Dear Life

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 aroundand 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 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 had locked it against interruptions. If I’d banged on the door they would have been angry. The counsellor 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 remembered 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 we 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 that she could do anything she wanted to.
    The counsellor 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 quite seem 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.
    My mother didn’t throw herself into the water. She didn’t go into labor from the shock. My brother, Brent, was not born until a week or ten days after the funeral, and he was a full-term infant. Where she was while she waited for the birth to happen I do not know. Perhaps she was keptin the hospital and sedated as much as possible under the circumstances.
    I remember the day of the funeral quite well. A very pleasant and comfortable woman I didn’t know—her name was Josie—took me on an expedition. We visited some swings and a sort of dollhouse that was large enough for me to go inside, and we ate a