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.