ache1
said that she was too young really to remember when Judas came first to the
house, but she did know that the dog
was her mother’s wish, not her older sister’s, and that there were stories which you might hear in any
family, stories which with each recurrent hearing became more and more your own
memories, and not just those of other people, of first-hand witnesses. She
related the following information in just such a way, that even though this
would have taken place at a time she could not really remember, her recall had been enhanced by the anecdotal
telling and retelling of the incident
to the point where her own actual presence or memory thereof had by time of
telling become a formality, saying:
ache1:
Well, my memories of it are are are, ahm, they’re hazy, at best, but I
think it was a, hmmmm, well, it was on the weekend, and my mum had been out
with her friend, or at her friend’s house or something, and she’d been at my
dad for like weeks about getting a dog, this with two young daughters in the house
as well. You know that thing with young couples? How if they don’t have kids
they’ll get themselves a pet that needs a, that needs both their ah, their responsibility.
Smiling.
ache1:
I read it. I think, and that makes
‘em think that they’re somehow still moving forward? Actually, that’s pretty
lame, since that’s not, I mean, my mum didn’t have that at all, since she
already had two kids, but she just
really wanted a dog, and so this one afternoon she comes home with her, I can’t
remember, now, if her friend was
actually there or not, but my mum comes in with this little dog, Gemma was its name, and I remember my
dad lying on the sofa watching something on tv, and suddenly this noise
exploding through the front room, and my mum and this dog. Maybe she’d left her
friend out in the car, but, the dog was really excited about, maybe just being
in a different place or whatever, but there was all this noise and commotion,
and then a, my dad reaching over and rubbing the dog’s head, and a, the dog
just standing there really still, and then the sound of its piss and the, these
little, a dark patch on the carpet, and then the dog running around again, and
I really thought my dad would go nuts, but he just laughed about it, and
instead of getting my mum or even my sister to clean it up, he actually got up
off the sofa and, there was, it just seemed like such a happy, the, the atmosphere was... Yeah, well...
She
trailed off, lost in the being back at the family home, and then the nurse
arrived and asked Skunk to give them a moment, and the curtains came around the
bed.
