All Is Vanity (11 page)

My alarm went off as we were about to cross Hudson.

“Just to the river,” Simon begged. “Please, it’s so hot. I need to see water.”

“You go ahead,” I said. “I must obey the watch.” But he turned up the block toward Perry Street and trudged dutifully back with me.

In the evening, the oppressive heat of the day became the balminess that gives summer its good name. Ted and I strolled languorously east on Tenth Street in the dusk. In front of the 2nd Avenue Deli, we passed tourists folding a map and felt smug. The
city was ours now that those who really owned it had gone to their country houses. And we were pleased with our possession, especially amid the quaint, exotic spectacle of an East Village August gloaming. A lumpy Ukrainian matron in a sprigged housedress stood sourly in her doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. A cat on a leash slunk along the wrought iron fence that bordered an outdoor café. Indian restaurateurs beckoned us into their Christmas-lit establishments. Ted studied the shelves in a used bookstore, while I perched on a vinyl chair with a split seat under a ceiling fan and read scattered pages of
Goodbye, Columbus
.

On such an evening, the sense that I was a writer—and even that I was the kind of writer who might be considered an artist—was palpable. I had the giddy feeling that this city was both my home—which meant I could claim its attendant rich human drama as my own—and a piece of theater I could view at a remove, a spectacle from which I could borrow shades and tones and a succession of characters who would, if I listened closely enough, whisper to me their amusing or poignant narratives. It seemed on such evenings that capturing life on paper would be almost as easy as observing it.

My novel bubbled from me as we luxuriated in all New York had to offer. I would outline for Ted the various maneuvers I’d put Robert through each day, while we dodged Rollerbladers along the riverside promenade to Battery Park or walked block after block uptown. I proposed options for the next day’s charge as we combed the bricks near the Metropolitan Museum for metal admission buttons casually discarded on the way out by those who’d paid the suggested amount. Ted, who in high school had gone through a period of intense interest in the Vietnam War, gave me details
about what battles Robert could have been in and what military rank he could have achieved while we held hands perched on the balustrade under the trees in Bryant Park, waiting for the free movie to begin, or two-stepped under the stars at Lincoln Plaza to the open-air bands. On the Staten Island Ferry with our faces turned to the breeze, and strolling late at night past Korean groceries overflowing with plums and green onions and black-eyed Susans, we debated whether Mrs. Martin would have called her son “Bob” or “Rob” and bandied army nicknames about.

I believe I would have been content never to finish, never to publish, only to work, if the limbo that was August had lasted forever. In August, when all of those people who, by their very existence, made me feel like a dull penny under their shoes were in places like Martha’s Vineyard, I was happy—in the deep way engrossing work makes one happy—simply to be dreaming scenes for Robert to play. I was satisfied when I caught hold of one of his moods and coaxed it to stick to the page in a way that seemed sure to call forth that very sensation in a readers mind. I was ecstatic when occasionally such moments seemed to dance across the paper in particularly graceful or vivid phrases. At times I forgot to reset my alarm and still I kept on, searching for words, crossing them out, straining my brain to conjure Robert Martin from scant impression and overtaxed imagination, trying to draw his very fibers through my fingers delicately, so as not to scare him off.

Looking back now, I suspect that in that brief, sweltering period, I was, in fact, a writer. But cooler weather was inevitable. And with it returned the real Manhattanites, the sort of people who called a messenger to deliver a package to the building across the street, and I was merely a hanger-on again, cringing and grinning
and well aware that if I had not been attached to Ted, I would never have been asked out.

We were invited to dinner in September, the first occasion at which I had ample opportunity to appreciate the words of Harold Nicolson, whose slim book of essays I’d read back in July, when it was already far too late for me to heed this advice: “Unless … you possess a strong will and a large private income I should not recommend you to announce your first book before you have written at least a third of it.”

Opening rounds went well. We were able to admire our hosts’ apartment without excessive chagrin, since it was only one room larger and a few hundred dollars less expensive than ours. (Being far better connected than we, they’d been able to take advantage of the city’s generous rent control policy, and so could afford to put a good deal of their money into their country house.) Then, while wine was poured, I leaned against the bright orange counter (cheap, 1970s renovations were the scourge of even the best apartments) and listened while other guests compared the fingerlings available at the farmers’ markets in Rhinebeck with those on sale at Union Square. People were either weary of summer and relieved to be back in the city or were already exhausted by the city and longed to be back in the country. That Ted and I had stayed in town was exclaimed over as an eccentric novelty, although several people agreed that the summer months they’d spent in town were among the best they’d experienced. Of course, they’d been students at the time.

When Ted and our host began to discuss the merits and liabilities of mutual acquaintances, I bravely struck off on my own and wandered into the living room where two women seated in easy chairs were engrossing one another.

Changing rooms at parties is risky. You have done something purposeful and so are forced to look as though you indeed have a purpose. If you’re lucky, a kind stranger will welcome you into her conversation. If you’re extremely lucky, an acquaintance will hail you from across the room. Most often, you must resort to feigning an overwhelming interest in the knickknacks or pressing your nose against a dark window so as to be able to see beyond your own abject face. For me, the tide of the party was about to turn.

I suspected that the women in the chairs registered my presence with triumph, pleased that they were involved in an animated conversation and not, like me, standing awkwardly too far into the room to retreat, but neither of them faltered in the pretense that I did not exist. Luckily, a plate of baguette rounds spread with marinated goat cheese was lying hospitably on the coffee table, so rather than scanning the bookshelves or acting as if I’d forgotten something essential in the kitchen, I availed myself of this prop to jimmy myself into their těte-à-těte.

“Have you tried these?” I said, committing myself to the couch and raising a baguette to my mouth.

“No,” said the woman nearest me. She pushed the plate slightly in my direction and turned back to her conversation. I considered chugging the contents of my wine glass.

“I hear you’re writing a novel,” said a bright voice behind me.

“Yes,” I said, turning with relief. Sally Sternforth crooked her knees and perched beside me on the couch. “Who’s your publisher?”

“For a first novel,” I explained, sliding into the space between the couch and the coffee table to retrieve the hors d’oeuvre I’d dropped on the rug, “you don’t usually have a publisher until the whole thing is done.”

I tried to deliver this as if it were insider’s knowledge to which I was privy, but it came out as an apologetic squeak.

“Really? Well, you know, with nonfiction …”

I interrupted her as I regained my position on the couch. “Yes, the proposal, the contract, the advance, all before the book is written. Have you tried the goat cheese? It’s delicious.” Secretly, I thought goat cheese had run its course. When we gave a party, I intended to reintroduce sharp cheddar, perhaps the sort with wine stirred in.

Sally forged on. She would not be waylaid. “Well, I admire you,” she said. She did not admire me. If she was kind, she pitied me, and if, instead, she was like most people, she felt superior. “It was such a relief when I’d been writing for months without validation to know that at least my book was sold.” A profile of Sally, replete with photos in various stylish outfits, had appeared in the
New York Times Magazine
two weeks before.

“Yes,” I said, “that would be nice.” I tore at my baguette round with my teeth.

There are those, and I like to count myself among them, who will graciously change the subject when they sense a particular line of conversation may cause embarrassment for another. Others, however, close in, licking their lips, like hyenas who sniff the blood of a wounded gazelle. “But you’ve published short stories?” Sally suggested, delicately retrieving a crumb of cheese from the corner of her mouth with her tongue.

I was tempted to lie. I might say, “Certainly, a few pieces. In small periodicals mostly. You know, the
Hoe and Spindle, Blue Dragon Review
, that kind of thing.” I could even mention a big quarterly or two—
Prairie Schooner, Grand Street
—as long as I avoided the national magazines. It was a pretty safe bet that Sally
Sternforth didn’t have back issues of the
Sewanee Review
piled by her bed. But I’m excruciatingly honest. It’s a fault really. “No,” I admitted. “I really just started this.”

“But Ted says you quit your job. Someone must have told you that you have potential.” She nodded encouragingly. I thought of my ninth-grade teacher, who’d written “Very good! You’ll be an author someday!” at the bottom of my five-paragraph sketch about a frog vacationing in Baja. I was sure that Mrs. Hammerstein was not who Sally had in mind. Did she really picture Paul Auster plucking one of my paltry, albeit well-written, student evaluations off the kitchen counter in a friend’s house and calling to beg me to share my talent with the world?

“According to John Gardner,” I said, “I’m a novelist.”

“Oh, you studied with John Gardner?” She said it matter-of-factly, but I could tell by the way she leaned toward me and smoothed the cocktail napkin lovingly over her knee that she was impressed. Even one of the women in the chairs glanced my way.

But what good was impressing people with lies?

“I mean his description of a novelist—in
On Becoming a Novelist
—it fits me.”

“Oh.” She put the napkin on the table. “We should mingle,” she said brightly.

Parties had long been a problem for me. People had an annoying habit of asking what I “did”—a question I had been brought up to think rude. My old answer, that I taught high school English, elicited a predictable response. First, as my companion realized that he or she was stuck talking to someone who exercised power only over sixteen-year-olds, there would be a subtle shift in stance, coupled with a fleeting scan of the other guests, in preparation for a smooth getaway. This was generally followed by the well-intentioned rally, the patron
izing forward tilt of the head. “I really admire that kind of dedication,” he or she would say, “the way schools are now.” And then I would be forced to explain with excruciating honesty that, no, I was not selflessly redirecting the lives of disadvantaged students from the ghetto by introducing them to the eternal wisdom of Shakespeare, rather I was further advantaging those who were already so well clamped upon the track that led to success that they could hardly derail themselves if they tried.

In a different crowd, the comment on the current state of public education might be replaced by a hearty “I better watch my grammar!” by which the speaker meant that he, unlike me, had more important things to do than pay attention to usage. But, in either case, the mention of my former profession had never incited lively interest and spirited conversation, except to the extent to which I could reveal tidbits about the failings of children with socially prominent parents, which hardly seemed fair or dignified. In short, I was used to others’ sudden need to mingle.

My new answer, on the other hand, provoked much interest, but of a kind that made me squirm.

“So what do you do?” the fortyish woman seated beside me at the dinner table asked. Her midriff, slightly plump, showed between her tube top and her spandex, hip-hugging skirt, and her black hair had a chic, slept-in look. I briefly regretted using a brush before leaving home.

“I’m, um, working on a novel.” I was surprised at how difficult it was to choke these words out. In private, I was proud of my efforts.

She threw her head back and rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, who isn’t?” she said bitterly and reached in front of me for the wine.

“Who’s your agent?” Zachary Roth asked. Zachary wrote a column about Washington gossip for a weekly political magazine. I
could feel the winds of the savanna; the hyena’s hot breath at my heels.

“She doesn’t have an agent yet, of course,” Ted said, rescuing me and even managing with his tone to suggest the question was ridiculous. “Fiction doesn’t work that way. You have to write the book first.”

“So what’s it about?” one of the easy chair women asked. She leaned across Zachary, who was seated to my left, finally interested enough to look at me.