Tilt - Alan Cumyn [45]
One call, that’s all Stan wanted. Two minutes to ask Janine a simple question. Why did you run away?
Stan was getting his room back. Ron and Feldon would sleep on the wretched pull-out that ensured guests didn’t stay too long.
“If he’s not gone tomorrow you’re going to be reading about us in the newspapers,” Stan’s mother said on the phone to Gary, over and over, with slight variations, for forty-three minutes. Ron couldn’t help but overhear. He kept tucking in the sheets and re-tucking and adjusting the blankets and testing the springs, like a man determined to make making the bed last as long as possible.
One simple question for Janine.
“I don’t care what happens at work tomorrow! The whole office can sink into the ocean. If Ron has gone, I’ll be the happiest woman on the planet!”
Ron adjusted and readjusted the window blinds, then started over again.
Finally Stan’s mother got off the phone and immediately called to Stan to please help his sister with her math. Lily was still making up her own rules for addition and subtraction. An hour later she had to be stick-handled into pajamas and teethbrushing. She told him an elaborate story of the river faeries who enchanted all the fish to walk upright and wear long gowns and tuxedos.
One brief, private conversation on the phone. If Janine liked girls the most he could accept that. He just wanted to hear it from her.
It wasn’t long before Stan’s mother sequestered herself in her bedroom. Ron and Feldon slept downstairs, Lily snuffled in her usual fitful state, and Stan lay in bed. Janine’s damp clothes were still balled on the floor. They smelled of her. He realized he still had his father’s phone. He could call her on that and yet he didn’t.
It didn’t feel right anymore.
He closed his eyes and in his head it was morning. Morning in a parallel universe. They were older. She was sleeping — it was the most natural thing in the world. Her black hair was a storm on the pillow. One bare breast poked above the blanket.
A line just popped into his head.
One bare breast above the blanket.
And the next line came pulling along.
One soft sigh on the shadowed wall.
It was sounding . . . like a poem. An entire poem just fell out, pre-formed.
. . . and dreamy early-morning breathing,
eyelids drawn, face so fair,
as real as real though you’re not there.
Stan could see it all, this parallel morning with Janine beside him in some other version of his life. As if it would be completely natural to wake up beside a naked, beautiful person.
An ordinary miracle, somehow.
—
Stan said the poem to himself — it was just a verse, really, it would need more — over and over while the black of night turned to shades of gray. It was in his head now. No need even to scratch it in his notebook. He really ought to undress, to slide under the covers, surrender to sleep. But he’d slept most of the day and had failed to phone Janine.
Why?
It didn’t feel right. He was operating on feel.
Why did he feel now as if the exact right perfect thing to do would be to get up and step away in the night and go to her? This was the moment. What had to happen between them had to be private. He felt that knowledge in his body the way he could feel the perfect jump shot starting from the ground, the rotation of the ball as it arced toward the basket.
She was waiting for him. Until now she’d done all the chasing. Now she’d run, and it was his turn to go after her.
Stan got out of bed and dressed. It was crazy, crazy. He gathered his runners from the front hall closet, kneeled and pulled them on, then slipped on a jacket. It was going to be cold.
And there on the front porch were Ron and
Feldon.
“What are you doing here?” Stan and his father said at the same time.
Stan backed down first. He was still the kid. Ron probably outweighed him by fifty pounds.
“Nothing,” Stan said, as if he had to explain himself