The Previous Adventures of Pets
A subscriber-exclusive short story
There are lots of reasons why families can’t be together this holiday season, and those fortunate enough to spend some time together have to take extraordinary precautions to make it happen. My family lives on the other side of the United States and I miss them very much.
Tonight I’m sharing a story about a family. It’s a melancholy story, but it’s also an autobiographical one. When I was a kid our family had a dog with two names: half the family called him one name, the other half called him another. I built a story about around this anecdote, which got me thinking about our dog’s life before he came to be a part of our family.
I say it’s autobiographical, but other than the weird detail about a dog with two names, it bears little resemblance to my family. In fact, I wrote this story not long after visiting my friend John (Hi John!) in San Francisco a few years ago and his family has two dogs, Charlie and Annabelle, that they got while living in Shanghai, a detail that I shamelessly stole. Sorry Charlie. Sorry Annabelle.
The story was published in Sequestrum earlier this year, but it’s behind a subscriber paywall, so I’m reprinting it here for the beautiful subscribers of Message from the Underworld, but you can read a short interview about it (preferably after you read the story) here.
Happy holidays, my friends. Don’t be bitten.
Fâng
Cindy talked her mom into getting a dog at a pet store at the mall at Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, where her sister, Melissa, had been caught shoplifting and would be doing her court-ordered community service, which involved wrapping presents for holiday shoppers with other young offenders.
“His name is Gibbles,” Cindy declared on the way home, scratching behind his ears, a gesture that gave both the dog and the human a great deal of pleasure.
The dog, a tan, shorthaired mutt with an underbite, already had a name. That name was Fǎng, but had been changed to Aurora by an employee at the pet store. Aurora, which meant “the dawn,” would have been a good choice for the Donovans because they had been searching for a new beginning since Tommy, the baby of the family, had disappeared the previous summer.
Tommy had been at a friend’s house a few blocks away on David Copperfield Road. He’d texted his mother to say he was on his way home, but he never made it. Tommy’s mother, Colleen, notified the police, who found his mangled bicycle at a construction site.
The police theorized Tommy been struck by a hit-and-run-driver. Only the driver didn’t run: he stopped and picked up Tommy and his ten speed and sped off again, leaving the bike in one location and the body in another.
“We found the bicycle,” said the police officer that had been assigned to the case. “We’ll find your son.”
Except they didn’t. The weekend somehow stretched into a week. A week turned to two. At the end of the agonizing summer the officer was replaced by a younger policeman who was more courteous but less experienced with trauma. Though none of the Donovans said it aloud, this change seemed to signify the department had given up on Tommy.
While the Donovans would never give up, each of them privately wondered when it would be okay to get back to the business of living, to reclaim the lives that had been hijacked by this tragic turn of events.
The day after the one-year anniversary of Tommy’s disappearance, the new police officer knocked on the door. He was wearing khaki slacks and a dark green golf shirt with a yellow mustard stain. He was leaving the force, he explained.
“I’m not cut out for this shit.”
Colleen’s husband, John, told the man to get off his fucking porch before he did something they’d both regret. When it became obvious the policeman was drunk, John turned to restrain his two teenaged sons, who played high school football and had become expert at channeling their rage into explosive violence.
Then along came Gibbles/Aurora/Fǎng.
The children loved everything about the dog—except its name. Colleen’s sons, John Junior and Edward, were especially indignant.
“Gibbles is a dumb name for a dog,” Edward said.
“It’s a dumb name period,” John Junior agreed.
Cindy made the mistake of asking what a not-dumb name might be.
“Fred,” Edward declared, which got a laugh from John and John Junior.
Melissa stayed out of it. She’d been caught sneaking out on a date with Domino, whom she met in the young offender program. She didn’t want any more trouble.
“Mom!” Cindy protested, but it had been so long since laughter had floated about the dinner table that Colleen did nothing to stop the boys. They never agreed on anything and now here they were, joking around together like the family they used to be.
From that moment Fǎng was called Gibbles by the girls and Fred by the boys with John siding with his sons and Colleen going along with her daughters. It was a ridiculous situation, but they had all become experts at blocking out things they didn’t want to deal with, cherry-picking their own versions of the truth.
When Colleen was alone during the day, drinking vodka with a splash of whatever juice was on sale at the grocery store, she used both names when addressing the dog: Fred Gibbles. Mister Frederick Gibbles.
For Fǎng, one name was as good as another. Fǎng had no difficulty determining when he was being summoned for dinner or called for his evening walk or urged to sit on Cindy’s lap while she watched TV. They shared an understanding but not language, which Fǎng had no use for.
Fǎng was a Shanghai street dog that used to run with a pack of semi-feral mutts. They roamed the streets together, scattering cats and rats from alleyways and car parks where they foraged for food and avoided the authorities. They didn’t howl at the moon or prey on pets. It wasn’t that kind of pack. Pack was probably too strong a word. They were more like a loose collective of trash eaters.
How he made it from Shanghai to a pet store in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, was a mystery; but Fǎng enjoyed the comforts of his new life, and was all too happy to give up his street dog ways, but he often thought of his old life in Shanghai, patrolling the streets and sewers for rats. Did his old packmates think of him? Did they remember their short-legged brother?
Questions like these can unravel you.
Fǎng had little difficulty picking up on the rules: play nice, don’t shit in the house, bark at people who approach the front door but don’t bite them when they come inside. He’d sit for treats, but he didn’t roll over for anyone. No, no, no. He liked his new humans, especially Cindy. Her devotion to him was complete.
Colleen was his second favorite human in the household. She kept a stash of vodka in the garage above the washing machine, an appliance her husband John did not seem to know how to operate. Here she did most of the washing, drying, folding, and crying.
Fǎng kept his distance from John who reciprocated his wariness. His hands smelled strongly of sex, an odor Fǎng seldom associated with Colleen. John Junior, the eldest, was preoccupied with lifting weights and masturbating in the shower. Edward, the middle child, made missing person posters on his computer, altering images so that his brother’s clothes matched what he was wearing the night he disappeared. Black shoes. Blue jeans. Red sweatshirt.
Melissa drank her mother’s vodka before and after her dates with Domino, who had been caught stealing supplies for his science project, a device that fell under the category of time machine. Domino texted Melissa messages like, What if we felt the same way about shapes as we do colors? Melissa wasn’t sure if she loved Domino or not, but she believed in him. She would wait the rest of her life for a chance to go back to the night Tommy didn’t come home.
The Donovans were lost, scared, confused, and completely normal. They communicated in grunts and glances, weak hugs and cold shoulders. They loved each other and had no idea how to show it. They were pack animals that spent their time together trying not to feel their feelings, convinced they’d be happier alone. They were wrong, of course, but they were going to be all right.
They were a family, after all.
Fǎng’s family.
Tommy’s scent was all over the house. It was an easy thing to follow it down the street. While Colleen sank into the sofa for her afternoon nap, Fǎng raced through the woods and went down into the ditch that fed the culvert under David Copperfield Road. A few feet up the pipe he found Tommy’s body lodged in the silt, blanketed with leaves. Although Fǎng had never known the boy, he knew him now, his scent burned into his memory forever. Fǎng left without marking the spot. He’d bring the Donovans back just as soon as they were ready to come to their senses.
