Memory usage command with syntax similar to the time command

Ironically, time might have answer for you but this should be not shell-built-in time but standalone one:

$ /usr/bin/time -v uname
Linux
        Command being timed: "uname"
        User time (seconds): 0.00
        System time (seconds): 0.00
        Percent of CPU this job got: 2%
        Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.12
        Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
        Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
        Average stack size (kbytes): 0
        Average total size (kbytes): 0
        Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 896
        Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
        Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 1
        Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 304
        Voluntary context switches: 3
        Involuntary context switches: 3
        Swaps: 0
        File system inputs: 56
        File system outputs: 0
        Socket messages sent: 0
        Socket messages received: 0
        Signals delivered: 0
        Page size (bytes): 4096
        Exit status: 0

It counts MAX RSS though, not VSS, so would it be useful for you or not depends on your very task heavily.

You can use valgrind for this:

$ valgrind myprogram arg1 arg2

Its output will have a lot of irrelevant stuff, but its heap summary does what you want:

==91383== HEAP SUMMARY:
==91383==     in use at exit: 157,643 bytes in 364 blocks
==91383==   total heap usage: 2,999 allocs, 2,635 frees, 306,450 bytes allocated