Upright Hallmark cards and lasagna-stained paper plates cluttered Grandma\u2019s kitchen table.\u00a0 I pulled up the sleeve of Grandpa\u2019s old gray role then let it fall back upon my arm.\u00a0 Bare feet tapped cold white and gold linoleum.\u00a0 Less than four hours ago the last guest had left, asking if we needed anything.\u00a0 I replied, as I had with all the others, that we were fine.\u00a0 The cat watched me.\u00a0 Sitting on his haunches, his gray-and-black striped back brushing against the patio sliding door curtain, he blinked his eyes.\u00a0 Then blinked again.\u00a0 I looked down at him.\u00a0 The clock struck five times in the living room.\u00a0 Neither he nor I stirred.\u00a0 I lifted my coffee cup from atop a yellow piece of paper creased at an odd angle.\u00a0 A brown coffee ring encircled our neighbor\u2019s condolences.\u00a0 My crumpled black jacket remained draped over the kitchen chair on my left.\u00a0 I reached over and fingered the fading white carnation in the lapel.\u00a0 The cat looked at me with a cocked head, as if to tell me not to wake up Grandpa.<\/p>\n
Outside, somewhere beyond the front door, a car horn beeped.\u00a0 The cat turned his head to the sound then turned back to me.\u00a0 The rest of his body didn\u2019t move.\u00a0 I closed my eyes and then reopened them.\u00a0 The scene was the same.\u00a0 I rubbed my palms together, callouses tugging at one another.\u00a0 Calluses earned on lonely nights in this house when I had lived here as a teen, unable to live peacefully with Mom and Dad that summer.\u00a0 Then coming home to where the cat prowled, sometimes glaring, sometimes licking fur with an irritated tongue.<\/p>\n
Overhead, a board creaked.\u00a0 The cat looked up with wide eyes.\u00a0 We heard the sound of unpadded feet followed by the sound of a bathroom door opening and closing.\u00a0 The doctor had said that Grandma\u2019s medication might side-effect in fitful sleep.\u00a0 I\u2019d walked the doctor out to his car last night.\u00a0 Grandpa\u2019s best friend of four decades had been the very first to arrive, the very last to leave.\u00a0 The chill had misted our breath.\u00a0 The cat trotted out with us.\u00a0 Perhaps he hoped we knew were Grandpa was hiding.\u00a0 The doctor had called him a good mouser, even though the cat had never caught anything.\u00a0 The doctor knelt down slowly on one knee to scratch the cat\u2019s ears; the cat answered him with an audible purr.\u00a0 The doctor laughed and then fell silent for a long moment.\u00a0 Grandpa loved that old cat.<\/p>\n
Grandpa had scratched the cat behind the ears the same way I did today, after my ballet recitals, my piano concertos, after I told him about the boy who had broken my heart.\u00a0 The cat had snuggled us as we ate Winchell\u2019s donuts, watching us and trotting alongside happily.<\/p>\n
But today we only sat where we were\u2026and the cat continued his gaze to the hallway, waiting for Grandpa\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Upright Hallmark cards and lasagna-stained paper plates cluttered Grandma\u2019s kitchen table.\u00a0 I pulled up the sleeve of Grandpa\u2019s old gray role then let it fall back upon my arm.\u00a0 Bare feet tapped cold white and gold linoleum.\u00a0 Less than four hours ago the last guest had left, asking if we needed anything.\u00a0 I replied, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n