After Cleo (32 page)

Household tension was at an all-time high that evening. I was vaguely aware that Lydia was sporting the unflattering beanie (note to self: find appropriate moment to tactfully let her know that a hat with a brim would suit her face shape better).

When Philip arrived home from work, the topic of eviction was carefully avoided. The girls and I presented Jonah's day in the most exemplary light. He hadn't peed anywhere. In fact, we lied, he seemed to be settling down. He'd eaten a housefly and slept for several hours without stalking or yowling at anyone. Glossing over the more disturbing aspects of my conversation with Vivienne, I explained the morning's misdemeanour was just a nervous reaction to the return of Jonah's most favourite person on earth. It wouldn't happen again.

After dinner, the girls and I kept Jonah shut out of the living room while the four of us settled in front of the television in case he reverted to more unacceptable behaviour. As we watched the day's news unravel, I tried to ignore Lydia's maroon beanie and the persistent meows on the other side of the door. A pair of paws appeared under the door. The pleading meows gave way to thumps. The girls and I exchanged glances. Philip's face was grim and immobile. Lydia stood up and opened the door. Jonah ran forward. Snared dashingly between his teeth was a purple glove, its fingers waving happily at us. With head and tail lowered he trotted toward Philip and laid the glove respectfully at his feet.

‘See?' Lydia said to Philip. ‘He's saying sorry.'

Jonah jumped on to Philip's lap and licked his hand. My husband lowered his gaze. For a moment I thought he was going to shoo Jonah back out the door. Philip hesitated, almost as if this was a first-time encounter, then raised a hand and ran it over the cat's silky spine. Jonah yawned and curled himself on Philip's knee. A flame of affection flickered in Philip's eye. A smile rippled on his lips. Maybe the battle wasn't lost.

Next morning, using my newly developed nasal radar I homed in on Lydia's altar. A dark stain trickled down its side toward the floor.

It couldn't go on.

Cleansed

When drugs aren't all bad

Vivienne's voice was warm and sympathetic over the phone.

‘If he was my cat I'd put him on a medication like Prozac,' she said.

‘But . . .' I began, hearing Mum's voice booming from her plastic urn:
‘Prozac! For a CAT??!!'

‘Look, I'm sorry. I know we've discussed it before and you're against it, but Jonah's problems can't be cured behaviourally. He's got into a pattern you won't be able to break.'

I felt a total failure. If pets reflect the personalities of their owners, what kind of lunatics were we?

‘It's not your fault,' Vivienne continued. ‘Orientals are nearly always high-maintenance.'

I drew a quivery breath. Our bag of options was empty. ‘Will he have to stay on it for the rest of his life?' I asked.

‘Not necessarily. After a few months it might change his brain chemistry and he'll start behaving normally again.'

Months?!

When I talked to the vet, she said not to feel guilty about having a chemically altered cat. She had a pair of Orientals at home and she'd had to put them on it every now and then.

Back home, I guiltily placed half a yellow pill in a dish of Jonah's favourite tuna. When I returned several hours later, the tuna had gone. All that remained was half a pill gleaming in the bowl.

I ground the other half of the tablet into a powder and spooned it through his next meal – which he refused to touch. In desperation, I pummelled the medication to a pulp, added it to an eye dropper fill with milk and tried to squirt it down Jonah's throat. He put his head back and sprayed it all back at me.

Vivienne paid an emergency visit and taught me how to hold Jonah firmly, prise his jaw open and drop the pill into the back of his throat as quickly and neatly as possible. She made it look easy, but when I tried it next day Jonah wriggled and squirmed like a seal before spitting the pill on the floor. Then he pretended to swallow it, after which he let it drop discreetly on to a cushion. After a gladiatorial battle, I finally won, stroking the pill gently down his gullet the way Vivienne had shown me. As Jonah skulked away, his tail lowered, I felt terrible.

Over the following days, Jonah became a quieter, more amiable cat. The spraying stopped almost immediately. I started trusting him enough to let him back into rooms he'd been banned from during daylight hours (though not enough to unravel the piano's cling wrap protection). He spent most of the day in the living room, dozing in the sun on top of the alpaca rug. While he still ran to greet people at the door and jumped at sudden noises, he was altogether calmer and easier to live with. We were happier. He was more content in himself.

The person I'd expected to voice the most disapproval of the new drug regime was Lydia. I thought she'd urge me to seek some other psychic or maybe an animal shaman. But she'd been working in a psychiatric ward lately. Medication, she said, could change lives.

Hoping we were on the brink of a new, odour-free life I embarked on a full-scale house clean. With her impeccable nose, Katharine helped me discover tiny spots on the skirting boards and stair rails that I'd missed before.

We were ready for a new phase.

Sainthood

If your daughter wants to cling to an altar, don't fight it

Lydia sailed through end-of-year university exams in October. I assumed she'd keep her care-giving work going through summer before embarking on her final year of Psychology in March. It was a great plan. I was perplexed when her response to my cheerleading was lukewarm.

Philip, Katharine, Jonah and I were watching
Big Bang Theory
one evening when Lydia hovered at the door to say goodnight. Television was too crass for her. I respected that. She was going upstairs to commune with higher energies. As she turned to go, I noticed she was still wearing the same maroon beanie – the one I'd knitted with leftover wool ages ago.

‘You don't have to wear that hat night and day do you?' I asked.

‘Not really,' she said, slowly pulling off her beanie. ‘Though it does get rather cold.'

The noise of the television faded to a murmur. The living room walls turned grey. Philip's hand froze on Jonah's back. Our mouths dropped open in unison. My beautiful, feminine daughter was completely bald. Her face seemed unaccountably small without its usual frame of hair.

She'd been looking so pretty lately. We'd been buying good shampoo. I'd lent her my hair dryer and heard its reassuring roar every morning.

‘Your hair!' I finally choked.

I wondered if she was making a statement – or if it was something more worrying.

‘Cool!' chirped Katharine, the eternal mood smoother. ‘Did it hurt?'

Lydia shook the pale boiled egg that was her head. The old volcano of anxiety rumbled in my gut.

Whatever the cause or her intentions, I knew overreaction would be futile. Any explosion on my part would push her further in whatever direction it was she was toying with.

‘Wow!' said Katharine, patting her sister's scalp. ‘How did you do it?'

‘I borrowed an electric razor.'

‘Did someone help you?' Kath asked.

‘No. Did it myself.'

‘
Whose
electric razor?' I asked stupidly.

‘Just a friend's,' Lydia replied blankly, clearly indicating further questioning wasn't welcome. I imagined curtains of her glossy golden hair dropping to the floor of Just A Friend's flat.

‘Lots of boys have electric razors, don't they, Lyds?' Katharine cajoled.

‘Was it Ned's razor?' I asked, almost hopeful she was seeing him again.

‘No, he's getting married.'

Just as I began conjuring up the possibility that she'd shaved her head in reaction to his upcoming nuptials, Lydia read my mind. She told me not to worry. She was relieved, in fact happy, that he'd found someone else.

The last time I'd seen the full shape of her head had been when she was a baby after she'd shed the first dark fluff she'd been born with. Her head was pretty then, rounded and curved in gracefully over the back of her neck, ears daintily tucked in at the sides. But even then, I'd waited eagerly for her hair to grow.

Now my daughter's head glistened under the halogen lights. I was reminded of the Ancient Egyptian statue of Nefertiti. She looked so . . . vulnerable.

‘Are you doing it for a fundraiser?' I asked, trying to sound casual.

‘No. I'm going back to the monastery.'

The sentence hit me like a landslide. Lydia and I had grown closer through my illness and building the garden together. Even though I'd been nervous about the intensity of her spiritual aspirations, I understood them on some levels. But this announcement summoned all my old fears of losing her and, worse, Lydia losing herself.

Philip showed no emotion. Jonah blinked up at her from his lap. Katharine became suddenly engrossed in an outdated magazine.

My daughter was bald, devout and heading to a monastery for the third time. It could only mean one thing.

‘You've decided to become a nun?' I asked.

‘I'm not sure,' she answered. ‘I just want to see how it feels for a while.'

I asked what she meant by ‘a while'. A few weeks? Months? A lifetime?

She said she wasn't sure. Again. How I loathed those words.

‘Can't you wait till you've finished your degree?' I asked.

‘I can do that any time,' she replied offhandedly.

I'd thought her rebellion phase was over. If there was anyone behind this I knew who it had to be. That monk. Why couldn't she be honest with me?

Trying to assemble my emotions, I wondered what she was thinking. Caring for disabled people and vegetarianism were fine and admirable. Shaving her head and becoming a Buddhist nun was a step beyond the realms of normality. Was she aiming to become a Generation-Y saint?

I'd been researching saints. They tend to come from middle-class families. Buddha himself, Saint Francis of Assisi and his sidekick St Clare were raised in comfortable homes. They'd all rejected the abundance their parents had provided.

St Clare's parents were devastated when she refused to marry. Their anguish is recorded on a fresco in the church dedicated to St Clare in Assisi. While the facial expressions aren't particularly informative (apart from one nun glowering at St Clare's mother), the title says it all – ‘Clare clinging to the altar to prevent her family bringing her back home.'

It would be the same for us if we tried to drag Lydia away from her altar of choice.

Gazing at our bald daughter, I tried to dredge positives out of the anxiety. Number one consolation was that the Sri Lankan civil war was over. The likelihood of her being in mortal danger had reduced. Bizarre as it seemed, at the age of just twenty-five Lydia was already a seasoned traveller who knew how to avoid trouble. Going by the phone calls I'd overheard, she had reasonable mastery of Sinhalese. Her teacher and the nuns would be meeting her at the airport and taking her straight to the monastery, which she knew well.

And if this strong-minded young woman really wanted to shut herself away from the world for the rest of her life on some remote island, I couldn't stop her.

Weariness washed over me. Truth to tell, I'd run out of fight. There was no point railing against the more outrageous aspects of our daughter – nor, for that matter, our cat. All I could do was live my life – and allow them the freedom to do the same.

Besides, Lydia had helped celebrate and soothe me through all the changes I'd been through recently. It was time I stepped back and accepted she was a woman in her own right.

‘Well . . .' I said, sensing the others were waiting for me to explode in one of my old-time tirades. ‘If you want to be a nun, and it's the right thing for you, I won't say I'm over the moon but I'll fully support you.'

And, to my surprise, for the first time I actually meant it.

Needled

A cat's scratch can be a badge of honour

Watching Lydia pack over the following week, I became increasingly curious. Not in the old way, when I'd been threatened by every aspect of Sri Lanka. I longed for a better understanding of the world she wanted to be part of and began to wonder what it would be like to visit the monastery. Physical hardship, possibly even danger, might be involved.

Closer to home, I had more prosaic challenges to contend with. While Lydia prepared for her departure, I was gearing up for the final phase of breast reconstruction: the nipple tattoo.

Philip claimed that, as the fake nipple's chief inspector, he was perfectly happy with it, but it looked albino alongside its partner. Having got this far, I figured the job might as well be finished.

But tattoos involve
needles.
Plus there's no man in a gown to knock you out during the process.

While I was mulling this over, Jonah insisted on a fishing rod session. Watching him spiral through the air, I wished I could be more like a cat. Even a neurotic one like Jonah didn't waste time fretting over needles.

When he finally collapsed on the rug, his glossy sides heaving in the sun, Katharine gathered him up.

‘Oh, Jonah!' she said, burying her nose in his fur. ‘You're such a good de-stresser!'

Maternal alarm bells jangled.

‘What's worrying you?' I asked.

‘My IB presentation on immigration,' she replied, running a finger down Jonah's nose. Our cat adored nose rubs.

Katharine was demonstrating a passion for refugees. On weekends she taught English to children from the Sudan. I'd already noticed an accusatory glint in her eye. Just as Lydia implied we didn't do enough for the disabled, Katharine was disappointed by our lack of commitment to refugees. I'd been made uncomfortably aware that Shirley's proportions were generous enough to accommodate several Sudanese families.