Tilt - Alan Cumyn [29]
Did he lose it just because Stan was watching? Where was his mother in that scene? Had they just fought?
How could this bleeding, angry klutz now make a living as a carpenter?
The phone rang mid-morning.
“Hey,” Janine said. “There’s something else I need to tell you about tonight.”
Stan waited. He was leaning against the stove trying to have a private conversation on the last phone in the world that was connected to the wall by a cord, and Lily was banging on the piano in the den instead of cleaning it.
“You really aren’t very good on the phone,” she said.
Clank, clank, bang, crash, crash went the piano.
“That’s my little sister,” Stan said. “She’s teaching herself to become Mozart.”
“Is she?” Janine said. “I really can’t tell if you’re kidding.”
Stan held the phone to the open air so Janine could hear.
“She should take lessons,” Janine said.
“Nobody in our family takes lessons,” Stan said. “We’re all self-taught. That’s why we’re all —” All what? “We’re all a bit tilted.”
It wasn’t such a bad word. Wasn’t the planet tilted?
Silence from her.
Was she tilted? The way Jason Biggs meant?
Another thought intruded. He really liked talking with her. He was terrible on the phone but he really liked talking with her.
He didn’t want to hear her say anything to ruin that.
“What about tonight?” he said.
“Uh . . . this dance.” Her voice was tight. “It’s . . . well, the whole group is, uh . . .”
Clink, clank, slam, clatter . . .
“Lily!” Stan’s mother called out from the bathroom. She had her hair roped back and she was wearing the tired purple sweatsuit she always wore for housecleaning.
“ . . . they’re a bit weird,” Janine said. “It’s just . . . I wanted to warn you. There might be some . . . parents there.”
More silence. “You said your parents were organizing,” he said finally. “So I kind of figured they’d be there.”
“And that’s okay?” She sounded relieved.
“Sure,” he said. “I think I already knew.”
“I just wasn’t sure if I told you,” she said quickly.
“Lily, stop it!” Stan’s mother screamed. “Stanley!”
“I’m on the phone!” Stan yelled. He pulled the cord around the corner into the dining room.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Janine said.
For a gulping moment Stan thought he could smell her. She seemed to be standing too close to him again, and the scent of her pushed his body against the doorframe.
“Why wouldn’t I want to come?”
Another long pause. Finally, “I’m not sure about the band,” Janine said in a small voice.
She didn’t want him to come. She was calling to get him to uninvite himself.
Stan felt a surge of ornery spine.
“Well, like you said, we could go for a walk if we don’t like the music.”
“I think it’s supposed to rain.” She had the voice of a girl he desperately wanted to hold in the dark all alone and press his lips up against hers and taste —
What would she taste like?
Stupid. She was calling to call it off. Head in the game, Dart!
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“If you don’t think I should come why don’t you just say it?” Stan said with too much voice. It hurt not to slam the phone down.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said.
What, what, what? Stan held the phone away from his ear and hollered at Lily to be quiet.
“I mean,” Janine said, “it’s a bit of a weird group, but if you’re okay with it I’d like you to come.”
“How weird?” Stan asked.
“No more weird than my family and me,” she said, and he had the sense that he wasn’t going to get any more from her than that.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said.
13
It was raining by noon when Ron showed up again, this time not alone. A little boy was holding onto his hand. They looked like drowned rats on the front porch — a huge soaked, sorry gray Papa Rat with a battered brown suitcase almost as wet as his shirt, and the Boy Rat with jug ears and liquidy black eyes so solemn as he gazed up and up even as rain from his plastered black hair dripped down his face.
Stan stood blocking the door, not knowing what to do.
“Dad,” he said.
“Stanley, I’d like you to meet your half-brother. Feldon, this