Page 470 - WhyAsInY
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Why (as in yaverbaum)
slower; their advantage was that they took hours), trying to read, end- lessly watching CNN, sighing, staring into space, and sometimes even weeping spontaneously. Seventeen years of marriage were, children aside, down the drain. I had to borrow $50,000 to turn my empty shell of an apartment into something resembling a home—and I had to do that in the face of a letter from Phyllis’s lawyer that set out a ridiculous set of demands and preceded them, memorably, with the line “We don’t want to put Harvey into a garret.” The implication that they believed that they had the power to put me into a garret but that, as an act of self- less charity, they had chosen not to was not lost on me. Thanks, I thought. The difference between the condition of Phyllis’s environment in Scars- dale and mine in New York City did not escape me either, although I guess that she would know that my modest apartment was at least a step up from a garret.
I was obviously depressed, and, if I needed any evidence of that condition and I didn’t have Dr. Kresch to ask, I could turn to the New York State Lottery, or at least my interaction with it, for guidance. Early on, I got in the habit of buying lottery tickets. To win? Absurd. The chances of winning the lottery were only marginally better if you bought a ticket than if you didn’t. Rather: to dream. The chances gave me the opportunity to fantasize as I walked to the office along the sidewalk that bordered Central Park on the south. They did not, however, give me the chance to win, not just because they were extraordinarily unlikely to be winners, but also because I never found out. I would throw them into a drawer and never check for results. How could I have possibly won? How could I possibly win at anything?
Loco Parentis
No, this section is not about my children; my relationship with them comes later. This section is about my folks.
Having made my apartment livable, I thought that it was time to reassure my parents, to let them know that I was okay. As was often the
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