All Is Vanity (29 page)

The upstairs is actually a little tighter than you’d think when you look at the outside of the house, because, of course, there’s no upstairs over the vaulted living room, but it should be fairly simple to put a master with a bathroom (complete with shower) “en suite” over the garage. That kind of renovation is going to be pricey, but Peri says if we do it “to code,” we’ll more than get our money back if we ever decide to sell. Which we definitely won’t. I’m envisioning a balcony off the bedroom just big enough for two chairs and a little table, a private retreat for the two of us, where we can have early coffee or a drink in the evening. You know, the kind of thing that’s supposed to put romance back into a marriage
.

The yard, Peri says, could be “emotional,” with the right landscaping. She’s right that we’ll have to landscape, eventually, and we’ll have to put up a fence right away for the dogs, but there’s a decent amount of space and a fig tree—I’ve always wanted a house with a tree—and we can use the fruit, make figgy pudding, or whatever it is one does with figs. Maybe the kids can set up a fig stand. And there’s room for a pool
.

One other minor problem: a dip in the driveway that’s already taken a bite from the Tercel. Some molded plastic thingy dislodged when I was pulling out. Pretty sure it’s superfluous, but it scrapes along disturbingly at all speeds. I think I can reattach it with twine
.

It was hard to figure out what to offer, since money this big doesn’t seem real. Adding or subtracting thousands feels like tossing dimes around. And it really is dimes if you listen to Peri, who pointed out that ten thousand dollars is really only ninety-one cents a day when you
spread it over the life of a thirty-year loan. The kids could contribute that with their fig stand. Shall I tell you how much we decided on?

She named a price that made me laugh, but as there was no more to the e-mail, I had to assume this was, in fact, the amount of money they were prepared to spend on this house.

Although I knew that “working on a house” smacked of self-absorption and materialism, it was fun to think about. More fun than thinking about post-Vietnam nihilism. Maybe Robert could do some house hunting and fix up a place for himself. It would, at least, provide some action. I would do an architectural rendering, to make sure I could visualize everything—maybe when the book was finished, my drawing could be reproduced on the end papers. But, first, Robert would have to have a real estate agent. I’d never had a real estate agent, only New York apartment agents who were generally less polished than Peri had been.

I scrolled back through my in-box. Letty had sent me a description of Peri after they’d met in November. I would use it as an exercise, a jumping-off point from which I would then create my own character.

I began simply by copying the relevant portion of Letty’s e-mail into a document I’d entitled, randomly, “Chapter Six.”
“My real estate agent is a tiny woman in a monstrously large car. Of course, this describes much of the population of the west side of L.A
.” I changed “my” to “Robert’s.” Would Robert be looking for a house on the west side of Los Angeles? I changed “Robert” to “Lexie,” a new character, an intriguing character, a character who, just as the how-to-write books had promised, suddenly seemed to be knocking on the inside of my head demanding to be let out.

All afternoon, Lexie searched for houses, while Robert languished as he always had at his kitchen table, a table, I now realized, I’d never quite envisioned. I could see Lexie clearly at hers. Lexie, in fact, did not have a kitchen table, because her kitchen was too small to eat in. She had a dining el, in which she’d put an old enamel-topped table, before they became trendy and overpriced.

Why did Lexie want a new house? This was complicated, and I was not yet sure I understood all the factors involved, but I explored the issue obliquely and implicitly as she looked, rejecting one place after another that had columns and marble and aluminum window frames and had been hideously renovated by someone less tasteful than she.

By late afternoon, I’d written five pages. Well, to be honest, I’d written about three and Letty had written two. Later, I’d change the sentences I’d borrowed from her, and she would be pleased, I thought, to know she’d been my muse. I read her latest e-mail again, snipping for myself details here and there describing the house that had finally attracted Lexie. It was during this reading that my brain, by now so well trained by Ted, came to understand what should have struck me immediately.

“Letty, Letty, Letty,” I said to myself, “you shouldn’t buy this house.”

I knew exactly what Michael was earning, including possible bonuses and the criteria for such bonuses, because Letty and I didn’t keep this sort of information from each other. I knew what private schools cost, a consideration Letty and Michael were obviously not taking fully into account. I knew what they’d spent redoing their old kitchen and I knew what they’d probably get for their old house. I considered property taxes and estimated likely repairs. I assumed at least two of the children would need orthodontia and
all of them would go to college. I computed the probable increase in the value of the property against what they were likely to earn if they invested their money conservatively in the stock market. All of this did not add up to financial disaster, but it did entail a close-cutting that allowed for no mistakes, no accidents, no family vacations, and very little retirement savings. It also required that all colleges be strictly state funded. In short, they would for all practical purposes be overextending themselves just when Michael’s new income might allow them to relax a little about their tight finances.

I spent the next hour and a half composing a reply to Letty’s e-mail, detailing my findings and concluding that she would be better off with a less expensive house, or at least one that needed less work or was in a neighborhood with public high schools she’d feel comfortable sending her children to.

Ted came home just as I was finishing.

“Writing away?” He was unable to conceal a note of sarcasm. Perhaps he did not attempt it.

“Actually, this is an e-mail to Letty telling them not to buy a house they want.” I explained my thinking and figures to him briefly and he nodded.

“Sounds right to me,” he said.

“But, Ted,” I went on, “I did write almost five pages today.”

He pretended to be absorbed in looking through his briefcase.

“I know I’ve told you lots of times before that the writing was going well, but today—I don’t know—it was different. I wasn’t straining to put something on the page. The character and the story felt almost real.”

I was not insane. Of course, I knew that at this point Lexie and her house felt real because they were real—or at least had real-life counterparts, Letty and her house. But this was only the foundation
from which I would build my own story. Tomorrow, I would decide who Lexie was, why she did what she did, what she would do next. Whereas Letty would decide these things for herself.

“I’m not sure what there is to eat,” I admitted. “I was writing so late I forgot to think about dinner.”

“That,” Ted smiled, “is the best thing you’ve said in months.”

Before we left the apartment, I printed out my five pages and laid them facedown by the computer. “I’m going to do this every day,” I said, tapping the little stack with my forefinger, “so you’ll see I’m making progress.” Then I shut off the laptop. I’d not sent Letty my reply.

The next day being Monday, I had to spend business hours in the offices of
In Your Dreams
. By the time I sat down at my own computer and collected my e-mail that evening, Letty and Michael’s offer had been accepted, so my warning, even had I sent it, may have arrived too late anyway. And how the MacMillans chose to arrange their budget was really none of my business, was it? This is what I told myself as I sent my calculations to the trash.

M—

They accepted our first offer. This means we should have offered less. Michael keeps reminding me that if there’s something horribly wrong with the place, the inspector will tell us and we can back out, but I fear there may be something lurking, hidden in the walls. What is radon again? All I know is that the house we have now doesn’t have it. Can we get lucky twice?

I look at that vaulted ceiling and that chandelier (which, unfortunately, the previous owners are taking) and the thick kelly green lawns that roll out in all directions on those hills and I feel like a real person
would live in this house. Not the sort of person who would repair a car with string
.

My mother disapproves, of course. She and my father came over to see “what you kids are getting yourselves into”—my father’s words, obviously—and she was frowning when she got out of the car. “What do you need with all this space?” she said, blinking in the sun
.

I’ll admit only to you, Margaret, that I wanted to hurry her in, out of sight of the neighbors who would surely note that her jeans have elastic at the back of the waist and her shoes, chosen strictly for comfort, have laces dyed to match the leather. My father’s hair is too carefully combed for this neighborhood. And when did he start wearing Sansabelts?

“Mother,” I said, “I have four children. We’re going to have to send a couple of them to a farm, if we don’t move into a bigger place.”

She clucked around the kitchen, pulling drawers out. “It’s awfully dark in here, Letty. You’re not going to like that, especially in the winter months. Have you thought about the winter months?”

I explained about eliminating the wall between the kitchen and the laundry, the additional window and the new, light cupboards, counters, and flooring we plan to install
.

“Michael must be doing pretty well now,” my father said, rapping his knuckles against the wall I’d said we’d be taking out
.

I showed them the space where we’re adding the master bedroom with the bathroom en suite. “We were always just fine with the one bath,” my mother said. “You don’t want to use too much water in Los Angeles, you know. It’s wasteful.”

I wanted to protest that six people would use the same amount of water whether it came out of one showerhead or two, but my mother doesn’t respond to logic
.

“This must be quite a job Michael has,” my father said
.

In the backyard, as I was describing our plans for the landscaping, my mother said, “But you can always use our pool, honey.”

It’s nice of her, I know, to want us over there, but I wish she could appreciate what it means to be buying a house here. I wish she’d just be happy for me
.

“Michael must be doing all right, then?” It’s killing my father, the worry that we’re irresponsible teenagers, blowing our nest egg
.

I finally put him out of his misery. “Dad,” I said, “Michael has a very important position at the Otis. He’s doing very well. We’re doing very well.”

Parents, how do you
—

Hold on. Phone
.

Jeanette. Asking if Hunter and Noah can go with her kids to see the butterflies next week at the Natural History Museum (“living, levitating, landing on your nose”—according to the banners along Wilshire). Have I mentioned that Jake and India are not the least bit bratty? At least not discernibly more so than my own stay-at-home-mothered children. It’s very distressing. And they speak fluent Spanish. Unfortunately, the boys will love going. I had to say “yes.” And “thank you.” And also, in a moment of competitive lunacy—“and maybe Jake and India would like to join us when we go down to the Long Beach Aquarium next week.” No, we had no aquarium plans!

Must close now and sew lips together with dental floss
.

Have you heard from Gordonhurst?

Love, L

So they could still back out of the deal. I was glad I hadn’t deleted my trash. Before retrieving my letter, though, I opened my “Novel” file. Letty was really onto something with those kelly green lawns, and although I was sure she’d not meant to allude to the green
breast of the new world in
The Great Gatsby
, it was an idea I could make use of for Lexie.

Lexie, I wrote, drives through the coveted, unattainable neighborhood, her short blond bob (nothing like Letty’s hair!) whipping across her eyes (this to suggest a sort of blindness—
not
the sort of blindness that actually indicates a greater-than-mortal understanding of the world—the kind I’d given to Terry, wise, old buddy of Robert’s—but a blindness to her own situation, the failure, in other words, to take into account the high probability of her children’s need for braces). Or perhaps Lexie’s child would need glasses, or an expensive eye operation, thus implying the blindness would extend into the next generation!

But I was losing track of my story in the symbolism, a fatal error I’d made before. Learn from your mistakes, I told myself sternly, and, making a quick note of the portentous surgery, I returned to Lexie in her air-condition-less Mazda 323, with its dragging muffler that generated tiny sparks as it scraped against the pavement. In the window of the house in which she is to meet her real estate agent, Merrie, she sees a green light, in fact, a string of green lights, in the shapes of palm trees—no, too tacky—maybe only a greenish flame, leaping up when Merrie lights a cigarette—no, no real estate agent would be caught smoking in Los Angeles. It was the window itself that glowed green—yes!—the stained glass windows flanking the front door of a charming Craftsman bungalow!

I paused, fingertips hovering over the keyboard. Comparing Lexie to Gatsby was somewhat misleading. No matter what Gatsby did, he couldn’t change the fact that underneath he was still James Gatz, a nobody from the Midwest, and therefore unacceptable to the posh Ivy Leaguers and their crowd. He got to
blame fate and society for his unhappiness. But now, in a world in which any girl from Glendale could go to Yale if her SATs were impressive enough, who did Lexie, or Letty and I, have to blame when we discovered we were not who we wanted to be? Only ourselves.