What the Dog Knows

Chapter 1
Thursday, July 1: Waiting for Relief

Do you ever regret something so hard that you play it over in your head a million times, with a million different endings except for the one that actually happened? Last week a car killed my dog, Diesel. My fault. I should have taken him babysitting with me — he loved my cousin Luanne. I see myself making sure the gate latches properly behind me and that there are no holes under the fence Diesel can dig through to escape. I picture the Smart Car that hit him braking or scooting around him, and I see Diesel bounding after me, safe, ears flying behind him like flags in the wind.

Instead, here I sit on my aunt’s stoop holding my fifteen-month- old cousin, rocking her back and forth, hoping the milk in her bottle will last till her mom comes home. July 1, Canada Day. We won’t be picnicking at the beach like in other years. Everyone’s working — “Service industry, what are you going to do?” Mom says — and it’s too hot, same as every day since the beginning of June.

“Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk,” Dad used to say. Then last month he decided to prove it.

“Scientifically impossible,” Mom said as she reached for the carton of eggs on the counter. “Besides, I’m the only one around here who ever fries any eggs.”

Dad, teasing her and trying to make her laugh, I suppose, scooped the carton away from her and ran outside. “You bring that back! I’m making breakfast.”

Too late. The door slammed behind him. Diesel and I ran to watch as he knelt down on our walkway, removed one egg, and cracked it on the cement.

“You’re wasting food!” Mom hollered from the window.

The egg collected dirt as it pooled into a groove. Dad cracked another on the driveway. That one ran down into the street.

“Stop it!” Mom yelled.

Diesel barked.

“Sunny side up,” Dad called and broke open a couple more on the hood of the car. Those slid off.

The edges of one egg on the roof of our old Neon clunker finally turned white. “It’s working!” I cheered.

“We don’t have money for this!” Mom cried as that one slid down the windshield.

Dad should have stopped then and made pancakes for us all with the last two in the carton. Maybe then we could have just had a laugh together. But instead he went inside for tinfoil and a magnifying glass. That method might have worked in a couple of hours. But Diesel quickly licked those up as Dad scrubbed the rest off the car. Meanwhile, Mom packed Dad’s clothes in a suitcase, which she pitched out the door.

“When you learn to act like a grown-up, you can come back.”

If only he had made her breakfast instead. She would have forgiven the big screen Dad gave her for their anniversary earlier that morning — heck, she loves watching movies. We would still be together. Even Diesel, ’cause I wouldn’t have had to babysit Luanne. Mom wouldn’t have found that job at Donut Time, and she’d have been minding Luanne instead of me.

That’s me imagining everything that month going a different way. I regret it all.