Chapter 7
ELLA VISITED the laundry room for the first time at half past six on a Saturday morning at the beginning of March. Not that the timing really mattered, she decided later, when her life had taken on its new, extraordinary dimensions and she’d begun to consider the uncanny moment of that beginning. Certain things—let’s call them that, certain things—had a way of tracking you down and finding you, even when you thought you were just going to wash some clothes in a Greenwich Village basement.
She’d moved into the building a week ago, and the hamper in the corner of the bathroom seemed pitifully empty without all the bulk of Patrick’s things. Still, it was time. Standards must be upheld. You couldn’t keep laundry in a hamper for more than a week, whatever catastrophe had interrupted your life. Too seedy. Too regressive. Anyway, Ella’s mother was bound to call her up soon for the morning welfare check, and she would surely ask whether Ella had done her laundry yet, and Ella wanted to be able to say yes without lying. (Woman could smoke out a lie like a pair of shoes on sale at Bergdorf’s.)
She’d already gone out for a run in the damp charcoal streets, but she hadn’t showered yet. (Terrific thing about insomnia: you could do things like go running and do your laundry without having to confront your fellow tenants in a state of squalor.) As she descended the cold stairwell to the basement, she realized that its strange odor was actually the fug of her own sweat—salt and skin, not yet turning to stink. Her hair, badly in need of washing, whirled in a greasy knot at the back of her head, held from collapse by a denim scrunchie that had not been fashionable even during the heyday of scrunchies. Loose gray sweatpants, looser gray T-shirt emblazoned with her college logo—she’d peeled off her running clothes to fill out the wash load—and on her feet, the shearling L.L.Bean slippers Patrick always hated, because they were crummy and smelled like camping. Teeth furry. No bra.
She remembered all these details because of what occurred inside that laundry room the first time she entered. Six thirty in the morning, the first Saturday of March.
A STARTER MARRIAGE, HER MOTHER called it. Ella had never heard the term before.
“There was an article in the Style section just a month or two ago,” Mumma said. “It made me think of you.”
“But we only split up the week before last,” Ella said, staring at the cluster of U-Haul boxes in the center of her new bedroom.
“I never trusted him.”
“You could have fooled me.”
Mumma leaned back against a stack of towels and made one of those gestures with her right hand, like she was flicking out ash from a cigarette that no longer existed. An amputee with a phantom limb. “Oh, I liked him well enough. What wasn’t to like? I just didn’t trust him.”
“I didn’t realize there was a difference.”
“Well, there is. Anyway, it seems the term was coined by a fellow named Douglas … Douglas something-or-other, in some sort of novel he wrote about your generation.”
“Douglas Coupland?”
“Yes! Coupland. Douglas Coupland. Have you read it?”
“Generation X? Or else Shampoo Planet.”
“No, the first one.”
“Read them both in grad school. But I don’t remember anything about starter marriages.”
“It was in a footnote, apparently. I expect you missed it. You’re all in such a rush, your generation. You miss the details.”
“I might have read it and just forgotten.”
“You should take your time. The footnotes are the best part.”
Ella rose from the bed and picked up the X-Acto knife from the clutter on her chest of drawers. Her mother had a way of saying everything like a double entendre. The suggestive throatiness of the take your time. And footnotes. What were footnotes, in her mother’s secret vocabulary? Better not to know. For one thing, there was Daddy. “Starter marriage, Mumma? You were saying?”
“A first marriage, made for the wrong reasons, or because you didn’t have enough experience to judge the merchandise. Like a starter home or a starter car. You trade up.”
“You and Daddy didn’t have to trade up.”
“We were lucky. I was lucky. The point is, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. As long as you haven’t got kids, you just move on. Move on, move up.”
The X-Acto knife had one of those retractable blades, and Ella couldn’t seem to make it work. The edge came out halfway and stuck. “Look, could we not talk about moving on for another week or so? I haven’t even talked to a lawyer yet.”
“Why not? I gave you the number.”
“And the fact that you have a divorce lawyer on speed dial kind of stresses me out, by the way.”
“He’s not on speed dial, and he’s not a divorce lawyer. He’s a colleague of your father’s. He can give you advice, that’s all.” Ella’s mother uncrossed her legs and rose from the bed so gracefully, she might
