Tilt - Alan Cumyn [63]
“What’s that?” his mother asked.
It was slimy. But it was also slippery and sort of like a —
“It’s a condom,” she said. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”
Slippery in his fingers.
“Huge!” she said.
Stan dropped the thing. It looked big enough to . . .
“I thought you said you didn’t use protection?” His mother didn’t seem to know where to put her eyes.
“It’s a girl’s . . .”
“A what?”
“A girl’s condom,” he said. He’d seen pictures of them. In health.
“Janine wore this?”
God. How could he not . . .
The thing lay there like a squishy plastic bag.
“Anyway, if you just made love this afternoon, there’s no way she could know that she’s pregnant. No way. And if she wore this . . .”
She was brilliant, Stan thought, and it all slid from him — the brick factory, the lung dust, the shitty apartment, the hard weld of his jaw —
Everything flooded.
“Oh, Stanley.”
Flooded into his mother’s arms. He felt himself shaking against her chest, weeping like a baby. She held him and stroked his hair.
“Oh, my baby,” she said in a whisper. “You’re only sixteen. It’s all right. You don’t have to know everything.”
How could he miss-see so many things? How could he go through the whole sweaty passion of it and not even know?
“I think you should bring her to dinner. When everything has settled.”
“Are you and Gary going to . . .” He could barely talk. He was just weeping and breathing.
“We’ll talk about it. I have to find work now.”
Weeping and breathing. She smelled good, his mother. In the face of his unbearable stupidity . . . he didn’t want to let go.
“It’s all right. I think it’s good,” he whispered. Footsteps on the creaking stairs melting away. All of them. The drama was over for now.
Stan held her and held her until the world calmed down.
26
A jump shot starts in the soles of the feet and travels, like a wave, up through the ankles, shins, knees, thighs . . . through the hips and up the spine and out the arm and fingertips. It happens before thought travels through the brain. The ball spins nightward . . .
. . . toward the hoop in the back alley, where the beautiful girl slithers up and over the fence and emerges from the darkness before the ball clangs against the rim.
“I got your package,” Janine said.
She was wearing the plaid shirt and jeans he’d returned. He could see the shirt under the opening of her leather jacket. She had the coolest clothes. She filled them out a lot better than he had.
Stan grabbed the rebound and dribbled twice, spun the ball in off the backboard, dribbled to the foul-line crack, sank a jumper, sped in before the ball could even touch the ground . . .
“You wanted to see me,” she said.
She had her hands on her hips. Even in the dull light she shone like the most brilliant beauty ever to set foot on an improvised back-alley basketball and martial arts court.
It wasn’t quite raining and it wasn’t quite snowing. The air seemed full of the turning of the season.
“One bare breast above the blanket,” he said. “One soft sigh on the shadowed wall. And dreamy early-morning breathing, eyelids drawn, face so fair, real as real though you’re not there.”
She didn’t move.
“I am real, and I am here,” she said finally.
“It’s not finished yet,” he said.
“Is it a poem? Is it for me?”
“I need to kiss you again.”
“What for? Research?”
She would not smile at her own joke. He got the flowers then from the shadows. That seniors’ residence garden had a good selection. It was almost winter anyway. He brought them to her.
“I don’t really like flowers,” she said.
“I thought all girls liked flowers.”
He could see her breath. That’s how cold it was getting. Not that he felt any of it. She sniffed the flowers even though she didn’t like them.
“My mom does, though. She’ll carry them with her all over the house.”
Their noses were almost touching. He had to crane his neck upwards.
“I’m a troublemaker,” she said.
They stood in the cold, dull light for the longest time, just heating up the whole world.
“You are a troublemaker,” he said