Tamsin

Four

Probably it was getting the visas that made it real. You need a visa to go to England if you’re staying longer than six months, and Sally made a big point of us making sure we got them right away, because we were going to be residents, not just tourists. “We’ll still be there when they’ve all gone home,” was what she said, and my stomach turned right over and froze solid, because I could see it. The sky getting darker and darker, and everybody but us gone home.

Or maybe it was Mister Cat’s red label finally arriving. Sally was going to handle all the quarantine stuff, but I told her I’d do it. I didn’t want to, but he was my cat. So I wrote off to England, to MAFF (that’s the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), and they sent me an import license application to fill out, and another thing for Customs, and a whole long list of specially approved kennels and vets and what they call “carrying agents”—people who could pick up Mister Cat at Heathrow Airport and take him to wherever he was going to spend the next six miserable months. Meena says she had to do the same thing when her family came to England, and all she had was a white mouse named Karthik. If I’m spelling it right.

So then I wrote to every one of the kennels in Dorset, and they all sent me their fancy brochures with color pictures of where they kept their animals, and actual menus of what they fed them, and how the runs and cages were heated, and what days the vet would come for checkups, and what days they did worming and grooming and all. (I crossed out that last part, because you don’t groom Mister Cat—you could lose an arm trying. He does that himself.)

Evan wanted to help me pick a place, but I wasn’t talking to Evan then. I chose one myself, called Goshawk Farm Cattery, because they said you could come and visit anytime without calling ahead, and Sally said not to worry about the cost, because she was feeling guilty, which was fine with me. I picked a carrying agent myself, too, and I hunted all over to find the right kind of travel cage, with enough ventilation and two water bottles. And I filled everything out and sent it off, and after a long time MAFF sent back what’s called a “boarding document” and a red label to stick on the cage. When I put it on and just stood there looking at the big number and the small print—I don’t know, maybe that was it. When I knew we were really going.

No, the piano, I think the piano’s what finally did it. Because everywhere we’ve lived, everything’s always been centered around Sally’s piano. Always. First you figure exactly where the piano wants to be, then you worry about how you get into the bathroom. Everything took second place to the piano being happy, I can’t remember when I didn’t know that. And the day I got home and the piano was gone, shipped out, out the window, the way it came in, it felt like a steam shovel had crashed in and scooped out our apartment—like a lot more had vanished than just the piano. And I knew that piano was on its way to some English farm somewhere, and I edged around the space where it had been and got to my room and started packing for real. Because we always followed my mother’s piano, that’s one thing I understood.

And after that the boxes started going, all the stuff Sally, Louise and Cleon had been taping up, day by day, faster and faster, like it was all getting sucked out through the hole the piano had left. I guess it was worse because I’d put such a lot of effort into not noticing what was being packed. I got up one morning and every book in the house had disappeared in the night, along with most of the towels and bedsheets. Or I came home late another time, and there were three chairs left, and no silverware. My footsteps actually echoed in the living room, because all the paintings by Sally’s friends were gone, and the big rug Grandma Paula gave her and Norris when they got married. Dinner was Sally and Evan and me at the kitchen table, eating Italian takeout with plastic knives and forks. Then the table went, and we sat on the floor to eat, because the last chairs were gone too. I remember the weather was really hot that summer, but that poor scooped-out apartment just kept getting colder and colder.

But Sally loved it. The emptier the place got, the brighter and livelier she got. She said it reminded her of how things looked when we moved in, and she kept telling me, “Jenny, it’s an adventure. Everybody needs to start from scratch once in a while. Just to scrap all your security, all the things you’re sure of, and step right off the cliff. Look, here we are, right now, falling through space, and all we’ve got to trust is each other and Evan. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Wild,” I said. “Mister Cat can’t sleep at night because of all the noise, and he’s going bananas because his dish and his box aren’t in the same place two days in a row. And he hates that travel cage, I can’t get him to go in—he just braces his legs and pees on it. He knows what it is.”

Sally looked straight at me. She said, “Well, that’s tough. He’ll survive just fine. We’ll all survive.” She’d never have said it like that once, that was Evan, no, that was her with Evan. It was really confusing, watching my mother leaving me, flowing into some other shape, the way they do it in movies. Sometimes, watching her, I felt like I was the only person in the world who couldn’t move, couldn’t change shape. Everywhere I looked, everything was being dragged away and not one damn thing put back. I’d have peed on my travel cage, too, if I could have gotten hold of it.

I remember Marta and I were in Central Park one afternoon, watching people dancing to a salsa band, and both of us were sort of semi-lifted on some Hawaiian she’d found in her brother Paco’s coat pocket. It was a hot, clear, sunny day, with little kids and their dogs chasing each other around, and Frisbees slicing overhead, and people on rollerblades zipping past you like bullets everywhere you looked. I was saying, “Something’s going to happen. I don’t know what, but something.”

Marta shook her head. She can look really wise when she’s high, because her face is so small and her eyes get so big and black. She said, “I’ll write every week. I promise. Jake, too.”

“I’m scared about going to school there,” I said. “It’s just the pits, I’ve been reading about it. They beat up everybody who isn’t English. I’m going to get killed.”

Marta laughed. “Come on, people think like that about this country. Just wear your grungy leather jacket, they’ll think you’re a big gangster.” She did a kind of Benny Hill English voice. “Ooo, ooo, nono, I don’t wanna mess with her, she’s from Noo Yahk.” She got to giggling then, and couldn’t stop, so that got me doing it, and we just sat there in the sun, looking at each other and giggling. The salsa band quit, and a couple of skinny tattooed guys started juggling torches and moonwalking at the same time. I said, “I’m really scared, Marta. I really am.”

“It’ll be okay,” Marta said. She put her arm around me, which was awkward because of her being smaller than me, and we sort of snuggled, just for a little bit. It didn’t exactly help, but it was nice.

And then it was three weeks to go, and then two weeks, and then like that, two days. I couldn’t believe it. Sally’s students were giving all kinds of good-bye parties for her and Evan, and she asked me to come with them every time, but I never did. Norris and his girlfriend Suzanne took me out to a fancy dinner at a French place on the East Side, and Norris gave me a genuine Burberry secret-agent trench coat, waterproof, for wearing in England. It was too big, but Norris said I’d grow into it. I actually have.

Jake and Marta wanted to give me a farewell party of my own, which was when I realized that I didn’t want one. I just wanted to do exactly what we always did, so we settled for picking up gyros at the Greek’s on Amsterdam, and then just walking, going absolutely nowhere, eating and talking like nothing was different, just the three of us messing along the same as always on one more summer night, like being inside some kind of warm, sweet, sticky pastry. When we got to my place, we just stood there under the awning and looked at each other. They didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to go upstairs, and everybody knew everything, and there wasn’t anything to say. So finally Marta just said, “You take care, vata,” and she hugged me, and Jake hugged me, too. He was crying a little. He said, “Man, when you’ve only got a couple of real friends…” and I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know already, get out of here, Walkowitz, go on.” So then they left.

Mister Cat was home. I turned on all the lights, and we sat on a box by the window in my room. There were people working outside, tearing up West Eighty-third, same as they’d been doing for the last couple of years, day and night, except Sundays. They’re probably still at it. I listened to the jackhammers, and I thought about how noisy New York is all the time, everywhere, and how you get so used to it you never even notice. Maybe I was so used to it I wouldn’t be able to breathe someplace quiet, the way I already felt I couldn’t breathe in this empty apartment. I’d probably just die of quiet, over there on some farm in Dorset, and nobody’d ever figure out why. I started to cry myself, thinking about it. It felt great, but Mister Cat got annoyed at me sniffling and honking into his fur, so I quit, and we just sat there at the window together until Sally and Evan got home.

The whole trip to London is one miserable blur, and I don’t want to write much about it. Evan tried to put Mister Cat in his travel cage while I was still asleep, but he quit while he still had everything he was born with. So I had to get up way early and spend an hour talking Mister Cat off the ceiling and into my lap, and then finally into that little tiny box. He gave me a look, just one long yellow look, and then he walked in by himself and lay down facing the back, facing away from me. He was so mad at me. I can get depressed right over again when I think about that time, even now.

It was four in the morning, something like that, and I was so out of it I never actually got to say good-bye to anything. Maybe that’s just as well, but I don’t know. I remember the limo sliding up to the curb like a submarine, and a couple of street people staring at Sally and me crawling into the back with suitcases stacked around us, because the trunk was so full. Evan got up front with the driver, and Sally put her arm around me. I had Mister Cat on my lap, and every now and then I’d bend down and whisper to him, “It’s all right, I’m here, it’ll be okay.” I could see his eyes in the darkness, but he wouldn’t talk to me.

And that was all, that’s how we left New York. Nobody to wave to, no tears—no feelings even, exactly. Four in the morning, and it’s all just gone, nothing left to take with you except suitcases.

I’d been on a plane one time before, when Norris was doing something with the San Francisco Opera, but I don’t remember any of the details because I was five years old, maybe six. They gave me a coloring book on the plane, and I loved the food in the little plastic trays. Not a lot of training for flying across the ocean to your wild new life, especially when you have to hand your cat over at the ticket counter like a damn garment bag. I saw other cats and one dog in cages like his, and that helped a little, because I knew at least he’d have some company in the baggage compartment. All the same, when I held the cage up for the last time and looked at him through the mesh, and he stared back at me and let out one single ice-cold miaow, it just went right through me, it was really awful. I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Sally put her arm on my shoulder, and it was all I could do not to slap it away.

The clerk put the cage on the conveyor belt. It bumped slowly away, with suitcases and packages piling up behind it until I couldn’t see it anymore. The clerk tried to be nice. He said, “Your kitty’ll be fine, honey. They’ll take him off the belt and put him in a special safe place with all the other animals. Everything but the in-flight movie.” He winked at Sally and Evan over my head. I can still see it, that fucking stupid wink.

The only thing I really remember about the flight is taking off, because we flew in a long circle over the city, and I’m still sure I saw old messed-up Eighty-third Street, even though I probably couldn’t have. But I know I saw the Park, I know that much, so for just one second it was all right down there under us—Jake and Marta, and William Jay Gaynor Junior High School, and the crystals-and-auras place on our corner, and the tiny Jamaican market on Amsterdam where Sally used to buy mangoes and papayas, and I’d get my reggae tapes. The woman in the Navy pea jacket, walking up and down Eighty-first all day, jerking her thumb at the cabs, yelling at them, trying to get one of them to stop and take her out of here. The big blind guy with the nose rings, who liked to scare the people having their dinner outside the Columbus Cafe, and the two old men I’ve seen on Broadway all my life, shuffling along arm in arm, yelling at each other. The black woman who runs the newsstand, who saved piano magazines for Sally, and kept telling me how I should do my hair. And the Siamese Hussy, wondering and wondering where Mister Cat could have gone. All down there, my life under our wings.

And after that it was all clouds, all the way to London. Nothing to see, no ocean, no sky, about as romantic as the IRT. I couldn’t sleep, but I wasn’t exactly awake either—I got one of those tiny pillows and crammed it up against the window and leaned my head on it, trying to get halfway comfortable. I tried to let my mind just float off, like it does in class half the time, but it kept seeing Mister Cat in the baggage compartment, lonely and crowded and being jolted around, not knowing what was happening to him, scared for the first time since he was a kitten and those boys were dangling him off the roof. I couldn’t stand to think of Mister Cat being scared, but I couldn’t think about anything else.

Meena says I have to describe landing at Heathrow, but it’s hard to remember what’s really that first miserable gray evening, and what’s from other times we’ve been there. Tunnel after echoey, endless tunnel, and the three of us pushing four luggage carts. Sally nudging me every minute, pointing to the people going through Customs with us, whispering, “Jenny, look at them, those are real monks, from Tibet!” and “Jenny, look, see what that lady’s wearing, that’s called a sari!” Evan helping a tall old black man in red and yellow robes and a red hat like a flowerpot to carry his duffel bag… like I said, things blur. And I didn’t want to look, or notice, or remember anything—not then.

We didn’t have any trouble at Customs, except for having to stand in line forever, and all that time Sally and Evan were waving to Evan’s sons, Tony and Julian, who were waving back from behind a big high window, along with a red-haired woman, Evan’s sister Charlotte, whom they’d been living with while he was gone. Everybody in the world was waving like mad, except me, even when Sally grabbed my arm and pointed up toward the window. I just kept looking somewhere else, all that time.

You can imagine all the hugging and gushing and carrying on when we got out of Customs. I’m not going to write about it, mostly because I still feel bad about the way I was with Sally then. Here she was, just off the plane and meeting an entire new family—stepchildren, sister-in-law, the works, and more coming—and nobody but me from the bride’s side, and I wasn’t about to deal with any of it. I saw a young guy holding up a sign saying GOSHAWK FARM CATTERY, and I was over there like a shot, because it gave me an excuse to duck out on all the at-long-last stuff, and I took it. I’d be different today, but that doesn’t do yesterday any good.

The Goshawk Farm guy’s name was Martin. He’d already picked up Mister Cat, and just needed someone to sign all the blue and yellow forms on his clipboard. So I did that, and then I kneeled down to say good-bye to Mister Cat and tell him I’d be seeing him really soon. And not to forget me.

He was crouched in his cage, scrunched down as far back as he could get. All I could see at first were his eyes, which aren’t green or yellow, like most cats’—they’re a kind of really deep orange, with a few little gold specks in them, too. Now they were glaring at me and he made a sound like a rusty old creaking door. He makes it at strange dogs and children he doesn’t know—Mister Cat really hates most children, which you can’t blame him for. But he never, ever made it at me, no matter how mad he got. I kept trying to say, “It’s me, you dumb old cat, it’s me,” only my throat hurt so much I couldn’t get the words out. And I wasn’t going to cry, either, not right in Heathrow Airport, in front of a stranger in a country I didn’t want to be in. So I just kept kneeling there by the cage.

Then this really funny voice, like a seal barking at the zoo, said over my shoulder, “I say, is that your cat?” I looked around and almost fell over backward, because there stood this small boy wearing a blue school coat, with a sort of Cub Scout cap, and absolutely huge gray eyes in this little pointy-chinned face. It took me a while to figure out why he looked familiar, until it hit me that his face was shaped just almost exactly like Mister Cat’s face.

I knew who he was, of course—God knows I’d seen enough snapshots of him and his brother, and their dog, and their school, and their mother. Julian. Not the dancer, the younger one.

“Yeah, he’s my cat,” I said. “Mess with him, you’ll never pick your nose again,” because Julian was wiggling his fingers through the mesh, trying to get Mister Cat to rub up against them. He pulled them back, but slowly, so I wouldn’t think he was scared. The next thing he said to me was, “I’m a whiz at maths. Are you any good at maths?” They call it that here.

“Actually, I’m terrible,” I said—which is still true—and Julian’s face just lit up. He said, “Oh, splendid, I’ll help you.” I couldn’t get over his deep, froggy voice, sounding like it had broken years before they’re supposed to. He’s always had it, practically since he started talking, I found that out later.

Martin, the Goshawk Farm guy, said politely that he guessed he’d be off with Mister Cat, then; but I was looking past him at Sally and Evan and Charlotte coming toward us, laughing, with their arms around each other—and past them at an older boy who had to be Tony, Julian’s brother. He wasn’t actually handsome, any more than Evan was handsome—his hair was all bushy and messy, and his skin wasn’t even all the way cleared up yet—but you couldn’t not look at him. It’s like that with some people—they don’t just catch your eye, they grab it so it hurts sometimes. I don’t know how it works. I just wish I was one of them.

So I got introduced to Charlotte again—she’s red-haired, I said that, and short, and everyone calls her Charlie, and she looked as though she’d been minding other people’s children all her life. And I shook hands with Tony, and I noticed he had sort of brownish-greenish eyes and was trying to grow a mustache, and I remember thinking—and Meena says I should absolutely not put this in—all I could think was, “Well, is it incest if he’s your stepbrother?” That’s the truth, and it goes in, and I’ll worry some other time about what Tony might think if he reads this. Dancers don’t read a lot, that’s one good thing.

That’s it for Heathrow, because it all starts getting hazy around this point. I was really tired, and really upset about Mister Cat, and maybe that’s why I just sort of sleepwalked the rest of the way. Because the next thing I remember is waking up in the London hotel bed, with Sally bending over me asking if I’d like some tea to start our new life with. She knows I hate tea—I still do, after six years in England—but that’s exactly Sally for you, she never gives up, she never quits on anything. I just went back to sleep. Sometimes that’s the best thing you can do with my mother.