from the bottomless crevasse screamed in my ears as I hung in midair. I couldn’t hear. Was she answering? What was she saying?

  “Well, you know, Margaret …” she began.

  Oh, God. Could I go back? My arms flailed. My legs churned the empty air. It was too late.

  “She’s awfully busy,” Sally was saying. “I don’t even know if she’s taking any new authors. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s not.”

  It was difficult to breathe, what with the rapid falling, the frequent changes in air pressure, the whipping about of the rag-doll-like limbs. “Oh, of course, that makes perfect sense. Well, never mind then,” I chirped.

  Sally softened. Effortlessly, she extended a net to break my fall. “Listen, why don’t I give you the name of someone else over there? She’s just starting out, but she’s up-and-coming. You can say I told you to try her.”

  “Thank you,” I gasped. I wrote down the name. I had no other options.

  CHAPTER 19

  Margaret

  ON THE MORNING OF DECEMBER 5, I nestled Lexie in a fresh box and dressed myself in a writerly black skirt and turtleneck. I debated whether the sterling silver earrings shaped like two tiny Everyman editions my parents had sent for my birthday blared presumption or suggested whimsy, and put them back in the drawer. Real authors probably wouldn’t wear tiny books on their ears. I let my hair curl to create the impression of unkempt artistic seriousness, but added a necklace of pink beads to announce that I was not a memoirist, about to put my head in the oven. I limited myself to a single cup of coffee, in case Heather Mendelson Blake offered me more.

  The Hope Perdue Agency offices, on the third floor of a town-house on Charles, were encouragingly literary. The stairway was dark, possibly even sooty, and the treads, under a worn Oriental runner, each creaked a distinctive, individual note. Upstairs, books and manuscripts were stacked in front of shelves crammed with the same, so that the hallway was reduced to a narrow, zigzagging path, along a floor that tilted charmingly, if disconcertingly, toward the back of the building.

  A girl was on the phone in the front office. The ends of her long brown hair swept the top of her desk as she nodded. “OK,” she was saying, “OK. Well, don’t worry, Alice, we’ll take care of it.”

  Alice? Alice Walker or Alice Munro? Or maybe McDermott or Hoffman. It was exhilarating just to be standing in that atmosphere. I wrapped my arms around my manuscript and pulled it to my chest. It was the key to this world, the secret handshake that would secure me a place beside the Alices.

  “Can I help you?” the girl asked.

  “My name’s Margaret Snyder,” I began.

  The girl said nothing.

  “Sally Sternforth suggested I come,” I continued. “She said I should ask for Heather Mendelson Blake. That she would be interested in my novel.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How nice of Sally.” She tossed her hair over her shoulders and held out both hands for my manuscript. “OK, well, I’ll make sure Heather gets it.”

  I transferred Lexie to her ink-smudged fingers, and that was it. It was over. I had no more business there. I lingered at the office door for a moment looking back at the block of pages that now would have to speak for themselves. And then I was back down the atmospheric stairs and out onto the gray sidewalk with nothing to do but clean the apartment and devise this year’s Christmas gifts while I waited.

  I assumed I would have to give Heather Mendelson Blake at least until Wednesday to finish reading it, and then maybe another day or two to decide which publishers to send it to, to make copies of it, and perhaps to get it copyrighted or whatever agents did. Realistically, it would be well into December by the time an editor saw my novel. I worried that editors didn’t buy much over the holidays, what with book parties, Christmas parties, and ski weekends. “I don’t think we can count on a check until January,” I told Letty cautiously that afternoon. “Can you hold out until then?”

  “Margaret,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe you’re doing this for us.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” I assured her. I was certain that she would, but I was happy to know that things would never work that way when it came to Letty and me.

  Letty

  Margaret likes to think that what happened was her fault. She wants to be the one with the story, the one who says how it goes, as if the rest of us couldn’t rub two sticks together without her. This part, however, she can’t tell, because this part, unfortunately, is mine.

  On the night of December 4, I had to pay for the rushes. Once Michael had fallen asleep watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and the children were in bed, I sat on a step stool at the newly constructed, mosaic-tiled breakfast bar and sorted paperwork for Jeanette. It was an especially busy time for J. Peabody and Associates, and there were various invoices to reconcile with canceled checks and several final payments on venues and to caterers due. The Otis event was not until February, but nevertheless deposits had to be made. One of these was for rushes.

  Jeanette had discovered that authenti
c rushes of the very kind once used to provide warmth and softness underfoot and to hide all manner of refuse, such as chicken bone’s and saliva, on the floors of the great rooms of medieval castles could be purchased from a small, family-owned business in France and shipped to Los Angeles via a Chinese import/export firm based in the City of Industry. To secure the quantity we required, I had to send a check for thirty-five hundred dollars to Wang Ho Company.

  I didn’t mean to pick up the pen filled with erasable purple ink. However, given that it was the only writing implement the children were not allowed to use and hence were discouraged from depositing in an undiscoverable location, among the roots of the fig tree, for instance, it is not surprising nor even entirely random that it was the first pen that came to hand after I’d emptied two drawers, checked the pocket of Michael’s jacket, run my fingers under the club chair cushions, and dumped my purse. An erasable pen writes like any other inexpensive, medium-nib ballpoint, and I filled out the check without thinking of anything beyond the exorbitant price of an outdated floor covering.

  The next day, Jeanette signed the check, and I would certainly have deposited it on my way to collect Noah from a playdate that evening had Ofelia not been summoned to her own daughters school to discuss a biting incident with the principal at two forty-five, which meant I had to cancel my afternoon appointments and return home after a lunch meeting with the Otis planning committee. It was during my twenty minutes at home, while I was forcing Ivy into an outfit appropriate for her three o’clock session at Toning for Tots, that I happened to pick up a call from Steve Carlson, who’d installed our plantation shutters. “Listen, Letty,” he said, “I like you and all, but I’m going to have to take you to court if you don’t pay me.” “How much do I owe you?” I asked, distracted by the difficulty of working Ivy’s resisting arm into a fresh T-shirt, but also being disingenuous. In fact, I knew the precise figure, having been informed of the amount four times by letter, three times by phone message, and twice by means of “casual” drop-by visits when Steve was working on other neighborhood window treatments. This time, however, Steve refused to play along: “For Christ’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?” “OK. OK. I know,” I confessed. “Three thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars.” “And Letty, if I don’t get it by next week, I seriously am going to take legal action. I hate to do it to you, but my wife—” I interrupted. I couldn’t stand to hear him make excuses for demanding his own money. “I’ll pay you! Please, Steve, don’t tell me these things!” He didn’t need excuses. He was right; I owed him. I had, in effect, stolen from him.

  The envelope was already in my purse, sealed and stamped, ready to mail. My fingers pushed it back and forth as I rummaged for the car keys. It was strange that the amount was so nearly the same as that on the check I’d written for the rushes. It was not such a large amount either. Enough, it seemed, to provoke legal action, but still not more than I could easily send to Wang Ho on my own the next week, after Michael and I got our paychecks. While Ivy wormed her way back out of her T-shirt, I took the envelope out of my purse and pried the flap open.

  The pen, with its own eraser conveniently attached, lay on the counter next to the coffeemaker where I’d left it the night before. At the time what I did seemed reasonable. The money needed to go to two people; but the one who’d been in my house, who’d drunk my iced tea and used my bathroom, was demanding it right away, while the other, the anonymous Wang Ho, could easily wait a week. It seemed sensible to pay the one that needed paying now, even if the money I was using was not quite mine yet.

  The actual “embezzling”—it still seems wrong to think of it that way, although I see now that that is precisely what I was doing—took less than ten seconds. I erased “Wang Ho and Company” after “Pay to the Order of” and wrote in “Steve Carlson,” and I put my name in the memo, so he would know whose shutters it was for. I addressed and stamped a new envelope. I sent Steve thirty-five hundred dollars, fifty more than he’d asked for as a sort of good-faith apology, from the account of J. Peabody and Associates.

  Margret

  Although I’d told Letty not to expect any word until the middle of January, I spent the next two weeks picking up the phone to check for the telltale beeps of a waiting voice mail message and leaving the apartment to give the phone a chance to ring.

  “Do you think I should call?” I asked Ted.

  “What for? When she’s read it, she’ll call you.”

  “But can it hurt to call? Just remind her that it’s there? See how it’s coming along? Maybe she has questions.”

  “Did you put your number on the title page?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then, she’ll call you.”

  “What if she misplaced the title page? I think I should call. Do you think I should call?”

  “All right. Go ahead and call.”

  “But they say not to call. That and the SASE. They’re like the rules of agents.”

  “You think if she loves it, she’s going to throw it out because you called?”

  “If she hasn’t started it, maybe she’ll send it back. Maybe she’ll think I’m too much trouble.”

  “Don’t call then.”

  On December 23, I sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee and a square of crumb cake. I would be brief and nonchalant. I would not be a bother. I would merely inquire in a businesslike fashion as to the status of my manuscript.

  “This is Margaret Snyder,” I said, presumably to the girl with the long brown hair. “I left my manuscript for Heather Mendelson Blake earlier this month?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. It was impossible to tell by this whether she remembered me or whether she was just politely marking time until I committed myself to some specific piece of business.

  “I don’t want to bother her, but I was just wondering if someone, maybe you, or … someone, could tell me if she’s had a chance to read it.”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  I hung on for more than a minute, allowing me ample time to drop several chunks of sugar and butter from my crumb cake into my lap. As I began to ease my napkin out from under my coffee cup without setting the receiver down, a voice I didn’t recognize came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  “This is Heather.”

  “Oh, hello!” I sat up straighter, and in doing so, dislodged the napkin too abruptly. The cup overturned. “This is Margaret Snyder,” I said, snapping to my feet and clamping the tail of my shirt against the edge of the desk to stanch the rushing spill.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m calling … well, I know I’m not supposed to call, but I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind. I mean, I just wanted to make sure you got my manuscript.” The coffee was headed now in two general directions, west toward my laptop and south toward the household ledger. I released the dam I’d constructed of my shirt and dragged my computer to safety. “I could easily get you another copy,” I said. “It would just take me a couple of hours to print and then I could run it right over. I live very near. Of course, I don’t know how long you’re planning to be in your office with the holidays and all.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  I repeated this information and slid my legal pad under the stream of coffee that was now running onto the carpet. “Sally Sternforth told me you might be interested,” I added helpfully.

  “Oh, yes, I have to thank Sally for the referral,” she said. “I’ll tell you, I’ve only gotten through the first few pages. You know, with the holidays and all.”

  “Yes, I know you must be busy,” I managed.

  “But it looks first-rate. That opening scene,” I heard paper rustling, “with the grass. Just lovely.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “First-rate. Just lovely,” I scribbled on a blank page of the ledger. I wanted to be able to report her precise words to Ted. “I’m hoping,” I continued aloud, “that the allusion to Gatsby works sort of as an undercurrent, almost at a subconsc
ious level, because I don’t think Lexie is really …”

  “Right, right,” she interrupted. “Exactly. Anyway, I have to go to London just after New Year’s, so I won’t be able to get to it until after that.”

  “After New Year’s is fine,” I assured her. “After New Year’s is wonderful. Just wonderful.”

  My hand was shaking as I replaced the receiver and I’d forgotten to wish Heather Mendelson Blake a happy holiday and a good trip. It was happening. My novel was on its way to being published. I’d dreamed and despaired of it; I’d worked around and toward it; I’d strained my marriage, tarnished my relationship with Simon, given up a good job and lost a bad one for it. Worst of all, I’d nearly—it still made my breath shallow to think of it—done irrevocable damage to my dearest friend for its sake. But all of that was over now. This post-New Year’s business was a nuisance: I would have to tell Letty to push back a bit the date on which we could expect to see money. But only by a couple of weeks. We were saved.

  Immediately, I called Ted and was forced to leave a breathless message on his machine. “She says its first-rate!” I announced. “Ted, isn’t this unbelievable? It’s really happening! Heather Mendelson Blake likes my book! She likes the grass!”

  While I sponged the coffee off the carpet, I called Letty and left a similar message on her cell phone. I called Simon, my parents, Warren, Sally, Neil, and several teacher friends, leaving versions of this message all over Los Angeles, D.C., and New York. I e-mailed Brooke in London. The faint brown stain that remained after my efforts to clean up the spilled coffee would function as a souvenir. When we had people over, I could point to it and say, “That happened the day the process of publishing my novel began.”

  When I could think of no one else to tell, I burst from the apartment and ran down the stairs. I had no purpose other than to feel the cold, fresh air on my face, and to walk the city streets, full of other people—a woman pulling a wire handcart; a man in a camouflage-patterned parka; a cab driver, peeing into a bottle; a man in a cashmere coat, the skirt flipping back in the wind; a girl applying lipstick; a mother with a little boy on each hand, one hanging back to examine the cab driver and his bottle—who belonged there, as I finally felt I did. I nodded to people as I passed them. I was worth their notice now.