All Is Vanity (27 page)

“Listen, Margaret,” he said, finally taking the books from me, “why don’t you try tutoring? I hear you can make loads of money that way and it wouldn’t swallow all your time.”

I saw myself out, down the hall, over the blood, into the elevator, where I rested my forehead against the green metal doors. On the sidewalk, I stood still for some minutes, letting people bump me impatiently as they hurried past. Moving forward seemed beyond my powers and it appeared unlikely that I could get myself home. Even picturing the series of tasks I would need to perform—making my way to the subway entrance, digging in my coin
purse for a token, dropping it into the slot, winding my way through the tunnels, standing on the platform—it was too much! And, after all that, I would not yet even be on the train.

Slowly, I began to stagger mechanically in the direction of our apartment. Without meaning to sometimes I stopped, my brain so knotted with inchoate ribbons of thought that there was no room left even for the nearly involuntary action of putting one foot before the other. In this manner I eventually did reach our living room, where I lay facedown on the couch, wondering, between frenzied bouts of self-recrimination, whether it was possible to suffocate myself with a sofa cushion, and waiting for Ted to come home.

Ted opened the door at seven-thirty-five. By seven-forty, I’d confessed, albeit inarticulately, to delusions of grandeur, months of wasted time, and the fact that my life as a productive member of society seemed to have ended. I cut deep and I cut wide, including the chronic lateness with which I had turned back student papers, my C in Swift and Pope, and the time I’d left a six-year-old Warren alone in a movie theater. “I think maybe,” I concluded, “that the best thing would be for me to go back to school.”

As I spoke, Ted had slowly lowered his briefcase to the floor and then, pressing his back against the wall, followed it with his body. He slumped forward now and rested his head on his knees. His hands lay slack, palms upward, beside his feet. Finally, he spoke, he voice muffled in twill. “To school for what?”

“I don’t know. Some field in which the rules are clear. Medical school, maybe.”

Ted raised his head and stared at me. “You want to go to medical school?”

“I don’t
want
to go to medical school, I just recognize now that
there are clear tracks that a person is expected to follow to get somewhere. I’ve been slugging it out in the brush and I want to get onto the path.”

“But you haven’t done premed. You never even took chemistry!”

“Well, not medical school necessarily,” I admitted. “How about law school? I have verbal skills. I think logically.”

“I thought we were planning to have children.”

Ted wanted children. I did, too, I suppose. I had thought, though, to put them off until I made my name. Letty often described herself as “just” a mother, to which I always replied that being a mother was the most important job, along with various other platitudes. I did, actually, believe this in a way. I believed it was an essential job and a difficult one, and all that, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but think that pretty much anyone could do it in some fashion.

“We are,” I answered. “Lawyers have children.”

Ted had pushed himself back to his feet now. He lay one hand on the kitchen counter for emphasis. “But, Margaret, think this through. You’re logical.” He said this a little meanly, which was not like Ted. “The earliest you could expect to start law school would be a year and a half from now. You’re in classes for three years earning no money—in fact, paying out huge amounts of money we don’t have. When you finish, you’ll be thirty-nine; we’ll be in debt; then you’ll have to work eighty hours a week for seven years as an associate to prove yourself to a firm. Margaret,” he said urgently—and although we stood several feet apart, it felt as though he’d got a handful of my shirtfront and was twisting it in his fist. “It’s too late.”

While stroking my head in a soothing fashion (I had somehow
ended up in my dramatic full-flung posture back on the couch), Ted gently suggested I try to get my job back at Gordonhurst. “That way you don’t have to give up on the novel,” he said. “You’ll still have spring and summer to write, and maybe by September, you’ll have made enough progress that you’ll even be able to continue writing during the school year. You could get up at five,” he added, encouragingly “Sally Sternforth says she does her best work before dawn.”

We both knew that my recalcitrant book would not progress once I could legitimately apply my time and effort to other work. The idea that I would continue with the novel was only a face-saving fiction. Still, Ted had a great deal of advice on how I could better approach teaching, so as to get more done in fewer hours—systematize my grading, for instance, and offer only one paper topic. Keep strict office hours, instead of agreeing to meet with kids willy-nilly (his term) throughout the day. “I’d be happy to write these up for you, if it would be helpful,” he said. “Oh, and Margaret, every year I see you rereading the same books for those classes. Couldn’t you just wing it with what you remember? It’s only high school, after all.”

Which was, of course, exactly the sort of comment that had made me want to quit in the first place. Nevertheless, the prospect of doing anything other than writing had become irresistible. I called George Temperly, headmaster of Gordonhurst Academy, the following day.

“George? This is Margaret Snyder. I used to teach English for you,” I added helpfully.

“Of course, of course!” he exclaimed. “Good to hear from you, Marge! What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

This would have been an excellent time to make something up
along the lines of the Peace Corps, but I perversely dragged my frustrated project once again through its public paces. “Well, I left Gordonhurst, you might remember, to write a novel. And I’m nearly finished.” This was not necessarily a lie. I did not say that the book itself was almost complete. Metaphorically speaking, I
was
“nearly finished.” “But you know how well first novels sell. Or rather how poorly they sell,” I said, and then added, “heh, heh,” a chuckle at my own self-deprecating drollery. “And so I’m looking for a teaching position in the fall and wondered if the English department might have an opening.”

“Well, that’s marvelous! Marvelous!” He had a habit of wringing his hands, and I could imagine him doing this now, the phone clenched against his jaw. “You know it looks like we might. Yes, this might be excellent timing for both of us. We’ll have to set up a little interview for you with Neil McCloskey—just as a formality, you know. Can’t have it be said we didn’t follow procedure, now, can we?”

I assured him that I was happy to follow procedure and hung up the phone feeling as if I’d been thrown a life buoy that would save me from the sea of my own hubris.

My “interview” with Neil began equally well. “You know we’d love to have you back, Margaret,” he said, gently pounding three packets of saltines with his fist and then pouring the crumbs over his chili. We were lunching in the familiar Gordonhurst cafeteria, the wood paneling worn slick along the wall where students had slumped for decades, waiting for the line to move. “And it would make the school look good,” he added kindly, “having a published writer on the staff.”

“Mmm,” I said, leaning over my souped-up baked potato.

“Margaret!” Evelyn Cook, the Latin teacher, who’d long held the position of celebrated writer among the faculty on the strength of a self-published account of her trip to Rome in 1963, was bee-lining across the room as fast as the obstacles created by thirty or so long tables allowed. “When does the great American novel come out?”

“Nice to see you, Evelyn,” I said. A bacon bit sprang away from the pressure of my fork like a tiddlywink and landed in Neil’s bowl. “No definite date yet,” I mumbled.

And then we were off: me, limping gamely through the grass, leaving a trail of sweet blood with every step, Evelyn in hungry pursuit.

“I can’t wait,” she exclaimed, “to go into a bookstore and see your name on the cover of a novel! Who’s your publisher?”

“Well, you know, since the book isn’t quite done, I haven’t got a publisher yet.”

She pressed on, nearly drooling. “Was it hard to find an agent?”

“Margaret’s thinking of coming back to us,” Neil interrupted, digging up a spoonful of chili. He seemed not to have noticed the bacon bit.

“Really?” Evelyn cocked her head and raised her eyebrows dramatically. “I’d assumed you’d set your sights well beyond our little pond,” she said. “Of course, I’ve found teaching to be conducive to writing myself. You may remember the sketch that was printed in
The Charioteer
a couple years ago. ‘Tuscany in the April Breeze’? But maybe that was before your time.”
The Charioteer
was Gordonhurst’s literary magazine. “You know, Jimmy Smithers, over in the math department, writes poetry. Maybe we could all get together.
Form a little writing group. We could serve wine and hors d’oeuvres. Tea for the nondrinkers.”

“That would be nice,” I lied. How pleased Evelyn would be, I thought, when she realized she would never have to read the name Margaret Snyder in print, not even in
The Charioteer
.

Obviously, I reflected later, as I walked one of the intimate, shadowy cross streets toward a Lexington Avenue subway station, returning to Gordonhurst had its drawbacks. Still, such a position was infinitely preferable to being an intern at a barely solvent magazine, as I told Simon when he called several weeks later.

“Do you still want that internship?” he asked. “One of them isn’t showing. Her parents surprised her with some graduation trip to China.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m going back to teaching.”

“Well, that’s good, Margaret. At least it’s a dignified job, not making copies at less than minimum wage, which is what we’d have you doing here. But what about your book?”

I explained the efficacy of the five- to six-a.m. slot, but we both knew the novel was over.

I spent March and April rereading the familiar texts, marking passages for discussion, reviewing sticky points of grammar, and devising assignments for which
CliffsNotes
would be useless. I decided that when George Temperly called to discuss my salary and benefits, I would demand a raise. As a known quantity, I should certainly be worth a great deal more to the school than I had been as a cipher from Virginia. I also outlined a spiel I intended to deliver to every colleague, well-meaning and malicious alike, who asked me about the status of my novel. It included phrases like “getting some distance” and “taking time to truly understand my
characters.” In early May I called Neil, and though I was actually quite eager to begin and so leave the ruin of the previous year behind, I affected a weary sigh.

“Just organizing my calendar, here,” I said. “I’ve bought the latest in picks and shovels at Bloomingdale’s. When do we head for the salt mines?”

“Margaret!” Neil’s terrier, Montmorency, barked in the background and I heard a soft thud, like a book falling from a table to the floor.

“Neil? Have I missed a meeting?” Although August was usually the month boobytrapped with faculty meetings about inexplicable insurance alterations and whether this would be the year to crack down on those who’d neglected their summer reading, occasionally such housekeeping occurred at the end of the school year. As someone who knew the ropes, I would probably be expected to attend.

“Margaret … no … you haven’t missed anything.”

“Good,” I said. “Listen, I think I’m all set for September, but are we doing
Jane Eyre
or
Great Expectations
this year?”

Neil cleared his throat several times, as if a bit of popcorn had lodged there. “Margaret, have you been out of town?”

Why did he keep repeating my name? “No,” I answered.

“And no one has called you?”

“Called me? No. Why? Has something happened?” I imagined a fire set in the corner of a science lab by a pressure-crazed junior or a flood among the precious records in the basement. Maybe George Temperly, or perhaps Evelyn Cook, had suffered a heart attack.

“No, no, nothing’s
happened”
Neil said. “I mean, it’s just
that …” He cleared his throat again. “Well, the thing is, Margaret, we hired someone.” Montmorency began to bark again.

I did not immediately grasp the significance of this. “You mean someone else?”

“Well,” he said. “Yes.”

“Instead of me?”

“Montmorency! Be quiet!” The dog continued to bark. “Well, you know, she’s just gotten her Ph.D. From Brown, actually. She’s very nice. Kind of bubbly, but smart as a whip. Very interested in Faulkner. I think you’d really like her.”

I experienced a strange squeezing sensation in my chest, as if I’d held my breath underwater for too long. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the sound of his voice.

“I’m sorry, Margaret,” he was saying. “We really should have called you.”

“OK, then,” I managed. “Well, thanks for telling me anyway.” My voice was high and unnatural. “I think the water is running. Or the stove. I better go.”

He said something about lunch or brunch. I could do no more than nod. “OK, well, better go,” I said again.

But he was relentless. “… writing group,” he was saying. “Thinking of taking a semester off to write it up. It’s sort of a mystery, but literary, of course, set in a private school. The head of the English department,” here he laughed modestly, “solves the murder.”