Хелен Браун - Bono

But he just smiled in that understated way that has always intrigued me. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said, lifting his side of the quilt and climbing in beside me. “Excitement has a price.”

The words hit me with the force of a cast iron wok landing on my head. Grateful as I was for our marriage, the wonders of modern medicine, our grown-up kids, and two beautiful granddaughters, in recent months I’d fallen into a confusing state of restlessness. Our life together had begun to feel a little, well, ho-hum. Excitement may come at a price, but I was almost ready to pay it.

My life hadn’t always seemed so dull. Nothing could surpass the ecstasy of gazing into the faces of my four children for the first time. On countless occasions, a burst of bliss had popped out unexpectedly from the dampness of a kitten’s nose, or the cool caress of grass under my feet. But the life I’d once led as a journalist, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, seemed a million moons ago. In those days, I could pick up a phone to hear some PR person begging me to do a one-on-one interview with Pavarotti or to take a trip to Alaska or Tahiti for the price of a few lines of travel writing.

These days, I was resorting to frankly desperate measures for a bit of excitement, and it wasn’t working—for me or anyone else. The purple streak I’d persuaded the world’s longest suffering stylist, Brendan, to apply to my fringe had been a disaster. Though Philip and the family were too tactful to say anything, I was starting to realize the new red fishnet stockings were a joke. Every day was a duller replica of the last. On my morning walk to the shopping center, a once opalescent sky bore down like a steely battle helmet. The magpies that used to land at my feet had, with the careless freedom only birds can muster, fluttered off to some other neighborhood. Even the birds were bored with me.

A visit to the doctor was an option, but I knew she’d reach for her prescription pad and tell me to exercise more. I had no intention of joining the army of medicated women with their fake smiles and dilated pupils concealing their shattered emotional states.

If I’d been in a novel, I might have taken off to France to embark on an affair with a lavender farmer. But even if I could do that to Philip, what self-respecting lavender farmer would have me? He’d laugh at my schoolgirl French and hate me for scattering croissant crumbs over his bespoke stone floor.

Instead, to liven things up on one slow Sunday afternoon, I smashed a serving bowl. I’ve never been a plate thrower. It landed with a satisfying wham at the same time I realized I’d actually quite liked that bowl. It was white porcelain, German, with delicate wavy edges, probably irreplaceable. My old self would have chosen to break something cheap and dispensable, like one of Jonah’s feeding dishes. But that nice woman, who would have been too dignified and aware of others’ feelings to throw anything heavier than a sock, had vanished. In her place had appeared a madwoman.

The only thing more shocking than the sound of china exploding on floor tiles was Philip’s face. His skin went pale. His lips formed a circle. In the hollow silence, I was certain he would grab his car keys and walk out the door. He had every right to. I almost wished he would—I was tired of worrying about him leaving me for being too old, too fat, too me-ish anyway.

Gazing down at the shards of broken porcelain, I waited. Seconds later, I watched shamefaced as he reached for the dustpan and scraped the wreckage off the floor.

Our marriage was by no means on the rocks. If anything, our connection had deepened following a recent brush with breast cancer. During those months after the surgery, we’d clung to each other like a pair of shipwrecked sailors. Once things had settled down, however, and we adjusted to the idea I wasn’t about to snuff it, we morphed into well-meaning neutrality. Like conjoined sleepwalkers, we drifted through routines of coffee drinking and sitting in front of the fire with matching iPads. There was Jonah, too, of course. Our deranged, medicated Siamese expected me to devote every waking moment to him.

My prognosis was good. But while I’d been relieved of the burden of arranging my own funeral in a hurry, part of me was missing the intensity of teetering on the edge.

If experience had taught me anything it was to be wary of irrational impulses. Decades earlier, a similar concoction of hormonal overdrive had catapulted me into teenage marriage and motherhood at the age of 19. Still, after my speed date with death, I couldn’t help feeling that however much sand was left in the hourglass, I wanted to spend it living as if I was dying. I wanted to seize life with all its dangerous beauty and vitality.

Philip removed his glasses and put them on top of the pile of books on his bedside table. He leaned over, planted a kiss on my nose, and snuggled under the sheets. We always went to bed at 9:30 on Sundays because of the Big Week Ahead. He would be up at dawn pummeling away on his exercise bike before jumping into the shower. After he had shaved and climbed into his suit, he would bring me a mug of tea with toast and raspberry jam. Life together was cozy, but numbingly predictable.

My pen hovered over “7 Across: Boredom” (five letters beginning with E ). Distant thrumming from down the hallway interrupted my concentration. The drumroll of paws pummeling floorboards was accompanied by a series of urgent and increasingly loud yowls.

“Here we go,” Philip muttered from under the covers.

Clutching the crossword book, I tensed my buttocks and prepared for the assault. Seconds later, a wild-eyed Siamese burst through the bedroom door, sailed through the air, and landed with a thud between my legs.

My husband took a dim view of Jonah’s fixation with my thighs. Whenever I tried to explain my nether regions have a well-upholstered squishiness that’s irresistible to a comfort-loving feline, he seemed unconvinced. I didn’t go out of my way to reassure him. Not when he and Jonah were the only two males on Earth who expressed any interest in my anatomy.

Damp and triumphant from battling imaginary dragons in his outdoor catio, Jonah emitted a victorious meow. He turned around three times, burrowed between my legs, and kneaded the quilt cover. Once he was confident I was satisfactorily pinned to the bed, the cat draped his ridiculously long tail over the mound of my knees. I lowered my hand and massaged his velvety nose with my forefinger. Purring like a tractor, he flossed his teeth on the other available fingertips.

Jonah flashed me a sapphire blink from behind his dark chocolate mask. He clucked appreciatively, and yawned. I lay still and waited for him to doze off. When the purring faded to a gentle rattle, I figured it was safe to reclaim my hand. I tried to inch it away, but a proprietorial paw stretched across my wrist. Jonah unsheathed his claws and squeezed my skin without quite puncturing it—his way of reminding me my status was several notches below his. Still, there’s nothing more flattering than a cat including you in his life, even if he regards you as little more than a mobile cushion.

With Philip on one side and Jonah wedged between my legs, I felt like the filling in an alpha male croissant. Much as I loved Jonah, he was the most demanding cat in the world. A Velcro cat, he clung to my lap, my arms, my neck, and never let me out of his sight. He bellowed like a moose when things weren’t going his way, which seemed to be most of the time these days.

Once they’d settled in and were drifting into their parallel dream worlds, I started to retrieve my hand inch by inch. With Jonah anchoring me to the mattress, I reached for the bedside light. My body emitted an involuntary groan, part of a symphony of noises it was making by itself these days.