All Is Vanity (28 page)

So many ways I could have gone, so many choices I could have made. If I’d studied French instead of cuneiform. If I’d taken a
computer class instead of Intro to Chaucer. If I’d gone to those recruitment meetings, if I’d gotten a Ph.D., if I’d become an electrical engineer. Behind me, doors opened onto gorgeous vistas and intriguing corridors. But somehow I had missed these and had instead wormed my way into a glorified closet with a window on an airshaft, from which there seemed no way out.

And, so, I became an intern, a second-choice replacement for someone still eligible for graduation gifts.

A YEAR AGO
, despite my public protestations to the contrary, I’d been pretty sure that an elevated place in the world had been reserved specifically for me. I’d assumed that I only needed to reveal my long-hidden talent, to throw off the bushel basket, so to speak, and those who had disdained me would gather round in awe to admire my light. But what if, after all, I had no light? What if the basket had been a useful cover allowing me to pass among those who otherwise would discern my undesirability? I now had to consider the possibility that I’d thrown off my bushel basket and lay naked on the grass and still people stepped over me as if I were a clod of earth.

On a Sunday in late May, when Ted had gone into his office—
he did this regularly now on the weekends to avoid the sullen, snarling creature I’d become—I crawled into the back of the bedroom closet and exhumed Robert Martin from his cat-fur-clouded box. I’d intended to use the backs of my manuscript pages, having just alphabetized a list of potential advertisers for
In Your Dreams
and run out of paper to feed the printer. But there, with one knee pressed uncomfortably on the straps of a run-down sandal, I determined that I was not finished yet. All the public and private humiliation I had suffered would only fuel my renewed efforts. So what that the list of those to whom I now had to prove my worth had grown? I would show them all.

If only I’d given up. If only I’d cleaned out the closet, applied to teach at another school, and devoted my creative energies to amateur theatricals.

I recognize now that I’d have gotten off cheaply then. A year, a stalled novel, and a few callous rejections were not so high a price to pay for clear-eyed disillusionment. But no true gambler stops just because she’s run through her wad, not when borrowing, begging, and stealing remain. I didn’t see it that way then, of course. My illusions bruised but essentially intact, I mistook my folly for strength. I clenched my teeth and shook the printed pages in my hands. I would use my desperation, marshaling it to speed my fingers forward. I would write a novel, I told myself, or die in the attempt.

As if it were only a matter of will.

I sat down at the table with the manuscript. I opened my legal pad to a fresh page and turned on the computer. I watched the screen alight and waited while it worked through its various procedures. I opened the file called “Novel.”

And the familiar malaise settled around me like a fog.

For forty-five seconds or so I stared at the last few sentences I’d typed in February. They were trite and flat. I deleted them. I drew a cube on the legal pad, and then another on top of it. I constructed a tower of cubes. I shaded alternate surfaces. Then I checked my e-mail.

There was a single message, from macfamily; subject: west-woodho.

While fortunes, such as they were, had steadily declined over the past year for the Hansen-Snyders, they’d continued to grow for the MacMillans. In January, Letty had dropped all pretense of “just seeing what was out there” and had begun to house hunt in earnest. So far, the process had been as disillusioning as my search for employment. On New Year’s Day, she’d written, “There are certain things we want, otherwise it’s just not worth moving.” These included location on a quiet, tree-lined street on the Westside, a good school system through high school, which instantly ruled out all of the Westside other than laughably overpriced Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, a house built before 1950
unless
it had been designed by a well-known architect, a formal dining room, a decent-sized yard, a bedroom for each child plus a study, at least three bathrooms, hardwood floors, and no aluminum-frame windows. They were willing to forgo a fireplace, if all other criteria were met. A guesthouse would be a plus.

After the first weekend, the five essential bedrooms had been whittled down to four, and there was no more talk of guesthouses or fireplaces. By February, they would settle for three bedrooms and an attic or garage that could be converted into a study, if everything else was “perfect.” In March, they agreed to make do with
two bathrooms, as long as one, at least, had a tub, and decided that Michael’s office at the museum gave him plenty of space to work.

Letty’s descriptions of the houses they examined had at first been long and detailed, full of careful weighings of pros and cons. More recently, however, they’d deteriorated into snippets of faults that rendered the places “unlivable,” although mostly these were difficult to remove errors in taste: bathrooms large enough to host spa weekends, walls covered in mirrors and marble, “Ionic columns in the living room again!” and wet bars, wet bars, wet bars. By May, she was ready to consider a three-bedroom, one and a half bath seventies ranch backed against a ninety-degree weed-covered canyon wall—basically the same house they now owned without the yard but, since it was located in a tony neighborhood, a house that “cost more than a mansion in Kansas City!” A house that would, in fact, be only slightly better than my “starter” job with
In Your Dreams
.

They carried a lot of debt, which was probably inevitable given the fact that they lived in a major metropolitan area on one academic salary and were raising four children and which was certainly exacerbated by their good taste and haphazard accounting habits. Letty and Michael were the types who, rather than recording checks diligently in their register, made frequent, frantic calls to their twenty-four-hour automated banking system to find out their balance. Also, Michael tended to be rather acquisitive. On what they considered their first date, a campus movie and coffee, Michael drew his credit card from a vintage billfold of supple calfskin but was unable to cover the cost of Letty’s cappuccino. “I hoped you’d order a latte,” he said, digging into his pocket to display a handful of change. “I had enough for that.” However, three weeks ago, when they were preapproved for a home loan, Letty was pleasantly shocked.

M—

The bank says we can afford way more for a house than Michael and I thought we could. Isn’t that great? Not only that, but we can get a loan through the bank the Otis works with that’ll let us put only five percent down. Of course, the interest rate isn’t the most competitive, but this way, once we sell the house we’re in now, we really will have enough to look at some decent properties
.

L

“Properties.” This was how one began to talk when one had been house hunting for nearly half a year. Letty did not seem to realize that the bank didn’t care if her kids went to college or if she ever ate out in another restaurant. So long as she had enough to meet the mortgage, she could “afford” it. Not surprisingly, being given permission to spend more than they possessed greatly accelerated the house-hunting process, and within days Letty sent the following:

M—

We’ve found it, the house I’ve been looking for my entire life, at least since January. That’s not to say it’s perfect. I admit that the house I pictured while resting my head against the steering wheel, waiting for Marlo’s Girl Scout troop to finish decorating their egg carton jewelry boxes and trying to shut out the “wheels of the bus go round and round,” had a porch with roses twining around the railings and the beach within walking distance and bedrooms with huge windows hung with gauzy curtains that billowed in the breeze—in other words, a house in a commercial for feminine products. But if a house like that even exists in this city, it costs at least two million dollars and the
windows in its single bedroom look directly into the bedroom of the house next door
.

This real house is a 1920s Spanish style in Westwood, north of Wilshire. Did you get that last key phrase—north of Wilshire? Yes, south of Sunset—but who wants to live in a dark canyon, anyway? But north of Wilshire. (Must learn how to work that into all casual conversations—“Oh, you know, north of Wilshire, where we are, the traffic isn’t so bad.”) I know, I know, so much for a decent public high school. But elementary is superb and we have to compromise somewhere! Anyway, we’d already decided on private for Marlo and her top choice—single-sex, with lots of scholarship girls so there’s almost the same economic diversity you’d find at a public school and with cars in the student parking lot that aren’t significantly different from those in the faculty spaces—is right down Sunset. You’ve seen the campus in movies
.

What I love about this place is the neighborhoody feel. The quietness. It’s on this pretty, hilly block where I’ll wave from the window to the kids as they run over to their friends’ houses, just like we did, although I don’t actually remember my mother ever waving. The gorgeous, exotic shrubbery is expertly maintained by exploited illegal immigrants—but we won’t have to continue that. We’ll water our own lawn, thank you
.

Beverlywood, where Letty lived now, was also a neighborhood of well-constructed sidewalks and reasonably safe streets, allowing children easy access from house to house. Of course, Beverlywood houses contained ordinary Game Boy-playing, skateboard-riding, TV-watching kids. I suspected that Letty envisioned some different breed of neighborhood child in Westwood.

The house has great bones (that’s real estate speak) and an impressive carved wooden door that’s recessed into the wall, so it sort of feels like
you’re entering a cave, except in a good way. And it’s big, Margaret, substantial—almost three thousand square feet. It’s not a mansion, but it’s a “real” house, a come-to-our-place-Brad-and-Zoe kind of house. It needs a few adjustments to make it work for our family, but nothing too daunting. Our turn to ruin a place with tasteless renovations!

The living room (where we would serve Brad and Zoe drinks) is dramatic, really the size of two rooms, and it feels even larger because it has a vaulted, beamed ceiling. It also has hardwood flooring, a good-sized fireplace, an original Spanish-style chandelier (my favorite feature) and sconces—Peri says it’s easy to get replacement bulbs. The living room is the house’s best space, which is good, since we’ll really have to live in it, there being no family room for the TV, the paperbacks, the puzzles, and possibly the miles of Hot Wheels highway (although for now I’ve told the kids there will be no plastic beyond the bounds of their bedrooms, I know I’ll eventually cave on that). We’ll want to add French doors that’ll lead out to a patio—once we build a patio. What’s the point of living in southern California without indoor/outdoor space? Also, the wet bar has to go. Nice formal dining room, not at all cramped, also “en-sconced.” The kitchen, I admit, is dark and poky—BUT there’s a dark and poky laundry room next to it, so once we take down the connecting wall and maybe add a window, the two rooms together will be light and airy. We’d want to replace the cupboards, the counters, the appliances, and the flooring anyway, so it’s really not such a big deal that we’ll be reconfiguring everything in a new and improved space
.

Four bedrooms upstairs—well, three right now, one big one for the boys, a small one each for the girls (incredibly hideous emerald green carpeting throughout—what were these people thinking?—but hardwood underneath), and a bathroom for the kids to share with the original 1920s tilework and tub—super long with a rounded corner. I could see
buying this house just for that tub. We’ll have to add a shower when the kids get older, but a tub’s best for them right now, anyway. Also, something very funky going on with the lighting in that bathroom—I’m not even sure it’s safe to have these fixtures in a room with running water. We’ll have to redo that, obviously
.