Cleo

by Helen Brown

  The Intruder

  A cat doesn’t go where it’s invited. It appears where it’s needed.

  Forever. Sam was gone forever. How long was that going to be? Was it some kind of infinity? The symbol for infinity is a figure eight. If I waited long enough in some universal bus shelter would Sam spiral back to me?

  Never. I’d never see him again. Not unless I believed in heaven, reincarnation or the boarding school of Doris Stokes. I couldn’t imagine Sam at boarding school, even one run by angels. He’d find out what the rules were and break them straightaway so he could be expelled and sent home.

  If any of those other realities, present or future, existed I had no access to them. Nevertheless, I liked to think I’d inherited some of my dad’s connection to the nonphysical world. One of his favorite quotes from Shakespeare was: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  Dad often spoke of the near-death experience he’d had as a young man on an operating table. He’d shot up a tunnel of sparkling light to meet some wonderful people at the top. He was overjoyed to be there, but then a voice told him gently, “I’m sorry. You have to go back.”

  Hurtling down that tunnel back to the ordinary world was, he said, the biggest disappointment of his life. The experience left him open-minded about ghosts, nature spirits, Ouija boards, any form of spirituality that wasn’t what he called “churchianity.” He’d met too many people who’d claimed to be Christian while demonstrating none of Jesus’ more admirable traits.

  Dad certainly was an unusual person. With his delphinium blue eyes he had a habit of looking not so much through people as around them. He often gave the impression of carrying out a conversation simultaneously with the person and their invisible companions.

  Some people are happy to die on a golf course. Dad managed his equivalent during the interval of a concert he’d taken Mum and me to when the boys were still small. Having just heard his favorite Bruch violin concerto, he turned to me and said, “God, the acoustics in here are great.” His head suddenly drooped over his chest and he let out a cry of pain. I put my arm on his shoulder and asked if he was okay. He raised his head, gazed at a point above the stage and smiled ecstastically. This time whoever was at the top of the tunnel was saying, “Come on up!” and Dad couldn’t wait to get there.

  While it was a shock for us, it was a perfect death for Dad. He’d been ready and willing. Longing for him to return seemed nothing short of selfish. But Sam was another matter. I searched for signs Sam might still be with us. If a curtain trembled there was always a breeze to account for it. On the wall I saw a shadow that resembled Sam’s head, but it was simply the branches of a tree fern waving outside.

  The only message we found were the words “Dumb Bell” scribbled in green felt pen in his handwriting high on a bedroom wall that Steve had started wallpapering. Sam would’ve had to climb a ladder to get up there to accomplish his graffiti. It was typical of our son to dispel expectations with a joke. If he was telling us anything it was he thought we were idiots for wallowing in our misery.

  Never. Sam would never grow up and savor the ecstasy of falling in love, the joy of seeing his own children born. Forever. He was lost to the world forever, remembered as a golden boy who never had the chance to become a man. The only way to stop the words spinning through my head was to go to the picture window—one that couldn’t be taken to the paint strippers because it was attached to the house—and attack it with a small crimson paint scraper. Never, forever, never, until my wrist ached and my fingers were bleeding and on the brink of bursting into flames. The view through the picture window of city, hills and harbor felt malignant, but it was the frame that needed scraping. With each stroke I stripped another layer of pain. Maybe when the wood was finally bare and smooth my heart would be healed. One time (was it daylight or dark?) Steve led me gently away from the window that had no solution. My pointless, obsessive behavior was disturbing.

  On the few occasions I ventured out into the world—the impersonal stage set of shops and offices—I had no qualms burdening strangers with the facts of my recent tragedy. “My son died,” I’d confided to the woman behind the post office counter. “Yes, he was run over three weeks ago. He was only nine.” The woman had turned pale all of a sudden, narrower and taller. She seemed to want to dissolve into the poster advertising a new series of pictorial stamps. Collector’s items, an excellent gift for friends overseas, convenient to post. Glancing nervously towards the door, she’d said she was sorry. Her tone was flat and quiet. Sorry about what? That I’d used her as a receptacle for shocking information or that I’d walked into her post office in the first place?

  A fleeting wave of shame had washed over me. What business had I ruining the day of a normal person who was simply trying to earn a living? She’d had every reason to think I was mad, lying, or both.

  I told the bank teller, too. His reaction was similar. What was this need to expose my wounds, so horribly raw, to strangers? The satisfaction of witnessing their shock and discomfort had been minimal. I must have had some kind of need to redefine my place in the world, to wear a label for strangers to read and, ultimately, force myself into accepting the unacceptable. Perhaps there was logic in olden-day mourners wearing black for a year. It would be a signal that the wearer was at best unstable.

  While I resented roosting at home to be the target of compassionate visitors, I was in no shape for the outside world, either. Walking down the main street searching for new clothes for our surviving son, children’s designer clothes of a quality so fine he’d be protected and sheltered forever, I became suddenly lost and disoriented. Awash in a tide of faces, all of them unfamiliar and disengaged, I fought an urge to cry out. Glossy shop windows leaned forward, threatening to crush me on the pavement. My knees weakened. An acquaintance spotted me and guided me back to the car. Humiliated by my need, I thanked her and sent her away.

  Gulping breaths in front of the steering wheel, I knew exactly how I must’ve looked. A human skull with hairs protruding from its scalp. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I was astonished to see a twenty-eight-year-old woman, unaccountably young, with red eyes.

  We tried to resume normal life, whatever that was. A couple of weeks after the funeral, wearied from my weeping and yelling, on top of the burden of his own secret grief, Steve packed his bag and headed off like a sleepwalker for a week at sea. I hoped he might find serenity in the routines and order of shipboard life.

  A few days later I heard the knocker pound against the front door. Sheltering in the shadows at the end of the hallway, I contemplated the figure behind the frosted-glass panel. While the silhouette appeared feminine, its shape wasn’t familiar. It seemed tall for a woman, the hair short and shaggy.

  Rob glanced up from the kitchen table, where he was building a space station with his new Lego set. In past weeks he’d been showered with toys and clothes, all blindingly bright in their shiny wrapping. Rata, once a reliable guard dog, maintained her prostrate position in the doorway of the boys’ old bedroom and pricked an ear. Ever since the accident she’d been immobile, inconsolable, and would barely lift her head. Whenever anyone tried to comfort her, she rolled a mournful eye.

  “Let’s not answer it,” I said. “They’ll go away in a minute.”

  Another visitor was the last thing we needed. Exhausted and numb to the core, I wasn’t capable of conversation. The story would have to be told again. He—or she—would gaze at me with whirlpool eyes while I explained how our two beloved sons went down the road and only one came home. Retelling the story, reciting it like plainsong in an empty cathedral, wearied me. I didn’t want their tears, was tired of their cancer-ward voices.

  Alternatively, perhaps our visitor was one of the people who’d brought food. Countless plates laden with sandwiches, muffins, roasted chicken, food for uncertain appetites had appeared on the doorstep over the past three weeks. I was grateful to those cooks for their practicality and restra
int. Their anonymous gifts were a welcome relief from emotional confrontation. Even though food was of no interest to me the meals seemed to disappear.

  A guilt-inducing pile of empty plates was growing taller on our kitchen counter. I had no idea who had brought them. Perhaps the visitor was one of those benefactors, with sufficient courage to revisit a house of sorrow and reclaim her plate.

  No, I wouldn’t open the door to whoever was hovering behind the frosted glass. He or she could leave the food, flowers or sympathy card oozing saccharine prose on the mat and retreat to a life without pain.

  As I stepped backwards to the safety of the kitchen, the figure tapped on the glass. Rata leapt to her feet and let out a simultaneous bark. It was the first time we’d heard her emit anything other than a whine since Sam’s death.

  “Good girl!” I said, stroking the lovable rug of her back as she lunged towards the front door, her tail wagging.

  The head behind the glass shifted expectantly. Whoever it was had heard both the bark and my response. There was no choice now. Refusing to open the door would be plain old-fashioned rudeness.

  Looping Rata’s collar through my fingers, I turned the latch. Sunlight stabbed my brain. The graceful figure belonged to Lena. Attached to her long elegant arm was her son, Jake, who was the same age as Rob.

  Most people had kept their children away. All except one or two of Rob’s closest friends had maintained their distance. Understandably. The death of a grandparent is enormous enough for a child to encompass, let alone the annihilation of someone their own age. Who knows what effect the sudden departure of someone from their own generation could have on their unformed nervous systems? And there’s no proof tragedy isn’t contagious.

  I wasn’t confident about my reactions to other people’s children yet, either. When names were mentioned, especially boys Sam’s age, vengeful rage would boil inside. What right has your son to be alive when mine is not?

  Lena’s son stared up at me unblinkingly, then at Rata joyously bursting to escape my grip on her collar. Jake peered around me into the hallway. Perhaps this was going to be a half-normal visit after all, refreshingly free of the old “I’m so terribly sorry. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Would you like to see Rob?” I asked the child, in case Lena wanted to express the platitudes I’d learned to expect. “He’s building a city on the moon.”

  Jake stood still, a smile flickering on his lips.

  “You could use the toilet if you like,” I blabbered, trying to stop Rata’s flailing tongue drowning him in saliva. “Except it’s not very private at the moment, I’m afraid. They said they’d need two weeks to strip the door, but it’s taking forever. We’re in a bit of a mess…”

  Lena bent like a willow over her shoulder bag, a huge patchwork sack, flamboyant and colorful enough to have been made by the artist herself. Reaching into the bag, she excavated a small creature with large triangular ears. It was black and not so much furry as sprinkled with occasional hairs. Perhaps she’d stitched together some kind of toy to comfort a boy grieving for his lost brother.

  I was alarmed when the tiny thing’s head moved. Its eyes bulged like a pair of glass beads. A set of impossibly dainty feet draped themselves through Lena’s fingers. I was reminded of those photos of premature babies whose miniature scale is demonstrated alongside an adult human hand. An organism so helpless it would surely have difficulty supporting its own life.

  “We’ve brought the kitten,” said Lena, smiling steadily.

  The kitten? What kitten?

  “Sam’s kitten!” said Rob, running down the hall and squeezing around me.

  Rata barked loudly and sprang free of my grip. Jumping on her haunches, she almost knocked Lena over. The kitten recoiled into Lena’s breast. Our dog must have seemed a monster to the little thing. The two animals obviously loathed each other.

  “Down, girl!” I growled. “She’s not used to cats.” Grabbing the dog firmly by the collar again, I led her inside and back down the hallway.

  “Don’t worry, old thing,” I said, rubbing a hand through her coat. “We’ll sort this out.”

  Rata seemed to understand that being jailed in the kitchen was a temporary inconvenience. The kitten, Sam’s kitten, didn’t belong in our house. It had arrived like E.T. in a spaceship (disguised as Lena’s patchwork bag). The kitten was from another time. We were different people when Sam was with us and our lives were whole. Now that we were broken, frayed remnants of our former selves there was no place for a kitten. Not with us.

  I couldn’t possibly cope with a baby animal and all its needs. Not when I’d already proved myself a failure as a parent of one human child, aged nine. How could I nurture such a tiny, vulnerable creature? Besides, poor Rata had suffered enough. She certainly didn’t need her life messed up any more than it was already by a natural-born enemy.

  Lena would have to take the intruder back. She’d understand. Finding a family better equipped than ours to look after the kitten would be no problem for her. It was a presentable enough animal, and she was a brilliant saleswoman. Heading back to the front door, I prepared my speech. Lena would feel let down, but her disappointment would be nothing compared to what we’d been through.

  As I reached the front doorstep I saw Lena haloed in sunlight, lowering the kitten into Rob’s hands.

  “She’s yours now,” Lena said softly.

  “I’m sorry, Lena…” I was about to launch into my speech.

  But then I saw Rob’s face. As he gazed tenderly down at the kitten, and ran a chubby finger over her back I saw something I thought had vanished from the earth forever. Rob’s smile.

  “Welcome home, Cleo,” he said.

  Trust

  A cat is always in the right place at exactly the right time.

  As Rob disappeared inside with his new kitten, Lena turned to go. Seized with panic, I grabbed her elbow.

  “There’s something you should know,” I blabbed. “I’m not really a cat person. I mean our family had cats when we were growing up, but they were more like wildcats. They just lived under the house and we fed them occasionally. Mum grew up on a farm, you see, and she never really got cats. She let a couple of them come inside and we semi-tamed them, but they weren’t friendly…”

  Lena’s face clouded. She needed to hear this. Not telling her would’ve been worse than filling out a customs form and ticking “Haven’t been on a farm in the past thirty days” when in fact you’ve been helping cousin Jeff milk his dairy herd for the last two weeks.

  “One of them, Sylvester, used to poop in Mum’s shoes, which was horrible for her, because she sometimes forgot to look before she put her shoes on. She’d scream the house down. She said Sylvester was temperamental because he was part Persian, with the long hair, you know. Black and white, he was. The thing is, Lena, I’m pretty sure we’re more dog people.”

  Lena turned her head like an exotic lily and surveyed the scrub that was our garden. Casting her eye over the mountainous piles of dung Rata had bombarded the front lawn with, she sighed.

  “This is a very special kitten,” Lena said. “And if you don’t like cats…”

  “It’s not that I don’t like cats,” I continued. “It’s just I don’t really know how to look after them. I haven’t read any books about kitten rearing or anything.”

  “They’re very easy to care for,” she said in kindergarten teacher tones. “Much easier than dogs. She’ll be no trouble. Just keep her inside for a day or two to settle. Give me a call if you have any problems. And if you change your mind you can give her back to me.”

  “But…” Lena didn’t seem to realize I’d made my mind up already. I didn’t want the kitten.

  “All she needs is a little love.”

  Love. Such a simple, four-letter word to roll off the tongue. So much easier for the facial muscles to arrange themselves around than “lasagna,” “leisure suit” or “leave me alone forever, please.” My heart had been ripped ou
t and pulverized. How could it possibly squeeze out a drip of anything resembling the L word for a creature I’d forgotten we’d ever agreed to own and wasn’t in the slightest way equipped to look after?

  Besides, a cat, assuming by some miracle it survived long enough in our company to grow into one, is an arduous, practically never-ending responsibility.

  I’d gone down enough in Lena’s estimation without tactfully asking how long a cat of this breed might live. From what I could remember, the ones I’d grown up with, even the semi-tame ones, were lucky to spend more than six years in our company. Most of them met sudden fates usually described in solemn, no-nonsense terms by our parents: “poisoned,” “run over” or “run away.” Further questioning was not encouraged. “Who did it?” or “Where?” were invariably answered with “Who knows?”

  Even if this kitten by some miracle managed to reach the grand old age of nine, that would take Rob through to the age of fifteen, a million years into the future. Considering the battering our endocrine systems were taking, I doubted any of us could realistically expect to survive that long.

  Lena smiled thinly and disappeared with Jake down the path. Poor Lena. I should have been more diplomatic. Abandoning her kitten to self-confessed dog people, she must have felt wretched. Nevertheless, she had offered to take the kitten back. Maybe I could let Rob play with it for a day or two, then we could return it to the embrace of a cat-loving household.

  Rata moaned loudly from behind the kitchen door.

  “Don’t worry!” I called to the old dog. “We’ll sort this out.”

  Rob was curled up in a corner of the living room, cradling the tiny creature in his arms. To have called it beautiful or even pretty would have made Elton John’s spectacle frames the understatement of the eighties. It was a scrap of life wrapped in a dishcloth. A toy you’d take back to the department store to exchange for one with more stuffing. I refused to think of it as something with a name, but if it did have one, “Cleopatra” would be far too long and elaborate. Something that miniscule wasn’t hefty enough to handle a name with more than one syllable. It wasn’t going to be staying with us long, so for now “it” would suffice.