Tilt - Alan Cumyn [32]
“I’ll get you a towel,” Stan said, and he was unreasonably happy for the few seconds it took him away from unfolding Catastrophe II.
Lily was guarding Feldon in the tub.
“He’s got a little nib,” she said. “Right between his legs!”
Stan could get a job planting trees in the north woods. A helicopter could set him down in the middle of the tundra and he could walk and walk for miles, stooping and planting. He would follow his own compass. At lunch he’d sit on a rock with pine gum on his cheeks and blackflies clouding his face, and the vast and empty tundra would stretch before him, and the sweat would run inside his clothes, and he’d write a card to Janine:
They say this is God’s country, and I know what they mean.
And his heart would pound just to think of her, back in civilization, a million miles away.
—
Stan brought the towel and Lily loudly rubbed trembling Feldon’s goose-pimply body with it. It was hard to tell just what exactly the adults were saying to each other in the living room.
Stan didn’t really want to know.
“Do you want to have a lie-down, buddy?” Stan said to Feldon. “Do you want to curl up in bed?”
“Feldon can’t talk!” Lily whispered.
“Sure he can,” Stan said. Then, to Feldon, “You’re just a bit shy getting to know us.”
He had the eyes of a hundred-year-old. Not a hint of a smile from his gray, calm face.
“Do you have a change of clothes, Feldon?” Downstairs was ominously quiet.
“He has no clothes, and he can’t talk,” Lily said. “And he’s got the brain of a squirrel!”
Stan tapped Lily’s head. “Don’t talk about anybody that way,” he whispered. “Especially not your half-brother.”
Feldon didn’t seem to mind.
“Maybe he’s half squirrel,” Lily said.
Stan found an undershirt for Feldon, whose skin was still cold. Then Stan put him in his own bed, which felt like the brotherly thing to do.
Maybe Stan wouldn’t be living there all that much longer anyway, so what would he need his bed for?
“You have a good sleep, Little Man,” Stan said. Feldon looked at him like he was never going to close his eyes but it didn’t matter. Stan drew the drapes.
He wondered if his father had ever called him Little Man.
—
Stan had said that he’d call Kelly-Ann, but what was he supposed to say? That her husband Ron had brought Feldon to his ex-wife’s house and was on his knees now explaining how to get red-wine stains out of a creamy carpet while his ex-wife’s boyfriend paced back and forth looking like he might burst a blood vessel?
Anyway, Stan didn’t have the woman’s number, and he’d never met her, and for some reason he was having trouble breathing. It felt like a balloon was slowly inflating, crushing him from within.
Ron and Gary looked like they were about to start launching lamps at one another. Probably Stan should stay on hand to protect his mother and the children.
But the inner balloon kept inflating like some maniacal toy.
“It’s not coming out!” his mother said.
“Trust me. Trust me, it is!” Ron replied.
What was he rubbing into the carpet? Why was he hunched so badly over the spot so no one else could see?
Why couldn’t Stan breathe?
He needed to tell them all that Feldon was in bed upstairs shivering even after the hot bath. And did the boy have a change of clothes?
And he needed to tell his mother, separately, that he wasn’t going to call Kelly-Ann. And he needed to tell her that no matter what disaster might be unfolding here, he was going to a dance tonight with Janine Igwash.
And he needed to tell Ron, separately, to get the hell out of their lives. He wanted to have a broom handle in his hand when he did that.
Except he could hardly move right now.
And that’s why when Ron, his miserable dad, said, “Son, could you get a little vinegar — not the apple, but the white?” Stan turned and left. The white vinegar was in the closet off the kitchen landing right beside the brooms. If he’d gotten the white vinegar he would have unscrewed the broom handle, too, and murdered his father.
Instead he plunged out the back door into the driving rain and the whole sweet wide world