Pookie is Dead

Eloise sat at the dinner table anxiously folding and refolding napkins into odd shapes. Her husband had gone to meet her son at the transit depot. They would be home any minute. She looked down at the table, frowning at how she had arranged the paper plates and plastic cups. Was this how you welcomed someone home after something like this? Did you throw a little party?

She looked at the clock hanging over the built-in in her small kitchen, then leaned over the dining table to look out the window. There was a middle-aged man walking down the sidewalk with his hat in his hands. She hadn't seen her son in over ten years. Could this be him? The man saw Eloise in the window, nodded with a forced smile, then kept walking past her house. 

Eloise turned her attention back to the dining table, this time fussing over the decorations that she had hung up. They had been out of "Welcome Home" decorations at the dollar store so she had picked up "Happy Birthday" decorations instead. She felt the sudden urge to rip them all down and go lock herself in her room. When she looked back toward her bedroom her eyes fell on the worn down sofa and the empty spot where her son's cat used to spend her afternoons. The animal had left a permanent indentation on the sofa even though she had been dead for several months. Eloise pursed her lips. She hadn't thought about this part of her son's homecoming. He loved that cat and she had never had the heart to tell him that she had passed, especially in the last months of his incarceration. 

"That goddamn cat," Eloise muttered to herself. She had never understood her son's love of that animal. It was cunning and lazy, quick to anger, and difficult please. It wasn't even pleasant to look at with its mottled yellow fur, uneven teeth, and crooked tail. She'd cared for it because it was the one thing her son had ever asked of her while he was in prison. "Promise me, Ma, take care of her," he said to her as they escorted him out of the courtroom. And she had. For ten long years she had treated that awful little monster like a queen and it had repaid her diligence and her son's patient love by dying unceremoniously just short of his release.

Just then the sound of her husband's old truck came rumbling in through the window. She leaned back over the dinning table, straining to see her son through the truck's glossy windshield. The next few minutes passed as if in a dream, each moment bleeding into those before and after it, as she fought back tears, holding her boy in her arms. After she was able to get hold of herself, she put him at arms length and took him in. He was a skeleton, aged beyond his years and stinking to high heaven. His eyes looked tired and his skin was deeply creased. When he smiled, there was no light in it, just a weariness. But he was home. That was all the mattered.

"I'm so happy you're home," she said to him at last. 

"I am, also," he said softly, his eyes scanning the room around him. He gave a sharp whistle, his eyes lighting up with anticipation. "Where's my girl?" he asked.

Eloise glanced nervously at her husband, then looked up into her son's eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, taking his hand. "Pookie is dead."