Tilt - Alan Cumyn [62]
“I know this has been a tumultuous day . . .”
They were getting married, Stan thought.
“ . . . but I would like to make an announcement. Isabelle and I have decided —”
“I got my girlfriend pregnant!” Stan blurted. That stopped the words in Gary’s throat.
“What?”
“Janine is pregnant,” Stan said. “She’s my girlfriend. It’s my fault.”
Stan’s mother crashed her cutlery on her plate. Everyone else was silent. Even Lily looked up.
“Oh, Stan,” his mother said in a little voice.
Freight trains collided in his ears.
Why had he said it? Why had he said it out loud?
Gary still had his mouth open, but nothing was coming out now.
Welcome to the family, big fella, Stan thought. Welcome to the nut house.
“When . . . when is she due?” Stan’s mother said. “Have you talked to her parents? Has she considered . . .?”
“It’s all really new!” Stan sprang to his feet because he had to, his whole body uncoiled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Up the stairs. To hell with the squeaks. A huge storm seemed to be blowing all around him. He launched into his room where it had all happened, where his life had come peeling apart in a matter of minutes.
Why?
Because he was Ron’s fuck-up son.
There was the bed, sheets and blankets still wrapped in knots. That’s where the disaster had unfolded. It was like he’d been on drugs or something. He’d gone completely out of his mind.
There was the balled-up T-shirt-and-gym-sock combination on the floor. Why hadn’t he just stopped there? Obviously he was unfit for . . .
But Janine had wanted to go on. She’d never tried boys. She didn’t know what she was doing.
But it was his fault. He knew himself.
He thought he knew.
He buried his face into the wreck of his bed. Everything was cold now. Cold and dark. It was difficult even to remember the steam heat of it.
“Stanley.” His mother’s voice.
“I closed the door for a reason!” Stan barked.
Everyone else in the family was allowed to come apart. Everyone else could slam the door and be left alone. But not him.
Why didn’t he have a lock on his door?
“Don’t come in!”
But she came in anyway, bearing food. Cold microwave mush. She sat on the edge of his bed — the very scene of the disaster — and put the ridiculous plate on the floor right beside his smelly wad of disgrace.
He could hear her sniffing distastefully.
“You really need to do your sheets,” she said.
He didn’t have to talk.
“I’m sorry for this afternoon,” Stan’s mother said. What was the phrase? Eggshells. Eggshells in her voice. “You know, as a parent, sometimes you get completely blindsided by something. You just . . . barge in with the current crisis in your head, and you have no idea. I’m sorry.”
If he kept his head in his pillow she would go away eventually.
“Janine seems like a nice girl.”
If he stayed still as a corpse . . . if he became a corpse. If he willed all the life to drain from his . . .
“I mean, it was a horrible way to meet someone. I wish you had brought her to dinner first or something. I have asked you many times if you’re seeing someone. I know we’re a bit chaotic as a family, but —”
“I wasn’t seeing her!” Stan said. “We just got together. It’s all really new!”
That shut her up. Stan waited, but he couldn’t continue to be a corpse. He shifted to look at her. Shades of gray in the darkness.
Something in the bed was still slimy from . . .
“How new is it?” she asked finally and pressed a little closer. Her hand was going to touch the slimy part . . .
Stan sat up completely in a protective posture.
“Just today. We just started everything today. When you walked in . . .”
“Oh,” she said. “Just today?” It was as if she was sitting in the den with the three remotes, indiscriminately pushing buttons.
“You walked in on us!” Probably everyone was lined up on the stairs listening.
“How do you know that she’s pregnant?” his mother asked.
“I just know! I’m Ron’s son, all right? I’ve got this —”
“Did she tell you that she’s pregnant?”
“She didn’t have to! I didn’t use any protection, I didn’t think . . .”
Slime, slime still on the bed. It was disgusting. Stan couldn