Cleo

“He does this sometimes,” I said quietly. Yet it was more than a teenage eruption this time. The lake cottage, with its garage choked with skis, boats and canoes, made the contrast between our two families all too evident. Philip appeared to have coasted through endless summers of pretty girls and sailboats. Our life, by comparison, was an endless struggle, over shadowed by death and divorce. How could anyone from Philip’s background have the slightest understanding of the grief Rob and I shared—and, more to the point, why should he?

“I’ll talk to him,” Philip said, standing up to follow him.

“No, don’t,” I said. “He’ll get over it.”

In truth I was frightened by Rob’s adolescent outbursts and had no way of handling them, apart from letting them blow over—which sometimes could take days.

Deaf to my instructions, Philip departed swiftly into the bunk room. Through the walls, I could hear him speaking gently to Rob. While it was impossible to hear exact words, the tone was unmistakable. Philip was meeting Rob’s pain head-on, accepting their differences and talking him down.

“He’s okay,” Philip said when he emerged some time afterwards. “He says he wants to sleep now.”

We woke next morning with rain thrumming on the roof. Lydia, plodding around in her pajamas, was delighted when she found a box of old building blocks in one of the cupboards.

“There’s been kids here!” she called.

Cleo was chomping on the remains of a moth while Lydia set about building an elephant castle with a swing for the baby elephants.

“Where’s Rob?” I asked.

“Dunno,” said Lydia.

Philip had no idea, either. A lump of fear settled in my stomach. If Rob had taken off during the night he could be  anywhere  by  now. He could have hitched a ride back to Auckland on one of the logging trucks that roared along the main highway. Or maybe just wandered into the bush. Either way, it could be dangerous, especially in this rainstorm. His father would have to be called, possibly the police as well. It was a disaster. Why did I always land in the box labeled “disaster”?

“Look,” said Philip, putting a hand on my shoulder and turning me slowly towards the French doors. Through the rain-spattered glass I could see waves, big as ocean surf, smashing on the beach. Purple clouds smothered the island. In the distance I could just make out a figure in a kayak.

The waves pushed the figure sideways and seemed to engulf him completely. He reemerged, plowing the oar into the water and turning the kayak around to surf another wave. The canoeist was fearless, intense in his determination to stay afloat.

“You’re all crazy around here,” I said. “Who’d go out in this weather?”

“Rob,” said Philip, smiling enigmatically. “And I have to say he’s making an impressive job of it.”

Freedom

Human beings strive to claim ownership of everything they love. Yet a cat belongs to nobody, except perhaps the moon.

Around the time I became a single mother Cleo stepped up her hunting skills. Maybe she sensed we were down to one provider and thought I was doing a lousy job bringing home the bacon. Not only was I a pathetic, two-legged creature with (from her point of view, anyway) a hideously bald body, I couldn’t hunt a mouse if world peace depended on it. Cleo more than compensated for my inadequacies with a stream of furry or feathered corpses scattered from the front doormat, through the bedrooms and down the hall to the kitchen. Our house resembled the workroom of an amateur taxidermist. To stem the tide of destruction I bought Cleo a hot-pink collar with fake diamond studs and a bell to warn potential victims to scurry back to their nests.

“Cats don’t wear collars,” Mum said in a tone implying she’d just delivered the Eleventh Commandment.

While the kids and I always looked forward to Mum’s visits, she invariably found something not quite right with our setup. This time it was the cat collar.

“She’s killing too many animals,” I said, tightening the buckle around Cleo’s reluctant neck. “Besides, it looks quite Audrey Hepburn, don’t you think?”

“It’s hideous,” Mum replied. “And it’s a cat’s job to kill things.”

For once Cleo agreed with Mum. The cat shook her head vigorously, making herself jingle like a Christmas accessory.

“See? It doesn’t like that thing!”

“She’s not an ‘it.’ She’s a she,” I said. “And she’ll get used to it.”