Blind Spot

by Laurence Miall

  This is how I had always thought of my parents: conservative types who always cautioned me and restrained me from wanting too much. The people described by Jacob Brookfield were strangers.

  PART TWO

  18

  We had never traveled like this before. My father had booked two rooms for seven days at the Montreal Ritz-Carlton, one for my parents and one for me and Laura. Both overlooked Sherbrooke Street, and beyond, the hill of stone and trees, Mont Royal. I was sixteen years old.

  My father was the keynote speaker at a conference in town and his talk would be published in geology’s most prestigious North American journal. Staying at the Ritz-Carlton was his way of saying we were moving up in the world.

  We arrived from the airport in a cab. The doormen in fancy dress unloaded our bags and took them to a lobby where a beautiful clerk attended to us. The hotel was luxurious. Everyone was friendly and charming. I had not wanted to leave Edmonton because that was where my girlfriend was. But I was here now, and I told myself to make the most of a bad deal.

  Being cooped up with my family for a week would be worse than being in school. In school, you could mouth off at teachers, crack jokes at their expense, and the other students revered you for it. But there was nobody to impress in my family.

  By this time in my life, I had concluded that Laura was so much better than me in every way, there was no point trying to keep up with her. She was in Fine Arts at the University of Alberta. She was studious, diligent, and kind. My mother loved her. My father grudgingly admired her industry, but for the most part, hardly paid attention. He was too preoccupied with his own work. My mother, meanwhile, was preoccupied with starting a business. She had developed a very “positive attitude” thanks to a motivational speaker called Jack Reese Jackson. I remember her listening to his tapes in the car. I always complained and told her to turn them off, but she insisted that the wisdom on these tapes would do me just as much good as it did her.

  “When you approach a situation with the right mindset, there is no limit to what you can accomplish,” she would say.

  But accomplishing things wasn’t important to me. My preoccupation was girls.

  Zoe Laboucan was about as cool as could be. Her parents had separated and she received generous “guilt payments” from her father, a lawyer, so she was able to rent her own apartment, which in those days only cost about three hundred a month.

  When I first met her, I was buying pot. I was with my friend Ian Borger. She was his dealer.

  The place was a mess. I could not help but be jealous of this girl, only two years older than me, who could leave overflowing ashtrays all over the coffee table and trash bags in the hallway, and who had a forest of plants — some green and growing, some dead or dying — and who had art books in piles on their sides over the floor. When we came in, she did not try to apologize or clear a space on the couch for us. She shrugged and smiled as she followed my gaze around the place.

  “You haven’t been here before,” she said.

  She had answered the door with a joint in her hand and was still smoking it. She offered it to me.

  “This is Zoe,” said Ian. “Zoe, this is Luke.”

  I took a long toke on the joint, hoping I wouldn’t burst into a fit of coughing and lose my cool in front of her.

  “Why haven’t you brought him before?” she asked Ian.

  We sat down and conducted the transaction. Zoe did not take her eyes off me. She had a lazy smile — a greedy smile. In getting our pot ready, she moved real slow... real smooth. She weighed out the pot, ground it up in the coffee grinder, and then put it in two plastic baggies. The initial joint burned out. She had another one already rolled and lit it up immediately. She was talking about the Folk Music Festival and how much fun she was going to have this year — if it was anything like last year. I was getting utterly stoned. After who knew how long, Ian said, “Shit, I’m late for work.” He had a job at a fast food restaurant called Burger Baron. I was getting up to leave with him when Zoe said, “What are you doing this afternoon, Luke?”

  The truth was, I had nothing planned.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Why don’t you stick around for a bit?” she said. “Help me finish this joint?”

  I looked at Ian and looked at her. The look on Ian’s face said it all. If he were in my shoes, he’d be staying.

  So I stayed.

  The first night in Montreal passed peaceably enough. We ate lavishly at the hotel’s restaurant. There was plenty of wine, plenty of which made it down my neck, so even the boringness of everything eventually became entertaining. I was looking forward to calling Zoe — and calling her whilst drunk. My parents had warned me that I would be responsible for paying for my long distance calls, but this did not deter me. As soon as I was back at the room, I told Laura to go take a bath or something, jumped onto the bed, picked up the phone, and dialled Zoe’s number. But Laura was still standing there. I hung up before the call had even gone through.

  “You’ve been away from home under twenty-four hours,” she said. “Are you going to call her every day?”

  “I told you to take a bath,” I said.

  “I don’t need a bath,” she retorted.

  “That’s your opinion.”

  She folded her arms, prepared — clearly — to stand her ground.

  “I know you don’t want to share a hotel room with me for a week, and believe me, I don’t want to either. But can you try and make this easier?”

  “I am trying,” I said. “You take a bath and that will make it easier for me to have a conversation with my girlfriend.”

  “I don’t want to be shut out of my own room like this every night,” she said. “I know you… You’ll be on the phone for hours.”

  “Come on, Laura…. She wants to know that I arrived safely.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Tell her that sadly for all of us, you did.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to go take a bath?”

  “Look, I’m only doing this tonight, understand?”

  When I finally made my call, I let the phone ring for almost five minutes, but no one answered. I watched TV to distract myself. Then fifteen minutes later, I tried again. It was bizarre to find Zoe out of the house. I tried a third time. Nothing.

  “How’s Zoe?” said Laura, when she returned from the bathroom.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Luke, you didn’t even talk to her.”

  I feigned a nonchalant shrug and turned over and buried my face in the pillow.

  Laura said, “Maybe she doesn’t really love you.”

  The next day, my father said we should climb Mont Royal. The hill rose up, green and wild, from the middle of the city. Maybe I would have enjoyed the challenge on another day. But after not finding Zoe at home, I had slept poorly. I had woken up feeling like I had been kicked in the stomach. At the breakfast table, my father said that the view from on top of Mont Royal was supposed to be breathtaking. I hated the way he stole phrases that belonged in a tourist book. I kept shaking my head.

  “You don’t want to go?” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “I feel terrible.”

  “You drank too much wine last night,” he said.

  I remained silent.

  “This’ll teach you not to drink too much,” he continued, and laughed.

  So this was to be another life lesson. Thank you, Dad.

  There were several ways of climbing Mont Royal, ranging from laughably easy to moderately difficult. My father chose the latter path, which was not actually a path at all. We followed a road near McGill University that took us to the base of the hill. There the broad cement trail started its slow ascent. For ten to fifteen minutes, we followed this trail. The temperature was about thirty degrees Celsius, which in Edmonton is bearable, but in a humid place like Montreal is a smothering, relentless affliction. I have never enjoyed extremes of temperature in either direction. I suffered. I missed our
air-conditioned hotel. It was eleven in the morning and I knew it was only going to get worse. True to form, I made loud and sarcastic complaints. “Isn’t this fun?” We turned another bend in the trail, exposed to a break in the trees and the full ferocity of the sun. “If this is what you guys wanted, why not go whole hog and visit Death Valley?”

  I made a critical mistake. I announced the wish that we get this experience over and done with quickly.

  “I agree, I thought the journey to the top would be faster,” said my father.

  He wasn’t agreeing. He was trying to be agreeable. My parents withstood my sulking with amazing patience — trying to turn all my negative comments into positive ones.

  “Let’s just leave the trail and head straight up,” my father continued.

  And so I was tricked into sticking with the torturous journey. Rather than follow the trail that curved like an S, we cut straight through it. This worked well at first. Because the trees were denser in the spaces between the trail’s turns, we enjoyed more shade. And we actually felt like we were climbing and making steady progress.

  Then, with no warning, the trail disappeared. We had become used to crossing it at regular intervals, but now our off-piste route stretched onwards and upwards with no break. In front of us loomed large boulders and a sheer rock face. Nobody said anything. The climb having now turned into a real climb, breath was in short supply. We simply kept climbing, climbing — approaching the inevitable obstacle ahead with no one suggesting how we might get beyond it. Even in the shade, the heat was now a torment to everybody. It gave me a small amount of satisfaction to see my father’s face, usually composed and clean-cut, dripping with sweat and bearing a smudge where he had wiped his forehead with a dirty hand.

  “We’ll have to climb these rocks,” he said, coming to a stop.

  We had struggled with the increasingly steep slope, clutching at branches or tufts of root, grass, and weeds to pull ourselves up. It had been pretty fun to see my family’s facial expressions change, from the air of congeniality that tourists wear when they expect to be enjoying themselves, to grim seriousness. My face had been grim all along. We were all in the same boat now. We had to get over the rocks. There wasn’t any other way, except admitting defeat and heading back down.

  “I didn’t bring my grappling hooks,” I said. “Or ropes.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said my father. “This doesn’t look too hard.”

  He stretched his leg up and found a toehold on the first boulder. His weight teetered for a second before he grasped onto a handhold in a rock in front. He pulled himself the rest of the way up. He said, “This is okay, this will be okay.” He reached a hand down so my mother could follow. Without too much effort, she joined him.

  “This will be a nice little scramble,” said my father, venturing to the next rock.

  Next was Laura. She was the least athletic of all of us. She was not yet overweight, but nor did she have a particularly favourable strength-to-body mass ratio. She struggled on that first boulder and I had to push her some of the way. Her knees scraped against the craggy surface and she cried out in pain. As we all watched her slowly wobble upwards to her feet, it became obvious that she was scared. She was only a few feet above my head, but had visibly gone pale.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” she said weakly.

  “Are you okay?” said my mother.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” Laura repeated.

  My father was on top of the next boulder, not daunted at all. He called down below, “It’s not a long climb.” I think this was supposed to be encouraging. Laura, however, was not moving. Her modest height from the ground had totally unnerved her.

  “I don’t even know how I’d get down now,” she said.

  “Don’t get down,” I said.

  “I can’t do this,” she said. “I’m feeling dizzy.”

  “I can’t do this either if you stand in my way,” I said.

  “Luke, I’m not kidding. I can’t do this.”

  It was then that I could tell that she was not just scared but genuinely panicked. It was an emotional breakdown. Her weakness was in full view of her only real enemy in life — me.

  “Look at Dad, he’s already almost all the way up.”

  It was true. At most, the mass of boulders was thirty feet high. He had charged on with little regard for what was happening down below. My mother was one boulder beyond the very first one, but that was as far as she had gone. There were just two of us at the bottom to babysit Laura.

  And I had no intention of babysitting her.

  “I didn’t come all this way to stop now,” I said. “I want to see the top of this stupid mountain.”

  “I’m coming down,” said Laura.

  “The hell you are,” I said.

  She had very tentatively lowered her weight and was now sitting on her ass — a position that I’m sure was very uncomfortable. Her two feet dangled over the side.

  “You’re not coming up?” my mother called out.

  “No,” said Laura.

  “Don’t be scared,” said my mother. “I’ll help you.”

  “I’m going down.”

  “You’re not coming down,” I said. I approached the boulder and pushed up against Laura’s feet.

  “Don’t!” she screamed.

  She must have thought I was going to unbalance her and make her fall. It was ridiculous. Once I was over the shock of her outburst, I had to laugh.

  “Holy shit, Laura — you’re more at risk of slipping in the bathtub than here.”

  “Let go of my feet.”

  My arms dropped to my sides. I was getting increasingly outraged. Laura’s boulder was the only one that could be scaled, and there she sat, blocking my way. I hated the idea of climbing the mountain, but I hated the idea of being forced to give up even more.

  “I’m up!” my father called out. “It’s nothing! Come on up!”

  He was exhilarated. Nobody could see him, but we could sure hear the glee in his voice. He must have had no clue what was going on below.

  “Luke, let your sister get down.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do then? Are we just going to leave her here?”

  “Just let her get down,” my mother insisted.

  “This is insane. This is child’s play, this ‘mountain.’ What’s wrong with you?”

  “I have vertigo,” said Laura.

  “No you don’t. Vertigo means vomiting and fainting. You’re just chickenshit.”

  “Luke, let your sister down!”

  Laura had started crying. She was actually crying. Oh God, how I hated her. She had ruined the climb up the mountain, but I was the villain and she was the poor innocent. This is how it always was. It didn’t matter to me if she was good and I was bad in our parents’ eyes, but I got tired of the inevitability of these roles. Grudgingly, I got out of her way. What happened next merely clinched my role as the evildoer. She slid off of that boulder with no clue as to how she would land, hit the ground awkwardly, twisted her ankle and shrieked out with pain. She lay before me for a few seconds, rolling around and clutching her leg before struggling to get up.

  “It’s sprained,” she said. She limped around and grimaced. “I can’t walk properly.”

  “What’s happening down there?” my father called out.

  “Laura’s injured,” my mother called back.

  I could not tolerate this. The very word “injured” seemed preposterous in the circumstances.

  “She’s not injured,” I retorted.

  “Leonard, come back down,” my mother called up the mountain.

  We had to wait forever while my father laboured to make his way down the obstacle course. Once he had joined us, it became clear that Laura’s so-called sprained ankle was nothing serious at all. During the wait, she had been sitting on a patch of mossy ground, wiping her tears and feeling sorry for herself. As soon as my father helped her get back to her feet, she discovered that the pain had entire
ly disappeared and that she could walk with no problem.

  “What a relief,” Laura said. “I was scared I might have sprained or fractured something.”

  “You could have sprained or fractured something,” said my mother. “You should have helped her down, Luke.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  We struggled down the steep slope back to the trail, slipping and sliding and occasionally falling. Once we were back, my father announced that we would follow it to the top, even if it was a longer walk than the route we’d previously been on. I could not believe this. For me, the day was a failure. It was best to cut our losses and give up.

  “You’ve fucking lost it,” I said. “You want to keep going?”

  “Shut up and do as you’re told,” said my father. He was bristling with anger.

  “You could have seriously hurt your sister,” said my mother. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t help her.”

  All of us were covered with sweat, dirty from the clumsy descent, and still we were pressing on. Unbelievable. These people were just unbelievable.

  We reached the top of the mountain and walked to the observation point where they ooohed and aaahed at the view. Montreal and the St. Lawrence River sparkled at my feet. It did not impress me. When my family was around, nothing impressed me. Nothing could make me happy. There was only one thing that made me happy, and that was escaping them.

  19

  My father enjoyed his victory. All the way down the mountain, he gloated. He gushed over that view. He spoke of the impeccable weather, the ideal conditions to see the distant hills, the postcard-perfect view of the downtown towers, the church spires, and the whole panorama. It was important to him that we knew that every step had been worth it; that our struggle had not been a major pain in the ass, but rather, a triumph of fortitude and perseverance. He apologized for leading us astray, but then bridged immediately to a monologue mythologizing the moment where the family had stuck together and come through the adversity of Laura’s fall, including Laura herself, now totally healed. For someone who rarely spoke, he sure was full of it that day.