How to Practice

started thinking about getting our house in order when Tavia’s father died. Tavia, my friend from early childhood (and youth, and middle age, and these years on the downhill slalom), grew up in unit 24-S of the Georgetown 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 (fifteen 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 material, 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 other’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 exoticism 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 meditation 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 Nouveau transplanted to Nashville. Kent had had the seats of those chairs reupholstered 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 collection 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, turning sideways to move among them. When Tavia came home from Kentucky to visit, she slept at my house, as there was no longer an inch of space for her in 24-S.

“Can 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 in April of 2020, in the early days after his death, and we were sick with missing him. The dresser drawers had not yet been opened; the overburdened shelves in the highest reaches of the closets were undisturbed. Still, Tavia and Therese had already found more than thirty power strips. Always a director, Kent saw every room as a stage. Lighting was just one of his many forms of genius.

Tavia wanted to show me a painting of a Hindu deity riding a white bull, four blue arms reaching out in every direction, that Kent had left me in his will.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” I said, after careful study. I liked the painting, but either you have a place for that sort of thing or you don’t.

Kent’s will was remarkably specific: Tavia got the fourteen-inch All-Clad covered sauté pan, Therese got the extensive collection of light bulbs, Tavia got the blue wool blanket, Therese got the midsize dehumidifier. The list went on and on: art, artifacts, household supplies. Since neither Tavia nor Therese had the space for more than a few mementos, they decided to sell most of their inheritance and split the proceeds equally. I added the blue deity to the sale.

“Take something else, then,” Tavia said. “He’d want you to have something meaningful.”

In the end, I took a blue quartz egg held upright by a silver napkin ring. I took a case of Lance cheese crackers with peanut butter and a gross of Gin Gins ginger candy for the staff at the bookstore I co-own. I claimed six boxes of vegetable broth for myself.