CLEO
His name was Fidore and he was an orange tabby. He was a barn cat who would only come in the house for my mother, who would only open the door to the outside world for him.
When we were little girls and our mother didn’t go to church with us, we asked why. They told us that she had certain allergies to specific wild plants and pollens and that were she to be exposed to them unexpectedly, she could die. Our parents said there was no protecting her with shots or pills. It was best if she never left the cleanliness of our house, and it was a spotless home.
I said to them, “But I’ve seen Mother outside in pictures.”
She told me that allergies change over the course of one’s life. “I wasn’t always allergic,” she said with a sniffle. “And those pictures you’ve seen of me were in Birmingham, Alabama. They don’t have the same plants there as here.”
I knew my mother was different from other women. Her words had a song to them that other ladies and farmers didn’t have. She met my father at a veterinary convention. Her brother had been a veterinarian, and she assisted him in much the same way Barbie and I assisted our father. Mother and Dad fell in love and married quickly, just three months after they met, and she moved to Nebraska to be with him.
Every day Mother would get up, cook breakfast and dress like the rest of us. Her clothes stayed new-looking longer than any of ours would, but such would be if one never left the house. The first time I remember her leaving the house was when we left Nebraska the following summer.
She especially liked wearing red. It made her blonde hair look flashy and her teeth whiter than clouds. She was a really beautiful and frail woman, with Barbie as a small mimic. While mother and Barbie could easily keep doll house furniture on their delicate limbs, I looked like I could haul horse trailers on my broad shoulders. Mother said I was lucky to be big-boned, and that if I ever gained too much weight when I was pregnant someday, I would still look like a model of the Italian female shape. I didn’t really know what she meant by that.
The day after my fair trip was a Friday, and I didn’t see Patrick in school. I could have asked one of his brothers where he was, but a certain adolescent shyness came over me and the thought of his eyes in the sunlight made me blush when I saw his brothers.
At the clinic that afternoon my father did not look me in the eye for longer than a couple of moments when he would talk at me. I should have been exhausted from no sleep, but I was a car battery getting a jump each time I thought of Patrick.
Barbie looked nearly as love struck as I was. She was the bookkeeper and she twirled her black pen over and over like her hand was a majorette. She hummed old fifties songs about love. I would giggle and tell her to stop and then she sang with her mouth open.
Dad came out of an operating room looking like dark prayers. “Cleo, in here a minute.”
I sat in the hard orange chair looking up at Dad, who stood with his hands on the operating table. He still did not meet my eyes. He said, “Cleo, about last night. I want to talk to you.” He pulled a cotton ball out of a jar and pulled at it, making a little sheep without a head by twisting legs from the cotton. “There are things you have to know now that you’re growing up. You have to think before you act, and you have to consider the consequences.” He propped the little toy animal up, but it fell over to the side under its own weight. He pushed it back up. “Just like this,” he gestured at the sheep, “You must weigh things out. What is important to you and what is necessary for survival. Not just your own survival, but that of your family.” He pushed one of the legs into the cotton and let it fall over. “You must stand for what you believe in, but you must first know what it is that you believe.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will have to decide things that may not be right in the eyes of others, or possibly might not even be legal, but you must question everything.”
I thought about the conversation I’d had with Patrick about grass. “I don’t do drugs, Dad.”
“No,” he shook his head, “I don’t think you do.” He even laughed a little. “Listen,” he said, “Listen to me and think about what I’m saying. Our country is built on questioning, our lives are built on it. You must put what you love before all else. And what you love is your family, and your passions.” He paused to stretch the flawed leg. “Sometimes what you do will seem right at the time, but others will not see it as so. I’m asking you to always consider their points of view, while keeping your own. Let me ask you,” and he looked at me. “What is it I have created here on the table?”
“A sheep, Dad.”
“I meant to make a cloud with legs. It can never fall to the earth and succumb to being its lakes.” He nodded slowly at me, and then slipped the thin bifocals out of his pocket, which he kept for small incisions. He put them on. “I may not make sense to you now, but only think about this. Balance.” He pointed at the four-legged, fat cloud. Then he left the room for the lobby. I heard him say, “Barbie, wipe down the tables, will you, and we’ll be off for home.”
Barbie came in and immediately saw the little cotton figure. “What’s that?” Without an answer, she scooped it up and dropped it in the trash. “Dad’s acting so weird today. He got a phone call and he’s been moody ever since. What’d he say to you?”
“I think he was telling me to go to college and not do drugs.”
We giggled and giggled. We had not giggled so much in a 24-hour period since we were little girls.
That night I called the only two friends I had, Genie and Cecil. I wanted to know if they’d heard anything about Patrick, but I kept the fair to myself.
Genie loved to talk about the Downes family, and she said she heard that Patrick was supposed to take some kind of job that his father was forcing him to get.
“What kind of job?” I asked.
“Something to do with labor,” she said.
Cecil, however, was unusually quiet and withdrawn. I was afraid that he had somehow heard about my adventure from the night before. I wasn’t sure at the time why I should keep Patrick a secret from him. I tried to get him to speak his mind, but he said he was in the middle of a good book and it was distracting him.
“What book?” I asked.
“One you’ve never heard of. It’s about politics,” he said.
By the time I got off the phone, my mother was in her red robe in the den, sipping iced tea and watching a TV show. It must have been All in the Family. It seems lots of my memories of her in Nebraska involved that show in the background.
I saw her profile from the kitchen, so child-like with her round forehead and up-pointed nose. I tried to tip-toe past without her attention, but she always knew when someone was near. One time, later in life, she wrote to me that she could smell other people as well as most of us see them.
“Cleo, can you get me some more tea, honey?”
After I refilled her drink with the glass pitcher, she said, “Sit down. I want to ask you about something.”
I sat on the lime green chair beside her, wanting to escape.
“Tell me more about this Downes boy.”
“What do you want to know?”
She looked away to her TV and curled her naked legs up. She looked small and pale in her deep red robe, a farmer’s wife without her make-up. “What does he look like?”
I told her without the poetics, but perhaps with a little flush.
“What do you two talk about?” She sounded more like Barbie the night before and less like the frightened mother.
“Not much,” I said. “We talked about Janis Joplin.”
“Who?”
I said, “She’s a singer. She died last summer.”
“Oh. I don’t ever listen to the radio,” she said.
“I know.”
She looked all over me before she met my eyes again. “Cleo, be careful. I don’t trust a boy who has little respect for a lady’s parents.” She frowned like she wanted to say more, and added, “It’s so hard being a mother
sometimes.”
“We just lost track of time. It won’t happen again.”
“Yes, but,” She pulled her knees up higher to her chest. “I just don’t believe you went for a walk in the woods and got lost. That’s not like you.” She squeezed the hem of her red sleeve. “I don’t like lies.”
“I didn’t lie. What do you think I did?”
She sipped tea and ice jittered in the shaky glass. “Be careful, is all I’m saying.”
“Careful of what?”
“You know.” She turned back to the TV with an empty face.