Tilt - Alan Cumyn [13]
And so it went. His mother’s boyfriend and — what was Jason Biggs’ stupid word? The gwog.
Stan was out in a couple more shots and then Gary missed everything after that so Janine would win.
The whole thing was some other game that Stan didn’t know. Some game that made it easy for Janine to hug a middle-aged penguin but not him, not the boy she’d asked to the dance. Because it wasn’t a real ask, it was all fake.
Janine shouldered her bag and slithered over the fence the same way she had the other night. But now Gary saw her, too, and it was all different.
“What a great girl!” Gary said, understanding nothing. “You’ll want to hang on to her.”
—
Stan’s mother and Gary went out again later that night. Stan lay still in his darkened bedroom, the ball bouncing in his head, glancing off the rim, his jump shot sputtering.
Janine’s hips in Janine’s jeans. Those heeled boots. She wasn’t so bad with the basketball. Her hands were big. Big for a girl’s. A girl whose clothes would not stay on, not entirely, not in bed with Stan in the dark while the bounce bounce kept bouncing . . . and parts of her moved in those boots not made for basketball, so he lay there in his usual state, his lying state . . . in state, like leaders lie when they’re dead and stiff as a board. Were they stiff . . . all over?
How rigor did mortis get?
How pathetic was it to feel this way about a girl who was just using him?
Lily was making huffing-chuffing breathing noises in the next room.
Then she said, “Well, you have to bring Feldon!” — her voice clear in the night air.
Stan waited. Sometimes she blurted stupid things in her dreams.
“I do want to meet him! He’s my brother!”
She went back to huffing-chuffing. She was just dreaming.
“Well, I can’t hear you, either . . . I did pull up the antenna!”
Stan sat up. Blinked. Listened hard.
“I just want to see him and hug him all over,” Lily said.
Stan crept out of bed. He waited by the door, listening.
Had she heard him? His lungs moved like a slow curtain. His feet felt cold on the floor. Lily was unnaturally silent.
He took another step. Lily snuffled in her bed, rustled the blankets. In the shadows she lay on her side clutching Mr. Strawberry, pinning his shoulders to the mattress. Her eyes were shut hard.
“I know you’re awake, Lily. I heard you.”
Stan approached and sat lightly on the edge of her bed near her feet. Lily’s lips curved in a ferocious frown. Her eyes stayed closed.
She looked like an angelic little . . .
An electronic ringtone version of “Ode to Joy” started to play somewhere within Mr. Strawberry. Lily tightened her grip on his neck but still didn’t open her eyes.
“Is that a phone?”
She shoved Mr. Strawberry under her pillow and turned her back on Stan. “Ode to Joy” kept playing, slightly muffled.
“Go have a pee,” Stan said. He was surprised when she simply did it — headed to the bathroom as if sleepwalking, hugging Mr. Strawberry to her chest. “Ode to Joy” went with her.
When she came back, in silence, she burrowed under the covers like an animal. Her fingers came away from Mr. Strawberry.
A minute passed, maybe two. Eventually Lily’s body relaxed into regular breaths. Stan brushed a dark curl away from her eyes.
Under the Velcro flap at the back, Stan pulled out the slim phone and flipped it open. The light shone in his face.
It took a moment to figure out the menu. He pressed a few wrong buttons at first and had to backtrack. But there was the list of recent calls. All the same long-distance number.
Stan pressed something by mistake. A phone started ringing at the other end. Stan stood up and tried to see how to shut it off.
“Pumpkin, you really should be sleeping,” a man’s voice said. Quite deep and somehow familiar.
“Dad?” Stan said.
Then he found the button finally and turned the damn thing off.
7
There were bulrushes, and the sun was warm on his face. The path was muddy so he had to be careful. The bulrushes were way over his head. Blue sky past that. Nothing past the blue sky.
Where were his parents? He whacked at the bulrushes with a stick. Sometimes