All Is Vanity (41 page)

I wanted to explain that it was not more than she would have had had she spent the change and not broken another dollar, but who was I to claim any insight about finances?

“But I thought you said Michael was doing well.” This, of course, was my father’s first line
.

“He is, Dad.” It’s all so predictable—his lines, my lines. This being an unprecedented situation I had hoped it might go differently
.

“Then why do you need money? And why is he sending you here to ask, instead of asking me himself?”

Wait—let’s not forget my mother: “I knew it! I knew you just had too much stuff. You always had to have the best, didn’t you?”

“When, Mother? What are you talking about?”

“In home ec? You had to have the silk? When I told you the rayon. And the rayon had the better pattern—you even said that at the time—‘I wish I could get this pattern in the silk,’ you said.”

“I’d earned the money, Mother. I’d saved it myself.”

“There were better things to spend it on.”

“Better than a prom dress?”

“When you don’t go to the prom, I’d say yes.”

“Letty,” my father said, “you just bring your account balances, your credit card statements, all that type of thing over here. I’ll get you kids sorted out.”

“Louie, she doesn’t want to show you her bills, for heavens sake. She’s a grown woman. What do you needy Letty? Five thousand? Fifty-five hundred? Just write her a check, Louie. We should be happy we have it to share with our kids. Although, Lottie would never ask for money.”

“Lottie asked to go to medical school,” I pointed out.

“That was different. That was education. Teach a man to fish,” my father said
.

“Never mind, Dad,” I said. “It’s not such a big deal. We don’t really need it. Michael’s doing really well, you know.”

“Are you sure?” my mother asked
.

I could see they were relieved. It’s not the money. I’m sure they could easily spare five thousand dollars. But they don’t know if giving it to me
is right. Are they helping or spoiling me? Hard as they try—and often I suspect they aren’t trying at all—I will always be a child to them
.

Obviously, Michael’s mother can’t help us. We’ve been sending her checks since 1989. She already subsists on tuna and toast. When we’re bankrupt, it’ll just be the toast
.

L

I opened the window again. I knelt on the desk and squinted down at the pages glowing white and sharp-edged in the grayish indistinguishable matter that lined the bottom of the air shaft. I might be able to dispose of the evidence of my guilt, but this did nothing for Letty. And then, as I hovered over that filthy abyss in despair, inspiration slalomed, sure and swift as a cab down Tenth Avenue, into my consciousness. Why not use Lexie’s story to redress both my obscurity and Letty’s poverty? Struck by the perfect, circular perfection of this plan, I nearly lost my balance. If I finished the novel, if the novel was as good as I suspected it might be, as good as Ted, an extremely discriminating reader, said it was, I could give my advance to Letty! Ted would understand. My interest, after all, had never been financial gain.

Luckily, pitching a manuscript into an air shaft, while a satisfyingly dramatic gesture, didn’t mean what it would have in an age before computers. I opened my laptop and set to work to fix all of Letty’s problems by eloquently compounding Lexie’s in the final chapters of
The Rise and Fall of Lexie Langtree Smith
.

Throughout the course of that day, I scarcely left my desk, and each time I did, a compelling idea or the perfect word tugged me back within minutes. When I grew hungry, which in earlier days would have sent me scurrying to the gourmet market or the A&P,
likely both, for a diversionary half hour, I spread sour cream on saltines to simulate herring and carried a plateful back to my desk. By seven-thirty, when Ted got home, I was in the middle of a scene in which Lexie’s house, the quintessential symbol of the new life she and Miles had spent so hard to create, burned to the ground after the cord of the six-slice, chrome-plated Italian toaster, having been stepped on so often during it’s sojourn on the living room floor during the kitchen renovations, frayed and sparked.

During the succeeding days I regained the intense focus I remembered from my childhood. Now that I was writing with a purpose beyond my own aggrandizement, I was able to devote a large portion of my brain, which had previously been occupied only by anticipation of critical and social reaction, to telling a good story, and my novel proceeded so quickly it seemed to sheet off the screen like a heavy rain off a roof. I only needed to catch the pages as they fell from the printer and add them to the pile. Even without Letty’s sketches, I found I could envision scenes and tap my way through the course of the action. I was at long last a writer, although I could not spare the time or the attention to enjoy the role.

In two weeks, I was revising. By the end of the third week, I’d written something magnificent. A few scenes needed polishing; a couple of secondary characters needed sharpening; some of the language could have been more precise; but overall, it was a fantastic novel.

I’d wanted to wait until the book was sold, until the check was in my hand, before I offered Letty the money, but it seemed suddenly crucial to let her know there was hope—that it was, in fact, nearly certain that if she could hold on a little longer, she would be able to pay her debts. Some of them, anyway. Most of them? All of them? And then some? Sally Sternforth had bought a co-op on
Carnegie Hill with her advance. I’d heard of people getting half a million dollars for their first novels. Why not me?

“Can you hear me?” I asked, after I’d delivered the gist of my news. Letty was on her cell phone again, edging her way through Mulholland Pass on the 405. Twice so far I’d found myself talking to dead air and had to wait for her to call me back.

“I’m not sure. Did you say your book was done? You finished it? Let me in, damn it! Sorry. Lane change.”

“Yes, and, as I said, it’s much better than I expected it to be,” I repeated modestly, in case the mountains had cut this off earlier. With the hand that was not holding the receiver, I turned over random pages of my manuscript, admiring sentences here and there.

“Margaret, I’m so happy for you.”

“But, Letty,” I said, “you’re not understanding me. This is good for both of us.” And again I pressed home the prospect I’d offered her. After she finally understood that I was presenting her with my advance, we were cut off and then, when she called back, we had to slog through all the “Margaret, I can’t let you do that”s and the “This is incredibly generous of you, but no”s. It was tedious, but it had to be done. And, finally, she had to agree. She had no other options.

“It might take us a long time, you know, to pay you back,” she said.

“Letty, you don’t need to pay me back. What’s mine is yours. And, really, I owe you. You’ve helped me more than you realize with this book.” I was about to confess the nefarious means by which the novel had taken shape, when the connection severed again. If she tried to call me back, she didn’t get through, and I made no such attempt. She would read everything soon enough.

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.

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.

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.”