Tilt - Alan Cumyn [2]
Water at the tap. Stan twisted to drink. When he straightened up, his mother’s phone rang.
“Oh, it’s you,” Stan heard her say from the other room in that girly voice she only used when talking to Gary.
Up the stairs. Stan practiced walking with his weight channeled to the outside of each foot to transfer the force of every step smoothly, like a soundless wave. Step number five was impossibly squeaky. But if the footfall were in the exact resonance of the loose board . . .
“Well, you always have the same idea,” his mother said downstairs.
Into Lily’s room. The floor too had a resonance he tried to feel with his feet. Little girl sleeping, her wild hair everywhere on the pillow. She was clutching Mr. Strawberry by the neck and already clenching her jaw.
Stan turned out her light and she opened her eyes.
“Is Mommy going out?”
“No. Did you have a pee?”
“Did she tell you she wasn’t going out?”
“I want you to have a pee.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Yes, you do. Get up.” Stan pulled at her wrist. She hit him feebly on the arm with Mr. Strawberry.
He marched her into their mother’s bathroom. It still reeked of Chanel from some days before when Lily had run amok. A gift from Gary.
“I hate going in here,” she said.
“Just plug your nose and go.” Stan waited outside the door and tried not to look at the unmade bed, the scattered clothes. Gary’s toothbrush for some reason lay on the bedside table.
“Nothing is coming!” Lily announced.
“Concentrate!”
The thin layer of dust on the dresser, on the closet mirror, on the abstract male nude hanging tilted over the bed.
“It’s not coming!”
His mother’s footfalls shuddered the stairs. How could such a skinny woman make so much noise? When she thudded into the bedroom, her blouse was already half off.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said. But the blouse came all the way off anyway. Black lace bra.
Stan studied his toes. She slid open the closet door and flipped through her dresses as if they were files in a cabinet.
“Lily is peeing,” he said.
“It’s not coming!”
Stan’s mother stepped out of her slacks, which stayed squatted on the floor in front of the closet.
Stan escaped to his bedroom. Even with the door closed and the pillow over his head he still heard Lily say, “But you said you weren’t going out!” He plugged in his music. Gain/Loss sang, Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna gonna gonna gonna gonna do? straight into his ears in the darkness over and over until the house was still.
Music off. Lily made little unasleep huffing-chuffing breathing noises in the next bedroom. He hadn’t heard the door close, but his mother was gone. All still and dark.
With his eyes shut he imagined himself on the tryout court, all last year’s returning JV stars there, Coach Lapman watching, everyone watching. He caught the ball and leaned left, went right then bing! On the spot, straight up like a human spring . . . the wave moving through him, the spin of the ball, the arc in the air. Swish. Nothing but net. Nothing but window. Silhouette. Dark against light. The twisting shot . . . and the twist of Janine’s arms as she tugged up the T-shirt . . . he hadn’t looked and yet the black and white danced in his mind . . . her dark bra, the points of her hair, the fall of her breasts . . . despite it all the show went on as soon as he closed his eyes.
On and on it went.
2
The alarm. Seven a.m. Stan was somewhere in the mountains fighting off a band of terrorists intent on stealing all the mountain goats. They were falling to his broom handle, to his furious feet.
Then he was awake and stiff. Stiff as a guy wire.
It made no sense at all. He stared up at the gloomy ceiling waiting to unstiffen.
He lifted his knees so that the sheets would touch nothing. Emptied his mind. Filled it with dishes. Dust mops. Digging in the garden. Foot on shovel. Shovel in dirt. Worms wriggling in black earth. Limp,