Tilt - Alan Cumyn [30]
Feldon reached up a small hand. Stan took it: limp and cold. He remembered his father insisting he, too, learn how to shake hands.
“What are you doing here?” Stan asked.
Ron stood still for a time, dripping.
“Didn’t you tell Mom that Feldon was with Kelly-Ann?”
Silence. Ron looked dignified, somehow, gripping that suitcase.
“She’s not going to let you stay here. No way,” Stan said.
In any contest it was essential to know beforehand what the outcome would be. Where had Stan read that? On some martial arts site. It was a matter of imposing your will on the other, of being certain within yourself that no matter how difficult the struggle, you would prevail.
Stan’s father seemed to be imposing his will on him right now.
A gust of wind brought a spray of cold under the shelter of the porch. Stan couldn’t keep them standing there forever.
“There’s no room for you,” Stan heard himself say without conviction. “I mean, Mom has a boyfriend now . . .”
Feldon coughed then. He put his tiny fist up to his mouth and his skinny body curled into a spasm of suffering. Ron did not lower his gaze from Stan, but only put a soothing hand on the younger son’s shoulder.
“Who is it, Stanley?” his mother called.
She was in her horrendous sweatsuit with her hair roped back and her knitted yellow sockettes. She was going to —
“Don’t let them in!” she shrieked from the hallway. “Jesus, Stanley! Don’t you —”
Feldon kept coughing. The wind blew colder than ever.
“Kelly-Ann has abandoned us,” Ron said quietly.
He knelt down and hugged Feldon until the coughing subsided. Had he ever held Stan like that?
Stan felt his shoulder being tugged back, and then his mother replaced him on the threshold.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Ron, what the fuck — ?”
Feldon turned his black marvels on her.
“Isabelle, this is Feldon,” Ron said. His voice seemed to hold a quiet, triumphant sort of defeat. “Kelly-Ann is gone. Shut us out. We just need a roof for a bit.”
“What? You took the bus home and just found this out, and now you’re back already? Or you came yesterday and didn’t tell me you’d brought your other son?”
Ron stayed on one knee, pleading with his eyes.
“Why can’t you just fucking answer me?”
Suddenly the wind sent a hanging basket spinning off its hook. It crashed close to Ron and Feldon and splashed black, wet earth on their soaked trousers and shoes. But neither of them flinched.
Coughing, coughing. Once more wretched Feldon clutched his father’s rain-soaked shirt.
It was Lily who burst from nowhere, squirmed past her mother and tugged at Feldon’s skinny arm.
“Are you Feldon? What are you staying out here for? You need a hot bath and a blankie!”
—
It was as if they’d taken two strands of a live wire and pressed them together, hoping for an explosion. Ron — Stan’s father! — was in the bathroom running hot water for Feldon, the kid who’d split apart the whole family. It was the same bathroom Stan’s mother had just cleaned. And Lily was hanging onto the half-open door, looking in, not looking in, and singing in her loud, off-key little-girl voice, “F-L-D-O-N . . . and Feldon was his name — oh!”
“E! E!” Stan wanted to shout.
His mother hovered in the middle of the living room, that hand bunching her roped-up hair, bunching it and releasing. The other hand was holding a glass of wine — at hardly past noon on a Saturday!
Rain hit the windows like liquid shotgun blasts.
“How can this be happening?” she asked.
Maybe Feldon was truly sick. Maybe he’d have to stay in the hospital. Maybe Ron could stay with him, too . . .
“I’m going to have to call Kelly-fucking-Ann,” Stan’s mother said. “Can you believe it? My husband leaves me. He knocks up a younger woman. And now she’s thrown him out . . . and I’m the one who has to hold it together!”
“ . . . and Feldon was his name, oh!” sang Lily.
What about me, Stan thought. What about Gary? You haven’t done this all alone.
“ . . . What do I get for all my trouble? The asshole is back in my house with his kid and his problems . . . he’s incapable . . . he’s incapable of .