Tilt - Alan Cumyn [31]
As soon as I’m old enough I’m moving out, Stan thought. When might that be? Maybe sixteen was already old enough? Once he got his license. He could get a job somewhere after school. At the grocery store. He could run items through the scanner and give people their change and help them bag. He could go on welfare. He and Janine could move in together . . .
“F-L-D-O-N . . . and Feldon was his —”
“ . . . and now I’m the one who’s going to have to call her,” his mother concluded.
“Why?” Stan asked.
“Because that’s the way the universe is. It doesn’t just punish you once. It rubs your face in the dirt and when you try to get up —”
She gestured with her hand, and red wine spilled onto the creamy rug she’d bought from the consignment store for Christmas as a treat for herself.
Stan’s eyes bounced once between the stain and his mother, but she didn’t notice. That’s how bad it was.
“I have to call her because Kelly-Ann Wilmer is my punishment for something I did, God knows what. Maybe in another life.”
If he left to live with Janine — if he took the job at the grocery store, if there was a job, and became his own man — then he’d be abandoning Lily to a crazy woman.
A crazy woman who had raised him with some semblance of normality despite living a train wreck.
A crazy woman who loved them both more than made any sense whatsoever.
“You don’t have to call Kelly-Ann,” Stan said.
“Well, who else is going to do it?” His mother glanced down irritably.
Then the whole weight of the world seemed to pull her gaze toward the stain. Her eyes fluttered as if she were about to lose consciousness.
“Did I . . . oh,” she sighed, and Stan could almost see the anger seeping from her like water through a child’s fingers.
“It’s all right, I’ll clean it,” he said.
But instead of going to the kitchen to stare in the cupboard at the possible rug-cleaning products, he stood in the middle of the room and held her while she wept a warm flood against his shoulder. Her hair brushed against his cheek and made his nostrils itchy.
“I’ll call Kelly-Ann,” he heard himself say.
Anything to help her stop crying. Her shoulders heaved. She had breasts. Skinny as she was, his mother was pressing her breasts against him.
“You’re so big and strong now,” she said into his soaked shirt. “I’m so proud of you. If I didn’t have you —”
The doorbell then. Who? This was not a good day for answering the door. But at least the interruption allowed Stan to unclinch.
Through the foggy pane he saw a man.
Gary! Stan practically hugged the guy.
“Is everything all right?” Gary said. “I’ve been phoning and phoning your mom . . .”
When he saw her he crossed the room like a man on a mission, wrapped Stan’s mother in his fattish arms and stood there and took it. The sobbing anew, the gibberish that had to come out in gasps and gulps before she could say anything intelligible.
“And . . . and . . . he’s right here now. He’s brought the boy — Feldon — with him. Can you imagine?”
Maybe Gary could talk to Kelly-Ann? Gary could stand at the foul line with his back to the basket and sink the most improbable shot. Maybe Gary was Clark Kent.
But when the two men met — in the middle of the living room, with Stan’s mom on her knees scrubbing out the red-wine stain on her favorite rug — it was more like Ice Man vs. Whipped Dog. Ron was wet still from the rain and moved like he’d been kicked in the backside and deserved it. And Gary was trying to hold himself tall, was actually sucking in his stomach.
“I heard your boy’s sick,” Gary said finally.
“It’s just a cough,” Ron answered. But Feldon’s rattle from the bathroom — where did that kid learn his timing? — disquieted the whole house.
“I’m going to need a towel,” Ron said. “We won’t be staying long. I just have to catch my breath a bit.”
Stan imagined the two men falling to blows. His father was stronger, but somehow Gary looked like he’d come out on top. Whatever on top would mean in a fight between two aging guys with more belly than wallop.
Why wasn’t Ron going to the linen closet to get a towel?
Because it wasn