Nostalgia Was My Dog
By Brooke Randel
I didn’t name him. The shelter named all the dogs. I suppose I could have changed it—he could have been a Buddy or a Blueberry or a Tiger—but I had enough on my mind. A volunteer walked me through the shelter, pointing out the dogs and giving me their highlights and histories as if he were a museum docent and I a person of import.
“Haze got in last month. Exquisite coloring. Great demeanor. We’re still working on potty-training.” No.
“This is Rebellion, amazing energy. Very upbeat.” Eh.
“Rumination is nice, but does have a tendency to get fleas.” Pass.
“Ah, here’s Nostalgia.” The volunteer swung his arm toward a brown rubber band of a dog, circling behind his gate. The dog seemed to be looking for the perfect spot to rest, but was finding nothing but circles; one circle, another, another. Clearly, this was the best choice for a bad decision. Nostalgia circled and I said yes. Before I knew it, a bright green leash was in my hand.
Nostalgia looked up at me with an open mouth. I attached the leash to his collar and walked him back to the townhouse I grew up in, a dark brick building packed with stuffy decor. I’d only been back in Philadelphia for a week and a half, and only because Ma’s health had taken a turn for the worse. My husband insisted I go, that he could watch the kids on his own. I always knew what they were doing: eating breakfast, walking to school, going to bed at 3 PM my time since they were in Lucerne, Switzerland and I was here in Philly. I opened the door with my key from childhood—Ma never updated the locks—and pictured Liv and Luca pulling the covers up to their chins, drifting into sweet, sleepy dreams.
“I got a dog!” I shouted into the half-dark house.
I didn't have dreams. Sleep took me the way it did when I was young: all at once, a clean getaway. At ten, I was tired from biking all day with friends, running around Fitler Square, evading Ma's chores. Now what tired me was managing hospice nurses and medicine, doled out in even doses. Ma loved order, but I never did. I wanted mess. I wanted adventure and freedom and escape and dirt.
As soon as I unclipped the leash, Nostalgia dashed around the townhouse. I stalked behind him, bewildered to see a dog in this place. He hopped onto the couch next to Ma. She looked as still as ever in her hospice bed, her chest lightly lifting then falling like a feather. I tracked Nostalgia with one eye (on the couch, smelling his butt) and her with the other (inhaling, yes, still inhaling) when my husband called.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, and I knew what he meant was, is your mom going to die soon and how soon please I’m tired.
“It’s so hard to tell. She’s sleeping. How long can one person sleep?”
Nostalgia jammed his nose into the couch cushions and seemed to get it stuck there.
“Is there anything I can do?”
I loved my husband, but he asked the most useless questions.
The next day, Nostalgia and I walked to the dog park, curving down the streets of my youth, observing all the new construction. He sniffed as many stairs, trees and trash cans as he could.
The dog park was really two dog parks, one for big dogs and one for small. Nostalgia was right in the middle. I thought of how many times I had been made to choose—keep the baby or not, move home or stay in Switzerland, stay in touch or fade in the distance. You seem to collect problems, Ma said to me once. She said it almost admiringly.
Nostalgia wanted to go to the bigger dog park, so I opened the gate, undid his leash, and let him run free. An older woman with a book came in after me.
“Beautiful dog,” she said.
“Thank you, I just got him.”
“What’s his name?”
I told her and she grinned as if given a secret. “How perfect. He looks like a good pup. Good with kids, I bet.”
I thought about how much my kids would like Nostalgia. His deep brown eyes. His awkward head tilt. But I didn’t plan on mentioning him to them or my husband. How to explain why I got a dog while my mom was dying in a country I no longer lived in? I cherished my time with Ma, every moment the last of something, our last conversation about Vanna’s dress on Wheel of Fortune, our last time hearing a bird fly into the window and me screaming while she turned away, but I couldn’t hold all those lasts in my hand, couldn’t deal with their not-lastness. Dying came too quickly and death took too long.
“He reminds me of a dog I had when I was a kid,” I told the woman. “Same color. Followed my mom around the house like a shadow.”
“Dogs have a way of healing just by being,” she said, the gray in her hair twinkling.
The dog, I remembered, had been a gift. I had broken a bone in my right foot and Ma wanted to cheer me up, help me forget the pain. I must have been four, maybe five. We only had him for a few months, until my dad realized he was allergic.
My eyes turned toward the ash trees at the edge of the park, up toward the airplanes cutting the sky into quarters. “I’m not sure I can keep him.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“I live in Switzerland.”
The woman looked down and clicked her tongue. “I’m sure there’s a way,” she said, and seeing I was a bottle about to pour, she tucked her book under her arm and left the park.
Nostalgia shat in the corner and I walked over to pick it up.
Back at the house, Ma had a blue glow to her skin, which meant Jeopardy! was on.
“We’re back, Ma,” I said. “Me and the dog. I know you can’t really say otherwise, but I think you’d like him. He’s a good dog.”
Nostalgia brought a dishtowel into the room, curling up by the TV. Something about the two of them, the way neither could shout over me or ask for a snack, made me want to keep talking.
“I feel bad for not missing the kids more. But being here, well, I just miss you, Ma.”
Her head rolled to the left.
“I miss being a kid with you and Dad puttering around the house, fixing our meals. All I wanted was to leave and now I just wish I’d sat still a little longer.”
She rolled her head back to the right.
Ma had me at forty, the same age I was now. She once told me she was a bit of a Julia Child type without bothering to explain what that meant. I never knew who she was before she became my mom. And how well did I know her after? She was so worried something might happen to me as a kid that when something did—a car crashing into my bike on South Street at fifteen, the second break for my sad right foot—she built a box of rules around me, limits on when, where, why and how. I bucked under her vigilance, angry her love could be another hard-plastic boot, another source of confinement.
I always thought distance had improved things between us: regular text messages, photos back and forth, mine of Liv and Luca, hers of her tomato plants. But that felt flimsy now. I missed our old close ways, our conversations at the kitchen table, the way she used to rib me, debate me, entertain me. Everything became so polite when I moved out of the country, when I put an ocean between our bodies.
“I can’t tell my family about the dog,” I said.
Ma made a gurgling sound.
“They won’t get it. It has to be a secret. Our secret.” I patted Ma’s hand the way she used to pat mine, understanding, undeterred.
“Who is Lil Nas X?” one of the Jeopardy! contestants shouted and for whatever reason, Nostalgia heard this and began to run. He ran long, looping circles around the house. Kitchen, living room, hallway. I yelled after him, but he only wagged his tail faster, legs sprinting, teeth still gripping that raggedy dishtowel.
“Nostalgia!” I shouted as if annoyed, but I was pulled in now, up and running. I was playing tag, a kid again, careful not to break Ma’s important things. I picked up speed. Kitchen, living room, hallway.
Nostalgia cut under the kitchen table, so I moved one of the chairs to block him on the next pass. He pushed it aside with his nose. I ran faster. He ripped into the living room, then turned to wait for me. I slowed, inching toward him. He stood at alert on the other side of Ma’s hospice bed. I took a step toward him, then another, staying low to the ground.
“Who is Ice Cube?” contestant 1 said, a tickle of fear in his voice.
“I’m afraid that’s wrong,” the guest host said. Poor Alex Trebek. “We were looking for Ice-T.”
I snagged a corner of the dishtowel and Nostalgia yanked back, sending me to the shag carpet.
“Good dog,” Ma mumbled. She was always more aware than I ever gave her credit.
Nostalgia and I created a routine for ourselves: early morning walk, kibble, drugs for Ma, yogurt for me, call Switzerland, watch TV, let the nurse in, go to the dog park, eat, let the other nurse in, one more walk, one more call, one more round of food, drugs, TV. Then I pretended to online shop for a few hours and fell asleep, Nostalgia by my feet.
After two weeks, the shelter called to see how he was settling in.
“Oh, he’s doing great,” I said. “Runny poop, but otherwise happy.”
“Try canned food. That should help.”
I said OK, but doubted I would.
“We like to call at this point to make sure the placement is working. Are there any issues?”
Like me not living in the States, I thought, but did not say.
“None at all! I think I have everything figured out.”
I lied to my mom so much as a teenager. Mostly to get out of things, but sometimes to get into them. Why did being around her make me want to lie? In Europe, I was a grown woman who handled problems head on. I wasn’t impulsive, or childish, or skittish, or scared. I tossed my phone onto Ma’s couch. Nostalgia jumped on it to investigate. Everything figured out? I had no idea what I was going to do.
That night I wrote Ma’s obituary and the following morning she died.
The next two weeks were a blur of problems. What should Ma wear? How do virtual funerals work? What time should it be? Should the kids watch? Where does an octogenarian keep her checkbook? Why is it not the obvious, normal place? Do I clean the house or just sit in it and cry?
Nostalgia had his needs, too. I took him on long walks along the river and bought the fancy dog food that smells like weird fish. We went to the dog park and I watched him run, so free and unaffected. My husband called often. He wanted to know how I was doing, and more pressingly, when I was coming home. He seemed to call whenever I was on a walk with Nostalgia, or sitting at the dog park.
“It’s good you’re getting fresh air,” he said.
“I guess so.”
“Well, keep me in the loop. I’ll get your ticket whenever you’re ready.”
“I know. I just need to get a few things in order.” My eyes lingered on the bright green leash.
Over the phone I heard a sharp, squeaky noise and knew instantly it was Luca. There’s something so distinct about one’s own children’s yelps, you can identify them from across the planet.
“Shit,” my husband said. “I’ll call you back later.”
Thank you, Luca.
Nostalgia came to me with a tennis ball in his mouth, clearly not something we brought. I threw it across the park and it bounced off a post, four dogs in breakneck pursuit. Nostalgia lost interest and peed on the fence.
I noticed a flyer on the post, a new addition to the pile of stickers and graffiti. The flyer said someone named Cal was looking for subletters. I whistled for Nostalgia, which didn’t work, but eventually caught him and walked back to the townhouse. Subletters, I thought, the word bouncing in my head like a slobbery ball.
That night I made my own flyer—fully furnished! vintage pieces! eclectic wallpaper!—and put it by Nostalgia’s leash. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live in Ma’s cramped townhouse, the air thick with her memory. I also couldn’t imagine leaving. The same way it repelled me as a young person, the townhouse was pulling me in, holding me tight. I needed a sign, a voice to direct me. Two days later, a baritone called, inquiring about the flyer.
“How many rooms?” he asked.
I told him and he said they’d take it, him and his roommate. They were grad students from Germany, both named Jürgen.
“But you haven’t even seen it,” I said, curious what it must be like to walk through the world with that much confidence.
“We’ll come by tomorrow. But I’m sure we’ll take it.”
The Jürgens came over at noon. They measured the rooms one by one, petted Nostalgia’s head and rubbed his belly. They loved how segmented the place was, all the privacy and quiet. I was dumbfounded and said they’d need to pay the first month’s rent ahead of time. Plus, a security deposit. In unison they asked how much.
I printed a lease on Ma’s inkjet and they signed. We negotiated what furniture they wanted to keep, and what I’d move or donate. Almost everything stayed. One of the Jürgens asked me where I was going to live if not here. I told him I was from Switzerland, a mostly true sentence.
“We were in Lucerne last summer,” he said. “Beautiful place.”
“Oh yes, just lovely,” said the other Jürgen.
I agreed. It was time to go home.
The kids ran to me at the airport. Did my husband forget children need haircuts? Their bangs flopped against their brows, falling into their eyes. I tucked their hair behind their ears and kissed their foreheads, cheeks and noses. My husband wrapped me in his arms and held me long enough for both kids to whine. I loved the way he kissed me, the way he meant it.
“I missed you,” he whispered in my ear.
“Me too,” I said. “Also, I bought a dog.”
My husband raised an eyebrow at Nostalgia, but nothing more. We loaded him into the car and my kids peppered me with questions, their eyes glued to his soft brown fur, his wet black nose. They demanded I sit in the back with them.
“How’d he get his ears?” Luca asked.
“Is he really ours?” Liv said.
Moving a dog internationally is less laborious than burying a mother. One microchip, rabies shot and vet-signed health certificate, and Nostalgia was ready to plant Swiss roots. In some ways, he’d always be a dog from Philly, a dog with some history, memories of ash trees and afternoon game shows, walks along the Schuylkill, and that gnarled dish towel, that hospice bed. But he could also be something new here, something different. I had struggled to see. One can hold on just as they let go.
Luca stroked Nostalgia with an unrecognizable amount of softness. Liv smelled his feet.
I told them I picked the dog out with them in mind, that I wanted to surprise them. Their eyes shone. I told it like a bedtime story: how long the flight had been, how excited Nostalgia was to see them, how nervous and stressed, so much on his mid-sized brain. My husband smiled at me in the rearview mirror. Liv tugged on my sleeve, asked if they could call him Nasty. I said yes. He was their dog now.
Brooke Randel is a writer, editor and associate creative director in Chicago. She is the author of Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Her writing has been published in Hippocampus, Hypertext Magazine, Jewish Fiction, Split Lip, and elsewhere. Find more of her work at brookerandel.com.