Bono

Next morning we woke to see a small black shape dancing across the floor, at war with one of Lydia’s socks. Shaking it by the toe and tossing it in the air, Bono was so deeply engaged in battle, he didn’t notice our interest. The previous day’s trauma had melted away for him, and now he was delighting in the simple act of fighting a sock. Bono was unwanted and terminally ill, yet he was relishing the fact he was alive right now with a sock for a playmate. I wished I could be such a master at embracing the moment. It would take decades of therapy and spiritual practice for me to reach that level. If only I could be more like Bono and stop fretting over things beyond my control.

He paused and stretched his right back leg out in a perfect arabesque. I’d never seen a cat perform such a balletic move before.

“Oh, he’s so cute!” Lydia cried.

He froze at the sound of her voice.

“It’s all right,” she said softly.

Bono dropped the sock and flitted like a shadow into a crevice between the sofa bed’s backrest and the wall.

“That’s the last we’ll see of him today,” I said.

Lydia placed her hand at the entrance to Bono’s new hiding place and continued talking gently to him. To my astonishment, a dark head emerged and tentatively nudged her fingers with his nose.

It was a touching scene, but if Bono was to survive he needed that pill. Feeling like an evil jailor, I snatched him, carried him to the Bunker, and shut the door behind us. Crouched on the floor, I held him tightly and forced a pill down his gullet. In that horrible moment, I could sense his (understandable) dislike of me. Worse, I felt any chance of him trusting me had gone for good.

Chapter Thirteen

THE UNIVERSE IN AMBER

There’s no finer work of art than a cat.

The math wasn’t difficult. Jon had given us permission to return Bono to Bideawee on the weekend. Today was Wednesday. That left only three more nights of living with a four-legged hermit. There was no shame in it. We would have fulfilled our mission of giving a sick cat a “holiday.”

Meantime, I decided to grant Bono’s wish of wanting to be ignored, to make the most of the week Lydia had left in New York.

“What say we go to an art museum?” I asked.

My daughter’s eyes narrowed. As a little girl, she’d been more interested in climbing doorframes than visiting art galleries. During the religious phase of her late teens and early twenties, she had frowned on artistic expression of any kind.

“What sort of museum?” she said in a tone that implied tooth extraction was involved.

“I think you’ll like MoMA,” I said. “It’s modern and not too big.”

Every outstanding gallery seems to start with a group of rich, public-spirited visionaries. In the early 1920s, names like Rockefeller, Goodyear, and Sachs got together with the idea of creating the greatest museum of modern art in the world. Public enthusiasm billowed and the collection rapidly expanded. The gallery had to move to larger quarters three times until it settled in its current Midtown spot in 1939.

Lydia appeared offhand as we lined up in the cold with hundreds of other tourists waiting for the doors to open. Admiring the new giraffe print bag draped over her shoulder, I kept my mouth shut. If this didn’t work out, we could always go back to retail therapy.

I’ve witnessed countless moments of transformation in Lydia—from the round-faced baby taking her first uncertain steps, to the young woman sweeping on stage to accept her university degree. Something equally momentous seemed to happen that day on MoMA’s fifth floor when we encountered the three large paintings of Monet’s water lilies.

Mesmerized, she lapsed into silence and allowed herself to sink into the master’s pools of pastel-colored beauty. Though she didn’t say anything, I believe it was the first time she understood the spiritual quality of art. Watching how deeply the paintings moved her, I felt on the edge of tears. If we’d packed up and left New York that afternoon, the journey would have been worth it.

I could understand why Monet devoted the last thirty years of his life to painting the water lilies. Nature becomes more miraculous as you get older and prepare to surrender your body to it. He saw the universe in his magical pond, and painted it nearly 250 times.

Admiring prints of Monet’s water lilies on a calendar or table napkin is one thing, but to stand in front of three, each more than six feet long, is to be transported to another world.

As we descended to the lower floors through displays of perplexing twenty-first century creations, Lydia asked me what happened to art. I didn’t feel qualified to answer. After a brief stop at the gift shop to pick up postcards of our favorite paintings, we hailed a cab.

“Let’s go to the Frick,” I said, pressing my luck.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a smaller museum, with a wonderful collection of old masterpieces.”

“How old?” she asked, suspicious.