Tilt - Alan Cumyn [27]
She stood then but had to lean against the porch frame.
“My leg’s fallen asleep,” she said, the wine glass in her hand.
She wasn’t leaving yet.
“I wish I knew what to say to you. You are such a beautiful boy. So beautiful.” She ran a hand through his hair as if it were hers — bunch and release, bunch and release. “Be careful with this girl. Everything is in hot coals right now for her. Her feelings, her reactions. She’s going to . . .”
Stan’s mother stopped messing with his hair. She tipped her glass to sip the last few drops.
“Actually, I don’t know what the hell she’s going to do,” she said. “I have no idea what anybody’s going to do. Your father showing up today . . . he really rattled me. I didn’t think he could anymore. But he wants something. He’s not telling us the whole story, not by a long shot. He wants something and I don’t know what it is.”
His mother shook her head wearily.
“Years from now,” she said, “when you’re in therapy trying to sort out your life, and you’re cursing me and your father for what we did or didn’t do . . .” She put her face in her hands. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?”
“I know I’m a rotten mother. But I have tried to protect you from the worst of the shit. And at least I’m not a liar. I haven’t told you the half of it, and I won’t. But whenever you’re dealing with your father, just remember. You can only trust a sliver of what the man says.”
She hugged him hard in the dull light.
“And I don’t believe I’m just being bitter when I say that.”
11
Stan had a memory of driving with his father. When was that? Some years before it all fell apart and Ron left for Kelly-Ann and his new life. They were in their old van, back when it seemed that every family had a van. Stan used to sit behind the dashboard on the passenger’s side pretending he was in the cockpit of an airplane.
That van had throat problems. It rattled even when it sat in the driveway.
And Stan’s father had a smell that day. Was he drinking? He smelled dangerous, somehow. Stan remembered watching his father’s hands on the wheel. It must have been a Saturday. His father wasn’t at the office. Stan wasn’t at school.
They were driving somewhere Stan had never been before, down to the river in an unusual part of town to go fishing. Stan’s father seemed jagged and sharp around the edges, like a piece of glass your hand finds in the water when you’re reaching for something else.
Did they say anything?
Finally they were there. It was sunny, not early morning by any means — when the fish had their breakfast — but maybe they would catch something. They walked together across a park and down to the public dock that jutted out over brownish water. It smelled vaguely oily, and the sunlight only penetrated the first few inches.
“If you cast over that way,” his father said, pointing stiffly to a spot beyond the reeds, “I think you might get some bass.”
A strange thought now popped into Stan’s head: that his father had spent the entire car ride rehearsing this brief speech.
“Did you go fishing here before?” Stan asked.
Where was Lily in this memory? She must have been very small. Maybe she was home with his mother.
Stan’s father didn’t answer the question. He set up Stan’s line with a bobber, with a hook and a rubber worm.
“See if you can hit that spot,” he said. “Do you want to try my rod?”
It was a big one with a spin-caster reel. Stan did want to try it.
It took a couple of efforts. He wasn’t used to releasing the line with his finger at just the right instant. But on the third or fourth cast, the bobber splashed somewhere near the quiet, deep spot his father had pointed out.
“That’s it. That’s good!” his father said.
They had brought two rods, but the second rod — Stan’s little one — stayed on the dock.
“I’m going to be meeting . . . an associate,” his father