Cleo

Yes, I thought, examining the latest styles in blue booties and cuddly rugs, I’d teach the new baby the secret Kissing Game, even though it had belonged exclusively to Sam and me. I wondered if Joshua would like Sam’s old wooden train set, and if there was anything else of Sam’s he’d like. Not that I was in any way planning to replicate what we had. Was I?

Rata was overjoyed when Mum’s Japanese hatchback slowed to a halt at the top of the zigzag. It was a car the retriever associated with jaunts to the beach, farms and other happy places. Mum had come to “help out” before the baby arrived. The length of her stay was unspecified, but if it was like any other it probably wouldn’t be more than a couple of nights. Mum and I loved each other dearly, but we both had strong personalities and were prone to amateur dramatics. We usually rubbed each other the wrong way after a few nights.

As Mum emerged from the driver’s door Rata sprang on her hind legs, plonked a paw on each of the old woman’s shoulders and swiped her cheek with a sloppy lick. Staggering slightly under Rata’s weight, Mum smiled broadly. She’d always been a dog person, and Rata was her favorite dog on earth.

After being showered with saliva, Mum patiently lowered each of Rata’s paws. Rob ran forward and wrapped his arms around her waist. Tail waving a welcome banner, Rata led us in procession down the zigzag. Second to Rob, there was no one now who Rata adored more than Mum.

Unpacking her bag in the spare room she presented me with her pièce de résistance—a shawl she’d knitted in wool so fine and needles so tiny the entire thing could be passed through her wedding ring. Dazzling white, with scalloped edges and a web of intricate stitches, it was the Ultimate Baby Shawl.

Since Dad’s death, Mum passed her nights in front of a flickering screen with only knitting needles for company. Most of the time she created blankets and big bulky rugs made from carpet wool she bought direct from the factory. This baby shawl was in a different league, knitted with such love and attention to detail it glowed with some sort of energy. It was a shawl that might be filled with protective spells to become a magic cloak.

“It’s beautiful!” I said, admiring her handiwork. “He’ll love it.”

“How do you know it’s a boy?” she asked.

“I just feel it.” But Mum was already onto another topic.

“Well, back in the twenties cousin Eve, that’s my first cousin, which would make her your second cousin or something along those lines…She’s the one who went to the Sorbonne and had the fling with the married hairdresser until the family found out and stopped her allowance. She arrived back in New Zealand wearing a fur coat and lipstick. Everyone thought she’d had her lips tattooed…”

Poor Mum. What she missed most these days, she often said, was having someone to talk to. Sadly, this inflicted her with the lonely person’s disease—she talked too much. As a result, some of her oldest friends had withdrawn to become occupied with bridge, charity work or grandchildren. I couldn’t blame them. Some of her stories were amusing, like this one about cousin Eve (which interested me the first time she told it. I was intrigued a family not known for glamorous and wicked women could have produced someone as wonderful as Eve). But Mum was a heavy-duty talker. It demanded great loyalty and affection to endure a barrage of words with a noticeable absence of polite questions about health and weather offered in return. As Mum launched into yet another monologue, smiles would set like raspberry jam, faces went flat as piecrusts. When the listener retreated into a private world of shopping lists and which underwear really should be thrown out, Mum would suddenly startle them with a loud “You’re not listening, are you?”

Even though we lived four hundred kilometers apart, Mum and I had always been emotionally close. Listening to her on the phone several times a week, I longed to ease her loneliness. She invariably mentioned the other widows in her community of concrete block townhouses and how lucky they were to have  regular visits from their families. The guilt missile hit bulls-eye every time. If we’d lived closer I could have been one of those responsible daughters who, every Sunday, arrived on their aging mother’s doorstep nursing a warm casserole dish.

“Let’s see how it looks on the bassinet,” I said, leading her and Rob into our bedroom, where the baby’s bed waited, a semitranslucent cocoon.

Flourishing the shawl, I prepared to spread it over the miniscule mattress.

“Wait!” Mum yelled.

I froze mid-swoosh. Curled up inside the bassinet was the unmistakable silhouette of a sleeping cat princess. Cleo flicked an ear, and opened a lazy eye to examine us in a bored way.

Our cat had obviously recognized the bassinet for what it was. Her subjects had finally got around to understanding her regal status and provided the level of comfort she was entitled to.