Bono

I’d forgotten how our house was an oven in the summer and a refrigerator by the time autumn came along. It didn’t seem fair to tell him about daffodils in Central Park, and the thermometer climbing by the day.

“How’s that cat?” he asked.

“Bono? He’s a handful. How’s our boy?”

“He’s been licking his fur too much. He’s almost bald down one leg. See?”

Philip held up Jonah’s front leg to show me a pale strip down the side of it. Jonah flicked me a pitiful look.

“Has that gray cat been bullying him again? Are you remembering his pill?” I asked.

“The vet thinks it’s separation anxiety. She says to give him as much attention as I can.”

“Really?” I said, swallowing hard. Poor Jonah. To be honest, with all the worry about Bono, I’d hardly thought of him. Still, Jonah was in good hands.

“Where do we keep the sheets?” he asked.

“In the laundry cupboard.”

“They’re all too small for our bed.”

“Just sort through them,” I said. “Try the green ones.”

I was almost relieved after they melted into the dark screen. I wasn’t about to hurry home to go on a sheet safari. Still, I felt guilty about Jonah. Since the cancer episode, I’d made a point of saying yes to life. But that Skype session had left me feeling more than a little selfish.

I wondered if showing me Jonah’s leg had been Philip’s way of telling me he needed me, too. If he hadn’t mentioned the sheets, I might have been tempted to fly home.

On the other hand, there was so much I’d missed out on through four decades of mothering. I’d spent the last years of my childhood in the 1970s giving birth and raising two small boys, Sam and Rob. The 1980s were consumed with grief after Sam’s death, followed by the joy of Lydia’s birth. The 1990s were about remarriage and giving birth again, this time to Katharine. Through all those phases, I never stopped working, writing for newspapers, magazines, and television. Occasionally, it seemed things had not really happened until I’d made sense of them on paper, and later a computer screen. If I could not find out who I was and complete myself now, in my late fifties, when would I?

Back in Melbourne, all the days seemed the same. Weeks drifted into years. In New York, every moment was etched with intensity. Lying under the purple curtains each night, I would brim with childish excitement for the next day.

Much as I loved Philip, I wasn’t sure I could ever shrink myself down to fit into our old routine in front of the fire again. My parents had spent their sunset years like that, and Mum became bitter about the compromises she’d made. She’d practically died with a tea tray in her hands. I did not know how I wanted to end up, but it was not like that.

After you’ve fallen in love and burst into song a few times, the business of real life begins. There are not many musicals about childbirth, trash nights, and whose turn it is to do the dishes. It’s a shame Rodgers and Hammerstein never wrote about that part.

Once Lydia had returned to Australia, nobody would care if I hummed along with the cast at musicals or made an idiot of myself pretending to be a native New Yorker. Of course, I’d honor my promise to look after Bono a while longer and start the blog. But even if a thousand people read it, he was bound to end up back at Bideawee. Once that happened I’d no longer need to fret over anyone’s emotional development or if they’d done number two.

Like a glorious Persian rug, a life of limitless possibilities lay before me.

Chapter Eighteen

STARSTRUCK

A cat prefers to be adored.

When I move to New York, I’ll live in walking distance of Broadway and see every show. I love how the theaters are so small and old-fashioned. The smell of dust and disinfectant is a reminder the greatest dreams are built on muck and microbes.

The only thing not to like is the intermission stampede for the restrooms. Something’s out of whack when it’s possible to print 3D versions of the heart, yet there still aren’t enough bathrooms for women in theaters.

Lucky Guy was fantastic. As the actors took their bows at the end, I stood and clapped until my hands were numb.

“What did you think?” Lydia asked, as we joined the throng of people surging into the theater foyer.

“Tom Hanks is amazing,” I said. “Some actors can’t make the transition from television to a theater stage, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”

Lydia hugged her program and smiled.

“Did you like it more than The Book of Mormon?” she asked.

How could I not? In his role as tabloid journalist Mike McAlary, Tom Hanks had practically stepped out of my past.

“Newsrooms were tough for women back in the seventies and eighties,” I said, digging my hands in my pockets. “The guys we worked with would be in jail these days.”

I told her how in my first week as a cadet reporter, aged 18, the chief reporter took me to a bar and announced he was going to have his way with me in the back of his car.

“What did you do?” she asked.