Home – A Short Story

She came home crying again.

She never actively had tears rolling down her cheeks when she came in through her bedroom door, but I could see it. I could see it in the way her bottom lip quivered, the way she seemed to hold her breath, anticipating the whirlwind. Two or three stubborn tears would race down her face, finding their way past the heels of her palms pressed firmly against her eyes, and down the soft curve of her cheeks.

I learned a long time ago that running up to her in this state was a bad idea. She would scream, yell, push me away, snap at me. At first, it hurt. Now, I expected it.

I watched as she took a great, big heaving breath, as her lips pulled down into a frown, and she let the storm take her.

She never talked to me about what caused her so much pain. But she always smelled like the same thing: pine and wood stove. My nose twitched. I hated the scent.

She fell to her knees in the floor, next to my pillowy bed. I raised my head, ears pinned back, hiding in my crate, as she cried. Every so often her shoulders would heave, and she would cough, as if she was choking on her own palpable grief. I buried my nose in my blanket to hide the smell of pine, crossing my paws over it, and pushing.

It was a few minutes before her shoulders stilled. And a few minutes more before she took the heels of her palms off her eyes and wiped at wet cheeks with her fingers. She looked at me; she had snot running over her parted lips. I raised my head and pushed the blanket off of my face, heart thrumming in my chest.

“I don’t know, Daisy,” she said. Her voice was thick. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this.”

I perked up at the volunteered information. I stood, stretching my back, reaching forward with my paws, before padding closer. The sound of my nails on the hardwood bothered her; her eyes squinted and her mouth tightened. I paused, just in front of her, and laid down.

She rested her shaky hand on my head, stroking my long, white fur. A breath shuddered past her lips. She sniffled.

Moonlight streaming in from the window cast shadows across her face. Her green eyes were red and bloodshot from crying as she stared down at me. I could tell she wasn’t seeing me; she was in a different place. Every so often she would wrinkle her nose, mess her face up, and then shake her head. It didn’t stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks, or keep her lip from getting caught between her teeth.

She was always out late. Luckily I had Mr. Muffles to keep me company. I know. It was a ridiculous name. That was what she called him. I called him Shitface, because I was outside one day and accidentally dropped him in—well you can guess it. She washed him, and continued to call him Mr. Muffles, but he was forever changed. The stuffed, purple dinosaur was in my crate, probably wondering why this was happening for the fourth time this week. I was, too.

She closed her hollow eyes and tipped her head back, letting it rest against the wall. She kept her hand still on my head. The contact felt warm.

Her next inhale was sudden and sharp.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” she said. “It’s past your dinner time. You’re probably wondering when I’m going to feed you.”

I kind of was. She had been gone for a while, but once again, this was the fourth time this had happened this week. I knew she would remember. Eventually. Even though the growling monster in my stomach was threatening to consume the pillows on the couch.

She stood and patted the outside of her thigh and I followed her, out of her room and into the poorly lit kitchen. She opened the musty pantry. The large, clear container my food was in was on the bottom shelf and pulled it out a little to remove the lid. My tail wagged at the sight of each mouthwatering, delicious kibble.

But her movements were slow. She paused at the bottom of her crouch, hand on the dark-colored lid. She breathed. In and out. In and out.

She opened the lid. The smell of chicken filled the air as she used the old, plastic cup she left in the kibble to dig it out. Faded writing was on the outside of the cup, and I would tell you what it said if I could read. Her hand was shaking as she walked out of the pantry and dumped it in my metal bowl.

I sniffed at it before eating, hesitant, as she walked back into the pantry. I heard, not saw, her lift the lid to the container, toss the cup in, and slide it back on the bottom shelf. I expected her to stand, walk past my bowl, and start cooking her own dinner like normal, but she stayed crouched there.

I lifted my head. She had her head in her hands and her shoulders were shaking again.

I walked towards her. She didn’t seem to hear me approach this time. Her cries became audible, not as bad as what they were in the bedroom, but her face—from what I could see through her hands—was red and splotchy. I stared, tongue half out of my mouth, heart thundering in my chest again. Even the monster in my stomach, as starved as it was, had gone silent. The pantry was uncomfortably warm and felt damp.

Remembering each time she had pushed me away, had yelled, I decided to take a chance.

I nudged her hands away from her face. I licked her salty cheeks. She pulled away, but there was a smile on her lips. She grabbed me and pulled me close. I fell into her lap, landing on my back, next to boxes of pasta and bags of rice.

She squeezed me, a small sob coming out of her parted lips. I pushed myself into her, confused because she had just been smiling, but accepted the dichotomous existence that made humans, human.

“It seems like I’m stacking all of my problems together to make them worse, but I promise I’m not,” she said. Her voice was thick. She absentmindedly scratched at my chest. “Hours are cut at work and mom’s health keeps getting worse and… Well—”

Tears slipped down her cheeks. She caught her lip between her teeth and shut her eyes. Her hand slid off my chest and towards my shoulder as she pulled me closer.

“I can feel it.” She put her other hand on my head. “I keep fucking up. He doesn’t love me anymore, not the way I want him to. And when he looks at me, it’s with disregard and annoyance. But… But when I look at him, I see nothing but the creative boy I fell in love with.”

She gripped my fur.

“He sees nothing but an anxious mess.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

“Is it so bad to ask to be considered? Is it so bad to ask to go on dates, or, or to be thought of? I just wanted a photoshoot to commemorate our two-year anniversary, and it ended in an argument. He’s going to leave me, Daisy. The future we made is going to be gone. I’ll have to rebuild again.”

Again. The last time she tried to rebuild was when I found my home with her. I remembered the nights she would fall asleep crying and I would be locked in the crate, forced to wonder what gave her so much sorrow. I was also a puppy at the time, so I get it. I would have eaten her pillows.

“I barely survived last time.”

I remembered the day she walked to the edge of a pier and threw something small and metal into the ocean. I wasn’t paying too much attention; I was more interested in the peculiar, white birds. But I do remember she spent the rest of the afternoon with her shoulders caved in, rubbing one of her fingers on her left hand.

I lifted myself, rearranging so I could stand in front of her. I pushed my head against her chest, my body against her legs. A hug, the closest I could give, the best approximation. She wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my fur.

She breathed. In and out, in and out. The light in the pantry flickered. My fur was wet.

“Daisy.”

It was a plea. She squeezed me hard, hard enough for it to be uncomfortable.

“I just want everything to work.”

I sucked it up and dealt with it.

“I want, for once in my life, to be enough. Enough to save my mom, enough to deserve love. Just enough to keep the bad things from happening.”

The pressure on my neck and body increased as she rearranged her arms. I put my head in the crook of her neck.

She could rebuild again. She would survive again. It was moments like these when I wished I could speak, that my vocal chords could do more than bark or whine. I wanted to tell her about all the ways she had grown, the new people she had met, the experiences we had together because she had to find herself again, but I couldn’t.

I settled for letting her wrap her arms around me as her sobs slowed, as her breathing evened out, and as she fell asleep in the floor, back against the shelves. I fell asleep too, the monster in my stomach silent, with one thought in my head.

She would always be enough for me.