My father simply assumed that I would come back, but then my father assumed that the clocks would have stopped in the face of my mother’s disease had they known she wished it. My father’s life was my mother; he no more wanted independence from her than he wanted independence from his arms or legs. He could not understand how Freddy and I could feel otherwise. He never saw what I wanted from England; it did not strike him as a sacrifice for me to return after a short ten days with my life and my lover and my own piano, without having recorded a single note. So far as he was concerned, it would have been odd and sad to stay in London when my mother was having a birthday in New York—when there was an opportunity to make her happy. I needed independence, a happiness of my own, and I was almost violent in my protests against the relentlessly depressing life into which we were all sucked in New York, the life around the hospital. I tried to close out this life. I believed in my career, and knew that my tenuous position as a musician would blow apart if left alone for too long. I argued with my father then, because I did not want to admit to him that it would have seemed odd and sad to me, too, not to come home for my mother’s birthday. I refused to admit to him that I could not have played a concert that night if the moon and the planets and the stars had planned to be in the audience.

Bernard put me on the plane to New York and Helen took me off. I felt like a shipment of glass. “You look about a thousand times better,” said Helen when I cleared customs, and her voice sounded almost jealous. “Good concert?”

“I’ve been having a virus,” I said.

“Couldn’t you let your mother corner the market on medical dramas for a few weeks?” she asked. “Watch your competitive streak, or it’s going to get you into trouble.” She gave me a big hug. “I think England suits you,” she told me. “Don’t stay in New York too long.”

We went back to Helen’s apartment, where I was to spend the night, so that I could surprise my mother the following day. Helen lived in an old building with brown corridors that smelled like decaying cats, but her apartment was the more impressive for that. It had been painted in brilliant white, a white so sharp that it hurt your eyes. There were no rugs or carpets on the highly polished floors. There were funny old pieces of furniture that she had bought from the Salvation Army, which had been rubbed to an almost jewel-like luster. There were several very large plants, and there were a few framed posters, and there was divine and terrifying order everywhere. On the dressing table, Helen’s earrings were arranged in even rows. In the kitchen, the plates stood in perfect stacks, and the boxes of detergent were graduated by size. Helen would have arranged her shoes in alphabetical order if she’d known how.