Cleo

I too entered a phase where I was more inclined to air my opinions. Having long given up hope of changing the world, I felt it was still entitled to hear my views on everything from presidential politics to how blondes should never be let loose in four-wheel-drives. The only thing missing was a loudspeaker on top of my car through which I could inform other drivers and pedestrians exactly how they were endangering others, themselves and the planet in general.

Following nature’s cycle, our nest was emptying out. Lydia took a year off from her university studies to teach English in Costa Rica. For a while, Rob moved to London, where he was working in a wineshop. If ever Rob and I needed proof of our powerful psychic connection all we have to do is try to call each other. Though we were on opposite sides of the earth, we’d often phone each other at exactly the same time. Even today when I call him his line’s often engaged because he’s trying to ring me.

“You’ll never guess who I caught up with,” he said one day, his voice tinged with excitement over the phone. “Chantelle. She’s over here, teaching in one of those tough inner-city schools.”

I felt a little sad when he mentioned she had a boyfriend. A good guy, Rob assured me, an Australian surfie, though it was hard to imagine what a wave-rider did with himself through the depths of an English winter. Not that Rob was lonely—he was living with a nurse from Queensland. Love’s often a matter of timing and coincidence: while I knew Rob would always have special feelings for Chantelle, prospects of them getting together seemed increasingly thin.

Several months later I was devastated to hear that Chantelle’s younger brother Daniel had died suddenly, of no apparent cause. While tragedy visits every household sooner or later, this was a terrible one for Chantelle and her family to endure. I hoped Rob might be able to help Chantelle with the overwhelming range of shock and sadness she’d be going through.

As the only one left at home, thirteen-year-old Katharine became Cleo’s assistant caregiver. “Look what my friends did last night!” she wailed one morning after having a group of girls over for a sleepover. “They’re so mean! They painted Cleo’s chest white!”

Closer inspection of the snowy fur revealed it wasn’t painted but was white from natural causes.

Cleo developed a geriatric gait, moving stiffly from the hip joints, a sensation I too was becoming begrudgingly familiar with. Cleo gave up playing sock-er, though she kept an old sports sock of Rob’s in her bed. She no longer sprang onto the kitchen bench. Likewise, my joints suffered a shortage of elastin. Creaking ligaments pleaded with me to give stairs a swerve if an elevator opened its tantalizing doors.

Our coats were changing, too. Teenage hairdressers felt duty-bound to instruct me how to make my thinning hair thick and glossy. (“Just massage a peanut-sized glob of this mousse into your scalp. I know it may seem expensive at one hundred and twenty-five dollars, but it’ll last you a whole year.”) Their older sisters lectured me about skin care. (“A cup of blueberries a day will have your skin looking like mine forever. And you’ll never guess how old I am. I’m really old. I’m twenty-five.”)

Free from the attentions of child hairdressers and beauticians, Cleo sprinkled black exclamation marks of fur over our sheets, our underwear, sometimes even our food.

Her black whiskers turned grey. I discovered an unsightly bristle sprouting from my chin.

Cleo and I had always enjoyed roasting ourselves in front of an open fire. Sitting too close nowadays made my legs resemble the surface of Mars. Cleo was even less fireproof. After ten minutes or so she had to stagger away from the inferno and lean against a cool wall to recover.

Quality was more important than we’d realized. I developed an irrational interest in the thread counts of bed linen and Italian stationery.

Our vision was no longer spectacular. An optometrist recommended reading glasses. (Who, me?) I chose the funkiest frames in the shop, green and blue metallic.

“What do you think?” I asked, showing them off to Philip and Katharine.

Their response made it clear. They were the type of reading glasses an old lady would choose in order to look funky.