Cleo

Compassion

Even though the cat is a solitary creature, it is capable of acts of great kindness.

“Sure you’re going to be okay?” I asked, clicking Rob’s school lunch box shut. His sandwiches were made of wholemeal bread, the healthiest available on supermarket shelves. Rob would’ve preferred white fluffy bread, naturally, but I was determined he’d sprout to a vigorous adulthood. If he couldn’t learn to love broccoli and bean sprouts I was going to stuff them into him, anyway. No more bad things were allowed to happen to this boy.

The school had been understanding about us keeping Rob home for an extra couple of weeks. It was his second year of school, so he knew most of the kids in his grade. Nevertheless, his first day back without Sam loomed over us. Since Rob’s education began, Sam had been woven into the fabric of every day. In playground warfare, the extrovert older brother provided a protective shield for the younger, quieter one. Nobody would pick a fight with Rob when they knew they’d also have to confront Sam (famed for his Superman kicks). Older and younger brother were Starsky and Hutch, Batman and Robin, each incomplete without the other.

“Will you drive me?”

“Of course,” I said, fastening the buttons of his new shirt. Western style, it featured winged golden horses flying against a white background. Wings and feathers seemed to haunt every aspect of our lives. The shirt was on the lurid side, but Rob loved it, and I was encouraging him to express his individuality.

There were no arguments with Steve about the cost of children’s clothes anymore. With Rob’s help I’d managed to venture into an impressive range of shops over the past couple of weeks. Like most New Zealand primary schools, Rob’s had a no-uniform policy. The intention was to create a laid-back atmosphere. The reality was, children’s fashion trends absorbed more time and money than most parents would’ve liked.

On his first day back, everything about Rob was fresh from the packet, including the shoes with marshmallow-soft soles. (“They squeak,” he said, as we wrangled with the spaghetti of his shoelaces. “People will laugh at me.”—“They’re just jealous,” I assured him.) His clothes and professionally trimmed hair presented a mother’s challenge to the world: this boy is precious; damage him at your peril. The only item on him that wasn’t new was the Superman watch on his wrist.

“What if bullies get me?” he asked, clutching the stainless-steel band of his watch.

My insides melted. If only I could shadow his every step through the day ahead, monitor each breath that filled his six-year-old lungs, and roar at his adversaries.

“They won’t,” I said, fiercely hoping I was right. But what if I wasn’t? His status as grieving brother had the potential to single him out for special attention from emotionally disturbed retards. “Tell the teacher to call me if you want to come home any time.”

“Look after Cleo for me,” he said, opening the fridge door and removing a jug of milk, too full for his child’s grip. The jug wobbled as he poured the milk into a saucer, slopping a pond on the floor. Cleo arched with delight as the delicious liquid flowed. Her tail uncoiled and her tongue set about its work with crisp strokes.

Rob was sleeping more soundly since he’d moved back to his old room. His nightmares and dreams were less disturbing. No doubt the comfort of a centrally heated kitten had something to do with that.

A sharp tapping on the window jangled my nerves. The unmistakable cheekbones of Ginny Desilva, the most glamorous woman on the zigzag, pressed against the glass. Her perfectly shaped lips were arranged in a magazine smile. She raised three moisturized fingers, waved her glistening talons at us and called, “Hallooooo!”

Ginny was wearing a gold vinyl jacket, false eyelashes, earrings the size of chandeliers and a ponytail that was perched high on one side of her head. My regulation track pants and stained T-shirt didn’t stand a chance.

A boy about Rob’s size was holding Ginny’s hand. He had spiky hair and a pixie face.

“That’s Jason!” said Rob in awe.

“What’s he like?” I hissed through my teeth, while nodding and smiling at Ginny.

“He’s one of the Cool Gang.”

Ah yes. The legendary Cool Gang. I’d heard Rob and Sam talk as if they’d rather paint their willies blue than join the Cool Gang. That was only because the Cool Gang hadn’t asked for their membership.

The only thing cooler than the Cool Gang was the Cool Gang’s parents. They were doctors, lawyers and architects who arranged tennis matches on a rotation basis so they all had a chance to show off the courts in their back gardens. Ginny and her husband, Rick, were Queen and King of the Cool Gang’s parents because they transcended the run-of-the-mill professionals. Rick ran a record company. And Ginny, well, all she had to do was drape herself in fake fur and be Ginny. Journalism had trained me to make snap judgments. Fashion model means way too beautiful and skinny plus shallow plus competitive about physical appearances and men plus dimwitted equals an excellent person for me to avoid. Ginny, in the single conversation I’d had with her when we’d bumped into each other on the zigzag, claimed to be a midwife, though this seemed too outlandish to be true. I’d assumed she was on something at the time.

“Hi,” I said, almost blinded by the sheen of her mahogany hair as I opened the back door.

“Wow! A kitten!” her son yelled before any of us had time to exchange formalities. Weaving around my track pants, Jason burst into the kitchen.

“Rob, you didn’t tell me you had a kitten!” said Jason. “It’s so cute! Can I hold it?”

“She’s Cleo,” said Rob, proudly presenting his pet to Jason. “Her dad’s a tomcat. He was wild. We’re pretty sure he was a panther.”

“Jason adores cats,” Ginny laughed, as we watched Jason burying the kitten in his neck. I was waiting for her eyes to settle critically on my track pants and the lake of milk on the floor (which Rata was obligingly slurping), but she seemed oblivious to our chaos.

“I heard Rob’s going to be in Jason’s class this year,” she said. “Jason was wondering if Rob would like to walk to school with him today, weren’t you, darling?”

Jason nodded, though somewhat dutifully. Rob walk to school with Jason? But the morning was all planned. I’d played it over in my head so many times—mother and son make tragic appearance at school gates. Mother gives son invisible injection of power and protection before son steps boldly into new school life.

“Thanks, but we’re driving,” I said, immediately aware how clipped and ungrateful I sounded. What was wrong with me? Not so long ago I’d been considered a warm, friendly person. When I was at primary school the other kids gave me the nickname “Happy.” There was no danger of a name like that anymore. “Would Jason like us to give him a lift?”

Of course she was going to say no. She’d do it on the grounds of politeness and respect for the hermit shell of misery I’d retreated into. I’d escape with the appearance of having made the offer. She’d decline, and we’d get on with our appropriately separate lives.

“That would be lovely,” Ginny replied, fixing me with brown eyes conveying unexpected warmth and something else. What was it—a fleeting spark of wisdom? “Byeee!”

Byeee? Must be retired fashion model speak. Watching Ginny sauntering away like an apparition from a punk rock magazine, I felt ambushed. With a tap of her fingernails on our kitchen window she’d gazumped our ceremonial drive to school.

Not only that, she and Jason had blustered into our kitchen as if it was the most natural thing to do. Her audacious swoop of neighborly intimacy was unnerving. She was crazy, obviously. Either that or unbelievably compassionate, with greater depths than I’d assumed she was capable of. Yes, Ginny had to be insane. Or incredibly wonderful. How else would she know that the best way to treat traumatized people is to behave normally (give or take a byeee or two)? I hadn’t been prepared for a guerrilla attack of kindness, not so soon after breakfast.

I couldn’t help admiring the woman. A gold vinyl jacket and leopard-skin tights? What was that perfume trailing behind her—tiger musk? And how come those chandeliers didn’t pull her ears apart? I was too thickheaded to realize I’d just made a friend for life.

With his punk hairdo and purple schoolbag covered with rock band stickers, Jason was the personification of Cool. Yet he was besotted with Cleo in an unself-consciously boyish way.

“This is the cutest kitten!” Jason said, rocking the black bundle in his arms. “You’re so lucky!”

It was the first time in ages that anyone had put the words luck and our family in the same sentence.

“She likes friends,” Rob replied.

A tingle fizzed down my spine. Rob was remembering Cleo’s so-called promise to help him find new friends in the talking cat dream.

“Can I come over here and play with her after school?” Jason asked.

“Course you can!” we answered in unison.

Cleo settled herself in a pool of sunlight on Rob’s bed and we headed out the door. Rata paddled behind us like a steam boat. Halfway up the zigzag, the old dog seemed to run out of puff and plonked herself down. I waited with her a moment. Even though she was panting, she slapped her tail reassuringly on the path as if to say, “Nothing to worry about.”

Once Rata had recovered her breath we climbed the rest of the hill. The boys watched anxiously as she straggled to the car. Suddenly aware she was being observed, the dog rallied, lifted her tail and leapt youthfully into the back of the station wagon.

The school gates hadn’t changed, which seemed strange considering so much else had. Those gates were at least seventy years old. The first children who ran through them were old men and women now. Their bodies were disintegrating around them in retirement homes, while the gates had merely gathered a layer of rust. The deal hardly seemed fair. Yet, given the choice, I’d still rather come back as human, with a limited quota of laughter and pain, than gates that lasted one hundred and fifty unfeeling years.

Kids were pouring through them, still buzzing with stories from the summer holidays. No doubt Sam’s demise had been a hot topic around every kitchen table. Were they going to smother Rob with too much attention or, not knowing what to say, simply ignore him? I fought the urge to scramble out from behind the steering wheel and escort him through every nanosecond of the day.

Rob and Jason climbed out of the car.

“I’ll pick you up here at three-thirty,” I said.

“S’okay,” Jason said. “We’ll walk home together, won’t we, Rob?”

Rob squinted through the sunlight at Jason and smiled. “Yeah, we’ll walk.”

Walk? Meaning cross roads? My insides swirled at the thought of Rob’s feet going anywhere near roadside tarmac without my protective shadow. But Jason and Ginny were right. The sooner Rob adjusted to a new routine, maybe even created new friendships, the easier his life would become. Their advice had arrived in the most powerful package—generosity wrapped in action, not words.

At the risk of Jason thinking I was deranged, I took an old shopping list from my handbag and scribbled on the back the exact route they needed to take walking home. The pedestrian crossing outside the school was monitored by senior students who presumably had some respect for traffic. Following the footpath along the bend of the gulley, they’d have to cross one quiet street before reaching the busy road Sam had died on. They’d cross not at the bus stop farther down the hill but at the zebra crossing several hundred meters higher up, near Dennis’s grocery store and the new deli. Pressing the shopping list into Rob’s hand I made him promise not to cross until he was certain every car was safely distant. “And remember to ask the teacher to call me if you want to come home early,” I called, the unmistakable whine of smother love in my voice.

But Rob was already halfway through the school gates, laughing at something Jason had said. Jason strolled alongside him, turned, waved at me and flung an arm across Rob’s shoulder.