Issue 152 Is Online!

search index
of all issues

Search This Site Enter word(s) to search for:

In the fall of 1994, when I was 40, my twelve-year-old son Taylor shaved the neighbour's dog, the Dalmatian. My neighbour, Audrey, phoned to tell me. We hadn't talked to each other for years. Around lunch time, the Dalmatian streaked through our yard and the phone rang.

I was excited because Audrey was calling, on her own, all the way from across the street. I was hoping to hear that she had forgiven me at last. I had Taylor after an affair three years into my marriage to Ross, the man who Taylor believed to be his biological father. In a southern Alberta town of conservative Mormons, Taylor's birth made big headlines. I remember clearly his baby blessing, Ross holding him up in a white baby blanket, like an invitation to come see my son, the blue-eyed freak. I never could understand people's gradual rejection. I imagined myself becoming a spinster in my old age, my home a place where children would hate to walk past. "There she is," they'd say, eyeing my spinster silhouette, "The witch."

"He was laughing," Audrey said. She didn't have the gumption to criticize Taylor outright. I had to infer that his laughter was wrong.

"He's a child," I said.

"You really need to do something."

"I've seen worse." And I had.

"God help us," she said, and hung up.

In the last couple years Taylor had become increasingly reckless. When he was eleven, three neighbour kids witnessed Taylor lighting a batch of sticks next to the Coppieters' garage. The Coppieters extinguished the fire before the whole building went up, but one side was charred in the shape of a fan. And a couple months ago, Taylor was caught shoplifting comic books from Fast Eddie's Convenience Store. He had to do a month of community service for that one, ruining, as he claimed, his entire summer. He'd become questioning and rebellious. Then a couple weeks ago, Taylor came home wanting to know about where his blue eyes came from, a question that Ross and I had staved off since his birth.

"Mom, am I adopted?" he asked.

"What?"

"Buddy Mendenhall says that I was probably adopted."

"You're not. You tell him you're not. Some kids think they know everything. Buddy's one of them."

"Are you sure?"

"Why, honey, why?"

We were in the kitchen, just me and the kid. I looked through the cupboards to distract myself. The sound of opening and closing cupboard doors filled the space. I found an apple in the fridge, rattled the silverware drawer for a knife and cut myself some slices.

"Here," I said. I cut out the core, handed Taylor some of my apple.

"Mrs. McDonald said that brown eyes are a dominant trait," Taylor said.

"Yes."

"But I have blue eyes. Dad has brown eyes."

"So what," I said. "You're not adopted."

I had heard of instances where a recessive gene will manifest itself generations down the line - even to a family of all brown-eyed folks, though it was rare and unlikely. But I was sure he had to be from the affair, from Jack, a man whom I had met through my job as Ridgeview's economic development officer. The big clue: Jack had blue eyes, Ross had brown. There were other indications of his parentage that were less obvious. He inherited Jack's delicate frame, for one thing, and he had the same small, flat teeth that looked ground down. I couldn't help but speculate about Taylor's emerging features and character. Would he end up like my husband Ross, a man governed by habit and religion? Or like Jack, an impulsive son of a bitch who promised me the world for a few months of escape?

"I'd be OK if I was adopted, you know. Some of my friends are. They even look a little like their parents.And we read this article in school about an adopted girl who found out she was a twin and now they're best friends."

"Well you're not. You don't have a twin."

"OK, don't freak out," Taylor said.

"I'm not freaking out."

I decided to push the science lesson. Tell him what I'd told him before, what he'd most likely told his friend Buddy. "And blue eyes are a recessive gene. Sometimes crops up. You just happened to get them."

"That's what I thought," he said. He seemed disappointed. I told him to come here and give me a hug, as though I felt he needed it. He was reluctant at first. I explained how genes work, how there were exceptions. Each sentence, to me, contributed to a very persuasive argument - so strong, I found myself wanting to believe it, to keep it that way, keep telling him over and over, reinforcing the lie. Worse things had been done to children, and some people would say that he didn't need to know. But I knew, even as I held him there, telling him that he wasn't adopted, that my little gnawing conscience would get the better of me.

So after the Dalmatian, after Audrey's phone call from across the street, I knew that it was time. I sent Taylor out to play, then called Ross at work - hoping to hear some confirmation or support for my resolution to tell Taylor about his paternity. All Ross said was "Are you sure? Sure sure?" emphasizing the second "sure" - not the response that I'd hoped for. But I had decided. There was still toughness in me.

"The bastard probably already knows," I said. A joke. It hurt me to talk like this. I waited for Ross to respond, holding onto the phone like it was a hot iron that needed to be there. Did he not get it? I blurted out one heavy "hah," like a misdirected hiccup and broke out crying. He started to talk and it made me angry to hear him so sympathetic, like he wanted to hold my head in his hands, pat my back and say "there, there," like in a bad commercial.

"Audrey called me today," I said, still upset. I imagined Ross with the phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear while he ate his lunch.

"A surprise?"

"Taylor shaved their Dalmatian. She called to tell me."

"He did what?"

"He shaved it with the clippers. It looks like a pink Pinto."

"I'll be over in an hour." He hung up.

I decided to tidy up the house, get my mind off things. But everything seemed to reveal Taylor's recklessness: microwaved Legos, scattered looseleaf, comic books. I put doilies over the permanent marker on the coffee table, turned the couch cushions upside-down to conceal burn marks from Taylor's magnifying glass. Some things you can hide. Then there was a knock at the door.

"Audrey?"

If you were in the neighbourhood, you might think that she was on her way to a business meeting: sensible pumps, grey skirt, cream blouse. Our yuppie neighbours. She was slim and fit and perfect, like one of those fake Christmas trees where all the limbs were symmetrical, and I wondered what someone so perfect was doing here, on my porch, breaking our truce of silence for the second time that day. "I thought you might want this," she said. "I know you love to read."

"Thanks," I said.

She handed me a book and before I could glance at the cover, she'd left, striding across the street.

She had given me a "how to" book about raising kids by Dr. Laura. I flipped through the pages, skimmed the subject headings about being a role model, building moral character, and maintaining familial relations. I went upstairs and put it in the recycling bin. I knew what this book was about. I had already done everything wrong.

Ross came home a half hour later.

"Audrey is a priggish shit," I said.

"Take it easy," he said.

Ross paused for a second to give me space, then got out a stack of brochures and travel guides and spread them on the coffee table like in a hotel lobby.

"I got these travel brochures from Gale. What do you think about taking a little weekend trip? We could tell Taylor then, just our family, up in the mountains somewhere."

I shook my head.

Ross said, "You know Taylor's going crazy because he's getting older. Puberty is setting in and he feels less obligated to behave. Out there, I could clear that up in a hurry."

Like Ross was some new-and-improved acne cream.

Ross kept talking in his objective tone, as though he were Taylor's child psychologist. Despite everything, Ross held to his nuclear family notions. When I first told him about the affair, I was sure that it would destroy us. I had already made plans to move to Lethbridge and live with my sister. But he insisted that he still loved me, that God would forgive me and that all our problems would be solved as long as we lived by the gospel and did everything together, as a family.

"This looks nice," I said, to stop the lecture. I was halfway into a brochure about Gargantua Caves.

"Gargantua is out," he said. "You'd need a lot of gear. It takes rappelling ropes to get down inside."

I sighed. "I have to do something."

"Maybe it could work," he said. "But only if we did just the main level. No one would be up this time of year."

Ross got out the topographical map to show me the route into Gargantua. The trailhead zig-zagged up a steep gradient shown by the tight black lines. "It goes up up and up, waaaay up," he said, like the friendly giant on the TV show. Even from the map Gargantua looked huge.

"But how do we get in there," I asked.

Ross pointed to where you turned off Crowsnest. There was a gravel road, marked in blue, heading west into British Columbia. But the road kept going past the entrance to a valley, and past the trailhead he had just shown me. There was nothing - nothing but rivers and valley that marked the distance between the gravel road and the trailhead.

"And after that?" I asked.

"That's why we have a 4x4," he said.

I smiled. I imagined us riding a monster truck into the valley, cruising through the rivers and over gullies like they were junk cars, leaving tracks as wide as a house. Like we were going in to make a road, our tires spinning and spitting up mud and earth, carving a place for us in the landscape in the same way lovers carved their initials into trees. That's where we went, we'd say, look at that. Straight as an arrow through the heart.

"I'll think about it," I said.

The next day, the old sadness started coming back. I had felt this way several times after the affair, when I found myself pregnant and finally realized that Jack was a player. At first I couldn't bring myself to tell Ross about it. I still loved him. I took long secluded drives in the countryside, thinking about ploughing into telephone poles. A favourite spot was the old make-out point at Ridge reservoir where teenagers would go on the weekend. You could see the whole reservoir from the point, the prairies and the foothills leading up to the grey-and-white line of the Rockies to the west. I rolled down the windows and locked the doors, made sure that my seatbelt was securely fastened. I wanted so badly to project myself into the water, car and all, and drown like an unwanted kitten. At times I felt that I would go through with it. But mostly, I just thought. I liked the shifty gravel roads and the dry solitude of the prairie - the feeling of speeding east with the wind, just right so that there was barely any resistance, like I was moving everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Then that weekend we were off to the mountains. Kananaskis country.

This is how it went: I continued taking long drives thinking of ploughing into telephone poles while Ross packed. Ross thought of everything: plenty of socks, glimmering mess kits, travel alarms, freeze-dried food he picked up at Mountain Equipment Co-op in Calgary, and sleeping bags, tents, ground cover, all techno-fabrics, light as a dime. When Ross said to travel light, he meant to travel with gear that weighed less. Taylor went along reluctantly, wondering why, all of a sudden, his parents were ready to head for the hills together like Lewis and Clark. On the way up, Ross gave several lectures while I drove. He went over a list of things to do: find a spot under a tree, make sure to tie up the packs, don't build a fire. I was getting addled by his constant chatter, thinking all the time of the conversation that I had had with Ross the night before about when we would tell Taylor.

"When?" I asked.

"Whenever the time is right. You'll know when," he said.

Then I made the big mistake of fishing Audrey's book out of the recycling bin. What I needed was more definitive advice - a source that I could use to confirm my decision. But when I turned to the chapter, "Indiscretions" I was disappointed with what I found. Dr. Laura's tone was right - she used strong qualifiers like "always" and "never," superlatives like "best" or "least." I got to liking the clear line of reasoning, the almost acidic way she could put down words. I read the chapter twice, each time sweating through the whole thing, reading as though someone had a gun to my head saying "Read this. Now." And the advice was always the same, never wavering. Don't tell your kid you've done something wrong if it's no longer a problem. She used countless examples of parents sharing drug experiences or infidelities in ways that royally screwed up their kids' lives. I tried over and over again to justify my own approach, my need to share my thoughts with Taylor, to have it all out between us, but in truth I was just stigmatizing the whole situation. If Dr. Laura was right, my kid was headed for a pretty sucky life.

The rest of the morning, Ross rambled on about camp etiquette, all the way after the turn off Crowsnest and past the bumps and creek crossings. Finally, we got up to the trailhead. So much for being alone in the wilderness. A monster pickup was there, parked and empty.

"I thought you said no one would be up this time of year."

"Usually," Ross said.

I felt sick. For me, the deal was off. I couldn't talk to Taylor - not with other people around. And we were sure to meet them - there was only one trail, one campsite. My sorrow needed room. I could be one person in a huge crowd of people or a woman alone, but not this - one of two parties out in the middle of Kananaskis country. Someone had mapped the same spot, made the same plans, and that was enough to keep me from wanting to talk to my son.

We started the hike. Ross said he hoped that the people were friendly. Then he gave a great lecture about poachers. Poachers, he said, had no regard for rules, like cars on highways with no speed limits. He quoted scripture. "If you are willing and obedient, you will eat of the good of the land," he said. "If you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured with the sword." The trail got steeper. I imagined Ross being mangled by a bear.

About mid-way, I knew that we were scaling the compressed lines on Ross's topographical map.The pitch was steep and we were heading through shale. Each step slipped back half a stride. At a stump, Ross stopped and took off his pack. Taylor stuck out his arms and rotated them, and faked falling backwards as he sat down.

"Careful," I said.

Ross took out a canteen and downed a few gulps of water, then passed it around. I was speculating about the other group. Maybe they had gone somewhere else? Staked a claim in the valley? So far, we had just seen shale and scrub pine and no signs of people. Then Ross said, "Taylor, I bet you're wondering why we wanted to do this trip."

I shook my head. Not now. "Ross," I said.

"Because I'm in trouble?" Taylor said.

"Ross ... "

"No, Taylor, you're not. Remember a while back when you asked your mother about being adopted?"

"Mom told you about that?"

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

"Yes, she did, Taylor. And I think that she has something else to tell you."

Taylor looked at me, surprised. I rubbed my shoulder with one hand. My shirt was damp where my pack straps had been. Ross came over, sat behind me on a boulder, then reached down to massage my back. I got up.

"Let's go for a walk, kiddo," I said.

I took Taylor by the elbow, the way I used to when he was naughty and I needed a corner to tuck him away. But we were going uphill, leaving Ross behind to guard our packs. Taylor kept up my pace for a while, then I let go of him when we reached a patch of shale and we both needed the space. Taylor said, "What's wrong, Mom? Why won't you tell me what's wrong?" repeatedly as we climbed until breathing from exertion broke up the sentences into fragments punctuated by more and more silence. I stopped at a tree in the trail that grew straight out of the limestone and then up, forming an elbow of a trunk.

"Here," I said. "Let's stop here."

Taylor hopped up on the ledge and put his arm along the trunk. I climbed up behind him and straddled him, wrapping my sweaty arms around him from behind. I was still almost a foot taller than my son, though I knew that wouldn't last. He was just starting puberty, or so he told me, and Jack had been tall and wiry, six-two or six-three. I found myself thinking about Jack's feet, the boat-shaped loafers that he commonly wore. Taylor's shoe size had changed three times in the past year and his runners were starting to get cramped again.

"How are your feet?" I asked.

"Cut it out, Mom. You're all sweaty and gross."

I pulled back and slid alongside him.

"When we get going down, you'll have to tie your shoes a little tighter. I don't want you jamming your toes in the front."

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No, it isn't," I said. "I want to talk to you about your father."

I expected to cry. Each time I had pictured the scene, the tears would be there, on the surface, ready to flow at the mildest suggestion. But there I was, dry-eyed, telling my life's history like I was some distant cousin who messed up. I told Taylor that he wasn't adopted, but that he had a different biological father who I had known for just a short time.

"That's where you get your blue eyes," I said.

I told Taylor how Ross and I had wanted to give him a stable home life, that the affair was my fault not his, and that he had always belonged to us and not anyone else. I told him about the joy it had been raising him, and that Ross and I had given him the best of ourselves. I told my son what I had learned from my relationships with both men: that he, Taylor was the most important and valuable person in my life. I told him everything.

That was it.

When we came back, Ross was reading his Bible.

"I almost gave up on you two," he said.

"You lugged that all the way up here? I thought you were all concerned about weight," I said.

"Always room for the word of God. Hi Taylor."

Taylor grunted, then hoisted his pack around his shoulders, cinched up the straps and headed, sure-footed up the mountain. He was unusually quiet. I couldn't read him. Ross waited until Taylor was out of earshot, then asked, "How'd it go?"

"You're an asshole," I said.

It took me about 3000 vertical feet, three blisters, and a lot of grunting to cool off. Ross had no right to expose me like that. I thought how I could rewrite the book that Audrey had given me. It would be short, like a recipe. How to tell your son he's the product of an affair: For BEST results, don't agree to spend a weekend in the wilderness, don't put yourself in an uncomfortable situation, and whatever you do, don't tell your son that he's a bastard until you're on your way home. Sound advice.

Finally, we reached the plateau. A six foot cairn of stacked limestone marked the spot, as did a fire pit, two tents, and a row of packs strung between trees. But the camp was deserted. We unslung our packs and sat on a log.

"I got to take a leak," Taylor said.

"Be careful."

And I meant it. From the plateau where we were, Turtle Mountain was still shedding its stone face. Shale and rock abounded, as did sink holes and gullies. The terrain was wildly unpredictable and I didn't want my son - my only son - going and peeing off some cliff like men like to do. Wouldn't that be the final irony - dragging him all the way up here and then having some horrible accident that maimed him for life? We didn't need any more scars.

So when I heard Taylor yell, "Helloooo," I jumped.

We heard voices responding to him, yelling back. He had found people. Ross and I followed in the direction that Taylor went, down through the rock-strewn vegetation to an area that spanned a long sweep of shale. The group, as we could see now, was made up of boy scouts, Venturers probably, who had a bunch of ropes slung around a tree. Extensive rappelling equipment. The boys were taking turns descending over the lip of the natural limestone bridge and down into the mouth of a cave that swallowed the shale.

"These guys are going through the caves," Taylor said.

The Venturer leader was a short, skinny man wearing an Aussie leather hat. He was mild-mannered and calm - not at all the kind of person I pictured leading a group of adventure-sprung teenagers into the backcountry.

"I'm Jake Duggan," the man said.

We introduced ourselves.

"A great idea, taking your son up here," Jake said. "This is the best time of the year. Less crowded." He talked quickly enough, but mumbled his words.

"But not this weekend," I said.

"You'd be surprised. During the summer, we get four, five groups at a time."

The boys rappelled and ascended on the rope. For long intervals, no one really talked. We just watched, arms folded, from a safe distance as the boys struggled on the rope, pulling an ascender attached to their foot up until their leg was cocked at a 90 degree angle, then standing and moving the ascender attached to their harness. One scout belayed for security. The whole system ran like clockwork with the ascender moving to the belay, then the belay descending, then the descender switching to holding the rope steady at the bottom. Some scouts took longer coming up and let their feet dangle in the air. Some moved as swiftly as though they were climbing a ladder. But whatever speed they went, it always looked like work.

"Can I try, Mom?"

Taylor was earnest and Jake seemed to know what he was doing, so we consented. Big mistake. The scouts were eager to show us how to use the equipment and they eventually conned us both into trying - Ross going down in one sliding jump and me taking my time in increments, letting the rope tighten and then slack. Before we knew it, the troop had invited us along.

That night, I went to bed early. Taylor and Ross stayed out with the scouts for a campfire while I found the solace of my sleeping bag. I got myself completely ready on my side of the tent, with ample room for Taylor next to me and Ross on the other side. I was idly hoping that Taylor would come to bed early, of his own volition, so that we could have time to talk. The rest of the evening completely derailed me, and I felt ousted by the Venturer's plans to go through Gargantua the next morning. Jake had showed us maps of the five rappelling pitches that led through a complex maze of tunnels and rooms. In places, the caves were like worm holes just six feet high, almost perfectly symmetrical with sandy bottoms. Interesting, sure. But the more Taylor latched on to what Jake was saying, the more I wanted to take my son back down to the trailhead, to the car, on to more familiar signs of civilization.

"Pam?" Ross unzipped the tent.

"Where's Taylor?"

"Smores. He'll come in a while."

I rolled over with my back to the center of the tent. I breathed slowly, like I had been sleeping. Ross kicked off his shoes and slid quietly into his bag. He rustled around for a bit, then stopped.

"I'm sorry, Pam."

"For what?"

"For bringing you up here. I didn't know there'd be people. I don't want this to turn into some scouting trip."

I didn't say anything.

"You two need time to talk things out."

No kidding.

"Why don't you both stay back tomorrow? I'll go with Jake and give him a chance to play tour guide. There's plenty to explore around the plateau."

"Maybe," I said.

I kept to my side of the tent and Ross sighed. He moved some more until I couldn't hear much of anything except the dull chatter of the scouts at the campfire and the wind coming up from the valley. I was still awake when Taylor crept into the tent. He smelled like woodsmoke, earth, and pine. Then I went to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up before anyone else. I moved very slightly and positioned myself so that I could see Taylor clearly. Ross lay on the other side of the tent with his back to the both of us. He had always been a sound sleeper. Silent, never budged. Ross was great for things like that. He was always organized and dependable; he did dishes, kept his shoes on a shoe tree, always pressed his slacks. But love for him was overbearance. Had I been a different woman, I imagine that we could have had a happy life together. Me, Ross the forgiver, and our bastard son Taylor. One damn happy nuclear family.

"Taylor," I said as he was getting up, "I was wondering if you would stay back with me today."

"We're going to Gargantua."

"The scouts are going to Gargantua. I think that Dad might go too. But I want you to stay here with me."

"Why?

Ross was awake now, calmly stretching, sitting up.

"I want us to have some time together to talk about yesterday."

"We already talked about it."

"Not really."

"What more is there?" he asked.

"Nothing more."

"Taylor," Ross said, "I think what your mother means is that she'd like to be alone with you in case you have something to say."

"Ross, I can handle this."

"This sucks," Taylor said.

"What was that?" I didn't like the word suck. Taylor knew it.

"This whole thing. The trip, your lying to me. It all sucks. Now I finally find something worth doing up here and you don't want me to go. Instead I have to stay back with my sucky mother in the sucky wilderness while my sucky father who isn't really my father goes up the mountain with the sucky Venturers. It's not fair. It sucks."

It was the most Taylor had said to me the whole trip. A real breakthrough. Ross started to laugh.

"Shut up," Taylor said. Ross laughed harder. "Will you tell him to shut the fuck up?"

That did a number on Ross's evangelical ears. I could see him gearing up for a lecture, so I cut him short. "That's enough, Taylor," I said. "You're staying with me this morning and that's final."

Another line I would add to my handbook: Don't force your bastard son to stay with you so you can brood and feel sorry for yourself while the rest of the world goes on a spelunking adventure. I thought about this over our re-hydrating peaches-and-cream mush. Ross was so ticked off that he ate his too quickly and burned his tongue. After breakfast, Taylor asked to go on a walk and I told him that he could if it wasn't far. He chucked the rest of his mush into the fire pit and ran off while the Venturer's gathered up their gear.

"Is Taylor coming?" It was a short, skinny kid with a coil of ropes around his neck.

"We'll try to catch up," I said.

The Venturers followed the cairns up to a shale trail that cut like a scar across the face of the mountain. I watched them for a good twenty minutes before Taylor came back with his hands cupped together.

"That must have been some pee," I said.

"I found a toad."

"Toads don't live up this high."

"What's this then?" Taylor brought his hands up to my face and opened them, slowly. It was a toad all right. I flinched and the toad hopped into my lap, then onto the ground. We both watched it as it shuffle-hopped into some unseen crevice under a log.

"How about that," I said.

"You'll tell the guys you saw it?"

"Sure I will," I said. Taylor sat down next to me. "You in the mood for a hike?"

"Sure."

I gathered up some gear: a couple flashlights with extra batteries, our helmets, and some trail mix. I made sure we had coats and that we both had jeans and gloves. I led the way, following the cairns that dotted the limestone plateau. My intention at this point wasn't quite clear. Another Dr. Laura no-no. I had no plan, no direction, and we were both inexperienced spelunkers wandering around a plateau filled with gullies and sinkholes. We made our way over to a green swath of water and moss with spikes of bear grass poking through the rock. I marvelled at the way the mountain gave way, almost reluctantly, to bits of life. Here there were still late-blooming wildflowers, bees.

"Where are we going?" Taylor asked.

"I thought we could do some exploring. Maybe make it up to the glacier and slide down."

We hiked in silence for a while. I wanted to talk. At first I thought I'd better not. I didn't want to do the same dumb move that Ross did yesterday, unnaturally exposing a wound. This weekend, it was like both Ross and I were boxers, darting around Taylor in the ring, his eyes closing up, wanting his manager to cut them so he could finish. There was something hurtful about the whole thing, like he had been our little experiment over the last twelve years of his life. Like the Dalmatian, but bigger. I feared that he would get in some accident or hurt himself through his own mischief. His death could confirm so many things. But here he was, alive as ever, waiting for me to prod him again with questions.

"I want to talk to you, Taylor, but I'm not exactly sure what to say. About yesterday. The whole thing."

Taylor kept walking, then sighed and stopped as though he had expected it. "OK. Shoot."

Shoot, I thought. He said shoot. It wasn't right. My timing was off. In a few years, a few months, a few weeks, maybe. Not now. "You don't want to," I said. Damn. Now I sounded hurt.

"It's fine, mom. Really. I'm twelve."

"What an indictment," I said.

"What?" Taylor said.

Fine. "How about you ask me questions?" I said.

"OK," he said. "Why did you take us up here?"

"To talk to you."

"You could talk to me at home."

"I thought here would be better."

"Why?"

"Because there wouldn't be any distractions. No one else around. Ross said we would bond. You know, like a family. Beaver Cleaver and all that."

"Who?" he said.

"Never mind," I said. Up near the saddle, we could see the line of Venturers, cutting their way across. "I just thought it would be good to do something together. So you would know that you could come to us with any problems."

"What, like I don't come to you with my problems already?"

"That's not what I meant."

"So what did you mean then?"

"That we know what it's like. We were kids once too."

"Hah." Taylor said. Not a laugh, just the word. "Sure you do. You know real well."

"Regardless of what you may think, we care about you Taylor. We planned this whole trip for you."

"No you didn't. You planned it for yourself."

I didn't know what to say to that. A kid can change your perceptions about everything in an instant, like Taylor shaving that dog, turning simple black and white to shades of grey and pink. Now I found myself suggesting that we catch up with the Venturers, realizing that had been my intent from the beginning. We picked our way through the rocks, moving swiftly, commenting only on the contours of the limestone, the saddle scraped clean by melting snow. When Taylor did talk again, he was less abrasive, like my son when he was seven or eight and more obedient. But I didn't want to talk. Instead I stared at the steep drop to our left and looked for the cairns, lining them up like beacons. Was this trip, as Taylor suggested, just self-indulgence? I found myself thinking of an old friend, Janice, who had died from an overdose on anti-depressants. I remembered seeing her once in the Merc, fingering through the lettuce, moving back and forth from head lettuce to leaf lettuce, just standing there in the aisle. I knew what she was thinking - head lettuce lasts longer, but doesn't taste right. Head lettuce is more economical, leaf lettuce healthier. The sadness was there as plain as the faces of her two teenaged sons, her 3-bedroom bungalow, her husband. Was her drug self-indulgence? When she died, I felt the same sadness for her that I had felt sitting behind the steering wheel, wanting to hurl myself into a brick wall.

We reached the mouth of Gargantua, a giant gopher burrow in the side of the mountain. The scouts were already on their way into the cave, but they stopped when they saw us coming.

"Decided to join us?" Jake asked when we clambered up to the mouth.

"Couldn't bear to stay away," I said.

Ross was smart enough to not say anything. We would talk about it when we were home tomorrow night, lying in bed with the lights off. I quickly changed into my coat and told Taylor to do the same. We duct-taped our flashlights to our helmets and followed the scouts into the cave.

I'm not sure when the transition happened, but Taylor started hanging back with me. I don't know why. Perhaps he sensed that I was upset. Even so, I didn't think he'd prefer my company to the Venturers, but there he was. After the first pitch, Taylor waited until I'd made my way down the rope, then he helped me off. I followed Taylor until we came to a room with an almost flat eight-foot ceiling. Jake was waiting for us. "This room lies between both provinces," he said. He made all of us turn off our lights and we stared into the dark and listened to the sounds of the cave. Gradually people's lights blinked on, the room sliced by rays of light. I flashed mine down at Taylor who was nibbling on some trail mix. He picked through, neglecting the raisins. By now, most everyone had left, their lights dimming in the distance. Taylor got up and I put my hand on his shoulder. "Let's sit here for a while," I said.

"OK."

Instinctively, we both turned off our lights. I listened to Taylor's breathing, the dull crunching sound of his teeth on the trail mix.

"Come here," I said.

Taylor responded and came close to me, resting between the crook of my arm and my breast like a lover. Taylor grabbed my other hand and held it straight up, spreading my gloved fingers in front of us. In my mind I superimposed the image of my hand, slender, nails painted, over the blank space. It was Taylor who broke the silence. "Mom," he asked. "How did you and Dad meet?"

"Ross? I don't know. There's not much to tell." Taylor kept asking me, going through every cliché in the book: did he sweep you off your feet? Was it love at first sight? I realized that I had never really told him these things. It had always seemed so drab and normal. So I told him. "I met him at school, when I was just finishing my degree. We dated for a while, then he asked me to marry him."

Taylor wanted to know details.

"We just decided is all. He seemed to think that it was a good idea and I believed him."

Taylor let this sink in. "So how did he do it? Did he get down on one knee? Did he take you someplace romantic?"

"You're still too young to be worrying about romance," I said.

"So did he?"

"No. It was like I said. We decided that it was a good idea. I don't even remember where we were."

I sat up and turned on my light. It was already getting weak. Talking about Ross made me uncomfortable, but if there was a time to tell him, to talk to him about our relationship, it was now.

"So do you love him?"

I fumbled through my pack for some batteries.

"Do you love Dad?"

I clicked my light off, unscrewed the back, slid the old batteries out and put them in my pocket. I reached for Taylor in the dark, felt for the down-filled sleeve of his jacket. "I don't know, honey," I said.

A beam of light licked the corners of the room, lighting them up briefly, then moved elsewhere along the wall.

"Hello?" It was Ross.

"Wait," I said. I put the new batteries in and we turned on our lights.

"Hey," Ross said. He kicked a piece of shale. "We thought you were lost."

"Just resting," I said.

"Oh."

Ross stood there, the obvious outsider, while Taylor and I struggled up and sat on the rock. I wanted to feel anger at the interruption, but couldn't find the spark. If the room we were in could hold two provinces, it could handle one dysfunctional family. The last chapter in my own self-help book would be: Don't go spelunking if you're claustrophobic.

Finally, Taylor asked, "Dad, who is Beaver Cleaver?"

Ross laughed. "You are, Taylor" he said. "You're the Beav."