A House in Connecticut (2004

At the Bottom of the Berkshires

LONNIE CARTER Falls Village is the second smallest town in the third smallest state in the Union. I found that I could start my life over again, reinvent myself. I think that was a quality that Sarah saw immediately and liked as well.

SARAH I have a house in Connecticut. My house was built in 1830, and it’s all made of chestnut. It’s a lovely colonial house. I bought it in 2004, just before my mother died in 2005. It’s sad that neither of my parents saw this house because it’s the house they would have wished for me my whole life. I’d been wanting a house of my own ever since I was a little girl. My uncle was an architect, and I learned how to do architectural drawings—how you draw a door, how you draw a window, how you do a wall. When I stayed home from school, if I had a cold or something, I’d always have a drawing board, and I used to design my dream house. I’d say, “The living room will be there, and there’ll be a studio there.” I went to visit my friend Laurie Simmons, who had a house up in the northwest corner of Connecticut at the bottom of the Berkshires—beautiful farm country. I woke up that morning and said, “I want to buy a house today.” Betsy Little, the realtor—a long-time friend of Laurie’s and my doctor, Elizabeth Beautyman—took us to see this house that she thought I would like. I remember when we came to it, Betsy drove past because the parking space was a little further down the street. And I said, “Why is it never a house like that one?” But it was that house. It was the house I’d been looking for my entire life. I had been looking for a house. I never ... I don’t own my loft—I rent it on Great Jones Street. I never had a lot of extra money, never had really any extra money. I just sort of did what I needed to do and raised my kids and got them through school. But I wanted a house for a really long time.

LAURIE SIMMONS Sarah woke up that day and said, “I’m in the mood to buy a house!” I think we looked at four or five that day. My little daughter Grace, who was twelve, was with us. Sarah said that Grace was one of the reasons she bought that house, because Grace really encouraged her and told her that it was a good house and that the spaces were good. She cried when she got the house. She cried at the closing. She was so emotional about this house. I felt like it was the first thing she ever had outside her work that was totally, utterly 100% hers.

KATE LINKER I said, “God, Sarah—I heard you found a house and Laurie said it’s really beautiful.” Sarah said to me, “It is not beautiful. It is exquisite.”

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The house—not beautiful, exquisite.

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