When my sister was eight our mother introduced her to Gerry. They talked about feminism. Gerry shot down Andrea’s argument that girls could do anything boys could do.
Afterward she was in tears. “See?“ said her mother. “You’re so intelligent, he treats you like an adult.
” The sexual assault happened the next summer. She was nine, he was 52. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said.
I was not around much by then. I’d left home at 18 and got work in Montreal. I knew that Mom was crazy about Gerry.
I was surprised she wanted to live with him in rural Ontario, having left over 20 years ago, never wanting to return. Gerry impressed me as somewhat pompous and arrogant, but he could be amusing. As a young woman I often saw the triangle of Gerry, Alice and Andrea as very close and jolly.
Lots of banter and jokes, often sexual or scatological jokes. Gerry would encourage Andrea and Mom would feign shock. I could feel the tension and darkness there, how Mom seemed helpless to ever draw the line.
Alice Munro’s husband sexually assaulted her youngest daughter. For nearly five decades, a conspiracy of silence haunted the family, and at times, One night I had a dream that my little sister was at the door of my Montreal apartment. Her eyes were wide and she said nothing, just stood there in the hall like a ghost, and raised her hands, palms out.
Bloodless strips of skin hung from her arms. I thought she had harmed herself and needed help. When I woke up I called my mother in .