“Isn’t it? What about your wedding dress?”
“That was four years ago!”
“And was I right?”
Ella banged the bottom of the X-Acto knife on the toaster oven. “You were right about the dress. But you might have warned me about the groom.”
“Oh, darling.” Mumma plucked the knife from her fingers, flicked out the blade with a single nudge of her thumb, and sliced delicately along the seam of a box labeled SWEATERS, CASHMERE. “You wouldn’t have listened to that, either. You were in love.”
IN LOVE. ELLA COULD STILL remember what it felt like, falling in love. Being in love. She remembered it as a certain moment, the first really warm day of that year, a month or two after she met Patrick, when he was away on a business trip in Europe and she was alone for the first Saturday in weeks. She’d put on her favorite cotton sundress, which had lain squashed in her drawer since October and reminded her instantly of Granny’s house on Cumberland Island. The smell of summer. She’d gone outside into the innocent sunshine, bought an iced coffee, and walked by herself in Central Park, entering near the Museum of Natural History and making her way southeast, without any particular goal. As she strolled past the entwined couples drowsing in the Sheep Meadow, she’d gazed at them, for the first time, in benevolence instead of envy. She’d thought—actually spoke inside in her head, in conscious words that she still recalled exactly—I’m so happy, it’s the end of May and I’m in love, and the whole summer lies before us. An immaculate joy had quickened her feet along the asphalt paths, the conviction that the world was beautiful (she’d even sung, under her breath, a few bars of that song—And I think to myself, what a wonderful world—to which she ended up dancing with her father at her wedding, two years later) and that the rest of her life was just falling into its ordained pattern before her. The life she was meant to live, unfolding itself at last. Courtship, marriage, apartment. Exotic, self-indulgent vacations. Then kids, house in Connecticut, school runs and mom coffees. Less exotic, more wholesome vacations. Which shade of white to paint the trim in the dining room. Later that day, she had dinner with her sister and spilled out every detail, every silvery moonbeam over pasta and red wine at Isabella’s. And not once that entire love-struck Saturday did she suspect that Patrick was doing anything other than working—working really hard!—throughout his Saturday in Frankfurt. Thinking of her the whole time. Not once did the possibility of disloyalty enter her head. They were in love! Hadn’t he told her so, before he left on Tuesday? In between kisses. Naked in bed. Warm and secure. I’ve finally found you, he said, his actual words, while he held her face in his hands. What could be more certain than that?
Now she had to go back and recall all those old business trips, every late night at work, every client dinner, and wonder which ones he was lying about. A painfully detailed revision of history and memory.
And that was the worst part. Because she could still remember how wonderful it was to be in love with him.
BUT THAT WAS SIX YEARS ago. Now she had this too-light basket of laundry and this dark, chilly stairwell on Christopher Street, painted in gray and moist against her skin. Only blocks away from the sleek SoHo loft conversion she had shared with Patrick, which had its own washer and dryer and required no stair-climbing of any kind, except on the row of StairMasters in the residents’ gym: eternally occupied, unlike the building stairwells, because you weren’t climbing those steps to go anywhere. My God, of course not. Just to stay skinny. (Sorry, to keep fit.)
Of course, in the cold light of reason, Ella should have been the one to kick Patrick out. Damn it. He should have been the one cramming his belongings into a studio apartment in the Village—It’s charming, Mumma said last Sunday, picking her way between the boxes to peer out the window, into the asphalt garden out back—while Ella, crowned by a nimbus of moral superiority, enthroned herself on one of the egg chairs inside the two-thousand-square-foot loft on Prince Street.
He should have been the one bumping a laundry basket into a damp basement in search of a rumored laundry room, while she flicked her sweaty running clothes into the washing machine off the granite kitchen and sipped an espresso from the De’Longhi. (Not that Patrick would ever do his own laundry, even if he knew how; in his bachelor days, he sent it out for wash-and-fold.)
He should have been spending his weekend unpacking boxes and contemplating the miniature kitchen in the corner. The way you had to step around the toilet to exit the shower. The way you had to open said shower door and prop your foot on said toilet in order to shave your legs. (Not that Patrick shaved his legs, either; at least not since his brief but expensive flirtation with a carbon-framed racing bicycle.)
But she’d been too shocked and angry to consider her rights as the Wronged Wife, hadn’t she? No, wait. That wasn’t right, shocked and angry. Not visceral enough. She’d felt as if a loud steam whistle were blowing inside her skull. As if her insides were melting. As if her legs and arms had no nerves. And how could you think straight when your body was in such disarray?
So instead of waiting to confront Patrick, send Patrick to the doghouse as he deserved, she’d fled into the bedroom—trying not to look at the bed itself—and packed a few things into a gym bag and rushed to Aunt Viv and Uncle Paul’s apartment in Gramercy. Stammered an explanation she didn’t fully comprehend herself. Spent the next week in their guest room, searching the classifieds for no-fee apartments and fending off her friends’ sympathy and her parents’ advice. Fending off the manic trill of her cell phone every few hours, which she refused to answer.
And now here she stood, instead of Patrick, in a Christopher Street basement before a metal door labeled laundry, at six thirty in the morning.
Balancing the basket on her hip while she fumbled with the door handle.
Thinking, At least I’ve got the jump on everyone else, washing clothes this early on a Manhattan Saturday morning. The one time when the damn city actually does sleep.
But as the door cracked open, and Ella stuck in her shameful shearling-lined foot to push it out the rest of the way, a wondrous and unexpected noise met her ears.
The sound of four industrial washing machines and two industrial dryers, all churning in furious, metallic frenzy.
NOT ONLY THAT. EACH MACHINE bore a basket of laundry on top, claiming dibs, waiting to pounce at the end of the cycle. Ella’s eyes found the clock on the wall, just to make sure that she hadn’t somehow missed daylight savings time.
Nope. Six thirty-four.
She let the basket slide down to the concrete floor. Put her hands on her hips. “What the hell?” she wailed. “Who are you people?”
“Oh, hello,” said a male voice behind her, appallingly sunny. “You must be the new one.”
Ella turned so quickly, she kicked over the basket. Jogbra spilled out. Sweaty running shirt. Seven days’ worth of lace panties in various rainbow hues. (Patrick scorned boring underwear.) She bent down and scooped desperately. “Yes, I am. Four D. Moved in last weekend.”
A pair of legs strolled into view, clad in blue jeans and a battered pair of nylon Jesus sandals. “Geez, I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you. Let me—”
“No! I’ve got it.” Ella scooped the last article back in the basket. Tried to find something innocuous to go on top. Something without lace. Something that wasn’t hot pink. Something that didn’t smell. She straightened at last and looked up. “I just
