An Only Dog

I could hear the twins behind me, arguing about which one of them was going to get my room. I ignored them for the most part as I sifted through the contents of my bookshelf, sorting my things into piles. It always felt odd, coming home to this room. Each time, despite the fact that I’d stopped growing, it felt smaller. Like the walls were slowly moving in, the ceiling coming down in an attempt to touch the floor. A real Alice-in-Wonderland feeling, as the room shrunk and the twins grew. Each time I saw them it seemed like they’d doubled in size, rapidly growing into their lungs, which were louder than the town’s fire engines and louder than the neighbor’s ongoing construction. I sometimes thought I could hear them from my apartment, a whole train ride away. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ethan and Elliot yelled a question up to the International Space Station, and received an answer. 

“You know,” I said to them, as I shoved one of my plastic soccer trophies into a garbage bag, “If you don’t stop bickering about it, maybe no one will get this room. Maybe I’ll give it to Daisy.” Daisy, who was laying in the corner, asleep after an exhausting journey up the stairs, didn’t budge. The puppy was in the room with us too, laying next to Daisy, batting her with its paws. Daisy was being patient, or, more likely, she didn’t really know what was going on. She was probably confused, who this new dog was, this new weird rambunctious dog living in the house where she’d always been the only dog. 

“Daisy doesn’t need a room,” one of the twins said, “Her bed’s downstairs.” 

“And Daddy says she might leave soon,” said the other. 

“Chris said that?” I turned around to look at them. Ethan was peeling stickers off a sticker sheet and pressing them to his bare chest, while Elliot was laying on his back, staring at the ceiling and kicking his feet like he was doing the backstroke. 

“Yeah,” Ethan said, securing a small glittery shark right above his belly button, “Daddy said that because Daisy’s old, she might have to go to sleep soon.” 

“Well, she’s a tough girl,” I said, looking over at Daisy, “She’ll be around for a while longer.” Daisy didn’t do anything, just kept on sleeping. 

“Whatever,” said Elliot, propping himself up with his arms, still kicking his feet. I turned away from them, went back to sorting through the contents of the shelf. It wasn’t like I didn’t understand that Daisy was getting old. She’d lasted a lot longer than anyone had thought she would. When she was younger she’d practically had a death wish. She’d devoured an entire bag of Halloween candy one year, eaten my birthday cake another. She’d once had surgery to remove a towel from her stomach. But she was still kicking, fifteen years old, old as hell for a dog. She’d been here before Chris, before the twins. Whenever I returned to this house, returned to my mother and my childhood bedroom, I returned to Daisy too.

“When’s Mommy going to be back?” One of the twins asked. 

“Soon,” I said, She’s at the grocery store”. I grabbed a picture frame that had been hiding behind some of the books and tilted it to see the photo. I smiled, bringing it closer to my face. 

“You two, look at this,” I turned around and angled the picture frame towards the twins. 

“Who’s that?” Elliot asked, leaning forward to look at the picture. Ethan went to take it from me, but I moved it away. 

“No, no touching. Look, that’s me and Daisy.” The twins both leaned in, goggling at the little photo tucked behind the glass. 

“That’s you?” Ethan said, “But you’re so little!” 

“I was little too, once, if you can believe it,” I said, “So was Daisy, look.” Daisy, in the photo, wasn’t exactly a puppy, but she was probably less than a year old, her fur still a shiny gold and not yet spattered with gray, her eyes still clear and bright. I turned the picture back around so I could look at it, look at little me, probably not that much older than the twins, grabbing onto Daisy as we laid in the back yard together. I returned to the bookshelf, letting the twins continue to argue and play with the stickers while I stacked the books into two different piles, and tucked the picture frame into a box. Soon, the door alarm beeped downstairs, and I turned around to look back at the twins.

“That’s Mommy!” One of them shouted as the puppy began to bark, and the pair of them zoomed out of the room, puppy in tow, flinging open the door with such a force that Daisy, for the first time, lifted her head to see what was going on. 

“Sorry about them, girl,” I whispered to her, bringing my hand to her nose and waiting for her to stumble to her feet. She stretched, her back dipping as she regained balance, and I followed her down the stairs, watching as she navigated the steps with a learned caution, pressing herself against the wall as she went. I winced as she stumbled down the last two steps, her back legs collapsing in on themselves, but she got back up I followed her to the kitchen where Mom was shooing the twins away.

“You boys bring the puppy out,” Mom said, and the twins abandoned their attempts to nab food from the grocery bags and ran out the back door.  

“Did they break anything?” Mom asked me, handing me a stack of chicken nugget boxes to put in the freezer. 

“No, they were fine. You saw the stickers?” Mom just rolled her eyes, scooting past me to open the refrigerator. 

“Yeah. At least that’s harmless. I’d rather them be experimenting with body art than, like, committing arson.” 

“They’ve done that?” I asked, as I closed the freezer and grabbed a bottle of orange juice out of the nearest shopping bag. 

“It’s a matter of time.” 

“I found an old picture of me and Daisy,” I said, shutting the fridge, “I showed it to them. I don’t think they realized she was every a puppy.” 

“No, they probably didn’t,” Mom said, “Oh, she’s getting old, our girl.” Mom looked back to where Daisy was hovering, waiting for any of the groceries to escape their packaging and fall to the floor. 

“Yeah,” I said, watching Daisy stick her nose into one of the bags, “They were saying Chris has been. . . preparing them for that.” 

“Oh yeah, he has,” Mom hummed, handing me one of the bags, “He knows that’s his job, to prepare them, and me. She’s just been here for so long, I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye.” 

“Me neither,” I said, “I don’t think she seemed this, well, old, last time.” 

“That’s just because she’s gotten worse,” said Mom, “Poor thing. But she’s still a happy girl.” Mom turned to me and brought her hand up to rest against my cheek. I laughed at the gesture, a familiar one, one she’d been doing since I was little. 

“What?” I asked, but she just shook her head. 

“You’re just so tall,” She took away her hand, shoving both hands into the pockets of her shorts. “Thanks, for watching them. It’s good for them to have you around.” I smiled, looking out the back door to where the twins were trampling over Chris’s grass seed, running with the puppy through the sprinkler, both Elliot and the puppy attempting to bite the water. 

“No problem. They’re good kids.” 

“Oh, I know that,” Mom said, “I raise good boys.” She smiled at me, and I looked back behind us to where Daisy was still standing, watching us like she always watched us, watching us like she’d been watching us for a long, long time. 

I got the phone call from Chris three weeks later. Chris never really called me, he texted me Twitter threads about baseball statistics or articles about solar energy, but he never called. I was just getting home from work when his name came up on my phone and my first thought was that it was a mistake, or that this was really Mom calling, her phone dead in another room. But it was Chris, his voice low, as he said something about being in the car on the way home from the vet. My heart lurched against my ribcage. Chris wouldn’t be calling to tell me if the vet had delivered good news, wouldn’t be calling if Daisy’s cataracts would fade or that her legs would regain feeling. I sat down on my couch and brought my hand to my forehead as Chris cleared his throat on the other line. 

“I think your mother might like it if you could come home if you can. On Saturday.” And there was the date. There wouldn’t be a date if there wasn’t something to schedule. I stared down at the rug, stared down at my work shoes probably tracking city dirt onto said rug. 

“I can come Saturday,” I said. “What time?” It felt wrong, asking for a time. Like this was something to put on a calendar.

“Noon.” He said, and hung up shortly after, leaving me sitting there. I leaned my head back to look at the ceiling. So my dog was going to die. I had never thought of her as dying, just as old, but now, it was different. She was in the act of dying, and I had no idea for how long that had been going on. If it had been happening for a few weeks, or a few years, or for her whole life. If maybe, the act of growing was synonymous with the act of slowly dying. I shook my head, almost a little embarrassed by myself. This was too much melodrama, I thought, for a dog. For a fucking golden retriever. But from now until Saturday I was going to be picturing her not as living, not as being, but as on an active journey towards her final scheduled day. 

Mom was sitting on the back deck steps when I arrived on Saturday, she was leaning against the railing like Daisy always did. The puppy was running around the yard, playing with something that looked suspiciously like one of the twin’s shoes. Daisy was sitting by the door, pressed up against the side of the house, and she looked up as I came outside, sniffing the air, turning her nose towards me. 

“No, good girl,” I whispered, sitting down beside her, “Don’t get up,” Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t. She could only push herself up into a sitting position and lean her head into my chest. I brought my forehead down to touch hers, moving my hand up to pet her ears. Soon, she laid back down, stretching out her front legs and resting her head in between them, and I walked over to sit down beside Mom. We sat there for a few moments in silence, watching the puppy now wrestling with the shoe, shredding it to bits. 

“Chris still out?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. I hadn’t seen his car in the driveway and hadn’t heard the twins. Mom nodded. 

“He’s bringing the boys to their aunt’s.” I nodded, looking down at my sneakers. We sat there in silence, listening to the spitting of the sprinkler and the occasional growls of the puppy. There was a noise behind us, and we turned to see Daisy making her way over to see us, fumbling around on her back legs, her head held low, her back hunched. She laid down behind us, and we turned a bit to watch as she stretched herself out in the sunshine. 

“She’s a good dog,” I said. It was all I could think to say. Mom just nodded, leaning back and running a hand through Daisy’s fur. 

“I’m glad she could be here for so long,” Mom whispered, “Especially with all of her accidents.” 

“They were hardly accidents,” I said, finding myself, despite everything, laughing, “That cake? That was planned.” Mom laughed too, still sifting her fingers through Daisy’s fur, rubbing a spot in her neck. 

“Remember the time,” she said, “You were probably around ten. When she ate that whole bag of dog food?” 

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “And she was like, twenty pounds heavier, and we had to keep her in the mudroom for a week!” Mom laughed, shaking her head. 

“You silly girl,” she said to Daisy, “Scared us so many times.” 

We sat there for a while longer, just talking about Daisy and the way she’d been when it had been just the three of us. Me and Mom and Daisy.

A car door slammed in the driveway, and the two of us jolted. Daisy, though, didn’t seem to hear anything. Chris came around the back, scooping up the puppy as it attacked him at the gate, and he carried it over towards us. I hadn’t seen the puppy up close since I’d arrived, but now that I did, it was obvious that it had gotten bigger. It was slowly growing into its giant paws, a step closer towards filling them out, a step closer to growing into its floppy ears and that big wonky head. When Chris set it down beside me I tried to pet it, but it nipped my hand and ran back towards the sprinkler. 

The vet came at noon. We put the puppy in the mudroom and set up Daisy in the yard. It was over quickly. Daisy laid her head in Mom’s lap while the vet went about her work. Mom and I wrapped Daisy in a sheet, and Chris carried her to the hole he’d dug and laid her down inside it. We stood there for a while after she was fully covered. Just stood there, Mom leaning her head on Chris’s shoulder, listening to the low rumble of the neighbor’s construction. We went inside, eventually, but it didn’t seem real. Even though we’d buried her, it didn’t really feel like she was gone. She was always so quiet, I almost felt like I was going to find her in a corner, having slept through this whole thing. 

Mom and I had sandwiches made and lemonade poured by the time the twins got home. They arrived home laughing and jabbering on about their cousins, but before we could toss them outside towards the lunch, towards this dreaded conversation, Elliot grabbed my arm and hauled me upstairs to my bedroom.

“You’ve gotta see my new room!” He was saying, Ethan hot on our heels. 

“Yeah and mine too!” Ethan said, “Mommy said that whoever moved into your old room got one bed, but whoever stayed got the bunk bed! So now I have two beds!” Elliot pulled me into the bedroom and I stopped dead in my tracks. Every time I’d entered my room since I’d moved out for college and then into my apartment, it had been kept for me. Kept, waiting for my return, a sanitized version of a bedroom, as it acted more like a guest room. But Elliot’s new twin bed was unmade, his duvet cover wrinkled and bunched up towards the back, his pillows on the floor. A big chest of drawers had replaced my desk, and toys and games were poking out of it. The walls had been repainted, too, solid blue replacing gray, a big laminated world map tacked to one wall, next to a little bookshelf filled with picture books and toy cars. 

“Isn’t it cool!” Elliot flopped down across the foot of his unmade bed, and Ethan raced over to the window to show me the cushion on top of the chest of drawers. I just stood there. It was so lived in. I couldn’t believe that he’d only been in here for three weeks. I went and sat down towards the headboard side of the bed, where the navy blue sheets were exposed, and for the first time that day, I felt myself beginning to cry. I hadn’t cried when Chris had called me about Daisy, I hadn’t cried when the vet had administered the injection, or when her head had gone limp in Mom’s lap. I hadn’t cried when she’d been lowered into the ground, or when Chris and I covered her with earth. But as I sat there, on Elliot’s new bed, I leaned my head forward into my hands and felt tears fighting against my palms. It felt stupid. And I couldn’t cry in front of the twins. 

“Don’t you like it?” Elliot asked, his voice softer than I had ever heard it before. I looked up to see him standing directly in front of me, leaning toward me as if looking for something on my face. I wiped my eyes with my palm as I nodded. 

“Yeah,” I said, choking back the tears. “Yeah, I love it,” My voice sounded clearer the second time around. I looked at Elliot, standing there, his shirt caked in dirt, his hair sticking up in odd places. The twins looked like Chris, they always had, but for a moment, I thought, maybe, Elliot looked a little bit like me.  

“Come see mine it’s better!” Ethan said, breaking me from the trance. He yanked at my arm so I stood up and followed, maybe reluctantly, maybe not so much. It was very hard to tell.