HANTIAN ZHANG's writing has appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco, where he works as a data scientist by day.
BEFORE
We thought we saw an opportunity, a chance. The Edwardian triplex up the hill had a vacant top-floor unit and two rented apartments, its yellow façade a cheerful contrast to the sidewalk myrtles. Through its bay window, we glimpsed the treetops of Noe Street, where our current condo overlooked a French bistro. Life had its comforts there, despite the lack of a view, occasional noisy traffic, and a cramped railway layout. The spacious upper unit promised remedy, the rentals promised income streams. The agent wasted no time underscoring that all comparable sales had closed below asking lately, as if the economy itself had been summoned by him to smile on us.
The next day, leaving our dogs, Caselli and Noe, with friends, we flew to Puerto Rico for vacation. Outside the San Juan airport, dingy cement boxes recalled Guadalajara’s decay, while downtown’s juxtaposition of bungalows and high-rises evoked Honolulu’s similar incongruity. In an ocean-viewing pub we conducted another round of comparison, submitted a bid below asking price, then headed to the beach. Most other beachgoers were college kids, on spring break and surrendered to carefree frivolity. I recalled the books I’d read at their age, how the gaze of others shapes identities. That felt long ago, yet the question remained fresh: If all comparable components were let go, what inexhaustible non-relationality would remain?
I revisited this question reclining on the beach another day. They all looked alike, the sand, until you pinched a wet clump and rubbed it apart, each grain asserting itself: cylinder, barrel, sphere; remnants of boulders, corals, crystals. Making comparisons again, I knew, but none of the distinctions felt significant enough to render any grain irreplaceable. I wiped them all away just as the email arrived: we got it, the triplex uphill.
Back home, the agent came to congratulate us, an entourage of stagers and painters in tow—buying the new meant selling the old. That we were leaving, really and after eight years, sank in only after they left, in the sudden quiet that felt hollow, surreal. I had been contemplating comparables since the open house, yet now I saw what was being compared were merely numbers, fleeting impressions, interchangeable elements. It takes a decision to bring order to the jumble, to give life its next direction, to fit its contour for the next shape.
DAY ONE
The Ukrainian movers arrived at eight on the mid-April Saturday, their footfalls stirring up dust, their maneuvers whittling down the mounds of boxes. The dogs whimpered in the bathroom where I had confined them, confused and alone. I would take them to the new place, I decided, where they could at least roam while I sorted the already moved breakables.
It felt sunnier uphill, quieter. Caselli and Noe sniffed the hallway, then settled in patches of sun. I laid out the glassware across the floor, counting minutes until the furniture would arrive to house it all. One hour, maybe less. I paced from room to room, a stranger in my own future. An empty space, full of sunshine but not much else, not yet. I ordered lunch, ate my portion at the counter. It was black quartz, not the white marble I had handpicked for our old place. My fingers traced its surface until reaching a warm patch of sun. It was past one; I had been way off estimating the movers’ arrival time.
Another hour passed before their truck appeared, my husband with them. I mentioned the lunch to Hans and delved into unpacking, barely registering his reply—something about eating with the dogs in the backyard. Such details were inconsequential, or so they seemed; what mattered was filling the space within the stipulated time frame, saving minutes and avoiding extra charges.
I was still sorting kitchen items when Hans entered through the mudroom, which connected to both backyard and roof. He appeared to be his usual self.
“Caselli is dead,” he said.
I stared at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
“Dead,” his voice cracked. “Caselli jumped off the roof and landed on the tarmac.”
Only then did his words slice through me, summoning images: the forty-foot descent, dark blood pooling, brain matter scattered like ash.
“Why was he on the roof?” My voice trembled. “I thought you were in the backyard.”
“The movers were all downstairs, so I brought the dogs to the roof. But the ledge there was low, and Caselli just hurdled over—” He stepped close to hug me, but I pushed him away.
“Do you want to check on him?" he asked, retreating a step.
“No,” I said. “You go.”
He turned and left. I leaned against the cool black quartz, eyes closed. Caselli—ears flapping like butterfly wings when he pranced, sheer joy in his sprint when called. I couldn’t bear to see that vibrant life reduced to splattered stillness. Just as sobs threatened to overwhelm, I heard Hans from downstairs, presumably with Animal Rescue. “My dog is not mobile but conscious.”
It took a moment for these words to reshape reality. Caselli still alive? No oozing blood, no spattered brain? That I could handle—and help with, too.
I flew down. The movers were unloading our furniture, oblivious that fifty yards away, in the alleyway, a life lay shattered—a small heap of brown fur, saliva foam matting his muzzle, a trail of urine seeping beneath him, mixing with excrement discharged on impact. As I crouched beside him, Caselli struggled to rise, but his body betrayed him. He whined, a piercing sound, sharp and relentless, that even our fingers combing his fur could not quiet.
Animal Rescue instructed us to transport him ourselves. I flattened a cardboard box into a stretcher, sped to the nearest SPCA with Caselli howling against my thigh. The nurse whisked him away, and Hans reproached himself again for his folly. A detail: before taking the leap, Caselli had bolted. He’d raced to the ledge and didn’t stop—just accelerated and vaulted over.
To my knowledge, the only place he’d ever bolted to like that was home. Maybe he thought it was just past the ledge? That would have made sense, given what a homebody he had been, five minutes out and already whining to return. Once, we were still blocks away when Fourth of July fireworks went off, and he tugged the leash so fiercely it felt like his life depended on reaching his bed that very second—but who can read a dog’s mind for sure?
I returned to our new house to finish the move, got back to the SPCA in time for the exam results. Miraculously, no bone was fractured, and no organ bled, but the impact on the brain left him vulnerable to secondary brain injury, seizures, and cardiac arrest. He needed overnight monitoring at another hospital, as SPCA had no neurologist on weekend duty.
The nearest other hospital was in Redwood City, forty minutes away and costing $4000 for one night’s ICU stay. We drove down, gathering clouds mirroring our silence. After check-in, we waited in a windowless exam room, thin walls trembling with occasional dog shrieks. We waited and waited and were eventually led through a maze of corridors into a large room. Past a surgical team huddled around a German Shepherd, rows of oxygen chambers lined the wall like a columbarium. And there he was, our furball curled in one chamber, laboriously breathing, impossibly small.
“Can he make it?” I asked.
“The first 24 to 48 hours are critical,” the vet said. “I see you preferred CPR in case of cardiac arrest, but if his brain bleeds and swells, keeping him alive would be unfair—he’d have no quality of life. You needn’t decide now, but in case of an emergency tonight, we’ll call, and you will have to choose. And if he makes it, to minimize disturbance, please refrain from visiting him for the following days.”
We ruminated over all these on the way back. We got back to the new house at ten, realizing only then we hadn’t eaten since lunch.
NIGHT ONE
Our furniture sprawled in wrong rooms; our boxes formed dark, looming massifs. We lay between the piles and surrendered to slumber, to loosen our hands poised for the phone and to obliviate our dread of the ringtone.
DAY TWO
Morning came, light fog and birdsong. I awoke to the realization that, one, the vet hadn’t called, meaning Caselli had survived the night, and two, the house had an odor, not foul but of wood and paint, age and usage. An old house’s breath. I had no recollection of it from the open house, not even during yesterday’s move. I wondered how Caselli would respond to it, these traces of all who had lived here before.
The absence of the vet’s call opened mental space for mundane concerns: where to place the Oaxaca runner? Its interwoven burgundy and navy wool had harmonized with the Douglas fir floorboards of our old home, but now it lay in discordance with yellow maple matchsticks. Our mid-century dining set, too, seemed suddenly vulnerable, its teak elegance overpowered by dark-stained Craftsman wall panels.
We were still assaying new spots for the rug when the vet called. Caselli remained stable—no seizure, no cardiac arrest. But still, he did not walk or eat, and still, he could not see much.
This was new information—the fall had blinded him. Our friend Michelle had once sat for a blind dog. She recalled no trouble at all, as that dog had known where to get food and where to relieve himself, he had known the place inside out. The same could not be said for Caselli; he had not even stayed in the new house long enough to learn it remained chilled at high noon.
This high-noon coldness bothered me, along with fretting over insulation costs. Thinking coffee might warm me, I headed toward the kitchen, but the sight of the empty hallway halted my steps. In our old house, this was where Caselli would have padded behind me, hoping for treats while I prepared coffee.
“Caselli,” I called to the empty space, the three syllables stepping down from palate into cold air. And here he was, eyes shining and tail swinging, clickety-clacks pattering close. I called again, and my imagined dog bolted toward me, mouth agape and tongue flicking. I smiled, bent down, opened my arms to this ghost, no tears but pure joy in my eyes—joy at having him here in this unfamiliar coldness.
“Caselli— Caselli—Caselli—” I called again and again and again.
From a heap of files on the floor, I found Caselli’s adoption record. Called “Lincoln” then, when the San Francisco SPCA listed him online. DOB: 5/6/2013, likely an estimate—exactly two years before his intake date, 5/6/2015. He’d come from the Central Valley, presumably a street dog. We had been seeking to adopt, and Lincoln had quickly become our top PetFinder candidate. On May 31, 2015, a Sunday, we submitted the application online, then headed out to brunch. Passing the plaza at Castro and 18th, we noticed a cheerful crowd around a makeshift pen where a dozen dogs cavorted: a pop-up adoption event.
“That dog,” Hans said, pointing, “looks just like the one we applied for.”
I looked closer at the quiet dog at the corner: a Jackawawa or maybe a Chiweenie. His head barely reached my knee, his body about a third longer than my arm. It was him. The same dog. A trial walk around the block was all it took: he responded to every command, never barked once.
“You’ve got a home!” the attendant said, giving him one last hug.
We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for supplies, giddy with anticipation. Back home, an email waited: “Unfortunately, Lincoln has been adopted at a mobile adoption event this afternoon.”
“It was us!” It was hard not to hit Reply just to say so.
Kismet. Meant to be. We named him Caselli after our street, retold the story countless times, each telling met with amazed gasps. Indeed, what are the odds?
“He arrived in our life randomly,” Hans said now. “So he would also depart suddenly.”
Our friend Mark had loved Caselli. Each visit, he’d call the dog’s name with the accent on the last syllable, an elongated “lli” drooping with musical force. Caselli would race out, circle our friend, and offer his rump. Mark would then give a gentle rub, and Caselli would purr, raising his tail and revealing his anus.
“No shame, no shame,” we would all chortle.
I smiled, recalling this. Mark had been gone for three years now, cancer. And in between our house buying and selling this year, his death anniversary had slipped past unnoticed until a week too late.
DAY THREE
Monday. I worked from home but found myself revisiting Caselli’s fall, the moment I did not witness but heard described and imagined over and over. The dash toward the ledge, the mid-air pirouette attempting to regain balance, the collision sound followed by stillness. Was he really trying to go home, thinking safety lay just beyond the ledge? And what did he feel—the shock and agony of landing, the helplessness of facing it all alone?
That afternoon, we inquired about visiting him, and the vet agreed. We waited in the same exam room, filled with apprehension and hope. Before long, we heard the shriek of a dog coming close. That doesn’t sound like him, I thought, but the door opened just as the thought formed. A nurse entered bearing a blanket-swathed tray, and atop it reclined a dog.
This was not Caselli; this was a doppelganger shell inhabited by a wholly different personality. Patches of fur on his forelimbs and flanks had been shaved, revealing pink skin scattered with IV insertion scabs. A feeding tube, slender yet prominent, snaked from nose to a sutured spot on his neck. The familiar traits of timidity had vanished, replaced by a frenzied, trapped energy manifesting in every possible escape attempt—shrieking, kicking, writhing. I held my palm to his nostrils and murmured endearments, hoping a familiar scent and voice might calm him. His response: more frantic spasms followed by ear-splitting cries.
“Still can’t see,” the nurse said, tightening her grip. Using her free hand, she flicked her fingers before his eyes. The eyelids remained still. “See, no reflexes.”
“He doesn’t seem to recognize us,” I said.
“Like this for most of the day,” the nurse added.
We were silent driving home. Thick banks of gray clouds loomed over the coastal mountains, ready to engulf the city.
“We might have to make the call,” Hans finally said.
I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
DAY FOUR
Waking up in the middle of the night, I realized there was a din in the house. I listened attentively, trying and failing to locate its source. The city sprawled outside in profile, luminous spires and somnolent Victorians. Maybe it was just the city’s collective snore; perhaps it was the past’s nocturnal whisper seeking remembrance.
I had awakened sleepless before, in the old house, from anxiety or nightmares. Caselli had been snoring most of those times, barking even, galloping on a dreamed beach. Now, I could only access his snoring through memory, my ears filled with this sourceless, persistent hum.
We drove down again at dusk. The sunlight turned glassy, and even with heated seats on, the car felt cold. Dread consumed me as we entered the hospital, intensifying as I waited in the small exam room. We didn’t wait long this time. A nurse we had not seen before brought Caselli in.
The first thing I noticed: his eyes were moving.
“Hey, buddy,” the nurse said, putting him on the exam table. “These are your people.”
Caselli struggled to stand. No shrieks this time, no barks. Just a gentle whine I interpreted as mild physical discomfort or perhaps a protest at being marooned here—where have you been? I scratched his ears lightly. He purred, in the old way I had always understood as relaxation. We placed a bowl of dog yogurt before his muzzle, and he licked it, once, twice, and kept going, his food drive returning—not as intense and without tail-wagging, but still a forcefulness, a vitality.
“Wow,” we exclaimed.
How much twenty-four hours could transform: he had walked that morning, in circles and shakily and reliant on a harness, but still. A finger approaching his right eye now prompted a reflexive blink—the left eye remained apparently blind, but still. After feeding, we took him out. Our walk lasted only five minutes, on mulch by the parking lot. I held the harness handle and led the way, and Caselli followed staggering, in erratic circuits but still.
A U-turn; an inflection point. Such words tumbled from our lips on the drive home, in updates to family and friends. No more bad turns, I told myself, clinging to this simplistic trajectory—only better from now on.
DAY FIVE
We no longer needed Google Maps to go to the hospital. Driving down again and looking out at the gloaming clouds, I saw the golden lining now, the Rothkovian pink and mauve.
“These are your people,” the same nurse said again, releasing Caselli from her arms to a mat on the floor. I sat beside him and extended my fingers for him to smell. His ears perked momentarily, then he licked his nose. I tore off a small flatbread piece and held it before his mouth. When he didn't take it, I moved it closer inch by inch until it touched his muzzle.
He took it. The familiar sound of swallowing.
“Yeah,” we all whooped.
We fed him dog yogurt again. He licked and licked, covering his nose, muzzle hair, and feeding tube with it. He looked away after finishing the bowl, which I read as fatigue. Then he tensed up again, attempting to back away. Failing that, he cried, plangent whines tilting up at the end. This was how he’d cry when we drove home with him, when our house came into view. He just wanted to go home, and I just wanted to take him, even though the home he had known was no longer ours.
“You are heroes,” I turned to the nurse. “You’ve brought him back.”
DAY SIX
We took Caselli home on Friday, one day short of a week in ICU. He lay in his dog bed on my lap, purring. The sun hung high, golden. It wasn't yet summer solstice, so the day would stretch on, gloaming lasting until eight or nine. I thought we could use those extended hours for more walks, then realized my thoughts had lost their vaulting quality, that readiness to jump at the next catastrophe. My thoughts had settled into their old, unagitated state, as I had begun to refer to the new house as home.
THE DAYS AFTER AND THE DAYS TO COME
Feeling the house as home was a different matter, one that took time, more time: weeks when Caselli's seizure alert bell woke us less frequently, months when his circular gait straightened into beelines. We found new places for old furniture and added new pieces, and sitting on the sofa after long days, unwinding and absorbing all the newness, I still caught myself reimagining our old place, where everything nestled in familiar spots, where Caselli lounged in his worn bed, lick-cleansing his paws. That life had already passed, but it still felt within reach, still felt present.
I inhabited two lives, then, for a while at least, one in experience, the other in memory. As I adjusted to our new home’s rhythms, one would fade, sink toward oblivion. While all that was happening, I’d stand by the window watching the cottonwood outside, the blue ring of mountains beyond the city. The leaf shapes and peak hues reminded me of my childhood home in China, where Indian coral trees stood outside the living room, a mountain ring framed the bedroom window. Judging by the view my new home offered, my life had somehow completed a circle.
I searched for more circles, literal and metaphorical. On those rare, clear early summer mornings, we watched sunrise from our bedroom—lavic luminosity erupting across the city, warming our faces. I remember Hans’s words the first time: “I just realized I had learned something from Caselli. He’s always been so content; he only needs so little to be happy. A patch of sunshine to lie in, a beach to run over. This is all he needs; this little is what makes him happy.”
His voice trailed off. The morning sun reflected in his blue eyes, glistening, threatening to spill onto his cheeks.
What was my lesson in all this? I revisited this question in the months that followed, as Caselli’s food-begging regained its insistence, as he darted straight to the old house every time we passed it. I thought back to that first hospital night, how I’d fumbled through book heaps on the floor. I pulled out The Year of Magical Thinking and Son of a Gun, and just two pages in, I already felt better, not from communion in sudden loss, but from diverting attention away from the vet call that might or might not come. I pulled out The Little Prince and flipped through the pages; I wanted to revisit that line, to confirm how exactly it went:
For me you’re only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys… For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for you.
There was another moment I missed describing: after emptying our old house but before stagers arrived, I sat alone on a backyard bench. It was a bright green Adirondack, purchased by former downstairs neighbors, Jane and Ashlyn. They had returned to New Zealand, gone for four years already. Two cypress trees outside their unit once grew tall as our deck, but they fell during a windstorm while we were in Puerto Rico. With their collapse, the green shade over our patio vanished; the deck felt exposed, raw.
My eyes caught on Caselli’s urine stains marking the staircase. I used to scold him for peeing there, but now my eyes welled up at these yellow ghosts of his presence.
“This place has changed,” Hans said upon finding me. He sat beside me, taking my hand. In our twelve years together, he always reached out first.
“I’ll never move ever again,” I said, holding his hand back tight. “This is my last time.”
But of course, I couldn’t know that—just as I couldn’t have foreseen Caselli’s leap home. What I do foresee are the comparables still to come—homes, loves, losses—each rendered singular by a particular angle of light, a specific timbre of a cry, the exact pressure of fingers against your palm at the moment you need them most. We stay, we move; we fall, we rise. We reach across the spaces for another hand.
In the end, perhaps that’s the real lesson: the yearning pulse of our animal selves, hurtling between past and future, seeking home in each other.
Volume 15.2 ✧ Summer 25
Hantian Zhang
