But after three years in a French school I was tired of girls and uniforms and Catholic school. Jeanie’s letters were filled with the assassination of President Kennedy, civil rights marches, and guys with guitars in Washington Square. She was listening to Joan Baez and going to coffee houses. I wanted to go to a real high school, have a boyfriend, and learn to drive a car. I had visions of sock hops and proms and flirting in the hallway.My plan was to finish high school in New York, but my mother had different ideas. In one of her more manic phases she sold the house Dad had built in Wilton and bought a different one, on the water, in the next town. “It’s a surprise,” she said when she presented my father with her fait accompli, “you’ll love it.” I think Dad hated the house on sight, but he was too polite to say so. He accepted it. What else could he do? My grandmother, the impresario, had paid for the land on which my father’s handmade house stood, and the title was in my mother’s name.Our new house was white, with bay windows and an attached garage on a street of proper houses.
