Wholeness

Elsa is a dog. Specifically, she’s a Pharaoh Hound—though most people don’t know what that means, and actually, she doesn’t know what that means. There are only a handful of names that she does know, not because they’re names, but because they’re people: Mommy, Daddy, and Roberto. And they aren’t just people, they’re her family—her mommy, her daddy, and her brother. And she is their Elsa.

Though he doesn’t live with them, Roberto comes over to the house many times a week. He walks in, says “Hello Elsa,” and scratches her head. His presence brings her tail to life and lifts her lonely body up off the floor, and as long as he’s there, she doesn’t leave his side. Though she rarely has anyone to protect, something inside her needs to protect, to stand guard, because, though she doesn’t realize it, that’s what Pharaoh Hounds do. So even when—perhaps particularly when—Roberto attends to business in the bathroom, Elsa is right there, outside the door, instinctively insuring the safety of her brother. Still, as she follows him around the house, the sight of him—or maybe it’s the smell of him—always reminds her that something else is missing—maybe two somethings—but she can never quite put her nose on what that is. Though she wouldn’t know the process has a name, she runs through a checklist every time she sees Roberto: Roberto is here, Mommy is here, Daddy is here. And it hits her again: someone is missing, and that leaves her feeling a little bit missing as well, so she sighs and lays down with her head between her paws.

Many times a day, Mommy draws a black, plastic-smelling, palm-sized object out of her pocket. It doesn’t look or smell alive, and for at least a short while, it doesn’t sound alive either. It tinkles, jingles, dings, beeps, clicks, and rings—and every time it does, Elsa can’t help but perk her ears—but it’s not alive, at least Elsa doesn’t think it’s alive.

Yesterday, it rang. Mommy always pays attention to it when it rings, thrusting her hand into her pocket, slipping it out and raising it to the side of her head, and talking to it like it’s alive, but this time she gave it extra special attention, dropping the groceries in her arms to take it out and put it to her ear. Mommy talked and talked and talked, and just as Elsa was about to tune out and attend to the rhythmic sound of hammering and sawing next door, she heard something she recognized: “blah-blabber-blah-blah-blabber-blah-Elsa.” And that turned her head. “Elsa, come here,” Mommy called.

It took her a second—only a second—and when she arrived, Mommy was squatted on the floor, arm extended toward her, jabbing the little non-alive alive thing in her face. It was making noise. Another checklist began. Not tinkling. Not jingling. Not dinging, beeping, clicking, or ringing. Now, it didn’t make any sense, but the object seemed to be talking—like a person. It didn’t look like a person, it didn’t smell like a person, and, nope, it didn’t even taste like a person, but it sure did sound like a person, and a familiar person at that. Mommy was here, so it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Daddy, and it wasn’t Roberto. Her head cocked to the side. Was she missing someone? Yes, someone was missing—maybe two someones.

“It’s your Joshua,” her Mommy said, eyebrows raised.

She knew that name: jaw shoe uh. But it didn’t take root at first. She listened to the voice say her name over and again from the handheld object and thought as hard as she could. Something was missing, had been for some time; and it had something to do with this voice and this name: jaw shoe uh, jaw shoe, jaw—Josh. It hit her all at once: the someone missing was Josh, her other brother. Josh, Roberto, Mommy, Daddy. Her back arched slightly and her back end began to sway of its own accord.

When Mommy pulled the thing back away from her face, Elsa started, having been lost in the strenuous activity of recalling for what seemed some time. Her rear was still in motion to the sound of her brother’s voice.

Mommy—who seemed to dislike getting back up to her feet—said to her, “Don’t worry, little girl. You’ll get to talk to him more tonight.” That made Elsa smile, not because she understood what she was being told, but simply because she was being told something. But as she turned and wandered toward the back yard to investigate the sound of neighbor kids, Josh’s voice bothered her the way Roberto’s scent always did. Her trot slowed, and she lay down in the driveway. Something had been found, but not everything.

Later that night, after her discovery had all but faded from thought once again, she heard a sound. Not a hammering sound or a car-pulling-up-the-driveway sound—though she would have heard that if she had been paying attention. It was the pins clicking in the barrel of the lock at the back door, but they weren’t the right ones. Only three little clicks. It took four little clicks before the knock that would open the door.

“Nope, not that key either—”

She lifted her head—it was that voice again: Josh’s voice. It came back to her and it made her wiggle. Something was different this time, though. She sniffed. She sniffed deeper. It was faint, but past the odor of things tracked across the carpet and the food in the kitchen—which it always took effort to sniff past—she caught a familiar scent—and smells, as we all know, are far better memory-joggers than voices. It was something she hadn’t smelled in a long time, or rather someone she hadn’t smelled in a long time. Sounds can deceive, but smells never lie. This wasn’t just the voice of Josh out of a scentless black plastic thing; it was Josh.

“You’re just turning it the wrong way.” Someone else was there too.

“There are only two ways to turn a key,” Josh responded, “and I’ve tried both—“

“No,” the other interrupted, “what I mean is—oh, let me do it. Just like—” click click click, “you jiggle—” click knock, “there: it’s open.”

It was all happening so quickly. Elsa’s mind could barely keep up with the long-missed memories of Josh that his sound and scent were spurring in her mind; there was no remaining faculty for establishing who the other voice was, but there was something recognizable about it, something that almost didn’t take effort to remember.

“That’s what I was doing,” Josh floundered, “I tried that—I mean—why didn’t it—”

“Can we stop talking about it and just go inside, you two? It’s cold out here.”

A third voice? It was louder than the others and—it was Roberto, of course that voice was Roberto. Her brain was trying desperately to sort out the person salad that her ears and nose were haphazardly tossing together. All the while, her tail was wagging, pulling her rear end to and fro with increasing vigor. The kitchen door creaked open, and she could hear a pair of feet thump across the floor. That wasn’t Roberto—he doesn’t thump; he thuds—but she could remember someone who did thump just like that.

As she ran for the door, clawing the carpet around the turns, the wave of scents that flooded in through the open door hit her like a parked car: Roberto, freshly mown lawn, Josh, and—yes, that was who it was—Yale. And when she had rounded the last corner, there were her brothers in the kitchen: Roberto, Josh, and Yale.

“Elsa,” Josh exclaimed, getting down to her level. She threw herself at him and tried to greet him, but all that came out was a whine and kibble-breath.

But there was too much to take in, so she couldn’t stay in one place, she had to find Yale, who she knew was also here. She sniffed first and found—pepperoni. And just underneath that potent aroma was Yale. Elsa looked up in the direction of the two smells coming from the same area, where Yale turned from the glowing, whirring box above the stove. His brown hair covered his face, and he had a fork hanging out of his mouth.

She ran over and circled his feet, panting, and he leaned down and picked her up—he always picked her up; she remembered that now. She never really liked it, but it was alright because he was there, because they all were there, everyone, and now she was certain that nothing, no one, was missing; she had three brothers—there were four of them total—no more, no less, and all of them were here.

The glowing food-maker beeped. Yale put her down, reclaimed the fork from his mouth, and got a plate ready for his pizza. Josh was still squatting by the door. He was looking at something—two somethings. His eyes flitted one way, then the other, the back again, and his lips crept into a smile. She turned her head to see what he was looking at and, catching her own tail flicking periodically into her line of sight, she realized that Josh was looking at their brothers; one eating pizza and the other moving luggage. She turned back to him, and his gaze slid down to her, so she head-butted him in his stomach and nuzzled—he was here; they were all here. “Yup,” he said, scratching her head. “I’m here—we’re all here. All here.”

Over the next week, the four of them spent much of their time at home, at her home, at their home: Josh, Roberto, Yale, and Elsa. She made sure to jump up and tell Roberto to be quiet whenever he got laughing too loudly at his brothers. Each time Yale went to the kitchen to heat up a pizza, burrito, or potpie, Elsa was right beside him, nearly running into doorjambs more often than not. Whenever Josh went outside for a dose of sunshine, there she was, not missing the opportunity for tug-o-war—a game that was obviously more tiring for him than for her. She was at the door behind them whenever they left and right there at the door in front of them when the returned, and rarely, if ever, did she see one of them without the others.

The boys stayed up late, and she stayed up with them, to the best of her ability. And the three slept much later than Mommy and Daddy did—long after the sun woke up—and Elsa enjoyed being the one to wake them: tongue in Josh’s face and rear in Roberto’s. The days with them ran so late and so long for her that toward the end of the week, every time she stopped moving, she couldn’t help but sort of—dwindle—and nod—off. Then one of them would start her, and off she’d go again.

One evening she woke up from one of those impromptu naps, shook herself a little, and cantered into the living room to rejoin her brothers, but something was different in the room. She looked and sniffed around for a second to see what it was, then paused to checklist. Mommy was there. Daddy was there. Josh and Roberto were there. And—she put her nose to the air—Yale was in the bathroom. Being asleep, she had almost missed a duty, so she weaseled through the group toward the bathroom door, where she sniffed again—not entirely to her liking—turned, and seated herself square in front of the door, facing out toward the room.

“She’s done that every time one of you has gone to the bathroom,” Daddy said, looking over at her.

“She’s a Pharaoh Hound,” Mommy said. “That’s what they do; they guard. Without all of you guys around though, she doesn’t really have anyone to take care of.”

“Yeah, ‘cause your mom and I aren’t exciting enough. But you guys have completely worn her out this week. She stops moving and just passes out; I’ve never seen her sleep as hard as she has been, ever. I get up to go to work, and she doesn’t even move.”

“Yeah,” Mommy agreed, “but she’s enjoyed it. I never see her as active as when all three of you are here. She’s up and going and just wants to be a part of everything.”

Daddy added, “all she ever does when we’re around is sleep.”

Right then, Yale came out of the bathroom door buckling his belt. He stopped in the doorway and looked down at Elsa, who had already stood back up, turned, and was looking back up at him, mouth ajar and tongue hanging out. He bent down and played with her head between his hands, then passed by. She followed.

“So, you all ready to go?” Roberto asked.

“I think so,” Josh replied.

Finished with her protective work, Elsa re-recognized that something about the room was different still, so she went to scout it out. It wasn’t a moment before she caught whiff of the change. She looked to the corner by the door to confirm what her nose had already told her: the mound of Josh-smelling clothes that had been piling up all week was gone, and there was no odor of laundry detergent to replace it. Her head tilted to the side a little as she processed the information. Then she picked up her trail again and found that the Josh smell had moved to a black and white duffle bag in the middle of the room.

She looked up at Josh. He had a gray coat on, and she knew what coats meant. He gripped the backpack at his feet and slung it up onto his back. Elsa looked around the room, sniffing in each direction, and realized that there wasn’t anything else that smelled like Josh. All the Josh scent was concentrated to him, his backpack, and his bag.
She edged up to his leg and looked straight up at his face. His leg seemed warmer than usual, and as she followed his gaze, she realized he wasn’t looking at anyone in the room but just staring at the wall. He wasn’t talking, wasn’t laughing, wasn’t bending down to pet her and talk with a funny tone of voice. Something was missing in him; if he could have lie down and put his hands between his paws, he looked like he would have.

Roberto walked up hugged him, with Elsa standing right between their legs, thinking about it still.

“It was good to see you.”

“Yeah… you too,” he said.

She didn’t have any idea what they were saying, but it didn’t really look like they did either. Yale came over to hug him too, and Elsa still wouldn’t move.

“Have a good trip, bro.”

“Yeah… thanks.” Josh picked up his things, head slumped forward, and Elsa followed him out to Mommy’s car. He placed his duffle in the trunk, tossed the backpack in beside it, and sighed. As he came around the side of the car, he kneeled down and looked at her. He didn’t wrap himself around her, didn’t push her around or play, only scratched a little, and didn’t smile. He did kiss her forehead, though. And he said, “It’s hard. I know you know.” No one’s rear end wiggled.

She stood as close beside him as possible, as long as possible, and watched, listened, sniffed as the backing-up-car sound carried him and Mommy down the driveway. Something was missing again. They all walked inside, lay down, and sighed. They aren’t just people, they’re her brothers, and she is their Elsa. Without them, she isn’t her; without each other, they aren’t them.