Alternating Currents

Diahann Reyes-Lane

Word Count 1389

1995:

The day after I broke up with my boyfriend I took our dog for a walk in the garden at the back of our apartment building. As I watched Polo sniff at the ragweed that was contributing to the heavy pollen count already giving me terrible allergies, I leisurely swayed back and forth on a wooden swing envisioning my new future, just a young woman and her dog.

My daydreaming was interrupted by my now ex approaching. He begged me to reconsider. Polo rushed over, all puppy energy wanting to play. But my ex, hell-bent on reconciling, shooed him away. Taking this as permission to roam, our dog headed toward the pond for more explorations. It was a man-made pond, always freshly landscaped with brightly colored flowers. Polo was not the only dog who loved to splash in the water.

My ex kept pleading. I wondered if I should feel guilty. He seemed blindsided by my decision even though we had barely spoken to each other during the last six months and treated each other more like hostile roommates than lovers. We hadn’t had sex in seven months. I knew that because I was keeping count. Besides, breaking up with someone is hard enough to do once let alone a second or even a third time. I certainly wasn’t going to backtrack now.

I wanted my ex to stop talking. I wanted him to go away. I wanted to move on without my ex even if it meant sharing custody of Polo while we lived in separate apartments. But he kept at it until enough minutes had passed that I realized I hadn’t seen or heard Polo in a while. “Polo, Polo!” I called out, at first in the same tone I probably would have used were I playing that water game, the one that starts with Marco. That’s usually enough to get him running back to me. This time, nothing. “Polo?” My voice was louder and more anxious. I stood up, scanning the garden and the pond. He never stayed down there long because he always came to find me. The water, usually only disturbed by the flow from the fountain or the buzzing of insects, was unusually still. That black tire floating on the surface was new.

Only it wasn’t a tire. It was our dog. My ex and I ran to the pond’s edge. Polo was unconscious in the water, his body limp, next to a tennis ball that he must have tried to grab with his mouth. I waded in. As I touched his body I felt a stinging jolt go up my arm. I let go. “I think a snake just bit me.” My ex rushed forward and picked up Polo. He wrapped him tight in his arms. From where I stood I could see our puppy’s eyes. They were wide open with an expression of what could only be described as surprise. Polo’s mouth was open, his tongue hanging.

My ex held him tighter. “That wasn’t a snake. His body is charged with electricity. I can still feel the currents vibrating through him.” We hurried to get out of the water.

I screamed out for help, the sound of my voice coming from some carnal place inside of me that I didn’t know existed. I begged someone, anyone, to call 911. A neighbor did but the paramedics refused to come. “Not for a dog,” the dispatcher said.

I started begging. “Polo, wake up!" His eyes that kept staring stayed vacant.

Another neighbor, a French woman who had a French Bulldog—we often encountered them on walks—offered to drive us to the vet. In the back seat, my ex sat there holding our puppy. We were both crying. Our French neighbor who was driving was crying, too. I stroked our baby’s head. I kept pleading. “Polo, wake up, wake up.”

At the vet’s office, we waited. I prayed, which is not something I do a lot. Until he came out and delivered the news. “I’m so sorry. It looks like he was electrocuted. Maybe some faulty wiring in the water? Is there a fountain or a light display in the pond? But don’t worry he died instantly. You can tell by the shocked look in his eyes. Would you like us to cremate him?”

Electrocuted to death by water is what I’ll say in the years that follow whenever Polo’s name comes up. People laugh at first thinking I’m joking until they realize I’m lethally serious.

A month after Polo’s death my ex moved out and back to California. There was nothing left in Georgia to keep him there. I stayed at our apartment complex but insisted I be moved to a different unit—one without a view of the pond.

“Your dog saved a life,” was my grandmother’s rationalization when I told her the news. A repairman had been scheduled to come and fix the fountain. He might have been the one to be electrocuted to death if Polo hadn’t gotten there first. My grandmother, who lived in the Philippines and regarded her dogs as security guards and not family, was not someone who would take the loss of any animal hard. “Just think, that repairman is someone’s father or husband or son." What about my son?

For years I kept Polo’s ashes with me, taking them back to the San Francisco Bay Area and later to Los Angeles when I left Atlanta. When my ex and I started speaking again and became friends, I shipped the ashes to him.

I never told him this, but for the longest time I secretly blamed him for Polo’s death. If he hadn’t gone into the garden and shooed him away, our dog might have never run into the water. He might have lived not just for eleven months but for eleven years.

2005:

On Polo’s 10th death anniversary we decided it was time to release his cremains. By this time my ex was living in Portland, Oregon. I was still in LA. On July 27, 2005, around what would have been the time of our puppy’s death, he hiked up to the top of a waterfall and called me on the phone. “Honey—I mean Diahann—” he quickly corrected himself, “his ashes are mixing in with the water.”

And then he told me a story. About how that day, when he found me in the garden, he had come from sitting in his car where he had been contemplating suicide. Our breakup felt like the last straw in a series of blows he was dealing with—struggles I hadn't realized had gotten so bad because we had stopped communicating with one another. “But then Polo died and I realized I needed to get my head straight. Life is too precious.”

If my ex hadn’t come and found us, our dog would never have gone into the water. If he hadn’t come and found us, who knows what might have happened to my ex. “Your dog saved a life,” my grandmother’s words echoed. What if he saved more than one life? Why did Polo have to die that day? There would never be a good enough answer.

I realized that it was time to let go, not just of Polo but of whatever misplaced blame I had put onto my ex. It was an accident. That was all it was. A senseless, tragic accident. And sometimes there is no one at fault and nothing to blame.

It was also time to release my own guilt I’d been carrying with me like a heavy weight. If I hadn’t taken my eyes off Polo he might be alive. If I had kept him close he might not have gone into the water. If I hadn’t broken up with my ex, Polo might still be here today. And yet, our dog had run into that pond to play dozens of times before and been fine.

I closed my eyes and pictured Polo’s ashes hitting the bottom of the falls. As I saw the water’s currents take him, I took a deep breath in and then exhaled. I imagined releasing all of the guilt and blame and regret I’d been holding in my body for the last 10 years. I watched it all scatter into the flow of the river.

Diahann is a writer and a former CNN journalist. Her essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Role Reboot, and other publications. She is working on a memoir about female desirability and desire. After a lifetime of living in big cities around the world, Diahann now lives in a mountain town in New Mexico with her husband and their clowder of cats. Visit her at www.diahannreyeslane.com or follow her on Instagram @diahannreyeslane.