All Is Vanity

  “The police? No. Why?”

  “Why are you in the addition?!”

  “I really don’t want Michael to hear this.”

  Disgustingly, a tiny part of me thrilled to the idea that as soon as I could get the computer turned on Lexie would be having an affair.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “It’s terrible. Really, really, terrible. I don’t know what to do.”

  I waited quietly.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes! Tell me what’s going on!”

  “I found the folder with the lists yesterday.”

  “Lists?”

  “You know, what’s in which box.”

  “Oh,” I said, “great.” I glanced through the bedroom door at Ted sleeping undisturbed beside the mass of comforter and smashed pillow that marked where I had been. I was overwhelmed suddenly with a sense of loneliness so powerful it brought tears to my eyes.

  “Margaret.” The urgency in Letty’s voice made me forget myself and return to her. “Along with the lists, there were bills.” She said this as if it were a wondrous event. “I guess I put them in there when we were moving and forgot about them.” She stopped, breathed deeply, and went on. “There are others, too. I keep finding these piles of paper and envelopes—some of them aren’t even opened! There was a bunch in a box of videotapes, and there are some at the bottom of my purse. And last night, when I went to call my cousin Jane for her birthday, I found three major credit card statements in my address book. Honestly, I don’t remember ever seeing half of these before. I mean, I knew about the ones in my purse—at least I know I kept dropping them in there, thinking I’d look at them later—but these others … it’s like they’re self-generating. I’m afraid to keep opening boxes. There might be more.”

  “Where were they in the address book?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which letter were they under?”

  “They weren’t under any letter. They were inside the front cover. What difference does it make?”

  “I was just,” I faltered, “wondering if you’d put them under ‘B’ for bills.” Why had I asked this? Was I fishing for details, trying to find out how to write the scene in which Lexie discovered her misplaced and forgotten bills so that it would read as if it were truly happening? I shook my head, trying to push Lexie out of it, to concentrate on my real friend.

  “Letty,” I said, “I really can’t believe this is so bad. So you’re a little late with a couple payments.”

  “I’m not worried about being late with payments. I’ve been late with payments a lot; believe me, I know it’s not the end of the world. In fact, after you pay the penalty, they usually just give you more credit. But this …” She groaned.

  “Breathe slowly,” I said. Letty had had a habit of hyperventilating when we were young. I’d carried a folded paper lunch bag in my back pocket just in case.

  “I can’t even make myself add these up. I started and then, honestly, I thought there was something wrong with the calculator, the numbers got so high, so fast. I thought I was going to pass out. I just pushed them all under the futon.”

  “But I don’t understand how this could have happened.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t understand it either. I mean, Michael is making so much now that we should be able to live like … well, at least like Zoe and Brad! I’m wondering if I forgot to deposit some checks or something. This just doesn’t make any sense to me.” Before I could respond, she went on.

  “If only Duncan would hurry up and raise Michael’s salary like he promised. I keep telling Michael he should ask about that, but he doesn’t want to seem pushy or ungrateful for what he’s already gotten from the museum. I can understand that.” She sighed. “You know, when I couldn’t sleep I wrote down everything we’ve bought this year; everything I could remember, anyway. It’s kind of disgusting—the sheer quantity of material goods. But, really, it’s just the standard stuff everybody else has. We didn’t even have cable until this year. It’s not like we put in a home theater.”

  “At least you didn’t buy a DVD player.”

  “We did, though.” She laughed, a small, pitiful sound. “I just haven’t unpacked it yet. In fact, I’m not sure where it is right now.”

  Again, looking back, I would not be honest if I didn’t admit that I saw, with at least one of my eyes, and certainly with my heart, exactly what should be done at this juncture. Scissor blades should bite firmly into plastic, the octagonal table should skedaddle back to the showroom, the best should be made of the really quite decent Westwood public school system, perhaps with the help of a supplemental reading list I could supply. With my other eye, however, I gazed at the growing pile of pages beside my laptop. The increased tension of Letty’s (soon to be Lexie’s) situation seemed almost to make them quiver. What harm could it do to go a little further? In a few weeks, Michael’s salary would rise and would cover the most pressing bills. Why could Letty not endure a little discomfort, perhaps dodge a few creditors’ calls, and so continue to feed my novel until then?

  Still, even once Michael’s salary was refreshed, it was clear to me, the spouse of one who recorded even the purchase of chewing gum, that the MacMillans would continue to be in debt. As a trusted and consistently bossy friend, I should, I knew, eschew self-interest and urge frugality and a sweeping reevaluation of priorities. The previous year, before my grasp had fallen short of my reach so often that I had become fearful of holding out my hand, back when I was a person of infinite resources and possibility, I would certainly have done so.

  But now the novel whose title I’d just amended to The Rise and Fall of Lexie Langtree Smith was the only chance I had to save myself. Did I have to give that up, just because Letty and Michael didn’t know how to manage their money? It was too much to ask.

  I began anew. “Look, Letty,” I said reassuringly, “this is not the end of the world. So you have to pay interest for a while. These are special circumstances. You’ve just bought a new house; you’re going to have to accept some debt.”

  “I can’t even pay all the minimum balances. We have twelve credit cards.”

  “Twelve!” This shocked even Lexie.

  “Or fourteen. There might be some in my other purse, although I’m not sure how much I’ve used them. And that’s not counting credit lines at individual stores.” Fourteen credit cards. I wrote the number on my legal pad.

  “I suppose I could return some things,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe some patio furniture. Michael just found two chaises very reasonably priced in this sort of retro/modern place on La Brea. You have to see them. They’re Italian with a brushed metal finish on the frame and these gorgeous colored bands—pinks and oranges and lime green. And they’re super light. Ivy could fold them up and carry them off. And there’s teak stuff, too. Armchairs and little cocktail tables.”

  I hesitated; the sense that I was betraying Letty squeezed my throat closed. I swallowed. “But what about your party?”

  “Party?”

  “The museum party. Labor Day. What are people going to sit on?”

  “Maybe,” she suggested, “they could just stand around. It’s supposed to be informal, remember?” she added, a touch defensively.

  “Won’t it be kind of empty and cheap looking?” I prodded. “Just a blank terrace? Unless you have dancing. But even then, people need to sit down. In fact, it’s probably even more crucial to have seating if you have dancing than if you don’t. Are you going to hire a dance band?”

  “Um … I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “Well, it just seems a shame to return the stuff before this party, since it sounds so perfect with the cocktail tables and all.” My words slithered, unstoppable, from between my lips. “I mean, aren’t these the kind of people who’ll notice if your party looks half-baked? It might affect how they perceive Michael.”

  She was qu
iet for a moment. “You’re right,” she said, finally. “I can always return the stuff after the party.”

  And even though convincing her had been my intention, I was surprised to hear her agree, since, obviously, I was wrong.

  “You’re lucky, Margaret,” she went on, “that you don’t care what other people think.”

  Shame rose in a dark wave in my chest. Futilely, I closed my eyes against it. I wished that what she’d said were true. And then, I had a flash of brilliance, a plan to help us both.

  When I’d hung up the phone, I started for the bedroom, but stopped just before the door. The story pressed at me from within, pushing me back irresistibly toward the closet/study. I turned on my computer and waited impatiently through its hemming and hawing. At last the screen was blank and my fingers pounced upon the keys.

  At nine, Lexie is sipping a late cup of gourmet mocha java, ground only moments before her German-made coffeemaker dribbled steaming hot water through its fragrant dust. She’s created an oasis for herself on her new, cordovan-colored, leather-covered loveseat, apart from the chaos of renovation, the whine of the saws, the pounding of the hammers, the swearing of the sweating construction workers. With anticipation, she pours forth from the canary yellow accordion folder a sheaf of clippings to garner ideas for the next stage of her grand project. Onto the red-brown leather slide a photo of a slate shower, directions for building a backyard gazebo, guidelines for ordering special rocks from a special canyon in Montana with which to frame the fireplace in the master bedroom, and also a cache of envelopes, some stamped in scarlet “Second” or even “Third Notice.”

  That morning in Los Angeles Letty (and Lexie) fished three credit card offers that had arrived the day before out of the trash, so as to take advantage of their cash advances, and at nine-thirty in New York (six-thirty in San Francisco), I called Warren, knowing he’d be in his office when the market opened.

  “About that Genslen,” I said. “How good is it?”

  “Why?” he said. “Have you been putting in a little overtime with the ol’ knife and fork?” I always cringed when I talked to the persona Ted and I referred to as “Office Warren.” While at home my brother was dry and reserved, at work he was a jovial, slap-on-the-back, throw-around-lines-from-movies kind of guy and I couldn’t reconcile the two.

  I explained Letty’s need to make money quickly.

  “Dumb idea,” he said, in his most investment-bankerish, least brotherish tone. “Stocks are too volatile. You don’t want to monkey with them unless you can hang around for the long term.”

  “I know all that,” I said. “And, of course, I agree, theoretically, but Letty’s really in a bind. She needs cash in the next few weeks.”

  “And if the next trial bombs and the stock tanks, then what will she do?”

  “Now, Warren,” I said, employing the slightly exasperated, big-sister tone I’d developed in our childhood and honed as a teacher, “do you really think that’s going to happen? You have Dad invested in this stock.”

  Warren sighed. I could hear in that exhalation the struggle between the portfolio manager and the younger brother.

  I pressed my advantage. “How many trials have there been so far?”

  “Two.” He answered guardedly, as if he worried I might trick him into revealing information he’d rather keep secret or drawing conclusions he’d prefer not to face. Such things had been known to happen in our collective past.

  “And the drug performed well in both of those?”

  “Yes,” he allowed.

  “I know there’s always some chance that things will go wrong, but as I understand it—and I do read a great deal, Warren; I’m up on my current events—the FDA is always overtesting these drugs. People are dying and the government won’t let them take a pill in case it turns their fingernails blue.” Given that we were talking about a diet drug, the last point was excessive, but still, I reasoned, rhetorically effective.

  “Well, this wouldn’t be the FDA,” he said. “It’s not that far along.”

  I regrouped and charged again. “Still,” I said, “it’s been tested twice. Aren’t the chances good that the third test will get the same result?”

  “They’re good,” he agreed. “But they’re not guaranteed.”

  “Nothing’s guaranteed. All I’m asking is that you give Letty the same chance for a good return on her investment that you’re giving our parents. You’ve known her as long as you’ve known them, you know.”

  The downside of younger-brother pliability was younger-brother defensiveness. “Margaret, Genslen’s only a small percentage of their portfolio. I’m managing their money in a responsible, well-diversified way.”

  “No one said you weren’t,” I broke in, but Warren was having his say now.

  “Letty can buy the stock, if she wants it. No one’s stopping her. I just don’t want to be responsible if she loses her money.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Warren. Don’t be so dramatic. I’ll be responsible. And when she turns a huge profit and solves all of her financial problems in one simple transaction, you can’t take the credit for that either. Anyway,” I assured him and myself, “Michael’s expecting a big salary jump within the month. If, by some wild chance, they lose this money, he’ll be able to make it up.”

  Warren therefore agreed to open an account for Letty and to buy the stock for her, if she wired him the cash.

  Over the next few weeks, Genslen continued to rise at a breathtaking clip, and this, together with the money Michael was bound to get any day now, made Letty more comfortable with their immediate financial state. Lexie, after a morning of panic, during which she used her cell phone to place an hour and a half call to her sister, Mary, in Iceland, bought a stock called Genlock, well on its way toward regrowing hair, and also relaxed. Once she’d purchased the stock, however, it wasn’t very interesting to watch her simply keep track of her growing fortune on the monthly statements. There’s only so much a writer can do with the opening of an envelope, the satisfied nod, the sips of black decaf while pondering: should I sell now or hold? I stretched various poker metaphors this way and that; I put a letter opener shaped like a tiny saber in her hand; I let one statement get lost in the mail for a few tense days, but the chapter grew dull, Robert-like. I sent an e-mail. “Letty,” it read, “what’s going on over there?”

  Dear Margaret,

  Unbelievable. People seem to think that as guests they can actually order the party of their choice. Even more unbelievable—it seems they’re right, because I am indeed listening to their demands. “It looks like we have to have a full bar,” Michael said the other night. I was tucked in bed, or actually in futon, which, you may recall, was our bed when we were first married, and which functioned most recently in the old house as a safe infant play zone. It was supposed to become a dog bed in this house, but we got rid of marriage bed #2, the one my Aunt Pearl gave us when she bought herself the adjustable kind advertised on interminable late-night TV commercials. Anyway, we ordered a new bed, an original Case Study bed, zinc and maple, very understated (we toyed with the California king idea, but it sounded excessive, and then we would have had to buy new pillows) but, as I think I’ve mentioned, it’s in the garage because it would look ridiculous in the living room, and, as I’ve probably noted several times, we have, as yet, no bedroom. So the old futon is, for the time being, our bed once again, shoved into the one corner of the living room that isn’t occupied by the toaster and the jar of Tang (did you realize that you can still buy Tang?) and the coffeemaker and the half-emptied boxes. (We’re working on the kitchen again.)

  Anyway—in said futon, I was diligently paging through year four of five years’ worth of Bon Appétits, marking with Post-its the pages of recipes for unusual finger foods. “But I thought we decided on sangria. Remember? Summery, festive, fruity?” I shuffled through my pile of magazines, looking for July 1991, in which I’d seen pitchers of ruby liquid, shot through with yellow, green, and orange, arranged on
stone tables under olive trees, from which peered adorable, tree-climbing goats. I reminded Michael that we were leaning toward a “Mediterranean” theme. “Full bar sounds more like Monte Carlo to me,” I said. “Besides, I already bought the pitchers.” “I guess a lot of people don’t like sangria,” he replied, tossing his trousers on top of the other clothes that we’ve mounded on the club chairs. (This is just until the closet is finished upstairs.) “You took a poll?” “No, but apparently Harvey Price did. We had lunch together today.” (Harvey Price is in charge of twentieth-century sculpture acquisitions—very glamorous.) Our conversation veered then into a list of what they’d consumed for lunch, still a subject of perpetual fascination for us (scallop enchiladas, saffron rice, ginger flan—Michael; grilled vegetable salad with shrimp, chocolate bread pudding—Harvey; and, by the way, cottage cheese on leftover toast—me. Ivy is currently obsessed with cottage cheese, so it’s handy; also, have not quite mastered quirky settings on new Italian-design, chrome, six-slice toaster, so have much leftover toast, some raw, some extra-crispy). “So how does Harvey know people don’t like sangria?” I asked, returning to the important subject. “He’s assuming,” Michael said, carefully tucking the blankets on his side tightly under the futon. (You know how he likes to sleep in an envelope of bedclothes.) “Actually,” he went on, “I think he’s the one who doesn’t like sangria specifically. But, still, he made clear that people expect a full bar at these things. He very deliberately let me know his favorite single malt.”

  Yes, a full bar will be horribly expensive, but remember that this whole party is an investment, so it won’t really be like we’re throwing that money away. I mean, there are intangibles to consider: goodwill, and generosity of spirit (and spirits, ha!). The worst would be to spend a lot of money on the sangria and nevertheless have people assume we’re chintzy. Michael, of course, not being up on his Scotch, doesn’t remember Harvey Price’s favorite single malt. I’ll have to do some investigating. Do I also have to find out every other bigwig’s favorite brand? Is there a corporate list? Or is it safe just to buy the second from the top in every category—Johnnie Walker Black, for instance, but not Super Black (I assume there is a Super Black)?