Chapter Seventy-eight

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Keller Nicholson via e-mail that my mother had died. I know that sounds a bit odd; after all, she was in her eighties and had heart disease, and people in their generation can’t possibly be surprised to hear of one another’s passing, but it just didn’t feel right to let him know that way. However, I was there on her behalf. She’d spoken of him so fondly over the years, as someone who had come into their lives when things were bad, when Dad was suffering from what we now know as PTSD. And, of course, no story of Keller could be told without stories of Pax. As a kid, I had the two of them inextricably linked in my mind, even though I knew that Keller had left them and that Pax remained with them for several more years.

“Pax our wonder dog.”—that’s what Mom called him. I swear that there were a thousand pictures of the dog—as many as of me as a three-year-old refugee from Korea. But none of this Keller Nicholson.

It wasn’t until I was in grad school that I connected the Keller Nicholson of Dogs of War fame, the novel that was required reading in some high schools, and the Keller Nicholson of Pax and the time my parents lived in Quincy. They’d moved to Norwood the first year Dad joined WEEI’s sportscasting team, having built a fully handicapped-accessible house on a fenced-in quarter-acre lot in the booming suburb. Dad had passed in 1985, but I’d only recently lost my mother.

*   *   *

“I brought this.” We’d been talking, weeping a little, because I was riling up long-dormant feelings in him and more recent loss in me. I handed him a clasp envelope. “It was tucked in her dresser drawer with your name on it, so I know that she wanted you to have it.”

Keller pressed his fingers against his chest, a soft gesture he’d been making all through our tomato soup and grilled cheese lunch. He didn’t open the envelope right away, sort of just studied the handwriting on it, as if he couldn’t read it clearly. When he finally did open it, the little brass clasp was so old that it broke as he bent it up, freeing the flap and revealing what my mother had left to him.

The leather of the dog collar was cracked with age and had been tightly coiled in that brown kraft envelope for so long that it looked like the inside of a nautilus shell. A dog tag dangled from the metal loop, a 1954 Norwood dog license, the same year they adopted me. On the broad surface of the leather collar itself was a brass nameplate with three letters stamped in bold Gothic type: PAX.

Keller made a soft sound, as if the air had been pushed out of him, but he was smiling. He held the dog collar in both hands like a holy relic, something sanctified. “Thank you for bringing this.” And then he reached out and took my hand.