Page 659 - WhyAsInY
P. 659

Chapter Thirty-Three
Finals
MAY 2003 – SEPTEMBER 14, 2014, ET SEQ. In which our author gets back to living—and so do you.
So, how did a simple spring evening in Manhattan change our lives? Easily, at least for Kathy: We had gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in many years and had dined out with Rebecca
and Marcel. We were walking to the parking garage, enjoying a pleasant breeze and the buzz of the City when Kathy, first quiet and apparently contemplative for a while, turned to me with one of the many seemingly out-of-the-blue ideas that she has come up with over the years and said, simply, “Let’s sell Church Lane South and get an apartment near our offices and Lincoln Center.”
So we did. All five of the children had now graduated from college (David, the youngest, had graduated from Carleton in June 2002), and our once-clamorous home in Scarsdale had fallen quiet (if you don’t count the background noise that constantly emanated from “my” TV or stereo). We were both enduring our commutes only to return to an empty house. As I noted earlier, Kathy’s office had moved to 555 West 57th Street, near 11th Avenue (to which she endured years of grueling driving, sometimes spending as much as three hours per day in her car, with her only solace being the ability that heavy traffic gave her to listen to Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Don Carlo, and many other classics and
 • 641 •




























































































   657   658   659   660   661