Tilt (14 page)

Feldon needed hot chocolate and a marshmallow. It was a minor miracle that both were in the cupboard. The marshmallows were particularly rocklike, but they melted in the hot drink.

There wasn't enough mix for Stan and Janine to have hot chocolate, too.

No messages on the answering machine.

Stan's mother had not come home yet, so maybe the office was not shutting down after all. Stan imagined if the place was going bankrupt or otherwise falling apart then everyone would be sent home early, like with a snow day at school.

He was going to have to get a note to explain his absence from school. Beg for a chance to write Stillwater's test.

Feldon showed no signs of running out of energy. He wanted them all to play hide-and-go-seek, which meant he would hide and Stan and Janine would count and then stumble around the house calling his name. Janine kept bumping into Stan — in the hallway, in the den, on the stairs. Her thigh would angle against his, or she would touch his arm for a moment or put her hand on his hip, not quite on his rear but not far from it, either.

Feldon hid in the linen closet, under the master bed upstairs and under a blanket beside the sofa. Each time they let him go for longer and longer while they sat in the living room on the loveseat, quite close but not touching, not really. Stan counted out loud and Janine looked at him, and Stan looked at her.

He didn't really believe she was there. It seemed like another trick of the mind. He wanted her so badly and here she was.

Dark eyes.

Heating the whole world.

Finally they found Feldon semi-snoring in the same cupboard in the kitchen where he'd hidden the other day. His chin leaned against the edge of a pot and Stan tried to extricate him gently, but he was not moving.

“Do you think he can just stay in there?” Janine asked.

They were both on their knees looking in the cupboard. Her mouth was so close to his that he had to pull back to miss it.

Her hand was on his thigh. For balance.

“Can't be very comfortable,” he said.

If she pushed slightly she could knock him flat on his back.

“I'd love to see your room,” she whispered.

If he tried to get up too quickly the blood would evacuate his head and he might keel over into the sink.

No dream.

He closed the cupboard door gently and pressed forward on his knees so that she had to kiss him. Which she did, kneeling on the floor, until the universe dried up and both of them nearly spilled into the legs of the kitchen stools.

“It's up the stairs,” Stan said finally.

His room, he meant.

She reached between his legs, which was not far at all.

“Feels pretty tight,” she said. She had a gentle way of squeezing. So Stan reached between her legs but she intercepted his hand.

“Upstairs,” she whispered.

The blood left his brain long before he stood. They walked together up the loudest set of cracking stairs ever built. Where was Stan's weight? He had no idea. His feet were somewhere miles down below the rest of him.

Feldon did not wake up.

This was all part of the dream. She knew exactly where his bedroom was. She'd seen it during hide-and-go-seek. He followed her like a balloon on a string.

She pulled him through the door.

And closed it behind.

She looked at him and didn't do anything, really. But somehow buttons began to undo themselves and Stan's shirt fell from him like old skin. She had old skin, too, to lose but first he needed to escape from all of his.

She pulled it from him.

He probably should pull hers.

But he was on the bed, being propelled backwards. She was pushing him backwards.

She wants this, he thought, a slow-motion realization. She wants this as much as I do.

Maybe more.

“It's beautiful,” she said. “You're beautiful.”

Meaning all of him, not just the throbbing egomaniac in the center.

He wasn't particularly calm. Somehow her shirt came off and in bending forward for something — just to kiss his belly, actually — the pink lace fullness of her bra brushed against . . . things and he spurted like a fountain. Like some Yosemite geyser on a nature show.

All over her beautiful chest.

“I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!” he said, and when he got up he was still gushing — on the bedspread, on her arm, the carpet, the floor.

“Is that . . .?”

She didn't complete her question. It was all new. New in fact but he could tell she knew the facts.

The facts of life.

Sixteen-year-old boys were lousy lovers.

Stan pulled a reasonably clean gym sock from his drawer and wiped the milky glue from himself.

Then he pulled out a T-shirt — exactly the same T-shirt he would have worn to the basketball tryout that morning if he had remembered to pack gym gear — and wiped what he could of the rest, from Janine and every other object he'd sprayed.

“I had no idea,” Janine said. She kept sneaking peeks at him. He was still naked and . . . and rigid as ever, practically. Grinning, one-eyed fool. “I had no idea it shot out so easily.”

She was in her bra and her skinny black pants and there was the lizard tattoo waiting for him to kiss it.

“It has a mind of its own,” Stan said.

He wrapped the gym sock in the T-shirt and placed the whole disgusting wad carefully, dry-side down, on the carpet by the bed.

He started to pull his underwear back on.

“Are you finished already?” Janine didn't sound disappointed. All right, she sounded a bit disappointed. But mostly she just seemed to be asking.

“I'm going to be oozing for a while,” he said.

He pulled on the plain old, baggy, ripped white cotton underwear he'd owned since he was eleven.

“Those are cute.” It was a cool thing to say, but Janine's face was baking red. She wasn't looking away. She didn't seem to be going anywhere.

—

It was like swimming. In the warmest, most delicious water. Underwater sometimes, but with clear vision. And breathing. And being able to fly and being underwater all at the same time.

He wasn't sure always when he was inside her.
Inside her!
It was clutch and accelerator. It was taking a shot to win the game from too far away but it didn't matter.

It was some of those things.

It was completely different.

Sometimes he was inside her and he didn't even know it. Or he felt like maybe he was inside her but he wasn't sure. When he was on top he was more certain — if she put him there.

Sometimes she put him there.

Sometimes . . . sometimes he wasn't sure where his skin ended and hers began, because it was terrifically hot, and he was sweating like the hottest day in the hottest gym, but it wasn't that. It was sweat so hot they steamed together with the touch of her belly . . . of her belly sliding against his . . . 

They slid.

There was no talking.

Sometimes she whispered something, but it wasn't . . . words so much as . . . little exclamations and low noises.

And her hair kept brushing against his skin . . . 

The lizard tasted salty.

They kissed and kissed just like in the kitchen but even more so.

It was all for real.

He had a vague sense that she might get pregnant. But probably she wouldn't. He'd already fired across her bow. It was a funny saying. He started to laugh for a moment until she asked him what was so funny, and then he couldn't say, and she started doing something . . . 

There was a lot they did together.

Everything.

Everything changed on the little rectangle of his bed on a slow afternoon with Feldon sleeping downstairs in the kitchen cupboard and Janine Igwash swimming in his arms, and he in hers, until her hair was stringy wet and his skin was completely . . . completely new and even then they kept kissing to make the planet stop.

The whole planet stopped.

That's how deep, how impossibly, they kissed.

Stan was looking at posts — slow, self-painting posts — but Janine was on the dock. Lying in the sun.

She was so much in the sun that he could hardly see her. But it looked like . . . she was in a bikini, maybe, and her eyes were closed so he could watch all he wanted.

If only he could see her better.

“Stanley!”

It was fascinating to watch the thick white, glossy paint creep up inch by inch, post by post all by itself.

“Stanley!”

His mother's voice.

“There you are!” She was barging through the door, eyes first . . . 

“What are you — ! For God's sake, Stanley!”

At least Janine wasn't there, he thought. It was all just his usual dream.

“Who the hell is that?”

Janine turned, sleepily.

Oh, shit
.

“Mom —”

“Stanley! Stanley!”

The furious recitation of his name.

“I left you in charge — !”

She didn't know where to put her eyes. Stan had the pillow now in front of himself . . . 

“Oh,” Janine said.

“Where the fuck is Feldon?”
his mother said.

“Mom, it's all right.” His heart was pounding in his brain but he felt calm.

“Where did you put him!”

Stan put his hand on Janine's shoulder. She was trembling in the sheets.

“Give us a minute,” he said, dead calm, a whole expanse of desert in his voice. “Mom, this is Janine. We'll be out in a —”

Another voice said, “Who's that?
Oh, my God!”
A woman was peeking around the door — big glasses, mousy hair.
“Oh, my God!”
she said again and disappeared, but her voice rattled in the stairway.
“Feldon! Oh, honey — Feldon!”

“Is that Kelly-Ann?” Stan said, stupefied.

“Get yourself together!” Stan's mother hissed and ran out of the room, clacking in her heels, slamming the door.

“Uhnn,”
Janine said under her breath, like she'd been punched in the stomach.

Stan knelt beside her and gathered her in his arms.

“Listen.” His hands were shaking, too, but he didn't feel that way inside. He felt like he was on the bridge of a battleship somewhere. That he had huge forces at his command.

“Listen. We're going to get dressed and go downstairs. You're my girlfriend. I love you. And my mom is —”

“Feldon! Where are you!”
Kelly-Ann screamed downstairs.

“Is she —?”

“Feldon's mom, I guess,” Stan said.

He tried to kiss her but she pushed him away.

“Now your mom is going to hate me.” She whipped her bra on like she'd been practicing for years. Stan rooted amongst the tangle on the bed, on the floor. His sorry underwear again. He found a new shirt and his old jeans. The battleship feeling receded and his head felt light.

“Stanley! Stanley!”
his mother screamed, probably from the kitchen.
“Get down here now!”

Janine raced into the rest of her clothes.

“I'm going to go,” she said, scared. Stan took her shoulders again. He was only half dressed, but they'd shared everything.

Everything.

“Stanley!”
his mother screamed.

“I love you,” he said.

—

Down the stairs. Stan held her hand.

His girlfriend's hand.

“Mom,” he said in the kitchen. “This is Janine Igwash.” He meant to give some kind of apology —
an apology that actually was no real apology, more like an admission of the excruciating embarrassment of this particular moment caused by . . . 

He waited for the words to assemble themselves. He thought of his mother racing off as a young woman to her military lover's apartment in the fifty-five minutes after sociology, at the same time that she was supposedly going out with the man she would stupidly marry.

How to put everything in a few sentences, and not only in front of his mother and Janine but Kelly-Ann, too, this mousy woman whose face was shock pale — hardly the look of someone who had just been on the beach in Montego Bay with her own lover?

All these thoughts, and what came out was, “He's in the cupboard.”

Right beside where his mother was standing.

“He fell asleep in the cupboard!” Stan said. It was impossible to keep the anger from his voice. Because of the way they were looking at him — at him and Janine, as if they'd been off screwing around or something while Feldon wandered away.

No one moved so Stan reached past his mother and opened the cupboard door.

“He's right . . .”

But Feldon wasn't there.

“I'm going home now,” Janine said. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dart.” She even extended her hand, which Stan's mother looked at like it was diseased.

Janine bolted down the hall.

Stan stood dumbstruck, still looking in the Feldonless cupboard.

“I'm calling the police,” Kelly-Ann said.

She seemed older than Stan had expected. Not as old as his mom, who dyed her hair . . . 

“I'm sure he's around . . .” Stan said. Kelly-Ann had her cellphone out. Then he said, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He really was dead asleep . . .”

Why did he use the word
dead
?

“You left him asleep in the cupboard?”

Kelly-Ann was on the verge of shredding him.

Stan's mother gripped his shoulders now. “What time did you leave him? Stanley!
What time!
”

He didn't know. Time seemed irrelevant, at the time. He remembered the kiss, which was endless, on their knees in front of the cupboard door.

“We were playing hide-and-go-seek,” he said.

“Bullshit you were!” his mother said. “I know exactly what you were playing!”

Kelly-Ann got through to the police.

“My little boy has disappeared,” she said, real fear in her voice.

Stan heard himself sound exactly like Ron. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean . . .”

Any of it.

“I was visiting my sick uncle at Mitou Bay,” Kelly-Ann said on the phone.
Mitou Bay!

Where the hell was that?

Not Jamaica.

The cops were never going to understand even the simplest aspect of all this. Stan hardly understood it and he'd been there for a large part.

“No. No. I don't believe my husband took Feldon . . .”

Kelly-Ann was shrinking in the kitchen, trying to summon help.

“We are estranged. Yes. He's a pathological liar. He took the boy to his ex-wife's home . . .”

Stan's feet started moving. Out the kitchen. Out the front door. Down the steps . . . 

“Stanley!” his mother called. “You come back here! The police are going to want to —”

He had to make things right.

—

He ran and he ran in the heart of the afternoon with the already low slanting light of fall easing into winter. He ran as if Coach Burgess were watching, clipboard in hand, estimating his character. As if Janine were with him, the wild girl with the strong stride. As if he had to keep up with her, impress her somehow, be worthy. He ran as if he wanted to stay by her a long, long time.

He ran to the only place Feldon could be — where Stan's feet knew to take him.

Down by the river. That's where he would go if he were Feldon.

And that's where Feldon was. Squatting by the edge of the greenish brown water, his hands on his kneecaps, eyes so serious. Neurosurgeon.

The big fishing rod was lying on the bank behind him, unused.

“Hey!” Stan said, breathless but still strong.

Feldon didn't get up, but his face lit and Stan felt suddenly that they really were brothers.

“The fish in here swim backwards!”

Stan kneeled beside him. “Backwards?”

Feldon pointed. The fish was hardly a minnow, almost invisible in the murk, especially in the low slant of the sun. It was sliding backwards.

Slowly, slowly.

“Your mom's here,” Stan said.

Feldon was mesmerized by the water.

“She's pretty worried about you. I think we should go back to the house.”

Not a movement. Feldon's eyes were fixed, his body quiet and still.

“I'm going to come visit you,” Stan said. “No matter where you end up living. They can't keep brothers apart.”

Feldon nodded. He took a bit of grassy fluff and dropped it in the slowly moving water.

“Here, fishy. Have some lunch.”

The fluff floated off, swirled around a rock, got pulled into the main channel.

Feldon stood up finally. “I have to get off my feet,” he said with great seriousness.

“Do you?”

“To make a jump shot,” he said.

—

On the way back Feldon talked a lot about the fish.

“He wanted to have lunch but he couldn't get to the top. Maybe he can't swim very well. He's just learning.”

“Maybe the current was pulling him backwards,” Stan said.

A police car raced past them with siren screaming. Feldon looked up, unconcerned. It seemed to be heading in the direction of their house.

“Where's the girl?” he asked.

“What girl?”

“The big girl.”

“Janine's at her house now,” Stan said. “I'm going to call her later. A whole lot of dust needs to settle first. But I'm going to call her right after.”

Another police car whipped around the corner and sped past them, lights flashing, siren on full wail. Every car all the way up the hill homeward moved over to make room.

“You should bring her some flowers,” Feldon said.

“Flowers? Really?”

“Girls like flowers.” Feldon scrambled up a low wall off the sidewalk toward some patch of garden Stan had never noticed before. It was the front lawn of the seniors' residence across the street from Longworth Mall.

“I don't think you should be picking those.” But Feldon went ahead as if he'd heard nothing. Yellow ones, some purple, others that were not quite red. What was the color? Russet.

In very short order Feldon had put together a decent bouquet.

“Girls really like flowers,” he said again.

The Tilt-the-World groaned in the parking lot across the street. Hardly anyone was on it, and yet it just kept going.

A third police car screeched past, bound for hell up the hill.

“Maybe we should go see Janine first,” Stan said. “I could phone home from there.” He wanted to see her again right away. Let her know it was all right.

“Maybe she could give me some more hot chocolate,” Feldon said.

They were walking again. Heading home.

“Her mother's got cancer,” Stan said. “She's dying.”

“Where will she go then?” Feldon asked.

“I have no idea,” Stan said.

“Maybe when you die, that's when you learn how to use your tail and your fins,” Feldon said. “You can go up to the top and have lunch.”

“You've really been thinking about this,” Stan said. The sun was so low the sky looked metallic, like a photograph in a glossy book. The silver beast tilted but just for a second the world stayed steady.

“Not really,” Feldon said. “I just now thought of it.”

Slowly, slowly they walked up the hill. Stan was mesmerized by all of it — from the slant of the light to the beauty of the traffic to the bittersweet feel of every step.

I'm going to remember this day for the rest of my life, he thought.

Then, only a few steps later, his stomach clenched around one particular thought.

Where did it come from? Why this instant?

Why did he suddenly know that today was the day he'd got Janine Igwash pregnant?