Хелен Браун - Bono

“But kittens are so cuddly,” she said, gathering Jonah off my lap and sinking her nose in his neck.

“I know, but remember what a nightmare this one was when he was little.” Baby Jonah had landed in our household with the subtlety of a hydrogen bomb that week after my mastectomy. But he’d also contributed much-needed laughter and warmth at a gloomy time.

“I’ll help look after it.”

My daughter’s maternal instincts were in overdrive.

“Thanks, but I’ve done some research and it’s a hopeless cause. There aren’t any pet friendly apartments in New York.”

Lydia ran her hand over Jonah’s long, silky spine.

“Would you mind if I take a look on the net?” she asked.

It was a harmless enough request.

After a while, I started to enjoy pretending to be a cat foster mother applicant. No doubt con men revel in similar highs of wickedness mingled with a dread of being caught.

Vida reported that Bideawee had a temporary shortage of kittens. They were hoping the few they had would be adopted out by Easter time. When she asked if I’d be willing to take an adult cat, I felt a pang of disappointment as a vision of a round-eyed cuddle bundle faded to a streetwise tabby. Which was ridiculous, considering I had no intention of fostering anything larger than a dust mite. Lying through my fingertips, I told her an adult cat would be even better than a kitten, though (remembering Jonah’s spraying habit and assuming an adult shelter cat would have issues around rejection) I would prefer a female.

A few days later, Vida sent an email saying the shelter would like to do a background check. I was flattered they thought I had a past that could be remotely complicated. And of course, it was good that they wouldn’t lend a feline to just anyone. I was enormously impressed by the thought and care Bideawee and my publishers were putting into this doomed fostering project. After that, there was a reassuring silence.

It was broken several days later by a message from Vida.

Hi Helen,

I hope you’re well. Bideawee says they have a few cats in mind, but they’re hoping they’ll be adopted out before April.

They want to know if you’d be open to fostering an adult cat with special needs? They have a few FIV+ cats that are in a special ward. They’re very sociable and sweet, but would need a foster home without any cats.

You’d need to meet the adoption center manager a few days before you pick up the cat to go over what the care would entail and sign foster forms.

What are your thoughts? Are you okay with taking on a special needs cat?

Many thanks,

Vida

Panic stricken, I called Olivia.

“A cat with AIDS ?” she said. “How New York 1980s can they get?”

“It’s not transferrable to humans,” I said.

Olivia thought I should put my foot down, but I said yes. If they’d asked me to adopt a three-legged Bengali tiger with syphilis I’d have said bring it on.

Because it was never going to happen .

There was one thing I had not counted on, however. Lydia is a Taurus born in the year of the ox in the hour of the ox. Once she’s decided to do something, she digs her hooves in and refuses to give up. The best way to get her to make something happen is to tell her it’s impossible.

After spending a weekend online, she appeared glowing at our front door. “Look at this!” she said, opening her laptop on the kitchen table.

I sat down and sifted through images of a small but livable-looking studio apartment. Hardly the Sofitel, but it wasn’t a tent, either. The most attractive photo featured a black, almost certainly vinyl sofa sitting on pine floorboards under a poster of the Flatiron Building.

“It’s a great location in Midtown,” she said. “Halfway between the UN Building and Grand Central.”

It sounded like a theme song, but then everything does in New York.

The price was reasonable and it was miraculously available for the month of April.

“And here’s the best part,” Lydia said, pointing out a line of fine print under the photo. I lifted the laptop off the table and peered at the tiny writing. A rock formed in my chest as two words came into focus: “Pet Friendly.”

“Really?” I said. “That can’t be right. I can’t see any scratching posts in this photo.”

Lydia fixed me with her psychologist look.

“You’re just going to have to man up about this fostering thing,” she said.

Chapter Four

LOVE IN THE GAPS

A feline is always ready to sniff out a new neighborhood.

Nobody is neutral about New York. They will tell you it’s a cesspool or the most fantastic place on Earth. Whatever their opinion, they will never ask why you are going. It’s understood a person has not fully lived until they have been.

I pressed my face against the side window as our cab merged with traffic streaming into Manhattan. Glittering needles of skyscrapers pierced the last blush of sunset. Confident of their beauty, they twinkled at us, knowing we’d soon be joining the millions addicted to living in and around them. Lydia sat in silence in the backseat as I pointed out the Empire State Building.

“See?” I said, jabbing my finger against the glass. “To think it was the tallest building in the world for nearly forty years.”

With a jolt of horror, I realized Mum used to do the same thing, hammering her index finger against car windows to draw our attention to the latest architectural styles in milking sheds. Any danger of morphing into my mother had gone. I had become her.

My desperation for Lydia to love the city was matched only by my hope she might understand and warm to me a little over the next ten days. It wasn’t anyone’s fault our personalities were close to opposite ends of the spectrum. Like the finger jabbing, it was gene stuff. If I could give up my tendency to lecture, there was a chance she might stop retreating into the monastic cell inside her head.

At 28, the poor girl had an entire youth to catch up on. Over the next ten days I planned to immerse her in everything she had turned her back on through five years of religious devotion—theater, galleries, and shopping for clothes other than sandals and robes. There would be plenty of time for book promoting after she had returned to Australia. Who knows what I’d get up to after she had left?

She had spent so long meditating in Asian temples, I was nervous she might disapprove of my infatuation with a place where Western culture reaches its logical conclusion. As we rattled into Manhattan, I took her silence for awe. Not even a nun could turn up her nose at a city exuding so much glitz.

It seemed an opportune moment to tell her about Michaela’s ice dancing party. I somehow hadn’t found the right moment to mention it before.

“Her what ?” Lydia turned to face me.

“You know,” I said, faking confidence. “Ice dancing party. New Yorkers have them all the time. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“Michaela takes ice ?”

“Of course not. It’s ice skating . . . I think.”

“Does that mean we have to dance on ice, too?”

I didn’t think so.

“We’ll be pretty tired,” I said, thinking whatever people did at an ice dancing party, it would be throwing her in the deep end. “You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”

To my surprise, she said she did.

* * *

Our Airbnb host, Ted, had told us our apartment wasn’t going to be ready till the next day, so we’d booked a place to stay overnight near Times Square. Darkness had fallen by the time the cab turned onto a narrow street and glided to a halt outside a shabby, dimly lit building. I scanned the entrance for a sign indicating it was an actual hotel.