Tilt (10 page)

She was standing in her killer black dress with her black hair plastered to her white, white face a few paces off, like she was about to draw her pistol and shoot him dead. He was already shot through.

He had known that going to the dance would be a whole bigger deal than it should have been.

“Sorry about what?”

She was crying in the rain. When he was the one who should be upset. Was this the way all girls operated?

“I broke it off with Leona weeks ago and then she came tonight anyway and I couldn't keep her away.” She wiped her face. “My parents don't know
anything
. Please don't tell them. I thought . . . I thought asking you was the right thing.”

“For what?”

“My mother has gone through second chemo. She only has about two months to live. That's what all the doctors say. She lives for these dances. She just shines. But she'll be days and days in bed afterwards. And I know she wanted me to invite one boy I liked. Just one.”

“But you like girls?”

She was shivering and crying and not answering.

He'd seen the two of them dancing together. He'd seen the white-dress girl — Leona — with her arm around Janine.

“I like boys, too,” Janine said. “Maybe. I like you.” She shivered deeply.

Clearly, despite everything, it was his duty to hold her, warm her. “I called
you
,” she said. “I wanted to go with you.”

It was his duty but he couldn't move. It felt like . . . rigor mortis was setting in. If she wanted him to hold her, to warm her . . . 

Even as the argument presented itself in his mind, she somehow curled into his arms. How did that happen? She felt . . . quite warm and soft in all the right places. She clutched him and even though they weren't moving it was almost as if the two of them were slow dancing after all. Her words were terribly sad and the sound of them — the feel of her — had a different effect.

“So . . . you do like me?” he said. The words fell out. Stupidly, pathetically.

“Of course.”

There was no reason to stay clenched wherever they were — in the middle of the street, practically. He, too, was starting to shake with the night's cold.

How confused was this? But the feel of her now . . . her hands on the small of his back, pulling him firmly against her middle.

“I saw you looking at me in class,” she whispered. “Guys think we don't notice or something.”

This close there was no focus. This close they could say anything.

It was odd. Any moment a truck was going to split the darkness with its headlights and crush their bones.

YOUNG COUPLE KILLED IN MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!

His mother would evaporate with shock and grief.

But now they were slow-motion dancing.

None of this made any sense.

And neither did the kiss. It only took each of them to move slightly. At first she turned her cheek a bit toward his, and he edged away because he didn't know if she wanted to kiss him. She pressed closer. Then he couldn't turn any farther. Once on a science class nature trip in elementary school he'd seen a brown owl — at a nature center, in a big pen — turn his head farther, farther, until he'd almost corkscrewed it completely around. But at 270 degrees or so — was that possible? — the owl swiveled his head the other way.

So Stan turned back to her and at first their lips just collided, the way two people pass in a crowded corridor when they aren't paying attention. An accident, then . . . 

Lock.

Her lips were terribly smooth and cold at first, then wondrously warm. If he kept his eyes open the rain crept in, so he closed them and held her even tighter. She was very strong. She had an enormous grip on . . . on all of him. But she didn't move her head or lips around. She had . . . smooth teeth. He could taste the sweet juice.

She was kissing him.

And it wasn't making a lot of sense.

Her tongue was . . . and his was . . . and everything was . . . 

A car honked then, God! It swerved hard and could have hit them. Stan pulled Janine over to the sidewalk. Where they should have been all the time.

KISSING TEENS BREATHE THEIR LAST!

They stood apart now. Stan had no idea what his face looked like, but Janine's was . . . astonished. Her mouth was hanging open.

And then she was running, running back to the dance. She was fast, too. It was surprising how strong her stride was.

She could run track. She could run track in a black dress and cowboy boots.

I should go after her, Stan thought.

Because that kiss meant something.

It wasn't what she'd expected.

His very first kiss. Maybe hers, too. With a boy.

She was a block away already when he started after her. She was fast but he was faster.

Or he should have been. If he wasn't so cold. And wet. His pants — her pants on him — were soaked and grabbed at his legs. He was a better runner than this, but she was pulling away.

She hadn't said anything about being a track star.

She made it to the door of the rec center far ahead of him, and that changed things somehow. She was running away — away from
him
— so he had no right to follow. She was back safe with her family . . . with her girlfriend, Leona.

She kissed him, then chose her.

And Stan
did
know where he was. May Creek Boulevard was just over there. It would be a long walk but he'd make it home. May Creek to Eddington and then he'd hit the river and it would be only a couple more miles from there.

He'd been Janine Igwash's boyfriend for about fifteen minutes. That had to be some kind of record.

When Stan staggered down the stairs the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon, wiping the sleep from his eyes, the house was empty except for his father taking apart the toilet.

“What are you doing?” Stan asked.

His father was on his knees surrounded by greasy tools, and the toilet lay on its side like an upended ship. A dark hole ringed by yellowy black wax stared up from the bathroom floor. The sewer reek was far worse than the leftover Chanel disaster upstairs.

“I'm trying to save your mother a substantial amount of money,” Ron said. “You know how much water these relics use in a year?”

Stan didn't know. His father's hands were covered in the yellowy black wax, a dab of which dangled from his cheek as well.

“You disappeared last night,” Ron said. “Your mother's going to kill you when she gets back.” Ron explained that they had all gone to the art gallery: Stan's mother, Lily, Feldon and Gary.

“Isn't Feldon sick?” Stan asked.

“Miraculous recovery. Must be something in the air around here.”

Could he not smell anything?

Stan couldn't figure out what Ron was doing with the toilet. He just seemed to be wiping grease on himself, a rag, the tools, the rag again . . . 

“So it's . . . pretty serious with this guy, I guess,” Ron said. “Gary.”

What was his father fishing for?

“They've been together what — a couple of months?” Ron's eyes didn't stay on a person. They darted here and there. And why did he just keep wiping himself?

“Longer than a couple of months,” Stan said.

“I bet he doesn't play hockey,” Ron pressed. “Guy looks like he'd fall flat on his ass if you put him in a pair of skates.”

Stan and his father did play hockey together. Stan remembered the cold on his face in the morning at the outdoor rink, the slap of the puck against the boards, how hot they would get in just a few minutes of hard skating.

“Gary is . . . surprising in a lot of ways,” Stan said.

“I wish your mother was,” Ron muttered. He shifted from his knees and sat on the side of the tub, his body hunched forward as if they were in the change hut after a full morning of chasing the puck. “Your mother is completely predictable, I hate to say.”

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't get a bass, at least you'll get a sunfish.”

Feldon the airplane continued to circle as if out of radio contact.

How badly was it raining? Nothing like last night. His mother couldn't possibly stay mad at him if he took the kid out. And if they left, his mother would say what she needed to say to Ron, who would realize this wasn't his house anymore. Even if he did replace the toilet.

Stan headed down to the basement to gather the gear. The rods were on shelves behind several boxes of Christmas ornaments. It was a matter of moving a few things . . . 

“The new one won't fit,” Stan heard his father say to his mother on the main floor.

The heating vent was right over his head. They might as well have been using a loudspeaker.

“I don't believe this,” his mother said.

“It's a standard size, but the pipes here aren't standard.”

“I don't believe this,” his mother said again.

“There is an adapter. But I have to go back to the store.”

“Did you call her?”

“I think it'll be all right.”

“Did you call her?”

There were the fishing rods. Stan had no reason to stay under the vent, but he lingered, anyway.

“She's pretty adamant,” Ron said.

“About what? Leaving you? What about Feldon?”

Maybe Stan could just get Feldon out quietly. He wouldn't have to say where they were going.

“Ron! Say something!”

He could just leave a note, maybe.

“What did you do to get her so angry at you? Did she really leave you, or did you leave her and take Feldon with you?”

If Ron was explaining, Stan couldn't hear it. Feet moved over his head.

“It's just a simple adapter,” said Ron. Heavy footsteps down the hall. Then the front door opened and shut.

Stan got the tackle box and silently climbed the stairs again. Feldon wasn't buzzing around anymore. He didn't seem to be anywhere. Stan quietly called for him in the kitchen. Ron had gone — probably to the hardware to get the adapter. Did he take Feldon?

“Where are
you
going?” His mother stood blocking the passage to the front door, her hands on her hips. The rims of her eyes were dangerously red.

“I'm sorry,” Stan said.

“Yesterday you just walked out! You dragged yourself back in the middle of the night . . .” If she grimaced any further her jaw was going to crack.

“I'm sorry,” he said again. He felt pretty foolish standing in the kitchen with a couple of fishing rods. Especially if Feldon was gone.

“You just disappeared! Do you have any idea — ?”

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” Bits of dust fell from the spin-caster onto the kitchen floor. Stan watched the clumps fall, then wondered if he should pick them up or if that would make things worse.

“Where did you go?”

Stan's eyes went down to the dust clumps anyway. Just for a second. The counter door was slightly open. And there was Feldon cowering with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears.

The sight of the boy drained all the counter-punch from him.

“I told you I was going to a dance,” Stan said. “I should have called. I'm sorry. I didn't think —”

He was going to say he didn't think she'd miss him, but of course that wasn't true.

“You didn't think!” she said. “You didn't think! Now look!” She gestured toward the bathroom as if somehow, if he'd been there, Stan would have prevented the whole disaster. “He's getting me to spend two hundred dollars on a new toilet that doesn't fit and I don't bloody well need!”

Stan wanted to just take Feldon by the hand and pull him out.

“I went to the dance and I got home a little late,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Lily came down the stairs clutching Mr. Strawberry.

“Fishing!” she cried.

“I was going to take Feldon down to the river,” Stan said.

“What about me!” Lily said, like her mouth was spring-loaded.

Lily, who hated fishing.

Feldon closed the cupboard door a little farther on himself.

Light rain fell on the window.

“I never get to go fishing!” Lily wailed.

—

“Did you ever do this with your dad?” Stan asked as they headed down the sidewalk toward the river. He was holding Feldon's hand. Feldon had the tackle box and Lily had Mr. Strawberry and the smaller rod, which she kept swishing dangerously. If he wasn't careful she would poke somebody's eye out.

“I saw it on TV,” the boy said.

“But your dad never took you out? He never left you on the dock or anything?” Stan felt like a prosecutor pulling on an uncertain line of questioning.

“We went to a store once,” Feldon said.

“A fishing store?”

“I want to go to the Tilt-the-World!” Lily cried.

Stan looked where she was pointing. Across the street at the Longworth Mall, a lone groaning silver ride glinted and whirled in a fenced-off section of parking lot. A few kids screamed, but most of the swinging arms of the mechanical beast were empty.

“It's probably not safe in the rain,” Stan said. “Mom would never let you.”

“You couldn't afford to take us anyway!” Lily said. She poked Feldon on the shoulder. “Nobody has any money. Not in our family!”

“My mommy has money,” Feldon said.

Stan grabbed Lily's wrist and pulled both kids across an intersection.

“She's going to come get me,” Feldon said.

“Does she even know where you are?” Stan asked.

“Why wouldn't she know?” Lily demanded. She was allowing herself to be led.

“We play secrets a lot,” Feldon said.

“What kind of secrets?” Stan pressed.

Feldon started to hum a little tune, then flattened his lips together like he would not talk no matter what happened.

The river was only a few blocks away. Stan steered the kids around a deep puddle.

He stopped and kneeled down to look Feldon in the eye.

“This is important. Does your mom know where you are?”

Feldon shook his head and stared down at his shoes. But what he said was, “My mom knows everything.”

—

Lily cast into the trees, into the weeds, into a bush beside Feldon's head, and Stan took the fishing rod from her so she ran onto a log by the river's edge where faeries hid and talked to them for quite a while on her belly with the ties from her raincoat dragging into the edge of the water.

Feldon opened and closed the tackle box, opened and closed it, and took out each colorful, prickly lure, his little fingers wonderful at avoiding every barb. He lined up the spinners and the leaders and the big hooks and the bobbers, the lead weights, the rubber worms and the spoons. They were like an army in the grass, or a specialized audience come to watch while Stan cast out beyond the shallows and slowly reeled in, cast out and reeled in.

So much was happening, and yet it was not long before he was thinking again of Janine. What did she do after the kiss, when she got back to the dance with Leona?

Did she kiss Leona the way she kissed him?

Why hadn't she told him it was a cancer dance? She was a good talker. Why did he have to get there to find out?

Why didn't she tell him about . . . the girl thing? Everyone knew anyway. Even Jason Biggs.

What else didn't Stan know about her?

“Lily!”
Stan called out. She was leaning out to the water, her foot planted in mud.