We were both mostly done with our tea. I didn’t want to ask Jamie just then about sleeping over—I’d save that for our next meeting. But almost on a whim, I did ask her one more question: in selling real estate in the area, had she found any neighborhoods where people actually did have a “central green space” or any kind of property in common? To my surprise, she not only said that she had, but offered to take me there.
And that was how, minutes later, I found myself driving behind Jamie’s SUV, climbing a long, steep incline toward the local reservoir when suddenly Jamie took a sharp turn to the right into what looked like a driveway but was actually a side street. Moments later, I was parked behind her on a narrow road among a cluster of nearly a dozen houses. I’d lived in this general area much of my life, and never knew that little neighborhood was there.
“Isn’t this cool? Isn’t this great!” she gushed. The homes—Tudors, Colonials, and others built in the 1910s and ’20s—sat on a hillside, bordering a public park. But the distinguishing feature, just as Jamie had said, was that this mini- neighborhood was indeed built around a central grassy area, which, she explained, all the neighbors owned. The common ownership was written into their property deeds—something Jamie knew about because she had recently been the listing agent for the sale of two of the houses.
“As far as I can tell,” she said, “hardly anyone actually uses the common grassy area, but it could be wonderful.”
JAMIE had gotten me wondering if I could find other examples of individual homeowners sharing property, and the ways in which they might gather together and make use of their common space. Later, a little research showed that, while it’s not common, it does exist.
• “I’m lucky to live in Shore Acres,” Dan Postotnik, a resident of that mixed- income Cleveland neighborhood on the shore of Lake Erie, wrote me. The 168 Shore Acres homeowners share two park properties, which are overseen and maintained by their neighborhood association. One of the parks, the size of a city lot, is used primarily as a playground. Neighborhood volunteers installed swings and slides, benches, and “a giant barbecue big enough for the whole neighborhood to celebrate together on the Fourth of July,” according to association president Meg Doerr. The other property, covering three lots, had been used as a tennis court until recently when residents decided to convert it into another park with a large picnic shelter and community gardens. Residents pay just $50 annually to cover taxes and insurance on the two properties. Volunteers clean up the parks in spring and fall, removing tree branches and mulching around the playground.The two shared parks are the center of neighborhood life, says Doerr. Some neighbors have held their weddings there, and recently many gathered in the park with one of Shore Acre’s most senior residents to celebrate his ninety-first birthday. The association is considering buying an empty lot on the opposite end of the neighborhood to create yet a third park, and also buying a vacant home to rent out to artists for living and studio space—a way to encourage arts in the neighborhood. “It takes effort and commitment to nurture and maintain such a community,” notes Postotnik, “but we prove it can be done, despite the broad changes in the society around us.”
• In the historic Center Square-Hudson Park neighborhood of Albany, New York, owners of six adjoining brick row houses have traded a bit of privacy for a lot of beautiful gardening. “Our tiny backyards were really shaded from the stockade fences between each unit,” recalls one of the owners, Kathryn Sikule. “With the shade from the fences, you really couldn’t grow too much.” Beginning in 2006, Sikule and some of her neighbors came up with the idea of taking down the fences and combining their gardens.Over time, more neighbors agreed to take down their fences or trellises and merge gardens. The result was “a beautiful, unique garden that has brought us all together as a community,” says Sikule. Stone foot paths set among the joint garden allow each resident access to the full landscaped space, and an uninterrupted view of a sunny, garden scene filled with plants, shrubs, and annual flowers. Already, some of the original neighbors have moved away but the new owners have accepted the joint garden, says Sikule. In an article about the garden, writer Jane Gottlieb observed, “For about the same amount of work, each [owner] gets five times the yard and a kinship that gates and posts would never have allowed.”
• In Southern California, residents of Avondale, a mixed-income retirement community in the town of Palm Desert, worked together to create a dog park. According to eleven-year resident Cheryle Clark, the park quickly “has become a gathering spot not only for the dogs, but their owners, too.” One resident, William Gazecki, eyeing an unused, triangular-shaped lot near the gated community’s golf course—unsuitable for a home because of traffic on one side and a wall on the other—donated enough money for fencing and labor. Another resident covered the costs for plantings, and others held a raffle to raise funds for maintenance. Now, says Cheryle Clark, twenty to forty dogs use the park regularly, often half a dozen at a time. “Absolutely,” she says, “it creates a community feel. And if someone is new and they have a dog, they can bring it to the park and other people immediately meet them.” Clark explained another benefit: “We have a lot of older people here, and now with the park—at least with the dog owners—we pretty much see each other daily. One morning, some of the dog owners felt one of the older people didn’t look so well. They checked him out and then called 911. That happened directly because they gathered together at the dog park.”
• Summers are not overly long in western New York State, but in East Irondequoit, a Rochester suburb, seven families who collectively own an in-ground pool enjoy the season by swimming and socializing with neighbors. As the neighborhood developed in the 1960s, explains current resident Phil Townsend, homeowners purchased an available property, set up a not- for-profit corporation, and built the pool. The result has been, says Townsend, “a neighborhood jewel.”
Among the seven families, Townsend estimates about twenty-five adults and children use the pool. “It’s been the key to the neighborhood being the type of place where everyone knows and watches out for each other,” he says. “And you don’t just know who the neighbors are; you know each other very well because you sit at the pool and chat: ‘Gee, how’s your mom doing in the hospital? How’s your daughter doing at college?’ That sort of thing.”
To keep up the pool, each family pays about $500 to $600 annually to cover taxes, chemicals, and other maintenance. Families share maintenance chores. Only rarely, says Townsend, does anyone fail to do their jobs or to follow the pool rules. “It’s like having your own pool, and the great thing is you can use it anytime but if you want to go out of town you don’t have to worry about it.”
JAMIE and I met a third time a week later on a Monday afternoon at her home. Max and Lily were at school. As before, she had prepared tea and cookies.
Jamie asked if I would like to go up to her studio; she had some new paintings to show me. I decided that while we were upstairs, that would be the time to ask about sleeping over.
In her studio, Jamie showed me a canvas of two zebras standing on an African plain. The animals’ necks were intertwined in a romantic way that made their stripes mesh. There was a time not so long ago—right after Marie and I had separated—when it would have pained me just to see that painting—but now I could enjoy it.
What had changed was that I’d recently started seeing someone: a lovely woman named Marla. Our families had known each other—her daughter and my daughters were close in age—and she, too, had recently divorced. Marla was bright, attractive, and had a good job in education. I made a mental note to ask Jamie later if I could buy the zebra painting—I knew she occasionally offered her work for sale, and it would make a nice gift for Marla.
Many other canvasses leaned against the walls. I wanted to ask Jamie again about the women without faces—she’d said earlier the reason was to depict women in general rather than any woman in particular. But I was still curious about a busy, accomplished woman like Jamie going halfway
around the world to paint women working and then make their faces blank—just smudges, really.
“I think it also has to do with just trying to represent the simplicity of native life,” she began, in answer to my renewed question. “I go to these places to try to learn from these women, to learn about the simplicity of their lives. I live a complicated life, I know, but I seek a simple one. I paint people who I strive to be like.”
Jamie did lead a complicated life. Her face and name were on hundreds of FOR SALE signs all over town, and each time I’d come to her home, I’d watch her juggle business calls, e- mails, and faxes, and a slew of other projects: soliciting publishers for her photography book, now running the neighborhood association, starting yet another real estate company with her mother, organizing—as she’d recently told me—her fifteenth reunion for Harvard Business School, plus constantly creating home educational projects—like the book of First Ladies—for Max and Lily. And just that day she’d said she was beginning to plan a trip to Bhutan.
“So, have you had much luck simplifying things?” I asked.
“Well, right now,” she said, “if you really want to know, I’m sort of going through a crisis.”
That sounded like the prelude to Deb O’Dell’s “meltdown” story in the car. I hoped Jamie wasn’t going in the same direction.
“I’m trying to get rid of unessential things, of the noise in my life,” she explained. “Trying to see what I want to do next.”
I asked if her husband was supportive of her efforts.
“Not really,” she said, and then paused.
“To be honest,” she continued. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I want to stay married.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Then Jamie revealed that the reason she’d been late to our meeting the previous week at Starbucks was because she had decided that day to proceed with a divorce. I remembered how tired she’d looked when she came in.
I asked how she was doing.
She was sleep-deprived, she said, and overwhelmed taking care of the kids. She was trying to exercise a lot.
“I hope you won’t mind me asking,” I said, “but are there any weapons in the house?”
In fact, I found it difficult to imagine either Jamie or her husband owning a gun, but the Willses’ shootings were still very much on my mind, and so my question to Jamie was serious.
“I’m amused by the question, almost,” she said, smiling. “Our home is a weapons- free zone!”
I told Jamie she could call me at any hour of the day or night, or just come over if for any reason she didn’t feel safe.
We talked more that afternoon about painting and photography and about neighborhoods in general, but I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping over. Her family was in crisis, and this was no time for an overnight guest.
Before I left that day, Jamie excused herself—she needed to get something from the basement. I waited in the kitchen, but then a moment later heard her shriek a string of profanities.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I shouted in response.
“There’s water all over this floor!” she yelled, and then cursed again.
I went down to take a look. There were puddles on the basement floor, but they weren’t “all over,” they were just in spots. There must have been a leak after a heavy rain the previous night. Jamie, I supposed, was understandably a bit fragile from the weighty decision she’d made, from lack of sleep, and from anxiety over the steep road ahead.
6
The Woman in the Castle
PATTI DiNitto’s connecting flight from Chicago arrived in Rochester at 9:20 p.m., nearly an hour late due to bad weather in the West. She’d called earlier to let me know she’d be delayed, and also to say that her older daughter, Caitlin, eleven, would be sleeping at home that night.
Patti was one of the last passengers off the plane. As she walked from the arrival gate down the long corridor toward the terminal, I spotted her easily: a petite woman—5 foot 3 and slender—in jeans and black leather jacket. She moved slowly but steadily, holding a purse and pulling a small suitcase behind her.
We hugged in a friendly way. I offered to carry her bag, but she declined.
Beneath the leather jacket, she wore several layers. “I’m cold unless it’s eighty degrees,” she said. It wasn’t eighty degrees. It was February in Rochester—a summer and fall had gone by since my last sleepover—and it hadn’t been much above twenty degrees all week. After three days in California, the contrast must have been difficult for her. In my car, I turned the heat up all the way and ran the blower on high, then asked where she’d like to go for dinner. “I don’t want to make any decisions,” she said. She explained she was tired, although not from the medical procedures, just from traveling.
“Your car smells like dog,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to get you an air freshener.”
There was nothing wrong with Patti’s sense of smell, nor her sense of humor. In fact, the car did smell like dog; I’d had Champ in there the other day when I took him to a park.
I drove to a strip mall five minutes from Sandringham Road. Patti waited in the car with the engine running while I went to see which restaurants were open. It was five minutes to ten; everything was closed except Applebee’s.
The restaurant (“America’s Favorite Neighbor,” as it calls itself) had opened just a few weeks earlier; this was my first visit. A young hostess in a T-shirt that read APPLEBEE’S: YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD HEADQUARTERS showed us to a booth. A waitress wearing a HI, NEIGHBOR! button brought us menus and ice water. Then, over the din of a sports show from a wall-mounted TV, Patti told me about her trip to the San Francisco Medical Center, where she was a participant in the trial of an experimental breast cancer vaccine.
Two years ago, as a radiologist specializing in mammography, Patti, then thirty- nine, had diagnosed her own breast cancer. “I had had a mammogram at thirty- five,” she told me. “The recommendation at the time was for the next one at forty, but it was obvious something was wrong. I did a mammogram, then had a biopsy.”
The timing was especially difficult: ten months before, Patti’s husband had moved out, leaving her with two girls in a four-bedroom, 4,500-square-foot home on Sandringham Road.
Patti had a soft, high-pitched voice; over the TV, it was especially difficult to hear her.
How Patti managed to get herself into the cancer vaccine trial in San Francisco was all about determination. Researching on the Internet, she told me, she discovered Dendreon, a biotechnology firm based in Seattle developing targeted therapies for cancer. The company was about to begin testing a vaccine aimed at Patti’s type of breast cancer, known as HER-2/neu. Chemotherapy and radiation had put her cancer in remission; the vaccine, if it worked, might keep it that way.
But the company discouraged Patti from traveling to California, where the drug trial was being conducted. Participants, the doctors pointed out, would have to come to San Francisco monthly for a year, first for treatments and then for follow-ups, and the costs of travel and lodging would not be reimbursed. Yet Patti flew out anyway to meet with the principal researcher. She insisted she’d be a good candidate and promised if she were allowed into the study—there was just one opening left—that she would pay her own way.
Once a month for the past six months, Patti had flown to San Francisco for treatments. The first round of measurements didn’t show any positive results, but Patti said it was still too early to know. She hoped to have some good news after her trip the next month.
While in San Francisco, Patti stayed with the sister of a Rochester businessman named Scott whom Patti had been dating for about a year. For Patti, her new friendship with Scott’s sister, and the ability to have a home away from home while receiving treatments, had been two good aspects of what otherwise was a tiring monthly ordeal. The first I heard that this arrangement was in jeopardy had come in a phone call from Patti about two weeks earlier, at around 10:30 at night.
“I
’m kinda bummed,” she said in her birdlike voice.
I was concerned. In the weeks since my first meeting with her, as I was doing some background interviews, Patti seldom called me, and never so late in the evening.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“News from California okay?” I thought maybe she had received some bad news about the vaccine trial.
“Yeah, as much as they can tell,” she said. “It’s sort of early to know how it’s doing.”
“So what’s got you so bummed?”
“My boyfriend,” she said, pausing. “It kinda didn’t work out, I guess.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “When did this happen?”
“It’s been a tough week,” she said. “Men are such . . .” And then her voice trailed off.
Not only was Patti crushed by the breakup with Scott, but she was afraid she’d no longer be able to stay in San Francisco with his sister, and she had six more trips coming up. As it turned out, however, Scott’s sister was glad to continue the friendship. So that night at Applebee’s, Patti told me she stayed with Scott’s sister the previous two nights. “We had a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s like a pajama party.”
“Good friends are hard to come by,” she added.
I asked if while she was away she had heard from Scott. There was a pause, and then she said, “No,” and she didn’t say anything more.
I was overcome with all Patti had suffered in the last couple of years: divorce, cancer, the leave of absence from her job, then the boyfriend.
“You’ve had to deal with a lot of losses,” I said.
In The Neighborhood Page 12