Tilt - Alan Cumyn [10]
“Don’t mention his name!”
“Feldon Feldon Feldon Feldon!” Lily said. “The baby!”
Quiet down below. Not even cupboards banging. Stan remembered when his mother and father fought. The silence was the worst. His father had a volcanic temper.
“Feldon is five years old by now,” Stan said. “He’s not a baby. Don’t even think about him, or Dad, or anybody. All right?” Stan took his sister’s head in his hands and turned it back to the figures in the notebook. “You start on the right, carry the one up here to the tens column, add one plus two plus one. What’s it come out to?”
As soon as he let her go, Lily’s doodle turned into a swirly F on the side of her paper. Her elbow nudged the textbook and a folded letter stuck out.
“What’s this?” Stan said. He grabbed the paper and held it high so Lily could not reach it.
Dear parents/guardian. It was from the school. It has recently come to our attention that your son’s/daughter’s academic standing has slipped below the acceptable school board standard . . .
“What have you done now?” Stan asked.
“Nothing,” Lily said.
Stan scanned the rest of the letter. The principal was asking for a meeting.
“Is this about marks or something else?”
Lily laid her face on the open book now, clasped her hands over her head as if expecting bombs.
Still not another sound from the kitchen. Stan got up and listened by the bedroom door.
Silence was the very worst. He remembered his father with his fists doubled . . .
“Mmm,” his mother sighed.
Great. Stan clomped down the stairs with the letter in his hand.
The air was thick with the smell of something burnt. Garlic? A stove element glowed red with nothing on it. Smoke curled up from the blackened pan that was resting in the sink.
His mother and Gary stood guilty, clenched in the middle of the kitchen, his upper lip and part of his chin smudged with her lipstick.
“Did you see this?” Stan handed the letter to his mother, whose face blanched. From upstairs he could just hear a tiny muffled voice, Lily singing, “And little baby Feldon was his name.”
“Shit for crackers,” his mother said.
—
At dinner Stan pushed creamy linguine, only some of the garlic blackened, around with his fork. Gary wiped his plate with the white Italian bread Stan’s mother never bought unless Gary was coming. Lily slurped the noodles until creamy sauce caked the wispy edges of her dangling hair.
“Well, it’s not the end of the world,” Stan’s mother said. “We’ve met with the principal before.”
“It’s a different one,” Lily said. “It’s a she.”
“Stanley will come with me,” his mother said. She didn’t have to say, Stanley keeps me from weeping on principals’ desks. She didn’t have to say, Stanley makes the family appear reasonable.
Stan’s mother lunged across the table and wiped Lily with her napkin. Lily squirmed — Stan knew she would — and got even more of her hair in the sauce. Water splashed from two or three glasses but Gary managed to catch the wine bottle before it tipped.
“I just want to keep your hair out of dinner,” Stan’s mother said. She smiled at Gary — a frantic sort of near-mad gesture — and Gary reached across and touched her hand. That was all. Somehow because Gary touched Stan’s mother’s hand, Lily stayed still long enough to be wiped.
“You should wear your barrettes,” Stan’s mother said to Lily.
“Rachel Edmundson has them,” Lily said.
Stan’s mother didn’t take the bait.
“Then just tie your hair back.” She slid her glass over a few inches and Gary topped it up.
Stan had a memory of his father pouring wine, and then he and Stan’s mother got up and danced slowly in the middle of the living room still holding their long-stemmed glasses. His mother’s face fit perfectly into his father’s shoulder.
They were happy sometimes. It wasn’t all scream and sulk.
“She’s a girl principal,” Lily said.
“That doesn’t mean you can just go along making up answers to all your assignment questions,” Stan said, unable to hold himself back. “At some point you have to deal with reality.” Stan looked to his mother for support, but she seemed to be at the end of