'You go tomorrow, Egg,' I said. 'We go today, but you and Mother don't go until tomorrow.'
'I want to be ready,' Egg said, anxiously. I tied his tie for him -- to humour him. He was dressing up Sorrow -in an appropriate flying costume -- when I brought my bags down to the Volkswagen bus. Egg and Sorrow followed me downstairs.
'If you've room,' Mother said to Father, 'I wish one of you would take the dead dog.'
'No!' Egg said. 'I want Sorrow to stay with me!'
'You know, you can check him through with the bags,' Fritz said. 'It's not necessary to carry him on board.'
'He can sit in my lap,' Egg said. And that was that.
The trunks had been sent ahead of us.
The carry-on and check-through bags were packed.
The midgets were waving.
Hanging from the fire escape, at Ronda Ray's window, was her orange nightgown -- once shocking, now faded, like the canvas for Fritz's Act.
Mrs. Urick and Max stood at the delivery entrance; Mrs. Urick had been scouring pans -- she had her rubber gloves on -- and Max was holding a leaf basket. 'Four hundred and sixty-four!' Max called.
Frank blushed; he kissed Mother. 'See you soon,' he said.
Franny kissed Egg. 'See you soon, Egg,' Franny said.
'What?' said Egg. He had undressed Sorrow; the beast was naked.
Lilly was crying.
'Four hundred and sixty-four!' Max Urick screamed, witlessly.
Ronda Ray was there, a little orange juice on her white waitress uniform. 'Keep running, John-O,' she whispered, but nicely. She kissed me -- she kissed everyone but Frank, who had crawled into the Volkswagen bus to avoid the contact.
Lilly kept crying; one of the midgets was riding Lilly's old bicycle. And just as we were leaving Elliot Park, the animals for Fritz's Act arrived. We saw the long flat-bed trailers, the cages, and the chains. Fritz had to stop the bus for a moment; he ran around, giving everyone directions.
In our own cage -- in the Volkswagen bus -- we peered at the animals; we had been wondering if they would be dwarf species.
'Ponies,' Lilly said, blubbering. 'And a chimpanzee.' In a cage with red elephants painted on its side -- like a child's bedroom wallpaper -- a big ape was shrieking.
'Perfectly ordinary animals,' Frank said.
A sled dog circled the bus, barking. One of the lady midgets began to ride the dog.
'No tigers,' said Franny, disappointed, 'no lions, no elephants.'
'See the bear?' said Father. In a grey cage, with nothing painted on it, a dark figure sat swaying in place, rocking to some sad inner tune -- its nose too long, its rump too broad, its neck too thick, its paws too short to ever be happy.
'That's a bear?' Franny said.
There was a cage that looked full of geese, or chickens. It was mostly a dog and pony circus, it seemed -- with one ape and one disappointing bear: mere tokens toward the exotic hopefulness in us all.
Looking back on them, in Elliot Park, as Fritz returned to the bus and drove us forward -- to the airport and to Vienna -- I saw that Egg still held in his arms the most exotic animal of them all. With Lilly crying beside me, I imagined I saw -- in the chaos of moving midgets and unloading animals -- a whole circus called Sorrow, instead of Fritz's Act. Mother waved, and Mrs. Urick and Ronda Ray waved with her. Max Urick was yelling, but we couldn't hear him. Franny's lips, in time with his, whispered, 'Four hundred and sixty-four!' Frank was already reading the German dictionary, and Father -- who was not a man for looking back -- sat up front with Fritz and talked rapidly about nothing at all. Lilly wept, but as harmlessly as rain. And Elliot Park disappeared: my last look caught Egg in motion, struggling to run among the midgets, Sorrow held like an idol above his head -- an animal for all those other, ordinary animals to worship. Egg was excited, and yelling, and Franny's lips -- in time with his -- whispered, 'What? What? What?'
Fritz drove us to Boston, where Franny had to shop for what Mother called 'city underwear'; Lilly wept her way through the lingerie aisles; Frank and I cruised the escalators. We were at the airport much too early. Fritz apologized for not being able to wait with us; his animals needed him, he said, and Father wished him well -thanking him, in advance, for driving Mother and Egg to the airport tomorrow. Frank was 'approached' in the men's room at Logan International, but he refused to describe the incident to Franny and me; he continued to say only that he had been 'approached.' He was indignant about it, and Franny and I were furious with him for not spelling it out to us in more detail. Father bought Lilly a plastic carry-on flight bag, to cheer her up, and we boarded the plane before dark. I think we took off about 7 or 8 P.M.: the lights of Boston, on a summer night, were half on and half off, and there was enough daylight left to see the harbour clearly. It was our first time on an airplane, and we loved it.
We flew all night across the ocean. Father slept the whole way. Lilly would not sleep; she watched the darkness, and reported sighting what she said were two ocean liners. I dozed and woke, dozed and woke again; with my eyes shut, I watched Elliot Park turning into a circus. Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy. I imagined returning to Dairy, and wondered if Fritz's Act would improve or run down the neighbourhood.
We landed in Frankfurt at quarter to eight in the morning. Maybe it was quarter to nine.