Starter House
'This is a starter house,’ Janet was fond of saying.
I’d been living at 3629 Tilden Street, New Haven for over a month now. Three months, give or take a week or so, from the day I saw the People magazine photograph of Michael with his new girlfriend—lovers arm-in-arm, his ear newly double-pierced with a tiny gold hoop and diamond stud. It was one of the side photos on that week’s cover, and something of the vaguely familiar must have caught my eye as I waited in line at the register in the General Store.
The cover story was on The New Glamour Couples, or something similarly stupid. I could only furtively glance at it enthroned there on the counter’s magazine rack for the few minutes I had to wait while the man in front of me paid up. I couldn’t just buy the thing, people around here knew we used to be together; it would be too absurd to have it in my possession anyhow, to be carrying it around. But no matter, that image had seared itself into my consciousness. Even when I closed my eyes, I saw it in front of me.
It wasn’t the fact that he was with someone else; I had no desire to keep tabs on him. I didn’t care if his dates were especially pretty either; I had taken myself out of that game for the time being. But this person he was with . . . I disapproved of her. The latest starlet in an oversized fur jacket. Malnourished by reason of vanity rather than poverty; breasts on display, of course; and all features in sync—she was as finely tuned as modern science and ambition could make her. And so very much in love. I didn’t know which was worse: that I couldn’t swallow his bad taste, confirming my worst suspicions about men; or that he would screw around with someone who promoted everything I fought against. I had to wonder, ‘Michael, do you ever think of me? Do you ever think at all?’
I thought of him, thought he cared; he never cared. I was a mistake. An amateur’s mistake. But he’d learned his lesson; he only dealt with professionals now. Her seeming success turned the knife deep in the pit of my self-esteem. Damn them; damn them both to hell. Did his people eventually tell him, you’re a big star now, you can move up to the top of the line. You can be morally careless. You no longer have to be yourself. You can afford not to care.
I paid for my things and drove home, ashamed for him, my face slammed to and held against the ground by her high-heeled foot, pinioned, choking on the ashes. I had to free myself. I had to begin living. Finally, finally, I cut the asset cord. Got rid of the money. Gave up my stock certificates, mutual funds—contacted my broker and cashed them out. Kept a small sum and donated the remainder of my bank balance to the local animal shelter and the ASPCA. I made a lot of good people very happy. Sadder and wiser, I bundled up a good many of my possessions and donated them to the Salvation Army; other stuff I shipped home to my parents. I paid off the remainder of my lease and moved out. I visited Maureen and Gary, and Maureen and I, the two sisters, stood in the garden, the leaves that formed a canopy over us twisting their backs outwards in the hope of rain, and said a silent prayer in memory of our blighted dreams, looking up into the cloud-ladened sky.
Thus self-purified and set free, the clouds temporarily parted and I propelled myself, phoenix-like, up into the resultant sun shaft, but I had no idea where I was going or how long I could stay aloft. Determined to live on only what I myself could earn, I applied to Yale University for a research/administrative position and looked for a place to live in New Haven along a bus route. Time to get real. But real was not very palatable. I’d been a bit overzealous in giving away my money. Nothing materialized on the job front, and one could not generally claim unemployment for being an out-of-favor girlfriend. With scant references, no income, and bills still coming in from the past, I soon discovered I would not be able to afford the jacked-up rent on an apartment of my own, not even a marginally respectable studio near campus. What remained of my savings drained rapidly through my unwilling fingers, and I realized the only solution was to roost humiliatingly but mercifully out of sight on the lowest rung until I could catch my breath—in other words, rent a room—rent a room in a group house like a kid just out of college—rent a room and take whatever assignments the temp agency would give me.
* * *
Poverty causes you to think and respond differently than you might under more benign conditions. This gradually sets you apart, isolates you, and hostility toward the smug well-off swells to fill all voids. They’re no better, yet they have everything and you have nothing. Money handed to them, incomes finagled out of the masses or earned through mercantile matrimony. They think they deserve it. You’d like to wipe that self-satisfied expression right off their faces. During the first several weeks of my residency at 3629 Tilden, during the time I was only sporadically temping, money occupied my mind. It was all I could think about because I no longer had any. I lived in a state of anxiety, savings gone, scrabbling about just to cover rent, in exactly the type of territory I had tagged along with Michael to avoid.
I hid the real level of my destitution, too ashamed to admit I was so incompetent I couldn’t provide better for myself, evidently lacking something essential, a nonstarter. I spent most of my time when not working in my barely furnished bedroom, unsociable, using my winter coat for a blanket as the season turned, watching the small black and white television set I’d nicked off the curb down the street before the refuse truck came by. It only picked up two channels. The clothes I had kept from better days hung in the closet in conspicuous incongruity: pure cotton, pure silk.
That room was a crucible, in those dark days, from which I would occasionally emerge, blinking at the light of the regular world. I spent many hours there trying to work out in my mind what exactly it was about myself that had landed me in the position I was in. I walked to my occasional jobs, sometimes in the rain, ruining my good shoes. If something broke or wore out, that was it. I lived on apples, peanut butter, store-brand bread, and sardines; skipping dinner once or twice a week, going to sleep early. What else was there to do? Everything cost money. I began to surreptitiously snitch little bites of food from the others in the house, breaking into their caches in the refrigerator or cupboard. Either I was good at this, a natural thief, or they had the tact not to say anything, though I thought not; I thought they thought I was weird and were sorry I’d moved in. Well, screw them. Always hungry, the driving force rapidly became volume over taste. You’ll eat anything if hungry enough, not the particular self-discovery I was looking to make. But I would’ve starved before I retreated back home, with no hope of revival, or asked any of my old acquaintances for help.
After many miserable weeks and several false starts, I finally landed a job at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, with the Latin American Collection, entering the catalog into a new database, punching in the bibliographic information. Pretty simple. Pretty boring. And the salary was much lower than I had anticipated for, after all, a college graduate—not enough to get me out on my own, but it was steady and I got benefits.
I steadied myself and began to develop a routine. I raised my gaze to eye level. I voluntarily initiated conversations with people at work and in the house. I bought a new lipstick, a flattering shade, and applied it repeatedly in the privacy of my bedroom, looking at myself in the mirror, turning my head back and forth. I bought myself a fat box of tissues, a luxury for one grown used to pilfering toilet paper out of public lavatories, placing the blossom-printed box just so on the dresser. I began to watch the nightly news with the others downstairs, eating supper, my plate perched on my lap. I was able to pay off my past; I slowly built a life. Not much, but all my own. As I lifted my head off the ground, I gradually came to know the other women in that starter house, each with her own need for revival, each with her own heavy baggage that needed to be put down first.
Image: All I could think about. Source: U.S. government currency, Public domain.