Хелен Браун - Cleo

“It felt real at the time.”

“Does she still talk to you?” I asked, no longer concerned for his sanity. Years ago I’d accepted Rob had a special connection with Cleo that only seemed to bring good.

“In dreams, sometimes.”

“What does she say?”

“She doesn’t talk so much these days as show me things. Sometimes we go back to when Sam was alive. We’ll run up and down the zigzag with him. It’s like she’s telling me everything’s going to be okay.”

Cleo straightened her front legs, arched her back and opened her mouth in a cavernous yawn. Appearing in Rob’s dreams was just a pastime, as far as she was concerned.

I’d have willingly exchanged places with Rob to relieve him of his ordeals. Yet he shrugged when I said such things. In many ways, he said, the illness was a gift. I shivered when he talked that way. He sounded like an old man. Certainly, his experiences gave him a perspective well beyond his years.

“I’ve been through good times and bad times,” he said. “Believe me, good’s better. When you’ve tasted stale bread, you really appreciate the fluffy stuff fresh out of the oven.”

Rob’s body gradually adjusted to eating and absorbing solid food again, though he still looked like a survivor from a wartime prison camp. If, for some reason, his body refused to heal properly and he had complications I wondered if he’d have any strength left to muster a fight. Fortunately, he was young and he seemed have stores of vigor to draw on from his athletic years.

Cleo, a more conscientious nurse than I, trotted after him around the house, snuggling into his blankets and presenting him with the occasional get-well present in the form of a decapitated lizard.

Through our long days at home together, I had the blessing of getting to know Rob better. It’s rare for a young man in his twenties to share his thoughts with his mother. In an unexpected way, his illness brought us closer together.

“I used to wish I had an easier life,” he mused. “Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they’re half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They’ve had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it’s ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day’s like. It’s going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out.”

He’d also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. “Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I’ve learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life’s more exciting and intense that way. It’s like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks.”

My young philosopher in a dressing gown had theories to rival an Eastern mystic’s. Yet deep down we both knew his dreams were the same as every other young person’s. More than anything, he longed for love and happiness.

Connection

A cat who appears in a dream is no less real than one who pads a kitchen floor.

The psychic cat is connected to the world in more ways than we imagine. She can creep into a kitchen or, just as easily, a dream. Waiting on her favorite window ledge, she knows when her slaves are on their way home to her. Guardian of unworldly powers, she beams a shield of protection over the human household she has blessed with her presence. Sometimes they are aware of her ability to slide between worlds. Mostly they are not.

A couple of months later Rob was still as thin as a sapling in winter and, as far as I could make out from an anxious mother’s perspective, not fully healed. Nevertheless, he insisted on planning an Outback adventure with a couple of old schoolmates—“the boys.” They planned to drive through the desert to Australia’s red heart, Uluru, a journey that would take three weeks. To say I worried was an understatement. Yet I had to accept that Rob had no intention of having an “invalid” sticker attached to his forehead for the rest of his days. He craved a normal young man’s life brimming with adventure, but the risks were enough to turn a mother’s heart to jelly.

I lectured the boys about the Outback being basically a vast zoo for creatures armed for attack. From crocodiles and sharks to snakes, spiders and ants, they’re all expert killers devoid of affection for the human species. Even kangaroos can be killers, crashing inadvertently through drivers’ windows at sunset.

They listened and nodded sagely. They weren’t fools who’d go out of their way to get into trouble.

The only thing that concerned me more than wild animals was the danger of mechanical breakdown. Since his surgery, Rob had been urged to keep hydrated as much as possible. If their vehicle sputtered to a halt in some parched wilderness, lack of water could be a serious problem. The boys assured me they had plenty of spare water on board. Technically, they weren’t boys anymore but young men well beyond the age of consent. I was left with no choice but to trust them.

“What are you worrying about?” Philip asked one night when I couldn’t get to sleep. “Rob’s mates are fantastic. You saw their loyalty when they visited him in hospital every day. They know what he’s been through. They won’t let him down.”

Their beat-up Ford hardly looked ideal for journeying across the vast emptiness of central Australia. They insisted they were prepared with the latest snake-proof camping gear. Imagining them inching across barren terrain under a merciless bowl of blue sky, I wanted to beg them to stay home and do something safe and sensible—enroll in cooking classes, take dancing lessons. Anything but this. But I’d learned enough about parenthood to know there are many times when it’s wiser to keep your mouth shut. I was hoping this was one of them.

Three weeks later, when they were due to return, Cleo paced the hallway. She leapt to the window ledge, stared out at the street, then sprang back onto the floor to start pacing again. She was twitchy as a cobra on a desert highway. When I picked her up we exchanged electric shocks. Her ears flattened. She wriggled impatiently. I lowered her to the floor so she could pace some more.

“Don’t worry, old girl,” I said, talking to myself as much as the cat. “He’ll be fine.”

A waterfall of relief washed over me as their car, red with dust, turned into our street. With Cleo in my arms I ran outside to meet them. Rob uncoiled his considerable length from the backseat to accept with a dutiful grimace my embrace. Strange how the child who once stood on his toes to kiss his mother now bent and inclined his head to receive hers. Running an anxious eye over his entire six feet and more, I noticed his physical condition had, if anything, improved.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Fantastic!”

We persuaded the boys to stay on for a barbecue before they headed off. Basking in the glow of the coals, we watched the stars sparkle to life.

“Nothing like the night sky,” Rob sighed. “Whenever things get too much all I have to do is think of the stars and all the things they look down on. Here on earth we think our little lives are so important. Even though we’re an integral part of everything we’re just tiny specks in the universe.”

Cleo took the opportunity to lick some tomato sauce off his plate.

“I had an amazing experience in the desert,” he continued. “One night when we were camping in a remote spot near Katherine Gorge I dreamt about a weird white cat. It had seven hearts and it was sitting on the edge of an inland sea.”