Bono

Chapter Eleven

SHOPPING WITH MOTHER

Inside every pussycat a tiger lurks.

Jon’s warning that Bono’s “transition phase” could be challenging was the understatement of the year. The cat had nearly demolished our building. As we stepped outside onto the street, my hands were still shaking. I quietly counted the hours until the weekend, the soonest Jon had suggested Bono’s “holiday” with us could end. I’d be needing a health retreat by then.

After months of wintry sleep, the city was shaking itself awake to spring. We stopped to admire boxes of tulips, their pink and yellow lips pouting at the sky.

Women unbuttoned their coats to flaunt brightly colored blouses. Even the handbag sellers on our corner were smiling. Though we’d barely had time to explore our neighborhood, we soon realized it was a microcosm of everything we needed.

“Oh look!” I cried. “A stationery shop.”

On the corner across from the handbag sellers, I could make out a window display of greetings cards for every imaginable life event.

“People email these days,” Lydia said, trailing after me as I bustled into the store.

“I know, but I still think there’s nothing like a carefully chosen card with a handwritten message.”

Oh dear. I was lecturing. We paused in the Sympathy section to examine an impressive range of cards for people who had lost pets. Not so long ago, a cat was just a cat. When it died, you were expected to get over it in 20 minutes. Now even Hallmark was acknowledging the importance of pets in people’s lives.

Toward the back of the store, an entire corner was dedicated to Frozen. Lydia rolled her eyes while I dived into a mountain of Elsa and Ana trinkets.

“The girls will love these!” I said, gathering up bunches of key rings and pencils.

“Are you sure the Frozen characters are good role models?” she asked.

I had no idea. All I could think of was Annie and Stella back home belting out “Let It Go!” until people begged for mercy.

Sated on Frozen, we plunged into the sea of traffic on 44th Street. We were both hungry so we entered a vast deli that doubled as an all-day café. After loading salads on our plates, we were taken aback when the tired-looking checkout operator with a Hispanic accent insisted we weigh them. Nobody weighs their food in Australia, at least not until it’s sitting in rolls on their hips.

A cop with a paunch equivalent to an eight-month pregnancy hunched over his coffee cup and gazed at the street as if nothing would surprise him. At the next table, a couple sat opposite each other and shouted into their phones. I liked the everyday grittiness of the deli and the people who went there.

Afterward, we walked past the fruit shop next door. The Indian man who’d served us the night before waved from behind a bank of flowers. Far from being scary, violent New York, this place was positively friendly.

“Let’s say hello to Doris,” Lydia said as we approached the pet supply shop.

Bluebell was dozing in the window, her tail curved neatly around her front feet.

“Not yet,” I said.

Doris would be shocked to hear of Bono’s disappearing up the chimney act. She’d label us the world’s most incompetent cat lovers.

We strode past the hardware shop. I couldn’t face the girls in there, either. I steered Lydia around a corner down a gentle slope past cafés and diners toward Grand Central Station.

I began to realize the reason so many New Yorkers look as if they have stepped out of hair salons is they probably have. There were more pocket-sized beauty salons, nail bars, and dry cleaners than I could count. Across the street, a supermarket overshadowed a computer gadget store, where I hoped to someday find a 12-year-old who would help end my Wi-Fi drought.

Even more alluring was an authentic-looking clinic offering acupuncture and Chinese medicine. With any luck, a few artfully placed needles and a massage would down-age my knee.

“Oooh, look!” Lydia said, stopping outside a bakery window packed with sumptuous pastries.

“Those raspberry tarts are to die for!” I said.

But she’d hardly noticed them.

“They’ve got free Wi-Fi!” she said, pointing at a discreet sign.

“Don’t you want a raspberry tart?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess we’ll have to buy something to get the Wi-Fi,” she said.Before we knew it, we were inside sitting at a scrubbed wooden table and feverishly checking our emails. I itched to call Philip. He wouldn’t believe a fraction of the things we’d been through in the past forty-eight hours. But there was no point. He’d be fast asleep with Jonah curved like a croissant next to his knees.

The only downside of my raspberry tart was the sign over the counter advertising the fact it contained 510 calories. Back home, cakes hardly ever confess how fat they’re going to make you. The tart landed in front of me with a guilt-inducing clunk.

“Delicious!” I said, digging into it with a fork. “Want to go halves?”

Like most naturally slim people, Lydia could take or leave a pastry.

“Please,” I said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Oh all right,” she said, graciously raising a spoon.

The cappuccino was good, but I was hankering after a full octane Australasian latte served by a barista in a man bun.

I planned to take Lydia inside Grand Central Station to show her the immense cathedral-like hall with its eggshell-colored ceiling, displaying the constellations in elegant gold leaf, but she disappeared into a women’s boutique near the entrance. I was more than pleased to hang around while she reveled in trying on skirts, tops, and shoes. She’d missed out on years of shopping.

“What do you think?” she asked, emerging from a changing booth wearing a creamy blouse with a flouncy collar.

I caught my breath when I saw the neckline plunging between her breasts. It was the last thing I’d have expected her to choose.

“Looks great!” I said. “What will you wear with it?”

“Oh, these pants will do,” she said gazing down at her jeans.

I rifled through a pile of skirts and held one up.

“How about this?”

Lydia twisted her mouth. It was knee length and probably too short for her taste, but I saw no harm in expanding her horizons.

“I was thinking more this,” she said, reaching for a brown handkerchief posing as a skirt.

I waited outside the booth, anxious she might have an identity crisis in there. When she pulled the curtain aside, a beautiful, faun-like creature stepped toward me. The cream blouse glowed against her skin, and the miniskirt made the most of her legs.

“You look beautiful!” I said. “Now all you need are the shoes.”

Lydia demurred, saying she’d spent enough already.

“My treat,” I said, pointing her at the stairs leading to the shoe section.

For someone who’d spent years in and out of a monastery, my daughter had a highly developed sense of style. She chose elegant, tan ankle boots with a discreet gold chain around each of the heels.

She thanked me several times over as we left the store on a rare and wonderful thing for her—a retail high.

“You know my friend Maggie,” Lydia said, as we joined the sidewalk throng.

Keeping up with my offspring’s friends is always a challenge.

“She has a pedometer,” Lydia went on. “Maggie found out she takes more steps when she’s shopping with her mum than when she exercises on purpose.”

“Really?” I said. “Well, we’d better keep going.” I was grateful for any excuse to delay finding out what Bono was up to.

We headed on to Macy’s, Herald Square, where I was expecting her to be overwhelmed by the scale of one of the world’s largest department stores.

A religion more than a store, Macy’s has a calendar of festivals, the most famous being the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which has been featured in countless movies and TV shows, from Sweet Charity to Friends. More than eight thousand participants march, float, and pulsate their way through Manhattan’s streets. Christmastime is no less exciting, with dazzling window displays and thousands of shoppers taking the elevator to Santaland on the eighth floor.

A spring flower show featuring a life-sized elephant statue bedecked with blossoms was in full swing while we were there, but we never found it.

The moment we stepped through Macy’s doors into a heated labyrinth of leather goods I wanted to turn and run for fresh air. But Lydia became calm and clear-eyed, like a predator prowling a fertile plain. She stepped softly through rows of brightly colored purses of every conceivable shape and size. I trailed after her until she stopped at a display of animal print bags, which my penny-wise daughter pointed out, were reduced by 30 percent.

If I’d gone out to buy her a handbag, I’d have opted for something in line with her classic taste—modest and beige. But New York was having a radical impact on my daughter. She was entranced by a shoulder bag in a giraffe-skin pattern with tan trimmings. As she took it from its hook and opened the zipper to reveal a scarlet lining, her face lit up. Conservative Lydia of the neutral ballet pumps and thrift shop cardigans was becoming a fashion tigress. We bought it.

“What do you think Bono’s doing?” she asked.

I was trying not to think about him.

“He’ll be having a rest,” I said.

We rode a befuddling number of escalators. By the time we reached the children’s clothing department, my feet were aching and my head was spinning like a potato in a microwave. Still, I found enough stamina to pick up a couple of dresses for the granddaughters.

“Would you mind taking these back with you?” I asked Lydia.

“Don’t you want to take them back yourself to give them to the girls?”

I didn’t like to tell her that at this rate my granddaughters could be teenagers by the time I gave up on New York and went home.

With a pang of guilt, I went on to the men’s department. Philip always liked a new shirt. I sifted through a pile and picked out a jaunty red checked one, a good weight for the Australian winter ahead. If I stayed on in New York, it might not be possible to deliver it in person. Still, it would be easy enough to wrap it up and send it to him from the post office next to Grand Central.

“What about Ramon?” I called to Lydia, who was drifting away.

She looked blank. Maybe they weren’t a serious couple, after all.

“Aren’t you taking something home for him?” I said fingering a pale purple T-shirt. “What size is he?”

Lydia didn’t know.

“Is he anything like my size?” a deep mahogany voice asked.

A breathtakingly handsome African American man smiled at me from the other side of the T-shirt pile. He was draping an identical purple T-shirt across his athletic torso.

“What size are you?” I asked smoothing the cotton against his solid pecs.

“Extra large,” he said with a gentle smile. “But sometimes I’m just large.”

It had been a long time since I’d thought about sex. Strange how not thinking about it can become almost as habitual as thinking about it. Most of the time I love not thinking about sex. It’s empowering. It wasn’t until I reached an age when I could be confident 99.99 percent of the population would not dream of regarding me as a sensual being that I was released to drift unmolested through any situation.

To all good-looking women who fear the day heads no longer swivel when they enter a room, I say come on in. The water’s fabulous. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to know that any man who approaches me now is, in all sincerity, asking for directions. Or offering to help choose the right sized T-shirt. Not since I was 5 years old and thought mummies and daddies ordered babies from hospitals have I felt so unconstrained.

I can honestly say that since the world became a giant selfie, there’s no better place to be than on the sidelines. Not thinking about sex or who I have to impress has freed me up to have a life. My brain is primed for friendship, crosswords, speaking my mind, and talking to birds (if they feel like listening).

That said, I was disturbed at the physical effect this thoughtful young man was having on me. My cheeks were burning. I called Lydia over. We decided Ramon was probably large, thanked the man and bought the T-shirt.

“A bit young for you, isn’t he?” Lydia said as we made our way to the sales desk.

“Don’t be silly. He thinks I’m his mother.”

I hadn’t felt so wickedly free since 1969. But then I saw him in the men’s shoe section. Philip was standing in front of a mirror inspecting a brand new pair of cowboy boots. Wild West gear was hardly his usual taste. Maybe he was having an identity crisis, too. Not that I was having a crisis. If I was going through anything, it was more of a post-cancer, two-thirds life reinvention.

In a rush of affection, I hurried toward him and was on the point of wrapping my arms around him, cowboy boots and all. Until I realized he didn’t look the least bit like the man I loved.

We left Macy’s and crossed the street to Victoria’s Secret. Not so long ago, Lydia had turned me on to the ultra-comfortable bras she’d been buying from infomercials. Made of beige polyester with straps thick enough to hoist a shipping container, they were comfortable, but hardly alluring. They suited me fine, particularly as underwires aren’t recommended for women who have had breast cancer. But I was concerned my Gen Y daughter saw the point of them, too.

The only thing more difficult than imagining that your parents are having sex is to conjure up visions of your children doing it. Still, I didn’t want Lydia to miss out on the ecstatic highs—and she had a better chance of achieving them wearing something other than a bra designed for decrepit piano teachers.

A friendly shop assistant directed her to some leopard skin bras trimmed with neon pink lace (it was the year of animal prints). Lydia was quick to try them on and they looked so good, we bought two with matching panties. The turquoise bra I bought for myself wasn’t quite so alluring, but it was less utilitarian than the skin-colored boob hammocks at home. I wondered if Philip would notice the difference.

While my daughter’s attention was diverted to a flouncy nightie Mum would have called “slutty,” I fingered a satin scarlet bra. It was the same size and style as the turquoise one. The likelihood of wearing it in real life was slim, but the encounter in Macy’s menswear had unsettled me. Novels have been written about wives on the run, drunk with freedom. They always end up throwing themselves under trains or overdosing on laudanum. Still, this was twenty-first century New York. If I wanted to become a sexagenarian sex kitten, it was my choice. After a quick check that nobody was looking, I tucked the red bra in my shopping basket under the turquoise one.

As the afternoon melted away, we ran out of hands to carry any more bags. I started feeling guilty about the rubbish island that’s bigger than Texas floating out in the Pacific. Even if we recycled the bags, they’d probably end up choking fish somewhere.

Lydia was running out of energy, too.

“I’m worried about Bono,” she said. Using the Chrysler Building as a point of reference, we made our way back to Second Avenue. Heavy with trepidation, I opened the heart lock to climb the paint-speckled stairs.