All Is Vanity by Christina Schwarz

been less suspicious. He was scrawny and his skin and clothes had a somewhat grayish, unwashed cast, but they didn’t appear to be literally lived in, nor did he seem schizophrenic or drunk. His eyes were clear, his face was unweathered, his beard was only a day or two old, and he was properly zipped. Still, he was likely to demand a reward or insist on talking to me in a vaguely threatening or bothersome manner. He might even follow me home. After all, he’d been scribbling with an unnatural intensity, he’d taken my pen, and he was a strange man. These things could not add up to anything pleasant.
    “I was afraid someone might steal it,” he said. His volume was not appropriate for a library.
    I looked around, worried other patrons would be offended by his implication, but the only other person in the room now was slumped over a table, drooling on his arm.
    “I meant to catch you right as you came in, so you wouldn’t worry,” the scribbler was saying, “but I got sort of engrossed.”
    He motioned toward his table. His own pen—blue with white lettering along the side, obviously purloined from some business—lay unattended on a page three-quarters full of densely packed writing. “I’ve gotta use this place as an office,” he added. “My partner is writing an opera in our apartment.” He put his hands overhis ears and made a face. “So,” he said, shrugging and giving the semi-smile he’d used when I shushed him, “back to work.”
    “Thanks,” I said belatedly, when I was sure he wouldn’t swerve back in my direction. I used a voiced pitched correctly for the library.
    He waved his right hand, wafting my gratitude away, while his left picked up the pen and raced across the page at a speed incompatible with serious thought.
    I tried to continue my novel, but the choppers were overwhelmed by the crack of the librarian’s gum and the tender green rice paddies paled in the fluorescent light. I attempted a scene in which Mrs. Martin transformed a single egg carton cup into a whimsical fedora, but she, being quite obese, moved even more slowly than her son. I forced Robert to continue his drive to Filmore and sat him in his mother’s kitchen in a vinyl-and-chrome chair from which the stuffing tufted out along one seam, but the two of them had nothing to say to one another.
    “Care for some breakfast?” the mother finally brought out.
    But, of course, Robert had already eaten.

    I knew I could not drag the Martins across one more line that day. Altogether, I’d written three-quarters of a page, with plenty of space between the words to insert corrections. Maybe beginning my book with the minute details of morning routine was the trouble, I thought, winding my way down the circular staircase. It left the whole rest of the day yawning. On Monday I would thrust Robert directly into midafternoon.

CHAPTER 5

Margaret
    MY HOPES FOR THE SUMMER were largely fulfilled, thanks to the strict regime I imposed on myself with a digital sports watch. I’d learned from a PBS documentary that James Thurber’s wife had insisted he set an alarm clock at intervals to prod himself to work quickly. My fourth-grade teacher had employed a similar method.
    Mrs. Larson’s classroom was part of a new addition to the school, the linoleum hard and slick, the edges of the desks as yet unsoftened by the cuts of rulers and compass points, the seats made of some modern composite that would never wear away in comforting grooves. The days in that room passed in a series of terrifying quizzes, each beginning with an ominous clicking as Mrs. Larson set a kitchen timer and ending with a ringing thatseized our hearts and stopped our pencils. With the smart movements of soldiers on maneuvers, we would pass our papers to the front, where she would collect and then impale them on her spindle. There were multiplication tests—increasingly difficult as we galloped from the twos times tables to the twelves; there were spelling quizzes,