Tilt - Alan Cumyn [41]
Why didn’t he cover the hole? The entire house was going to stink.
“She’s hard-assed. Pardon my French. Fucking unforgiving.”
Stan couldn’t help himself.
“You left us,” he said. “You started a family with somebody else. Why would you think Mom would forgive you for that?”
Ron shook his head slowly. “It’s not a simple world, kid. Sometimes people pretend it is. Kelly-Ann is a piece of work, let me tell you. She turned my head, then she got herself pregnant, and if I didn’t go with her . . .”
The thought hovered in the bathroom like the swamp gas.
“What?”
“She was threatening to kill herself. And the baby. My hands were tied. I put up with it as long as I could.”
“So, you took Feldon? Does Kelly-Ann know you’re here?”
“I’m just doing what’s good for the boy.” Somehow another blob of yellowy black appeared on Ron’s chin. “And if your mother has no room in her heart for forgiveness, well . . .”
Ron glanced to either side of Stan’s face, his eyes never settling.
“A man does according to his nature,” Ron said. “You’ll figure that out. Probably exactly what you were doing last night. Tomcatting, my father used to call it. You never knew your grandfather. He was a tough old bastard. But we’ve all got it in us. What you asked me the other night on the phone. That’s the family curse right there. Women don’t understand and they don’t fucking forgive and the next thing you’re out in the cold.”
Something was not right in those eyes, in the way his hands kept moving, wiping here, rubbing there. As if he didn’t know entirely what he was doing.
Ron tapped the side of the gaping hole with a wrench.
“I thought maybe this wasn’t going to be a standard size. And I was right. It’s not. I know some things, you see. I fucking do.”
A sound then from the front of the house. His mother and the rest getting back from the gallery. Stan went to the front hall as they came in all together.
Feldon did look recovered. He was carrying a small bag with the gallery’s logo on it. Probably they’d bought postcards in the gift shop.
Gary seemed to be chewing on words he didn’t want to let out.
“Daddy!” Lily said and pushed past Stan to the bathroom. Had she come unsprung at the gallery as usual?
His mother glanced at Stan — cold-eyed — shook out her umbrella and hung up her coat.
Not a word.
That’s how bad it was.
Gary nodded to him grimly, then shuffled in the hallway.
“I . . . I’ll call you tonight,” he said to Stan’s mother.
“You better,” she said. And they kissed. It wasn’t earth-shattering. It wasn’t like Stan’s kiss. The memory of it zinged through his body like an uncoiling spring.
Then Gary was gone, and Stan’s mother banged cupboards in the kitchen. Not good.
Ron wanted back into the family! But he didn’t deserve it.
Anyone could see that.
Feldon came up to Stan with his big eyes and his long face. “You snore!”
“How would you know?” Stan asked gently. Feldon seemed to be wearing new clothes.
“Because!” Feldon scrunched his nose and made snuffling noises, which caused Stan to remember vaguely that the dark bed had been lumpy in the middle of the night when he’d slumped in.
Of course! He’d put Feldon in it himself the day before. Feldon with a fever, this same boy now balancing on one leg and scratching his nose.
“How are you feeling?” Stan put his hand on the boy’s forehead. Not boiling. Stan remembered being sick like Feldon when he was little and then the next day being perfectly fine.
Feldon blew through his lips and hopped around the room with his arms open like an airplane.
Better, apparently.
“Want to go fishing?” Stan asked.
The thought just occurred to him as he spoke it — a stroke of genius. They still had two rods in the basement. Stan thought he knew where. And the tackle box was in the laundry room under the old table.
“I know a place,” Stan said. “If you don