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Music occupied as important a place in our apartment experience as food did. When I first moved to the City, music that we played had been impressed on vinyl 331/3-rpm LP records, which, you will recall, I had brought with me from Farragut Road. But, if you recall that, you’ll also remember that the music that I brought with me was “classical,” by which I don’t mean “classic rock.” As you could surmise, that was not exactly what the kids wanted to hear, and, to tell the truth, classical music was not sufficient for me either. The location of 45 West 60th was perfectly suited to my goal of remedying the situation. Only six blocks to the north was Tower Records (talk about an anachronistic name, but it wasn’t anachronistic in 1986). At first, when the kids came to visit, we would make a “Tower run,” during which each of them could pick out one or two LPs. You can well imagine that, with an eight-year spread from Danny to Rachel and a three-and-one-half-year spread between Danny and Peter (you can figure out the other one), there was a rather broad range of tastes to be catered to (and here I’m not accounting for the gap to the quadragenarian). I don’t precisely recall any of the boys’ selections, but Cindi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is unfor- gettable, as was Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” which I explained to Rachel meant “resembling a variant.” (No, not really, but I actually called it “Like a Version.”) When CDs swept the market, Tower Records did not change its name, but you can be sure that the runs continued, in fact multiplied. (Tower Records’s retail operation has now gone the way of Tower Buggy Whips.)
The apartment was not all spontaneity, food, and music (and TV and Marx Brothers movies, of course). There were many moments, usu- ally one-on-one, where serious interactions occurred.
Of the three children, Rachel, by far the youngest, outwardly took the divorce the hardest. She, like all children of divorce, was confused and upset with the circumstances and maintained reconciliation hopes for years. She, also like all children of divorce, ultimately learned to keep the lives of her parents totally separate, to be careful to protect them, and to avoid carrying information back and forth. That was not
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