All Is Vanity (26 page)

“Can I help you?” She smiled back and placed her fingers on the faux wood veneer in readiness.

“Well, I’m hoping to find some sort of freelance work. I’m quite skilled in anything that has to do with manipulating language. I majored in English at Penn and completed all the requirements for a major in Near Eastern archaeology, except for statistics. I know archaeology might not sound helpful, but, in fact, it teaches one how to think logically better than most disciplines. And, of course, there is a lot of language work, mostly with dead
languages, I admit, but that teaches one grammar, you know, from the inside out …”

“I meant,” she said, interrupting me, “can I help you find your name tag?”

My armpits prickled and I shifted my shoulders in my ill-fitting jacket.

“Oh, sorry. Margaret Snyder.”

I peeled the tag off its wax backing and stuck it to my lapel. All around me, people were shaking hands and chatting in little clumps. I guessed that this was what was meant by networking but felt, after my blunder at the signing-in table, unequal to introducing myself around. Luckily, I had forms, titled “Experience and Expertise,” to fill out. These subjects were divided into several categories, such as computers, finance, sales and marketing, and information science. We were supposed to check all that applied.

Unfortunately, nothing applied. My ability to write a decent sentence under any circumstances counted for nothing here. I couldn’t even understand the terms used to describe the know-how these people apparently used every day. While I’d been trying to get teenagers to discuss why Bartleby “preferred not to,” others had been acquiring the skills that made the world go around. I had shunned the gold-carpeted, the name-tagged, and the banquet-tabled for years and now they would not have me.

I raised my wrist in front of my face, dropped my jaw and struck my forehead with the heel of my hand to convey to whoever might observe my premature departure that I’d just remembered a pressing engagement across town and slunk toward the elevators.

Since it wasn’t rush hour, I easily found a seat on the subway home. Clearly, I, unlike most people, had nowhere to go at any
particular time. In August, when I’d been a contemporary beatnik in charge of my own life, I’d reveled in this sensation. Now that I was essentially unemployed, I loathed it.

I spread the twisted forms I’d been holding like a baton on my lap and wrote “Employment Possibilities” on the back of one page. By the time the train reached Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, about half an hour beyond my stop, I’d compiled a fairly reassuring list. Most promising was tutoring, the new refuge of starving artists and intellectuals, among whom I figured I could now count myself. Traditionally, of course, tutoring had generated only a starving-artist’s wage, but I had heard that things were different now, what with the meritocracy inflating the value of college educations and parents convinced that every dollar pitched in the general direction of securing their child a spot in one of the few socially anointed institutions was a dollar well spent. Morally, of course, I deeply disapproved of using my intellectual skills and experience for something as mercenary as giving superprivileged children an even greater edge than they already possessed in exchange for their superwealthy parents’ money. I was not, however, in a position to indulge such qualms. Promising myself that I’d tutor for free a needy child for every one whose parents paid me seventy-five dollars an hour, I called Neil, my former department head, as soon as I reached home.

“Margaret!” he said, when he returned my call several hours later. “It’s so good to hear from you. How’s the writing going?”

How deeply I regretted telling anyone of my plans. How earnestly I wished I’d quit my job to do something simple, like raise a child. “Great!” I said. “Really moving into the home stretch now. I mean, there’s still a lot of polishing to do, of course …” I trailed off, having dumbfounded myself with the facile substitution
of “a lot of polishing” for “basically still have to write the whole damn thing.”

“Oh, sure, of course. The polishing will be fun, though, I’d think.” His wistfulness made me wonder if he might also once have had a novel that never reached the longed-for polishing stage. “You know, Margaret, I’d love to read it. When you feel comfortable with that, I mean.”

“That would be really nice of you, Neil,” I said, and so struck was I with gratitude that someone I respected would want to read what I’d written that for a fleeting, warm moment, I forgot that there was, in fact, nothing to read. “As soon as it’s polished,” I said. “But, listen,” I went on, “since I’m so far along with this now—you know, really done with the hard part—I’ve been thinking that I could afford to spend a little time away from it.”

Neil understood my need for a refreshing change of scene and a few extra dollars. He reminded me that the wife of Sherman Sterling, the head of the Upper School, ran her own college counseling and tutoring business. “I’m sure you met at the Christmas party,” he said. “Statuesque, dark chignon, looks stunning in red. She’s always trying to find new people.”

I didn’t clearly remember Kate Sterling until I heard her rich, bronze voice over the phone. It was the sort of voice that should be worn with a pashmina shawl.

“Hi,” I said, in my own, somewhat tinny timbre. Reading from a script I’d prepared, I explained my connection with her and the purpose of my call. “So,” I said, “since I’m so far along now, really done with the part that demands the most sustained concentration, I thought that it might be nice to get out and do some work that involves others …”

“I’m glad you got in touch with me, Margaret,” she interjected
smoothly when I paused, hoping my gasp for breath was inaudible. “And I’ll have to remember to thank Neil for sending you my way.”

This sounded encouraging. I pressed on. “I don’t know what you need exactly, but I certainly could do English for the SAT. Probably math, too, if I boned up on it a little. I did fairly well on the math section myself. I really didn’t fall down in that area until statistics. And I could help students with their coursework in any of those areas. I’d prefer that, actually. The idea of coaching these superprivileged kids to help them get into superelite universities …” I broke off. This was obviously not the best opportunity for debating the ethical merits of my potential employer’s business.

“Speaking of colleges,” Kate said, “where did you go to school, Margaret?”

I had a good answer for this.

“Penn … hmm … well, lots of my kids end up there. It’s a very good school.”

I was surprised that this did not go without saying.

“But parents would be happier with a tutor who went to a place
they
couldn’t get into. Like Stanford. Or Brown. You sure you don’t have an advanced degree from Brown? Lots of our tutors do.”

I was sure. I helpfully explained the strength of Penn’s Near Eastern archaeology program and the reasonableness of my choice. As I spoke, I heard the telltale click of e-mail being answered.

“But anyway,” I finished quickly, “at this point, how much does it matter? That was years ago.”

“Well, we can get around that if you did something interesting after college. Did you work in publishing? Have you ever been a consultant?” she asked hopefully.

“No, I taught,” I reminded her. “In D.C. and at Gordonhurst.”

She sighed. “Yes, but those schools …” She paused and began again. “If you’d been at St. Albans or Brearley or Trinity, then we’d have something.”

What that something would be was still unclear to me. Would I be better equipped to advise teenagers to write vocabulary words on index cards if I’d presented my lessons on
Hamlet
in a building on First Avenue instead of Third?

“But Sherman is at Gordonhurst.”

“Yes,” she said, dryly. “Of course, he does have other qualities. I’d be happy to put your name on our list,” she said, “and if anything appropriate comes up, we’ll call you.”

I could not pretend, even to myself, that this was not a discouraging setback, but it would be May before I exhausted my resources and learned my lesson.

In February, I met with an editor Simon knew at one of the biggest houses, a man who went through several assistants every year and so was always looking for new ones.

“Maggie,” he said, nodding from behind his desk at the chair I was to take, “Simon says very good things about you.”

“That’s very nice of him,” I said, and then added, inanely, “I say very good things about him, too.”

“What I’m not clear about is why you want this job.”

I launched into a speech I’d composed the week before describing my fascination with the publishing world beginning with the buying and selling of ideas, touching on the discovery and nurturing of talent, and ending with the democratization of art in
America, to which he quite properly did not pay complete attention. Instead, he flipped through a pile of mail with one fingertip as I spoke.

He interrupted as I was talking about the formative books of my youth. “You understand you’ll mostly be answering the phone?”

“Of course,” I said. I had not understood this.

The phone rang then and I wondered if this was a test of my initiative, but he picked it up before I could do more than raise my hand toward it. “Jack!” he said, “hang on a moment.” He cupped his hand over the receiver.

“You know,” he said to me, “I’ve thought about it and I just think it’s not going to work. This is a job people tolerate because they want a start in the publishing business. It’s not worth it if you don’t have years to spend climbing your way up. It’s not for you.” He swiveled his chair sideways to indicate we were through. “Jack!” he said again into the phone.

My knees shook as I waited for an elevator full of young, smug creatures with stylishly dirty hair and cardboard cups of coffee. Down we went, stopping at nearly every floor, letting them out and in, in and out, their easy inclusion announced in every slouching curve, while I stood straight at the very back, arms crossed over my chest.

I kept my arms in this position when I reached the sidewalk, so as to contain the fury that hissed and sizzled and popped within me. I started walking fast, my head tucked down and forward, a battering ram aimed squarely at this city and its inhabitants, a large proportion of whom were now forcing me against the pipes of a block-long stretch of scaffolding we were all squeezing through like ground meat in a sausage casing. Though somewhat hobbled
by the crush of the crowd, I marched the six blocks to Simon’s office, intending to rail at him about the sort of people he knew in publishing.

In the quiet of his buildings blessedly empty elevator, however, my anger began to dissipate, so that by the time Simon appeared in the narrow chute between
In Your Dreams’
two rows of cubicles, I was ready to rally once again.

The offices of
In Your Dreams
were not nearly so plush and coordinated as the publisher’s had been. The gray carpeting was thin and industrial-looking with a large, rust-colored spot that might have been blood Rorschached near the middle. The copy machine had a sign that read “Please Fix Me” taped across its top. The lighting was fluorescent. As editor in chief, Simon had a private room with a door but no window.

Simon’s floor was a mosaic of books and journals, bristling with yellow Post-its; mail, opened and unopened; and pages escaped from manuscripts. His orange plastic molded guest chair stood unevenly, one foot on a padded mail pouch that appeared to be full. I slid a stack of books from its seat to my lap as I sat down.

“I understand you have an internship program,” I said as casually as I could.

He frowned. “I thought you were going to work for Red Lewis.”

“No,” I said. With my fingernails, I scored small lines in my palms.

“The thing is, we’re looking for students, Margaret. You know, people who actually believe that putting a few months’ worth of work here on their résumés is compensation enough.”

“But you pay something.”

“Believe me, Margaret, you’d be stuffing envelopes and typing. You’d hate it. Anyway, I know I’ve said this before, but don’t you want to concentrate on finishing your novel?”

I tossed my hand in the air, as if batting his words away from my ears. “You see, I don’t need mental stimulation,” I said. “I’ve got the novel for that. And I will finish,” I added. “I just need to make a little money in the meantime, Simon. Doing anything. I won’t hate it. I promise.”

Simon sighed. “The problem is we’ve already got people lined up.”

Several of the books began to slide off the top of the stack in my lap. I joggled them back into position. “I’m sorry,” I said, getting up. It was difficult now to resettle the stack on the chair. “I shouldn’t have put you in this spot.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I really wish I could help you with this, Margaret, but I’m just the editor.” He laughed at his own joke.

“OK, well, thanks,” I said helplessly, standing. Balancing the stack of books on the chair took a steadier hand than I possessed. “Thanks,” I repeated. “Thanks, anyway.” The books slid against each other in their slick jackets.