Bono

Chapter Thirteen

THE UNIVERSE IN AMBER

There’s no finer work of art than a cat.

The math wasn’t difficult. Jon had given us permission to return Bono to Bideawee on the weekend. Today was Wednesday. That left only three more nights of living with a four-legged hermit. There was no shame in it. We would have fulfilled our mission of giving a sick cat a “holiday.”

Meantime, I decided to grant Bono’s wish of wanting to be ignored, to make the most of the week Lydia had left in New York.

“What say we go to an art museum?” I asked.

My daughter’s eyes narrowed. As a little girl, she’d been more interested in climbing doorframes than visiting art galleries. During the religious phase of her late teens and early twenties, she had frowned on artistic expression of any kind.

“What sort of museum?” she said in a tone that implied tooth extraction was involved.

“I think you’ll like MoMA,” I said. “It’s modern and not too big.”

Every outstanding gallery seems to start with a group of rich, public-spirited visionaries. In the early 1920s, names like Rockefeller, Goodyear, and Sachs got together with the idea of creating the greatest museum of modern art in the world. Public enthusiasm billowed and the collection rapidly expanded. The gallery had to move to larger quarters three times until it settled in its current Midtown spot in 1939.

Lydia appeared offhand as we lined up in the cold with hundreds of other tourists waiting for the doors to open. Admiring the new giraffe print bag draped over her shoulder, I kept my mouth shut. If this didn’t work out, we could always go back to retail therapy.

I’ve witnessed countless moments of transformation in Lydia—from the round-faced baby taking her first uncertain steps, to the young woman sweeping on stage to accept her university degree. Something equally momentous seemed to happen that day on MoMA’s fifth floor when we encountered the three large paintings of Monet’s water lilies.

Mesmerized, she lapsed into silence and allowed herself to sink into the master’s pools of pastel-colored beauty. Though she didn’t say anything, I believe it was the first time she understood the spiritual quality of art. Watching how deeply the paintings moved her, I felt on the edge of tears. If we’d packed up and left New York that afternoon, the journey would have been worth it.

I could understand why Monet devoted the last thirty years of his life to painting the water lilies. Nature becomes more miraculous as you get older and prepare to surrender your body to it. He saw the universe in his magical pond, and painted it nearly 250 times.

Admiring prints of Monet’s water lilies on a calendar or table napkin is one thing, but to stand in front of three, each more than six feet long, is to be transported to another world.

As we descended to the lower floors through displays of perplexing twenty-first century creations, Lydia asked me what happened to art. I didn’t feel qualified to answer. After a brief stop at the gift shop to pick up postcards of our favorite paintings, we hailed a cab.

“Let’s go to the Frick,” I said, pressing my luck.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a smaller museum, with a wonderful collection of old masterpieces.”

“How old?” she asked, suspicious.

“You’ll find out when we get there,” I said. “We can leave if you don’t like it.”

Skyscrapers perforated clear spring air as the taxi glided through rows of blooming trees on Park Avenue. With New York at her magical best and my daughter opening herself to art, I was on a high.

“I oughta kill you!” a Hummer driver shouted through his open window at our driver, who apparently hadn’t moved over to let him into his lane.

We cowered, half expecting Hummer man to raise a revolver, leaving us to mop the cabbie’s brain off the sidewalk.

“Bastard,” our driver muttered as he pressed the accelerator and swerved ahead at teeth-shattering speed. Once a safe distance from his aggressor, the driver slowed down to explain he was a practicing Buddhist and a pacifist. But he’d lived in the city twenty-seven years so was entitled to use the local lingo.

Lydia quickly overcame her reservations about “old stuff”. The wry twist of a mouth in a Gainsborough portrait, or a witty twinkle in the eye of a woman wearing an eighteenth-century wig are reminders people haven’t changed. Power, sex, fame, and death are ongoing obsessions.

I was drawn to the works featuring animals. Cats, dogs, and horses are portrayed with great tenderness in paintings three hundred years old. It was comforting to see the connection between humans and their quadruped friends is eternal. The trouble was from every exquisitely painted animal eye, I saw Bono staring back at me. As Monet had admired the universe in his pond, I considered the possibility of comprehending all creation in Bono’s amber gaze. Our prisoner was getting to me.

* * *

We arrived home to the sound of paws scuffling over floorboards.

“Oh well,” I said, watching a pom-pom tail disappear under the bed. “Only two days to go.”

Whatever Bono got up to while we were out exploring the city was a mystery. I was disheartened. It was like living with a ghost.

“Till what?” Lydia asked. She was opening a can of cat food.

We’d given up trying to keep Bono in the Bunker. It was pointless. Whenever I opened the door a crack to shove a food bowl in there, he bolted out and refused to be caught.

“Jon said we can take him back to the shelter at the weekend. Remember?”

Lydia looked shocked.

“We can’t do that!” she said.

“Let’s face it. He’s a disaster.”

“No, he’s not! He’s beautiful.”

“He just hides under the bed and glowers at us like we’re a pair of murderers.”

Lydia’s eyes became as moist as Monet’s pools.

“You say you’re a cat person,” she said.

“I am, but . . .”

“He needs us.” Her voice was ragged with emotion.

“I know, but he’s hardly thriving.”

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” she said. “Can’t we keep him at least until I go home? It’s only seven more days.”

I could hardly say no. A week would go fast enough.

* * *

Lydia’s passion for Bono intensified by the day. As she lay on the floor beside the bed talking to our shadowy guest with endless patience, a tangible bond developed between them.

Bono had a wily street-cat side. Whatever he’d been through, he’d proved himself a survivor. At times he was so silent and still, we forgot he was in the room. As he listened in on our conversations, it seemed the shadow under my bed was finding out everything about us. I wondered what was going on inside his head.

Though he refused to approach Lydia during daylight hours, at night he crept out to sleep on the back of her sofa bed above her head. The moment she woke, he flitted away again.

It was all very touching, but I had more urgent worries.

When I replaced the meal with food that wasn’t laced, he treated it with the same disdain. With the cat putting himself on a starvation diet, there was no hope of sneaking medication into his meal. To make things worse, since our ghastly struggle to get the pill down his throat, I was his least favorite human.

There was only one person to call.

“Hi there! How’s Bono settling in?” Jon’s voice radiated warmth.

It was one of those questions with a long or short answer. I wasn’t about to own up to the chimney incident.

“He’s okay. He’s drinking lots, but he’s stopped eating the canned food you gave us.”

“I see.” Jon didn’t sound at all alarmed.

“The first time was understandable because I’d crushed a pill and spooned it through the mash,” I said. “He must have hated the taste of it.”

“Have you been able to give him pills manually, the way I showed you?” Jon asked.

“Only once,” I said, tears rising in my throat. “He hates me now.”

I’d seen cat whisperers at work on TV shows. The problems people have with their cats are almost always due to human failing. I used to look down my nose at the couple whose cat attacked their ankles. Couldn’t they see the feline was bored? Now I was as much a wreck as any hapless TV cat owner. I could sense Jon listening carefully, like a psychiatrist, at the end of the line.

“Of course he doesn’t hate you,” Jon said. There was kindness in every syllable.

“And I can’t catch him to have another go. He’s too fast on his feet.”

Jon had clearly dealt with far more serious problems between cats and people than this. He was so relaxed I wanted to scream.

“I’m a foster mother failure,” I added, half hoping he’d insist we return Bono immediately.

Instead, he laughed in a comforting way. “No, you’re not,” he said. “Just sneak a pill inside a piece of fresh chicken breast, or turkey. He’ll love that.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’re doing great,” he said. “And call me anytime. If I’m not here you can always talk to another staff member.”

The cat whisperer’s confidence was so reassuring, I thought I might have a chance of living up to it—if only he’d offer to move in with us for a week.