A Saturday. Caro watched The Friendly Giant with me and made comments that spoiled it. Neal was lying on the couch, which unfolded into his and my mother's bed. He was smoking his kind of cigarettes, which could not be smoked at work so had to be made the most of on weekends. Caro sometimes bothered him, asking to try one. Once he had let her, but told her not to tell our mother.
I was there, though, so I told.
There was alarm, though not quite a row.
"You know he'd have those kids out of here like a shot," our mother said. "Never again."
"Never again," Neal said agreeably. "So what if he feeds them poison Rice Krispies crap?"
In the beginning, we hadn't seen our father at all. Then, after Christmas, a plan had been worked out for Saturdays. Our mother always asked afterwards if we had had a good time. I always said yes, and meant it, because I thought that if you went to a movie or to look at Lake Huron, or ate in a restaurant, that meant that you had had a good time. Caro said yes, too, but in a tone of voice that suggested that it was none of our mother's business. Then my father went on a winter holiday to Cuba (my mother remarked on this with some surprise and maybe approval) and came back with a lingering sort of flu that caused the visits to lapse. They were supposed to resume in the spring, but so far they hadn't.
After the television was turned off, Caro and I were sent outside to run around, as our mother said, and get some fresh air. We took the dog with us.
When we got outside, the first thing we did was loosen and let trail the scarves our mother had wrapped around our necks. (The fact was, though we may not have put the two things together, the deeper she got into her pregnancy the more she slipped into behaving like an ordinary mother, at least when it was a matter of scarves we didn't need or regular meals. There was not so much championing of wild ways as there had been in the fall.) Caro asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I didn't know. This was a formality on her part but the honest truth on mine. We let the dog lead us, anyway, and Blitzee's idea was to go and look at the gravel pit. The wind was whipping the water up into little waves, and very soon we got cold, so we wound our scarves back around our necks.
I don't know how much time we spent just wandering around the water's edge, knowing that we couldn't be seen from the trailer. After a while, I realized that I was being given instructions.
I was to go back to the trailer and tell Neal and our mother something.
That the dog had fallen into the water.
The dog had fallen into the water and Caro was afraid she'd be drowned.
Blitzee. Drowneded.
Drowned.
But Blitzee wasn't in the water.
She could be. And Caro could jump in to save her.
I believe I still put up some argument, along the lines of she hasn't, you haven't, it could happen but it hasn't. I also remembered that Neal had said dogs didn't drown.
Caro instructed me to do as I was told.
Why?
I may have said that, or I may have just stood there not obeying and trying to work up another argument.
In my mind I can see her picking up Blitzee and tossing her, though Blitzee was trying to hang on to her coat. Then backing up, Caro backing up to take a run at the water. Running, jumping, all of a sudden hurling herself at the water. But I can't recall the sound of the splashes as they, one after the other, hit the water. Not a little splash or a big one. Perhaps I had turned towards the trailer by then - I must have done so.
When I dream of this, I am always running. And in my dreams I am running not towards the trailer but back towards the gravel pit. I can see Blitzee floundering around and Caro swimming towards her, swimming strongly, on the way to rescue her. I see her light-brown checked coat and her plaid scarf and her proud successful face and her reddish hair darkened at the end of its curls by the water. All I have to do is watch and be happy - nothing required of me, after all.
What I really did was make my way up the little incline towards the trailer. And when I got there I sat down. Just as if there had been a porch or a bench, though in fact the trailer had neither of these things. I sat down and waited for the next thing to happen.
I know this because it's a fact. I don't know, however, what my plan was or what I was thinking. I was waiting, maybe, for the next act in Caro's drama. Or in the dog's.
I don't know if I sat there for five minutes. More? Less? It wasn't too cold.
I went to see a professional person about this once and she convinced me - for a time, she convinced me - that I must have tried the door of the trailer and found it locked. Locked because my mother and Neal were having sex and locked it against interruptions. If I'd banged the door they would have been angry. The counselor was satisfied to bring me to this conclusion, and I was satisfied, too. For a while. But I no longer think that was true. I don't think they would have locked the door, because I know that once they didn't and Caro walked in and they laughed at the look on her face.
Maybe I remember that Neal had said that dogs did not drown, which meant that Caro's rescue of Blitzee would not be necessary. Therefore she herself wouldn't be able to carry out her game. So many games, with Caro.
Did I think she could swim? At nine, many children can. And in fact it turned out that she'd had one lesson the summer before, but then she had moved to the trailer and she hadn't taken any more. She may have thought she could manage well enough. And I may indeed have thought she could do anything she wanted to.
The counselor did not suggest that I might have been sick of carrying out Caro's orders, but the thought did occur to me. It doesn't seem quite right, though. If I'd been older, maybe. At the time, I still expected her to fill my world.
How long did I sit there? Likely not long. And it's possible that I did knock. After a while. After a minute or two. In any case, my mother did, at some point, open the door, for no reason. A presentiment.
Next thing, I am inside. My mother is yelling at Neal and trying to make him understand something. He is getting to his feet and standing there speaking to her, touching her, with such mildness and gentleness and consolation. But that is not what my mother wants at all and she tears herself away from him and runs out the door. He shakes his head and looks down at his bare feet. His big helpless-looking toes.
I think he says something to me with a singsong sadness in his voice. Strange.
Beyond that I have no details.
From Gravel, in the collection Dear Life, by Alice Munro