Cleo

Risk

A cat’s movements are fluid as milk and she always lands on all fours.

Rob was right. Cleo wasn’t the slightest bit jealous of the baby. Surrendering the bassinet without complaint, our cat seemed to understand Lydia was a precious addition to our household. Fascinated by the new human, Cleo welcomed Lydia’s interest in staying awake most of the night. In fact, Cleo seemed to think Lydia had invented a three-hour feeding schedule specifically to relieve the boredom of long, uneventful darkness. Whatever time the baby stirred, two a.m., three-thirty, or four-fifteen, a four-legged silhouette meowed as if she’d been merely napping in anticipation of this fun event. Cleo would spring onto the rocking chair to snuggle into the warm, damp intimacy of mother and newborn. Sometimes she perched on the chair’s headrest and, purring loudly, gazed down at us through huge translucent eyes. Standing sentinel over us, Cleo seemed to gather mystical power from the night and envelop us with love and protection. The spirit of Bastet traversed the centuries and beamed from our small black cat.

I’d never met a baby more comfortable in her own skin. Clasping my finger with her delicate hand, Lydia seemed to know she was where she needed to be. It was incredible to think she would never have existed if Sam hadn’t left us two and a half years earlier. I still wept for Sam and searched for him in the shape of her head, her eyes. But Lydia was determined to be accepted on her own terms. Great joy doesn’t obliterate grief. Both can be encompassed at the same time.

Winter was under way again. Lashings of rain iced southerly gales as they roared through Cook Strait to harass the city. Umbrellas exploded on street corners. Old women clung to lampposts. As citizens struggled up hills to their homes, not a single one could be accused of having a good hair day. When the wind finally exhausted itself, the hills wrapped themselves in petticoats of cloud and sulked. The city closed in on itself. And still it rained.

Wellingtonians seldom mentioned these minor irritations. Their reward for living on a series of climactically challenged cliffs staring straight into the jaws of the frozen continent was the knowledge that they inhabited the nation’s capital, and were therefore (there was no way to put it tactfully) important. They certainly were a cut above those rough Aucklanders, dreary Christchurch people and (heaven forbid) country bumpkins from the provinces. If the weather made day-to-day survival tough, the capital’s inner life was furnished with book clubs, night classes and more theaters per head of population than any other city. A cultured lot, they were.

“You must’ve brought the weather with you,” they’d say in accusatory tones to drenched and shivering visitors from out of town. “If only you’d arrived yesterday. We’ve just had two weeks of glorious sunshine.”

But after the tenth consecutive day of rain and wind, Wellington could do something extraordinary. Shaking off its grey cloak, the city would suddenly emerge in crisp primary colors. A smiling yellow sun would turn the harbor blue. Scarlet roofs would glow against green hills. Wellington looked fresh out of a children’s picture book. Once again, locals could congratulate each other for living in what they called a tropical paradise (well, practically).

Six weeks after Lydia’s arrival Rob was due to turn nine years old. The prospect of another ninth birthday cast an irrational shadow. Would it be an unlucky number for all our children?

“How do you want to celebrate?” I asked Rob one morning, nervous he might ask for a repeat of Sam’s eerie ninth birthday “party.”

“What I’d really like,” he said while I held my breath over the kitchen sink, “is a pajama sleepover party.”

“With Jason?”

“And Simon and Tom and Andrew and Nathan…”

“A big party?” I asked, imagining happy noises resounding off the wallpaper. “Let’s do it!”

“Can I ask Daniel and Hugo and Mike, too?”

“Of course! Do you want girls?”

Rob looked at me as if I’d suggested he have broccoli and onions on toast for breakfast.

Th e morning of Rob’s birthday we woke him early and presented him with a small packet wrapped in red tissue with a blue bow. Superman colors.

“Do I open the card first?” he asked breathlessly.

He was delighted to find Cleo had added her signature to his birthday card in the form of a paw print made in blue finger paint. Always a careful child, he coaxed the cellophane tape off with his fingernails instead of tearing at the paper the way other boys would have done. Watching his face, so sweet and expectant, I wasn’t sure he was ready for the gift, but Steve and I had talked it over countless times and chosen it with care.

“Wow!” he cried, his face blazing with joy. “A real Casio digital watch!” It was out of its box and on his wrist before anyone could say “Multiple Functions.”

“I love it!” he said. “It’s even got a light, see? If you push this button you can tell the time in the dark.”

Th ere was no doubt Rob’s ease with technology hadn’t come from my side of the family. He pored over the sheet of instructions and told us the watch could do just about anything except fly into space. Flushed with satisfaction, he peeled off the protective seal over its face, folded the instructions and placed them respectfully inside the box the watch had arrived in.

“It’s the best present I’ve ever had,” he sighed, lifting his Superman watch from his bedside table. “But I can’t wear two watches.”

His thumb circled the face of the Superman watch. Something jarred in my throat. How could we have been so insensitive?

“I really love this Superman watch…” Of course. It was too soon for him to give up the comfort and connection with Sam it provided.

“Don’t worry, Rob,” I said. “We’ll take the Casio back to the shop and change it for something else.”

“No! That’s not what I meant!” he said, shaking his head earnestly. “I mean…do you think Sam would mind if I put his watch away in my drawer?”

The sharp lump in my throat dissolved as I drew Rob into my neck and stroked his hair.

“Sam wouldn’t mind at all,” I said, swallowing back tears of pride. “In fact, I think he’d say you’re ready for a big boy’s watch.”

Later that night, boys trooped down the zigzag wearing their pajamas and smiles bright enough to blind the possum who was busy demolishing the tree by the gate. Rob welcomed them inside, decked out in a bright-red dressing gown and his brand-new watch, with more digital functions than the space shuttle.

The house filled with loud, raucous, running boys. Walls shook. The rubber plant trembled. Potato chips were ground into the shag pile. Sausages were thrown across the kitchen. It was the sort of party that would’ve set my teeth on edge in the old days. Not anymore. Tie sheets and dangle them out the window? Why not! Cricket in the hall? What’s a broken lamp or two? I slid into my blue dressing gown to match the party theme and prepared for boys to run wild.

I hadn’t realized how many friends Rob had made in the two and a half years since Sam’s death. They weren’t dutiful friends who’d taken him on purely out of sympathy, either. They teased, laughed and treated Rob with genuine affection. He’d journeyed such a long way since 1983. The shy younger brother had transformed into an outgoing friend magnet. I almost wept with gratitude and respect for him.

Cats, babies and parties tend not to mix. I’d arranged for Lydia and Cleo to be tucked away in a room at the quiet end of the house. But they were intrigued rather than spooked by the visitors. I let them out to circulate—Cleo on her own and Lydia in my arms. Cleo swiftly adopted Simon, a red-haired cat lover, and spent most of the night on his lap sampling slivers of ham. Lydia, wearing one of her blue baby suits (bought when she was going to be a boy) greeted our guests with the gracious smile of the Queen Mother on a walkabout.

The boys played Pass the Parcel or, in their case, Throw the Parcel (thankfully neither Cleo nor Lydia played the role of Parcel). Rain flung itself at the windows. A drumroll of thunder rumbled above the roof. A flash of lightning coincided with the front door knocker slamming on its hinges.

An elderly magician stood on the doorstep wearing a false nose and glasses. Holding a large suitcase in one hand, he was oblivious to the storm, as if it was just another theatrical prop that followed him around. He must have been close to eighty years old. Apologizing for being late, he removed his raincoat and slapped a fez on his bald head. I feared for him. No audience is harsher than a collection of rowdy boys. The boys sneered when he stepped boldly into the living room. He wasn’t going to last thirty seconds in there.

His hands were square, with fingers the size and shape of cigarette stubs. Bricklayer’s hands, yet they proved deceptively nimble. The magician made ropes change their lengths inside a plastic bag, and ink-spattered scarves wash themselves clean in the privacy of a cardboard box. Though the boys had no intention of being impressed, they couldn’t help themselves.

Towards the end of his act the old man produced a top hat. He asked the birthday boy to tap it three times with a magic wand. To everyone’s amazement a pure-white living, breathing dove emerged from the hat.

Cleo, who had been watching the show with detached amusement from Simon’s knee, suddenly shot across the floor like a licorice bullet and sprang at the bird. The old man tumbled backwards. Alarmed, the dove squawked and slipped out of his grasp. The boys watched in awe as the bird flapped across the room to perch clumsily in the rubber plant. Steve grabbed Cleo and carried her out of the room while I helped the magician to his feet.

“Wow! This is the best party I’ve ever been to!” yelled one of the boys, as the magician retrieved his bird and carried it out to the kitchen. The others whooped agreement and sent the old man off with enthusiastic applause.

Later, the magician soothed his dove along with his nerves over a mug of tea. Spacey strains of David Bowie reverberated through the walls.

“They call that music?” he sighed, sliding his plastic nose and glasses into his pocket. “I’m a Bing Crosby man myself.”

The old man drained his tea, packed up his suitcase and headed back to the safety of the thunderstorm. I waved him good-bye and ventured into the party room. The sight of fifteen boys in pajamas jumping off furniture and leapfrogging over the shag pile would have reduced me to a screaming shrew not so long ago. But I’d wasted too many years trying to yell boys into shape: surrendering to the noise, the untidiness and the celebration of it all was much more fun.

I searched the sea of heads for Rob. He was easy to spot in his red dressing gown with Cleo in his arms.

“You’re going to love this one, guys!” he yelled, turning up the stereo even louder. As Bowie boomed out Rob’s favorite song, “Let’s Dance,” I had only one choice. Surrender. With Lydia perched on my hip I swayed, twirled and waltzed till my legs ached. The room shimmered with joy. I hadn’t partied like this since Sam was alive—no, since ever. Along with all the tears, I’d shed ideas about what mattered. I didn’t have to be in control all the time anymore. The boys weren’t disasters waiting to happen to our furniture. A few extra scratches would improve the coffee table. We laughed. We danced. We were alive.

A few weeks after Rob’s birthday, there was a phone call from newspaper editor Jim Tucker. Jim was starting up a national broadsheet, the Sunday Star, and wondered if I’d like to join his team as a feature writer. Listening to Jim’s energy-charged enthusiasm, I had to concentrate on his voice to convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. A fresh start in an exciting work environment was something I’d longed for. Up till now, I’d been confident that would never happen. After all, my weekly pieces about family life in the Wellington newspaper were hardly Pulitzer Prize material.

Jim was offering every mother’s dream—flexible working hours. But there was one thing he wasn’t prepared to negotiate. If I wanted the job we’d have to pack up the family, cat and all, and move six hundred kilometers north to Auckland. Heart throbbing in the back of my throat, I thanked Jim and asked if he could give me some time to think.

Cleo glided into the kitchen and stared up at me through crescent-moon eyes. I lifted her up and ran my fingers through her silky fur. We’d made good friends in Wellington. How could we leave Ginny and Jason? Rob was happy at school. The success of his birthday party proved the great progress he’d made. Lydia was young enough not to notice, but even then I’d have to find quality care for her while I was working. And what about Cleo? Cats are famous for being more attached to places than people.

Then there was the job. Jim was obviously confident that I could write about subjects other than babies, carpet fluff and supermarket trolleys, but what if he was wrong? After a decade languishing in the ’burbs, I’d forgotten most of my journalism training. Parts of my brain had almost certainly shriveled. Why else would I scribble shopping lists in code I couldn’t decipher by the time I reached the supermarket? Failure would be embarrassingly public.

I loved Wellington and had learned to appreciate the character-building aspects of its weather, hills and earthquakes. On the other hand, the allure of a larger, warmer city was appealing. I sometimes wondered if the zigzag bungalow was built on an unlucky fault line and doomed to bring sorrow to whoever lived within its walls. Even though Steve and I had sailed a cloud of elation around Lydia’s conception and birth, we were starting to drift back into old patterns of withdrawal and resentment. Love was on ice again. Maybe the romance of hibiscus flowers and long summer nights would muster our strength for one last try.

Always supportive of my writing “career.” Steve was prepared to put up with the inconvenience of selling the house and commuting to his ship every few weeks. Accepting Jim’s job offer was risking a lot. Turning him down, however, would be taking other, possibly more dangerous, risks.

I’d seen Cleo in a similar dilemma, with her back legs wedged in the fork of a tree and her front paws stretched down and perched perilously on the top of a fence. She knew she had to get down from the tree, and the fence was the only viable option. Her confidence wavered every so often, and she’d try to twist herself back up into the tree. But it was too late—she’d made the move, stretched her body across the space between the tree and fence and there was only one way to go. She had to use every ounce of concentration to land her back legs accurately on the fence. If not, a humiliating tumble into the garden would be involved. Cleo was a risk expert. She took them every day and they nearly always paid off.

We’d survived two Christmases without Sam, and two of his birthdays. The days when grief was still raw were interspersed with a slowly increasing number of “good” days. Optimism was fragile, though. Like a shoot forcing itself through the earth after a long winter, I was easily crushed.

Bolstered by Jim’s offer, I was walking through the city center one morning feeling unusually buoyant. Valerie, an acquaintance from Sam’s preschool, approached, arranging her face in that funeral-parlor expression that had become so familiar. “How are you?” she asked in the old terminal-diagnosis voice. “I was thinking of you the other day when my great-aunt Lucy died…”

After listening to Valerie’s story (great-aunt Lucy dropped dead digging potatoes, aged ninety-seven) I hurried home and picked up the phone. “Jim? I’ll take the job.”