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.
Five
We stayed in London five days, with Sally and me sharing a room in a bed-and-breakfast place off Russell Square, and Evan bunking in at Charlie’s with Tony and Julian. I liked that part, once I got over being tired, and as long as I could make myself believe that we were just being tourists, summer people, people who go home. But all I had to do was see real tourists—sometimes all it took was a plane going overhead—and everybody says I’d turn between one minute and the next into a sullen little hemorrhoid with feet. And I know I did. I meant to.
Julian took me over from day one. It didn’t matter how I acted—he was going to show me everything in London that he liked—later for the National Theatre and the Tate Gallery and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. And practically everything Julian liked was American-style stuff—the Pizza Pie Factory in Mayfair, the video arcades around Earl’s Court, the Taco Bell in Soho (you can’t buy Julian for Mexican food, but you can definitely rent him). Which was all fine with me, you couldn’t make anything too American for me. I kept trying to make England not be there all around me, and Julian, ten years old, was the only one who seemed to understand, even though he didn’t really. Maybe that’s why we’re still vatos, as Marta would say—still buddies—even though he’s sixteen now, and completely impossible.
I liked London right off, though I wasn’t going to admit it for one minute. It did feel like New York—tense and crazy, but in a slower sort of way—and it looked just familiar enough to be exciting. (You don’t realize how many movies you’ve seen about a city until you’re actually in it, recognizing all kinds of places you haven’t been to.) The only thing I didn’t like was the driving on the left—it made my stomach feel weird when Charlie was zipping us around London. One time, crossing the street, I almost got totally creamed by a bus I never saw. Tony snatched me back at the last minute, and Julian told him that now he’d have to be responsible for me forever, the way the Chinese or someone believe. Poor Tony.
Sally kept asking me every night, after the others had gone back to Charlie’s flat, if I liked England any better now. And every night I’d say, “I like London. I really wish we could stay in London, if we have to be here.” And then Sally’d get tears in her eyes and say something like, “Baby, I know, but you’ll love Dorset, I promise. If you’ll just give it a little time, just not make up your mind before we even get there. Can you do that, darling?” I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t really want her to be miserable—only at the same time I really did—so I’d usually mumble something about wanting to see Mister Cat. Which wasn’t lying, and at least that way we’d both get to sleep.
I’m going to skip over where we went and what we saw. Anything you can see in London in five days, just figure we looked at it. Probably had lunch there, too—it seemed like we were always eating, that first time in London. When we weren’t running to catch the tour bus.