Helen and I went to find me an apartment, largely at my mother’s suggestion. “If you’re living here with your father and me when I die,” she said, “you’ll have a hard time moving out. You’ve been living on your own for a long time. With you in this apartment full-time—we’ll end up arguing. Remember what you promised: no fights.” In fact, neither she nor my father wanted me to move out, but I think she knew that there was a great deal in my life that she would not care to see, and that it was easier, better, for me to be at some distance. And I think she knew that the illness that held her prisoner could hold the rest of us, and she did not want—at least for the moment—to trap me inside it, where she and my father were.

Helen kept saying that Jason had managed to locate the Golden Fleece with less high drama than I brought to finding an apartment. I suppose that I did fuss about where I was going and how I would live. I had decided to keep, at least for the time being, my house in London, and so I wanted to find someplace where I could be while I really decided about the US. I wanted it to feel completely different from London. Agents showed me places with scratched marble fireplaces and crumbling moldings and I was absolutely belligerent. “It’s got to be someplace very New York,” I said to Helen.

“This is very New York,” she said. “You’re in New York. It’s all very New York.” I told her that one apartment was too close to my parents, another too far away. I said I didn’t feel comfortable with postmodernism. “You know what?” she said at one point. “This is a very uncomfortable period in your life. All the apartments we look at are going to seem very uncomfortable. Just find one you can make the best of.” My mother was too weak to come along on all these treks, and I was glad to have Helen’s company. She would ask the agents all the tough-minded questions about whether the air-conditioning really worked and what the neighbors were like and why the elevator inspection certificate had expired. After we’d looked at places, I would take Helen out for drinks and I would rant about Bernard. “Let’s talk hard sense,” said Helen. “You never thought Bernard was the true love of your life. So you always knew you were going to have to break up sooner or later. So now you’ve done it and that’s over with, and you can begin looking again, and maybe find someone who’s really right for you. This is New York. The world’s your oyster.”