Tilt - Alan Cumyn [11]
“Sometimes reality is overestimated,” she sighed. She could go that way, become limp and unparental in the flick of a moment.
Stan studied his plate and decided to stay quiet. They ate in unbearable silence until finally Gary made a point of asking Stan what was happening at school. So Stan told him, in as few words as possible, about the cancellation of JV.
“So you’re a basketball player,” Gary said.
Stan’s mother chimed in. “Stanley used to play hockey but then suddenly that was all over. Now it’s basketball.”
She said it as if she’d really forgotten why he gave up hockey.
“I used to play basketball,” Gary said improbably. “I did, I did! We should play horse sometime. I’ve got a wicked jump shot.” Gary stroked the air with his meaty hand. His belly rubbed against the table, and Stan grabbed two of the water glasses before they could spill again.
“You two should play!” Stan’s mother said. She pressed Stan with her eyes, the way that she did now a hundred times a day over everything from wiping up the kitchen to taking out the garbage to helping Lily wrestle with the world.
Stan and his father used to play hockey. After school in the winters, out on the frozen rink in the park in the next neighborhood over.
Stan had not played hockey, had not skated, in five years.
But now Stan allowed that he would play Gary at horse any time. Gary said that he would like that, and Stan’s mother’s eyes said that she would like that, too.
Then Lily said, “Feldon is coming next week!”
Silence. Lily’s eyes gleamed the way they did when she’d just scored big at crazy eights.
“Lily,” Stan’s mother said. Her eyebrows flattened. “Lily.”
“It’s true! Daddy told me!”
His mother twirled her fork, wound nothing on her plate.
“He called me and he told me!”
“Feldon is not coming. Your father is not coming,” his mother said icily.
“He talked just to me and he said how would you like to meet your younger brother, sweetie? And I said he could stay in my room and Daddy said that would be fine!”
Silence, like after the ship has sunk and water is rushing in and you are going down and down to the bottom.
Gary got up suddenly and started stacking plates. Stan’s mother hated anyone stacking plates at the table. Stan got up then too and carried away a serving dish. Soon Gary had the water running in the kitchen sink so it was hard to hear. But not impossible.
“Lily, darling,” his mother said. “I want you to listen carefully. I know people in your head tell you things. That’s fine. It happens to all of us.” Stan went back into the dining room to pick up glasses. His mother had taken Lily onto her lap, was holding her gently.
“But he calls me!” Lily said.
She stroked Lily’s hair. “I’m here, or your brother’s here. We would know if your father —”
“But he gave me my own phone!”
Lily was crying, the way she always cried about her most ridiculous tales.
“I’ve been too indulgent with you, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry, Lily. You can’t keep —”
“He came to my school! He —”
“Stan doesn’t have a cellphone. You don’t have a cellphone. We can’t afford it, and your father certainly can’t afford —”
“He gave me one! My own, he did! He told me not to tell you!”
Stan’s mother’s face was washed-out white. “If he gave you one you go upstairs right now and get it. All right?”
Lily gulped, then climbed down and clomped off. Her footsteps resounded up the stairs. Two doors slammed — her bedroom, then her closet.
Gary stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. He had tied on a red and white apron that read, I lost my ~ in Sam’s Deli Disco!
“Maybe he did give her a phone,” he said.
A gaze like smoke from Stan’s mother.
“She’s going to be up there fiddling in her closet for the next three hours. And when I ask her, ‘Lily, honey, where’s the phone your father gave you?’ she’s going to tell me something about a rhinoceros in the park.”
Gary scratched the Deli Disco part of his belly.
Welcome to the nut house, Stan thought. It’s not too late to save yourself.
But Gary didn’t seem to be going anywhere.