A Blind Spot for Boys (17 page)

R
eacquainting myself with running water and flushing toilets—blessed, beautiful porcelain toilets—took no time at all. Which made me doubt whether photojournalism could ever truly be my calling. Four days without bathing was more than enough for this girl. I didn’t mind sleeping on the rug in front of the fireplace that night, especially not when I luxuriated in a five-minute shower with lukewarm water the very next morning. Electricity was so spotty, I had three minutes to blow-dry my hair before the power disappeared. Who cared about a little dampness? My hair was clean.

My parents returned from their walk around town with a couple of browning bananas they had scavenged for our breakfast and news. First, Stesha had called sometime while everyone was out. So she had left a message at the front desk, assuring us that she was recuperating so well in a hospital she was ready to
make a break for freedom. And second, rescue helicopters were arriving today. Even better, Mom’s age-group had been called, which meant that families lucky enough to have someone fifty-five and older would be home-free in four or five hours.

So why was I reluctant to leave? Quattro’s eyes and mine met across the sitting area in our casita as though he had the same thought, both of us looking away shyly.

With a dramatic flourish, Mom placed her hand on her chest as she eyed Dad and me. “O ye of little faith. Aren’t you glad that I slept with our passports and extra cash in the waist wallet that you two made fun of me for buying?”

It was only now, as I listened to Mom gloat about safeguarding our passports, that I kicked myself for leaving the cameras in the mudslide. I knew I should concentrate on being grateful to be alive, but if I had only reached back into the tent and grabbed my backpack. One second and I would have rescued the cameras and all the photos I’d taken.

Gone.

Just like our departure.

Wouldn’t you know it. After all our good-byes and hugs at the casita—even Quattro embraced me briefly but tightly—it started to drizzle on the way to the helipad, and Dad was back to ominous frowning. An hour before the helicopters were supposed to land, we were told that the rescue mission was back on hold due to rain. Nobody but Grace was in the casita when we returned, and that only because she had come back to collect her raincoat. Mom and Dad huddled together on the sofa, complaining about the disorganization of the Peruvian government.

Grace lasted all of a minute before she interrupted their ode to woe. “Then let’s get out and do something.”

“No, we should wait right here in case Stesha calls with more info,” Dad said, jabbing his finger toward the handwoven rug. “Besides, it’s not like any of us will be able to do anything to help much.”

“It’s better than sitting around.”

“Yeah!” I agreed. When did my take-charge dad ever just wait for someone else to fix a problem and right a situation?

“And staying here when you could have left and straining our resources is better?” Dad asked.

“Gregor!” Mom protested as Grace’s cheeks flushed. She said, “Grace, I’m sorry.”

“Mollie, you’re not the one who should be apologizing,” Grace said as she thrust her arms into her raincoat. She left the casita without another word.

White-hot anger burned inside me. Where was my real father? What did Dad have to be bitter about, really—or any of us? There was no reason for my family to harden into lumps of black coal. As I shoved my feet into my hiking boots, Dad sniped about how selfish Grace was being by remaining here. It was as if he wanted to get rid of her.…

“No way,” I muttered, straightening before I tied the laces. Horror-stricken, I looked at my father, who had successfully purged the room of Grace, no different than if she were some troublesome bug. With a shock, I realized that Dad had deployed one of his tried-and-true pest control techniques: Create a hostile environment so pests couldn’t possibly want to stay. I caught
a glimpse of myself in the mirror near the entry. Hadn’t I done the same exact thing with every boy since Dom? Purge them from my life? Get rid of them before they could get too close and hurt me?

I groaned and backed away from my reflection in the mirror. “Whoa…”

“What?” Mom’s eyebrows furrowed at my outburst.

I spun toward Dad. “Have you noticed that we use pest control techniques on people?”

“Your dad exterminates pests, not people,” Mom said.

“Well, didn’t you just do a hostile environment on Grace?” I asked him. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“What do you mean?” Mom asked, shaking her head.

“We froze her out,” I said. “Classic relationship ender.”

“Oh.” Mom’s mouth pursed as the truth hit her.

Dad said defensively, as he gestured to the daybed, “We gave her a bed last night. Your mom and I slept on the floor. We’re not freezing her out.”

These exact same denials could have spewed from my mouth whenever I justified my quick and efficient breakups with boys. Holding out the camera that I had borrowed from Quattro as if it were a divining rod, I searched for a vestige of my parents’ former selves. I wedged between them on the sofa and commanded, “Look at this.”

Dad squinted at the camera, moving it closer, then farther, which made me feel guilty, but not enough to back down.

“Perfect composition,” he said about the photo of a bromeliad, pale green and ghostly in the cloud forest. A semblance of
pride animated his face, an expression so familiar, I ached with homesickness. The deep, warm, unflappable man I loved existed somewhere inside that bristly shell of bitterness. But even as he handed the camera back to me, I watched his expression harden once more into resignation.

“And another of you two.” I was rewarded with Mom’s approving coo when I forwarded to the photo of them holding each other right after the mudslide. Each image, each sentence was part of the trail of crumbs leading my parents back to themselves. Advancing to another shot, I said, “Here we are, just yesterday, trekking through the mountains and cloud forests. A trip of a lifetime, right? But who knew when we started the trip that water and dirt could be so destructive?”

“That’s life for you,” Dad said.

That was the opening I had been waiting for: the exact moment when I could charge ahead and, with the right aim, hit the impossible target:
Dad, remember who you are
.

“You know something?” I stood up from the couch to face my parents, my eyes on Dad.
Please hear this
.
Please
. “This is life. Anything can happen. So we’ve got to deal with it and move on. I mean, look at where we’re sitting right now after we almost died—died!”

The luxurious casita with its thousand-count bed linens and indigenous artwork and handcrafted textiles and plumbing and heating was perfectly quiet as my words rippled over them, but had they sunk in?

“That’s so…” Dad started to say, but he stopped as though his positive attitude had withered and died these last weeks. Neither
Mom nor Dad closed the gap between themselves, choosing to remain separate peaks on the sofa.

“Hey!” Christopher called as he strode into the casita. The door banged shut behind him. His thick hair was damp from the rain. “What’re you guys still doing here?”

“The evacuation was called off,” Mom said, her eyes drilling in on Dad, who was staring down at his clasped hands.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” Christopher said hopefully.

“Do you know where Quattro is?” I asked, unable to help myself. Luckily, Mom was so tuned in to Dad, she didn’t pick up on my question.

“Oh, he’s volunteering with the cleanup. I was just going to grab my gear and help.” Christopher brushed his hand through his tousled hair, leaving it in even more disarray. The edges of his eyes crinkled warmly when he smiled. The dark circles under them had been erased. After he lifted his rain gear from the coatrack, he paused at the door just long enough to ask us, “Want to come?”

I waited for my parents to answer, hoped that they would say yes. But Dad shook his head with a rueful smile and said, “Maybe later.”

“Dad, all those memoirs you read? About explorers? You’ve always said you wanted one big adventure.” I gestured around us, no longer caring that Christopher was right here, witnessing our family drama. “Well, there’s an adventure happening to you right now.”

It was as if Mom were experiencing an epiphany. She stood up, gazing down at Dad alone on the couch. “It’s true, Gregor.
No matter what, you’ll always be my hero. I just wish you believed that.”

Dad’s jaw worked. Frustrated and unable to stay cooped up inside for another minute, I pocketed the camera and strode to the door, not caring that my shoelaces were still untied. “Wait, Christopher, I’ll go with you.”

What I didn’t expect to hear was Mom’s echo. “Me, too.”

Navigating the stone-paved Inca Trail, climbing thousands of uneven steps, traversing different ecological zones—those challenges were nothing compared to shoving our way through the frazzled crowd lined up at the train station. Apparently, the frustrated and scared tourists with their death grips on their luggage didn’t get the memo that the trains weren’t running and the tracks themselves were out of commission.

“Oh, there he is!” I said to Christopher, pointing down to Quattro on the train tracks, where he was clearing debris with a couple of other men and women.

“Where?” Christopher craned his neck.

“Two o’clock.”

“Wow, you got good eyes.”

More like a homing instinct where Quattro was concerned. I blushed when Mom nudged me meaningfully. But then Quattro himself glanced up and looked directly at us, as if his homing instinct for me was just as well developed.

“He’s had a hard time of it, losing his mom and all,”
Christopher said to me with a sidelong glance while Quattro hopped over the embankment to make his way to us. As Quattro closed the distance, Christopher hurried to say in a lowered voice, “You’re good for him.”

What was I supposed to do with that revelatory piece of information? I had already let Quattro know my feelings, and if he wasn’t biting, I wasn’t baiting. I told myself again that I was content with being just friends with him. But then, a heavyset woman pushed me out of the way just as Quattro smiled at me, and I knew she wasn’t the sole reason why I was thrown off balance. He reached out for me before I stumbled. I could have kissed the portly woman.

“I thought you left,” he said, his hands still on my arms.

“The evacuation was canceled. So we came to help,” I told him.

“Cool.” Another grin, another flutter in my heart. I was such a goner for him. “Follow me,” Quattro said as he parted the crowd for us. I envied the easy way he carried himself through the platform.

“Wow, this is worse than a concert,” I said, glad to be free from the throng when we reached the edge of the tracks. I breathed in deeply.

“Worse than a mosh pit,” Quattro countered before he leaped down to the tracks. He held his arms up for me and said, “Jump.”

I had no doubt that Quattro would catch me, but I hadn’t counted on the exhilaration of being caught in his strong arms. Swooning. I never understood that word until this very
moment. But I didn’t want to hope for something that would never be; I had spent way too much time doing that for Dom.

“Gotcha,” he said.

In more ways than you know.

Christopher called down to him, “Hey, what about me?”

“You’re on your own, Dad.”

We joined the volunteers, all wearing daypacks, none toting luggage, as they gathered around a familiar short and stocky man: Ruben. His eyes lit up at the sight of us. “You all came.”

“You’re still here!” I said to him. “I thought you left yesterday.”

“No, I told you I wasn’t leaving until you were all safe,” he answered.

Then Christopher explained, “Ruben stayed in our tent last night.”

“You should have stayed with us,” Mom protested now, as I said, “We had enough room!”

“I’m happier outside,” he said simply, understated as always.

Really, I should have known that Ruben would be at the center of any kind of relief effort. Here was a man who’d shown us nothing but quiet steadiness since the start of the trip, never drawing attention to himself, never needing to be the hero. He just was, always doing more than what was required. I didn’t have a single doubt that Ruben would stay until each and every one of us in his tour group had been safely evacuated, not because it was in his contract or because he had promised Stesha, but because it was the right thing to do.

“How can we help?” Christopher asked him.

Ruben blew out, his breath barely lifting the lank tendril of greasy hair that hung over his right eye. He was holding a lengthy to-do list jotted hastily in pencil. Just skimming the list of projects was overwhelming: removing the debris off the train tracks. Filling empty sacks with sand. Constructing makeshift walls. Half of the work seemed senseless in the face of the relentless river still churning so strongly that a five-foot chunk of concrete bobbed like a bathtub toy before the current hurtled it farther downriver. Dad was right. Even if we worked all night, would we make a dent of difference? Maybe if every single tourist behind us would help, we might be able to clear this small section of track. But how do you mobilize volunteers when desperation is real and danger feels close?