After Cleo (14 page)

Being home was good but frightening. The table was set for lunch, except for one glaring omission. There were knives and plates – but no forks. The old me would've sprung into the kitchen and slid the forks out of the drawer before you could flick a dishcloth. Now I could only sit and wait for someone to notice and do something about it. They didn't.

‘Forks,' I wheedled in my post-operative voice.

There was a pause bred from years of me leaping around to fix things before they'd started going wrong. Mother's syndrome. When does it start? Must be in those moments after birth when a woman sees her baby for the first time and feels like a god. Giving birth is the ultimate act of creation. No wonder Mother Earth was the first deity. She brought things to life and helped them grow. We handed religion over to men just to keep them occupied. Our devotion to our creations, our kids, has no limits. I'd heard an eighty-year-old woman angst over her sixty-year-old son as if he was still in nappies.

It's a two-way disorder. Mum becomes a compulsive nurturer. Dad and kids play the role of domestic dimwits. Once it sank in that I could not, would not, jump up from my chair to collect the forks, Lydia hurried over to the kitchen to get them.

Motherhood has a habit of turning women into martyrs. I'd always believed I was too liberated for that to happen. Yet the decades had eroded me into someone just as subservient and resentful as my own mother. Jeez, I had three aprons hanging from a hook beside the fridge! I even wore the one emblazoned ‘Desperate Husband'.

There are no medals for being dictator of the small island nation that is a household. Maybe breast cancer would bring the dawn of a freer, more democratic society to our place. Perhaps I'd learn to step back and take care of myself more. It might be good for all of us.

I couldn't sit at the table for long. A hot dagger was digging into my ribs. Bed and the forgiving softness of the sheepskin were welcome relief.

It soon became clear that the new regime was going to require patience. I couldn't bend over to pick a towel off the floor. Or stoop to collect crumbs, or petals from wilting floral arrangements, the way I always had. It was time to adopt selective blindness like everyone else, and not notice anything below waist level.

The only suggestion Greg had given to ease the abdominal swelling was gentle massage. Limited arm movement made it impossible to perform the task myself. Understandably, there weren't many volunteers. To my astonishment Lydia stepped forward and offered her services. Twice daily she instructed me to lie on the couch while she rubbed almond oil on my belly. Her willingness to overlook my gruesome wounds, her tender dedication, was overwhelming. I'd never have been so physically intimate with my own mother. Lydia cooked meals, brought cups of tea and took over the running of the household.

Whenever I asked about her time in Sri Lanka, her gaze drifted sideways. Her descriptions were vague. She'd meditated a lot, often more than twelve hours a day. (‘How do you sit still that long?' I asked. ‘Oh, sometimes I'd get up and do walking meditations,' she replied.) There had been outings with the monk, blessing a few bits and pieces, and taking part in ceremonies.

I still couldn't get a feel for the place and why it held such magnetism for her. The more I probed, the less willing she was to talk. Nevertheless, I was so overjoyed to have her home I didn't want to do or say anything to make her uneasy.

When I asked what had happened to Ned, she looked away and said they'd broken up. Another No Go area.

Assuming her father Steve had paid for her return fare to Melbourne – there was no other possible way she could have afforded the ticket home – I wrote him a fulsome card of thanks. For all the disagreements we'd had in the past it was heartening to know he understood the importance of family.

Soon after I posted the card, I dreamt Lydia's monk was sitting in a pool of light at the end of our bed and laughing good-naturedly. With his maroon robes folded neatly around him and his bald head gleaming, he looked so amiable my animosity toward him faded temporarily. I wanted to thank him for the cave ceremony, but by the time I'd woken up properly the monk had disappeared.

It was the second outlandish visitation I'd had in a couple of months. Maybe it was just a matter of time before I'd be wandering down streets muttering to myself. There had to be some explanation for the visitations. The first one with Mum in the wellness retreat was probably due to caffeine withdrawal. And the monk to a hangover from hospital drugs.

Steve didn't reply to the thank you note, but our relationship had never been straightforward.

Forbidden to vacuum, lift anything weighing more than a kilo, drive or pick things up off the floor, I struggled to adapt.

‘Don't bend over like that!' Lydia snapped as I stooped over to pick an envelope off the floor. Her tone was sharply maternal. The power dynamic had changed.

A patient is so called for good reason. In the early days after surgery, progress had been fast. In hospital I'd woken one morning suddenly able to creep to the loo. Once I was home, improvement slowed. Some days I even went backwards. A drive to Rob and Chantelle's for pizza one night was surprisingly harrowing. I'd forgotten to wear the surgeon's ‘corset' that held the ghoulish grin of stitches in my abdomen together. It was a lovely evening but I was wrecked the following day. Then there was the night I spent bonding with Katharine watching
Dr
Who
with a hot-water bottle on my stomach. I'd forgotten that a wide strip of flesh there had no feeling. In the morning it was bright red and accessorised with two large blisters.

Other times, I felt a lot better, like the day I asked Lydia to stop at the chemist and buy leg waxing strips. As if I needed to volunteer for more pain.

The delight of my sister Mary's arrival was immeasurable. The dark brown curls of her girlhood were lighter these days, and tamed by regular visits to the hair salon. Having stayed in the town we grew up in, her outward style was conservative, but her perspective surprisingly broad. She'd raised three children with her husband Barry and continued to work as a substitute primary school teacher. Her pupils had grown up to be cops and car thieves, opera singers and opticians. There wasn't much she hadn't seen.

Some people deteriorate with each decade – and not just physically. Disappointment seeps into their bones and turns them bitter. Mary's one of those rare beings who grow more beautiful every year without even trying. The tenderness in her hazel eyes had intensified with time. Since her bout with breast cancer, she'd accepted that while life's not perfect, it's still pretty wonderful. I watched her savour a shaft of light on water, or the blue of a hydrangea flower. She'd learnt how to live.

Unlike me and our brother Jim, Mary was always The Quiet One. You'd think a reserved person in a household of loudmouths would lack power, but it turned out the opposite. Whenever Mary ventured a well-considered opinion in her calm, steady voice, we always listened. Still do.

When she wrapped her arms around me I was the little sister again, protected in her embrace. Nothing could hurt me now. She smelt of home.

Mary's easy-going presence in the house over the following days was medicine in itself. To the outside world we would've looked like two middle-aged matrons sifting through old photo albums together and drinking mugs of tea. Inside our heads we were the little girls we'd always been – Mary, wise and tactful; me, eager for her approval.

Every day I crept around the block, trying to walk a little further each time. Faced with steps to climb up or down I could almost hear my stitches screaming ‘Nooooooo!' Hobbling back from a 500 metre marathon, we bumped into Patricia from down the street. When we'd first moved into Shirley, Patricia had introduced herself and said she wasn't social and would prefer not being asked inside for cups of tea. Respecting her for that, I'd tried to stay out of her way. Fate had punished us both ever since, arranging for us to bump into each other constantly – at the supermarket; waiting for crossing lights to change. Trapped in another unplanned encounter, I asked how she was. Not too good, she said. She was having women's problems.

I hoped she wouldn't go on too long. My legs were getting wobbly. When she asked after my health, I hesitated. Telling her about the mastectomy could've been perceived as one-upman-ship, so I said, ‘Good.'

Patricia beamed at my sister and said, ‘She always looks well, doesn't she?' and trotted off down the street.

Sometimes Mary would say I was looking tired and excuse herself to catch a tram into town or go for walks. I sometimes worried she might need a higher standard of entertainment, but she assured me she was happy with her own company. On her last day with us she returned from an excursion with a twinkle in her eye.

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘I don't think I should say,' she said smiling enigmatically at Lydia and me.

I recognised that expression from years back. The old ‘I know what you're getting for Christmas' smile.

‘Come on! Tell us!'

Lydia stopped rattling the dishes in the sink and put her head to one side.

‘Is it a secret?' Lydia asked.

‘No,' Mary replied. ‘Well yes, it should be. Oh all right. The only reason I'm going to tell you is you've sworn you're never getting another cat.'

‘Of course I'm not getting another cat.'

‘Okay, then,' Mary said, settling to her subject. ‘I've just seen the cutest Siamese kitten in a pet shop across town!'

My sister is in possession of what's commonly known as a long fuse. She doesn't get hugely annoyed or enthralled by anything much. When she does it's for good reason. Her eyes were positively blazing.

‘What were you doing in a pet shop?'

‘I was just walking past and I saw him. Well, I think it's a him. He's really special!'

Another thing about Mary is she has an eye for quality. Her taste is restrained, and exceptionally good. Any kitten she considered even half cute would be off the scale of adorability by anyone's standards.

Nevertheless, I was on safe ground. I had no intention of getting another cat. Not only that, I'd never been enamoured of Siamese as a breed. While the ones I'd met were attractive to look at, they were far too full of themselves and yowly.

If I ever acquired another feline – which I wasn't going to – it would be a mixed-breed moggy like Cleo, preferably from an animal shelter. On top of that, in the unlikely-verging-on-impossible circumstance I'd
ever
consider another cat, it certainly wouldn't be one from a pet shop. Though I didn't know much about it, I'd heard rumours about kitten and puppy farmers who breed animals indiscriminately in their backyards with the sole purpose of selling them to pet shops on a no-questions-asked basis.

No ‘cute' Siamese kitten was going to wrap me around its little paw. Immunity was guaranteed. On the other hand, I'd just started feeling strong enough for a proper outing. A quick trip to a pet shop would be fun, and about all I could manage before crawling back into bed.

I climbed painfully into my clothes, packed the drainage bottle into my coat pocket, slapped a homemade beanie on my head and creaked down the path. Lydia loaded me carefully into the front passenger's seat and drove the three of us across the river. A parking space was waiting right outside the pet |shop. Hunched over my stitches, I hobbled through the doors with sister and daughter on either side.

If there's an opposite of a cancer ward, it must surely be a pet store. In this restless nursery of life the smell of damp news paper and sawdust mingled with birdseed and something vaguely meaty. Budgies squawked, canaries whistled, puppies whined. Neon stripes of tropical fish flashed from inside their tanks.

A large cage about two metres high in the centre of the shop soon drew us into its orbit. A handwritten notice on the cage door said ‘Burmese and Siamese Kittens. Please Do Not put Finger's through the Wire. It Spreads Disease.'

I'm a fully paid-up apostrophe bore. So much so, Katharine reckoned I should have my own television show travelling the world striking out rogue apostrophes and restoring omitted ones on public signs. I was on the verge of protesting about the creative punctuation of ‘Finger's' before my attention was swiftly diverted.

About a dozen tiny kittens were curled up in bunches, some on the floor, others on a ledge halfway up the cage. They were all fast asleep – except for one. A pale kitten, considerably larger than the others, was scrambling up the inside of the cage wire with the aptitude of a world-class mountaineer. One paw after another he scaled the wall, trusting his entire body weight to the strength of the claws on his front feet. Higher and higher he climbed, until he was almost at the summit. Deeply engrossed in his challenge, every muscle in his body was focused on conquering the cage – and gravity.

Even from several feet away I could see he was beautiful – sleek and long limbed. Milk white, his faced was tinged with shadowy brown with matching ears, tail and feet. Intrigued by his looks and daredevil personality, I took a step forward. The kitten suddenly froze and, spread-eagled against the wire, fixed me with a sapphire gaze. The intensity of his stare shot straight through to my heart. The clamour and noise of the pet shop faded to nothing. I was transfixed.

The kitten refused to unlock his gaze. I couldn't look away. We were caught in a mutual stare. A strange interaction seemed to be happening. Admittedly, hallucinogens were still pumping through me after seven hours of anaesthetic ten days earlier. Yet as the kitten bored his electric blue eyes through me, I could feel him insisting, no
demanding
, we become part of each other's lives.

I'd experienced love at first sight once before. When I'd first clapped eyes on Philip, I'd practically turned to pancake mixture. But he was – still is – an incredibly handsome man. That magic evening, standing at the top of the museum steps in an impeccably cut suit, he'd resembled an action hero on his day off. Who wouldn't have fallen for him?