Tilt

by Alan Cumyn

  “I bet you’re pretty good. It’s just horse. You know the rules? Stan already has H-O-R. Two more misses and he’s out.” He gave Janine the ball. “Just take a shot. It doesn’t matter if it goes in or not. It’s just a game.”

  Janine put her backpack down by the foul-line crack. She held the ball as if it were a vase that might explode. Weren’t lesbians supposed to be good at sports? Her eyes were only for Gary. Gary! The penguin.

  Janine heaved the ball in an awkward sort of set shot, both hands pushing out. It hit the rim on the way up — way too hard! — and popped straight into the air.

  And in.

  Janine jumped in the air, and it was Gary who slapped her a high five and said, “Wow! You’re a natural!” when she was anything but.

  It was blind luck! Anyone could see!

  Stan stood stiff and quiet, a human fence post.

  “So now I have to make the same shot from the same place,” Gary said. Bounce bounce. He smiled for Janine, leaned back in his improbable way, lifted himself onto his toes . . . swish.

  “And now Stan has to make the same shot, too.”

  Bounce bounce. Stan felt himself flushing from his ankles to his earlobes.

  This was not difficult. He could make this shot twenty times in a row on any ordinary day. Bounce bounce.

  A jump shot is a wave that begins in the soles of the feet. It travels up through the ankles, calves, thighs, hips . . . up the spine, through the shoulder, elbow, wrist and out the fingers . . .

  Clank!

  “H-O-R-S!” Gary said triumphantly. Then they were at it again, Gary and Janine high-fiving.

  And so it went. His mother’s boyfriend and — what was Jason Biggs’ stupid word? The gwog.

  Stan was out in a couple more shots and then Gary missed everything after that so Janine would win.

  The whole thing was some other game that Stan didn’t know. Some game that made it easy for Janine to hug a middle-aged penguin but not him, not the boy she’d asked to the dance. Because it wasn’t a real ask, it was all fake.

  Janine shouldered her bag and slithered over the fence the same way she had the other night. But now Gary saw her, too, and it was all different.

  “What a great girl!” Gary said, understanding nothing. “You’ll want to hang on to her.”

  —

  Stan’s mother and Gary went out again later that night. Stan lay still in his darkened bedroom, the ball bouncing in his head, glancing off the rim, his jump shot sputtering.

  Janine’s hips in Janine’s jeans. Those heeled boots. She wasn’t so bad with the basketball. Her hands were big. Big for a girl’s. A girl whose clothes would not stay on, not entirely, not in bed with Stan in the dark while the bounce bounce kept bouncing . . . and parts of her moved in those boots not made for basketball, so he lay there in his usual state, his lying state . . . in state, like leaders lie when they’re dead and stiff as a board. Were they stiff . . . all over?

  How rigor did mortis get?

  How pathetic was it to feel this way about a girl who was just using him?

  Lily was making huffing-chuffing breathing noises in the next room.

  Then she said, “Well, you have to bring Feldon!” — her voice clear in the night air.

  Stan waited. Sometimes she blurted stupid things in her dreams.

  “I do want to meet him! He’s my brother!”

  She went back to huffing-chuffing. She was just dreaming.

  “Well, I can’t hear you, either . . . I did pull up the antenna!”

  Stan sat up. Blinked. Listened hard.

  “I just want to see him and hug him all over,” Lily said.

  Stan crept out of bed. He waited by the door, listening.

  Had she heard him? His lungs moved like a slow curtain. His feet felt cold on the floor. Lily was unnaturally silent.

  He took another step. Lily snuffled in her bed, rustled the blankets. In the shadows she lay on her side clutching Mr. Strawberry, pinning his shoulders to the mattress. Her eyes were shut hard.

  “I know you’re awake, Lily. I heard you.”

  Stan approached and sat lightly on the edge of her bed near her feet. Lily’s lips curved in a ferocious frown. Her eyes stayed closed.

  She looked like an angelic little . . .

  An electronic ringtone version of “Ode to Joy” started to play somewhere within Mr. Strawberry. Lily tightened her grip on his neck but still didn’t open her eyes.

  “Is that a phone?”

  She shoved Mr. Strawberry under her pillow and turned her back on Stan. “Ode to Joy” kept playing, slightly muffled.

  “Go have a pee,” Stan said. He was surprised when she simply did it — headed to the bathroom as if sleepwalking, hugging Mr. Strawberry to her chest. “Ode to Joy” went with her.

  When she came back, in silence, she burrowed under the covers like an animal. Her fingers came away from Mr. Strawberry.

  A minute passed, maybe two. Eventually Lily’s body relaxed into regular breaths. Stan brushed a dark curl away from her eyes.

  Under the Velcro flap at the back, Stan pulled out the slim phone and flipped it open. The light shone in his face.

  It took a moment to figure out the menu. He pressed a few wrong buttons at first and had to backtrack. But there was the list of recent calls. All the same long-distance number.

  Stan pressed something by mistake. A phone started ringing at the other end. Stan stood up and tried to see how to shut it off.

  “Pumpkin, you really should be sleeping,” a man’s voice said. Quite deep and somehow familiar.

  “Dad?” Stan said.

  Then he found the button finally and turned the damn thing off.

  7

  There were bulrushes, and the sun was warm on his face. The path was muddy so he had to be careful. The bulrushes were way over his head. Blue sky past that. Nothing past the blue sky.

  Where were his parents? He whacked at the bulrushes with a stick. Sometimes they exploded into clouds of little butterflies — browny white ones that flew up with the breeze over his head, not down in the heat close to the muck and the path. He whacked the stalks of the bulrushes, and when he could he jumped up with the stick and whacked the fuzzy hotdog ends where the browny white butterflies lived.

  The browny white ones weren’t real butterflies. They floated in the wind and sometimes he sneezed them and then it was hard to keep his sneakers out of the muck.

  There would be swimming after this. Somewhere at the end of the path. He was listening for the swimming but he couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was the rustle of wind through the brown dry stalks and the green wet ones. The green and the brown together made a messy wall that could open up and swallow you, so that’s why he had to stay on the path.

  And then his sneakers were wet, swallowed by the muck on what should have been a dry spot. First one, then the other, squelch squelch, and the muck smelled like toilet gas and his feet squirmed in the mucky sneakers that wanted to stay glued where they were. He nearly pulled them off just by stepping another step. So he ran and the muck got worse as the path squirmed and snaked.

  Where were his parents? Where was the swimming?

  So he ran and he ran and it didn’t matter anymore what muck he stepped into, up to his ankles, splattering his knees.

  There they were, his parents. He almost missed them! He almost ran past them hiding off the path in the green and brown wall where they’d thrown down the blanket.

  He pushed through to them and said, “Where’s the swimming?”

  It was so hot they’d taken off some of their clothes. It was so hot down there on the blanket in the green and brown wall that Daddy and Mommy were squirming. Their underpants were at their ankles!

  Stan said again, “Where is the swimming?” because his sneakers and his legs were mucky.

  And Mommy turned her face to him. She looked like she’d been dreaming. Daddy had his face hiding into her neck.

  “What are you doing?
” Stan asked.

  That’s when his father lifted up his face, too. He was lying right on top of her in the hot hot and his face looked like he’d just been swimming himself.

  “We’re planting your little brother, Sport,” he said. And Mommy hit him — it wasn’t much of a slap. Her arms were mostly trapped in his.

  So Stan ran to where the swimming was. It wasn’t far at all and he did splash water on the sneakers and his legs till all the muck came off. Later when he looked up his parents were on the blanket on the beach in their swimsuits. His mother was reading a book and his father was sitting in his dark glasses staring at something far far away.

  —

  At breakfast Stan and Lily sat alone over two bowls of brown flakes. His mom and Gary were upstairs still. At least they were being quiet.

  Sometimes they weren’t.

  “When did Dad say he was coming?” Stan pressed.

  “I had a dream about kitty-cats,” Lily said.

  “If he’s coming we really need to know,” Stan said.

  “There was a black one and a tawny one. Tawny is a color,” she said.

  “Mom, for one, is going to hit the roof.”

  “And that was his name, too. Tawny and Rick. They were racing and jumping off the rooftop and Rick thought he could fly.” She picked up her spoon and held it, flying, over her head. Milk dripped onto the shoulder of her blouse. “And Tawny yelled out, ‘Look out below!’”

  Stan grabbed the spoon and put it down on the table. Lily shook her hand as if he’d hurt her.

  “When is he coming?”

  Lily picked up her spoon again and slurped her milk. “Rick hit the ground and died.”

  “How did you get that phone?”

  “There was a little bounce and then his feet went splat! And there was blood where his little head —”

  “Is he back in town? Did he bring it to you?”

  “— bounced around like a little ball.”

  Stan drilled his big-brother eyes into hers until she had to look at him.

  “Filled with blood,” she said. “Everywhere it bounced it left a little mark.”

  “Lily — did he come to your school or something and bring you the phone?”

  “He didn’t look like any pictures. It was all gray.”

  “What was?”

  “His beard.”

  “Dad has a beard?”

  Lily twirled her wet spoon on the table.

  “Was he waiting for you at school?”

  She was a baby when their father left. What was he trying to do now? Steal her away?

  “Should I tell Mommy?”

  “No! Let’s just keep this —”

  “Because I already told her and she didn’t believe me anyway. Just like you don’t believe me about Rick the dead cat.”

  “I took the phone, Lily. If Dad’s going to call anybody now, it’ll be me.”

  —

  Stan wasn’t going to go to the dance. Not with his father in town. This was high alert, code red! He had the phone in his pocket and it felt radioactive.

  No way his mother would react well to his father being back. Why was he back? If he wasn’t going to send money — he was years behind with the money —

  no way Mom would let him see Stan and Lily.

  Why didn’t he send money? Because he’d left all of them: Stan, Lily, Mom. He’d just poured gasoline on that part of his life and set it all ablaze.

  Why was he phoning Lily?

  Stan felt like he was standing by his locker in the middle of the storm, a storm of high-school kids whirling off in their own directions, and he was the lone calm center.

  “What do you have now?” Janine Igwash said to him suddenly from only a few inches away. He didn’t particularly like having to look up at her. She was in a black stretchy top that went well with the red shock of her hair and hid nothing of her form. The tattoo on the crest of her milky shoulder peeked out at him. A little lizard shaped like an S, but with legs.

  “What?” He really had to work on his conversation skills.

  “What class do you have now?” she said slowly and clearly, pronouncing the words through soft-looking lips.

  He was not going to go to the dance with her because she was not interested in him and it was horrible to feel so stuck to the edge of his locker door by someone who wasn’t even trying. She did it effortlessly by standing there.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know what class you have?”

  The little green and red lizard rippled slightly when she breathed.

  She smiled and then hooked her finger into his belt loop and tugged slightly. He fell forward, almost directly into her, into where she had been. Already she was moving off.

  Heading down the hall to whatever classroom was supposed to contain her.

  —

  At lunchtime Stan stood outside in the cold gray air and stared at the phone. Now would be a good time for his father to call, if he was going to call. It would be a good time to have thoughts in order in case the call came, so Stan leaned back against the wall and considered.

  “Dad!” he said to the cold wind. No one else was out in this wind. It was a promise-of-winter wind, a warning of cold times to come. “Why the hell are you in town?”

  The phone remained mute.

  Stan’s father was a difficult man to figure. That much was clear, and Stan had had five years to think hard about it. His father was tall and lean and a good hockey player. Stan remembered, too, the burn of snuggling close to his cheek. He smelled . . . of aftershave or something.

  He smelled like a regular father. But how was Stan to know? He’d only had the one.

  Stan’s father burst over things. Like Lily did, Stan thought now, except he was a lot bigger than Lily and more dangerous. Stan had a memory of spilled coffee in the kitchen — of how his father’s voice cut even deeper than broken china on a bare foot.

  He made you feel like everything was fine or it was all your fault. But didn’t every family scream? It was all usual, right up to the moment his father left with a much younger woman and a baby on the way. Stan had never even seen a picture of them. They were phantoms, ghosts. But afterwards his father became something entirely different — a liar and a cheat and a man Stan’s mother couldn’t talk about anymore without the wallpaper curling from the tears and swearing.

  Why was he back?

  Maybe the real-estate thing he’d been pursuing — he’d quit law after running away with Kelly-Ann — had come through and now he could finally cough up the years of child support he owed.

  Maybe it was over with Kelly-Ann now, too. Maybe he wanted to re-glue the family. Maybe he loved them after all. Maybe he’d spent years thinking about his kids. Maybe he was sorry.

  He was. Fucking sorry. He was a sorry excuse of a father.

  Stan stared at the phone.

  The school door opened and Karl Brolin and his gang — Ty Blake, Nylan Leash, Jamie Hartleman — came out like a pack of dogs all barking at once and running around the lead guy. It was too cold, too windy to play, but Brolin was bouncing an old leather ball, and he headed straight to the junior hoop. He took one of his lazy falling-away jumpers — like Gary, he barely got off the tips of his toes — that clanged the rim and fell out. No wrist release. No spin on the ball. Jamie Hartleman grabbed the rebound, lobbed up a hook but Brolin palmed it above the basket. He tried for a dunk but the ball bounded off and the huge boy hung from the rim.

  It was only the junior hoop — regulation height still, of course, but it was where the younger guys were allowed to play.

  Now Brolin and Blake took on Leash and Hartleman. Four starters for the senior team. Leash was the only true guard. The ball was a blur when he dribbled, and he made Brolin look slow.

  On one drive Leash faked a scoop shot, passed instead, but Brolin kept trying for the block . . . and Leash ended up crumpled on the pavement holding his knee.

  Brolin just stood there wit
h his hands on his hips.

  “Hey! Hey, you, kid!” Hartleman yelled at Stan. “You play, don’t you?”

  Brolin pulled Leash to his feet, and the best point guard in the whole school hobbled around muttering obscenities at Brolin and then limped back to school.

  “Don’t you play?” Hartleman called.

  Stan put away the phone and Hartleman snapped a bounce pass at him. The leather was slick, the ball hard to handle.

  Hartleman stole the ball from Stan and dribbled around like a big crazy bug before spinning one in off the backboard. Brolin and Blake didn’t even move to defend.

  “I could beat you guys playing with a fire hydrant.”

  So Stan, the hydrant, started with the ball out near the faded three-point line. Blake didn’t even bother covering him. Stan could have drilled a jumper. But the rim was bent, it was windy, and he didn’t want to miss, not in front of these guys. So he passed off to Hartleman, who whirled and bobbed with the two guys on him. He glanced at Stan — wide open! — then took an off-balance left-handed hook that wasn’t even close.

  Thirty seconds later Brolin had a dunk and a lay-in and then Blake faked Stan out of his socks and glided free to the basket.

  “Just fucking try to play,” Hartleman muttered to Stan.

  Down three already! Stan got lucky on a rebound Brolin was too lazy to contest and found himself concentrating on a simple shot off the backboard as if, of all the things he wanted to do in his life, this was the most important.

  A point!

  Twice in a row Hartleman got double-teamed and passed off to Stan for the same ten-foot jumper that rattled in despite the wind and the bent rim.

  Brolin spat on the ground. They traded a couple more baskets. All tied.

  Next basket wins.

  Hartleman dribbled lazily beyond the three-point line. Brolin reached but missed, reached but missed. Blake went after Hartleman, too. Stan was all alone beside the basket. Hartleman bounced, bounced . . . a little whirl . . .

  . . . and here was the ball finally in Stan’s hands. He jumped, looked for the basket . . . .

  And crumpled under the full weight of Brolin slamming him from nowhere.