16 THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021
PERSONAL HISTORY
HOW TO PRACTICE
Learning to let things go.
BYANN PATCHETT
ILLUSTRATION BY KARLOTTA FREIER
I
started thinking about getting our
house in order when Tavia’s father
died. Tavia, my friend from early child-
hood (and youth, and middle age, and
these years on the downhill slalom),
grew up in unit 24-S of the George-
town condominiums in Nashville. Her
father, Kent, had moved there in the
seventies, after his divorce, and stayed.
Over the years, we had borne witness
to every phase of his personal style:
Kent as sea captain (navy peacoat, beard,
pipe), Kent as the lost child of Studio
54 (purple), Kent as Gordon Gekko
(Armani suits, cufflinks, tie bar), Kent
as Jane Fonda (tracksuits, matching
trainers), Kent as urban cowboy (fif-
teen pairs of boots, custom-made), and
finally, his last iteration, which had, in
fact, underlain all previous iterations,
Kent as cosmic monk (loose cotton
shirts, cotton drawstring pants—he’d
put on weight).
Each new stage in his evolution
brought a new set of interests: new art,
new cooking utensils, new reading ma-
terial, new bathroom tile. Kent taught
drama at a public high school, and, on
his schoolteacher’s salary, in the years
before the Internet, he shopped the
world from home—mala prayer beads
carved in the shape of miniature human
skulls, an assortment of Buddhas to
mix in with his wooden statues of saints
(Padre Pio in his black cassock, as tall
as a five-year-old). He laminated the
receipts and letters of authenticity that
came with his purchases and filed them
away, along with handwritten prayers,
in zippered leather pouches.
I grew up in 24-S, in the same way
that Tavia grew up in my family’s house.
We knew the contents of each other’s
pantries and the efficacy of each oth-
er’s shampoos. And, though our house
was much larger (it was a house, after
all), the domain of the Cathcarts—
Kent and Tavia and Tavia’s older sister,
Therese—had a glamour and an exot-
icism that far exceeded anything most
Catholic schoolgirls had seen. Candles
were lit at all hours of the day. The
walk-in closet in Kent’s bedroom had
been converted into a shrine for med-
itation and prayer. A round, footed
machine that looked like a plate-size
U.F.O. burped out cascades of fog
from the kitchen counter. The dining-
room chairs were spring green, with
backs carved to mimic the signs of the
Paris Métro—a flourish of Art Nou-
veau transplanted to Nashville. Kent
had had the seats of those chairs reup-
holstered in hot-pink patent leather.
Tavia and I spent many happy hours
of childhood standing between the two
giant mirrors (eight by six feet, crowned
with gold-tipped pagodas) that faced
each other from either end of the tiny
living room. We watched ourselves as
we fluttered our arms up and down,
two swans in an infinity of swans.
After his daughters were grown and
gone, Kent amassed an enormous col-
lection of Tibetan singing bowls, which
crowded into what had once been
Therese’s room, each on its own riser,
each riser topped with a pouf made of
Indian silk. He played them daily, turn-
ing sideways to move among them.
When Tavia came home from Ken-
tucky to visit, she slept at my house, as
there was no longer an inch of space
for her in 24-S.
“
C
an you imagine what he could
have done if he’d had money?”
I said to her. We were standing beside
stacked cases of Gerolsteiner mineral
water in Kent’s galley kitchen. Despite
his chronic lack of space, Kent was a
disciple of bulk purchasing. This was
What I had didn’t surprise me half as much as how I felt about it. in April of 2020, in the early days after
