by Alan Cumyn
“Flagrant foul!” Hartleman said. “Basket counts! Fucking basket counts!”
Everything looked very far up. The sky was gray, gray. The basket was like a bent black shadow.
“Are you like, dead, or what?” Brolin said to Stan. “My foul. Your ball. We’re still tied.”
The behemoth pulled him up on his feet.
Brolin placed the ball in Stan’s hands, walked him to the spot behind the three-point line. Stan stood there dizzily.
Bounce, bounce. Stan’s head still wasn’t clear. Brolin backed off him. So Stan needed to pass it off. The thought was clear but his body wasn’t responding.
“Take your best shot, kid.” Brolin made a little motion with his hand. He wasn’t going to defend.
Stan couldn’t see where Hartleman was. He couldn’t see the basket. He could barely see Brolin, for that matter. It was all a mash . . .
But his body knew what to do. Bounce, bounce, a fake to the right . . . and Brolin smiled. Smiled!
Stan didn’t know where the basket was till he was shooting. His wrist was releasing, and there it was finally . . . ludicrously far away.
Brolin eased into position to collect the rebound . . . which didn’t come because the ball fell through pure as rain.
“In! It’s in!” screamed Hartleman. Then the senior was hugging him. Screaming right in Brolin’s meaty face. “We got a boy here can fucking shoot!”
The ball was blowing off toward a puddle. Blake went after it. For a moment Stan thought they’d have to play again, that Brolin was simply not going to accept the result.
But Brolin was looking at something else—at someone. Stan had a hard time following his gaze. He had a hard time figuring if his feet were on the ground.
But eventually he saw.
There was Coach Burgess by the door, his big hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.
8
Stan sat through biology class trying not to stare at Janine Igwash in her clingy black top. He was trying to think of how exactly to tell her he wasn’t going to the dance even though he’d said he would. But it was almost impossible because Jason Biggs, every few minutes, kept saying things like, “You and Hartleman beat Brolin and Blake two-on-two! With Burgess watching! Unbelievable!”
It was unbelievable. Given the wind, the bent rim, Stan’s dizzy head, how far away he was when he took that shot.
He couldn’t tell her about his father. That would be too much. But maybe his mother could be sick. With what? Nothing too serious. A bad flu, so Stan would have to stay home and look after Lily and it really was tough luck about the dance, thanks so much for thinking of him. He might actually be carrying flu himself so don’t stand so close.
Sometimes solutions seemed to come out of the air.
“And Brolin was covering you on the last shot! That’s what I heard!” Jason Biggs said. “You are in! You are on the senior team!” He shook his pimply face at the wonder of it and Mr. Stillwater looked up from his marking to glare at Stan.
They were supposed to be reading from the textbook and Stan had exactly the correct page open on his desk. But Stillwater still glared at him.
“You are on the senior team!” Biggs whispered again.
Tryouts wouldn’t start till Monday. But Stan felt a little giddy wind inside, fluttering with the possibilities.
As soon as biology ended, Stan would walk out with Janine Igwash and tell her about his mother’s flu. He’d do it in the hallway where it would be so noisy no one else would hear. “I’m so sorry,” he’d say. “Maybe I shouldn’t even be in class today. I might be infectious myself.”
He too could be sorry.
But what was she doing inviting him in the first place?
It would be a small lie to keep other larger stupid things from happening.
“I heard Brolin was so mad he bent the junior hoop right out of shape,” Jason Biggs whispered.
Stan read about how light hit the retina and created an upside-down image. The signals intersect at the optic chiasm and cross over to the opposite side of the brain for reversal in the visual cortex.
But what if the actual world was upside down and we saw clearly but our brains misprocessed all the information?
Maybe some people saw things correctly — upside down to everyone else. And maybe those same few were all in asylums banging their heads against their bedpans because everyone else was crazy.
Stan found himself flipping through the book, past cell division, past photosynthesis, past the organs of digestion . . . to the human reproductive system.
The page just fell open: The Female Reproductive Organs. They were fantastical shapes in yellow, pink, orange, blue. Like flowers and gourds stuck up inside shadowy female flesh. It was a brand new book so no previous student had had time to scribble foolishness on the pictures.
Stan read the bizarre labels: Fallopian tube, Fimbriae, Follicle containing mature ovum. And then his eyes stalled on Clitoris: spongy, erectile, highly sensitive tissue bundled with nerve endings much like the male penis.
The male penis. What other penis was there? Obviously this complicated little female version. Where was it? It seemed to be a blue dotted thing hidden inside the labia minora and labia majora, whatever those were.
It couldn’t really be blue?
The other cross-section view didn’t help, either. Here the female pelvis looked like a cow’s skull split open. Stan couldn’t see any legs. Pubic symphysis. What was that? There were the labia minora again, but they looked completely different from this angle. Was north up?
“Mr. Dart,” Stillwater said from inches away, pinning Stan to the page like an insect in an exhibit.
Stan shut the book. Blood shot to his face.
In the gap between Stillwater’s angled elbow and his predictable blue shirt, Stan could see Janine Igwash staring at him again. She had all of those things: fallopian tubes and a pubic symphysis and labias minor and major. She had a clitoris, somewhere.
“What are you reading?” Mr. Stillwater asked him.
Stan tried desperately to find the chapter on the crossing of vision, whatever it was called. But every page he opened seemed to have vaginal implications.
“The eyes, sir,” Stan said. “I’m reading about the eyes.”
His face seemed to be giving off steam.
“The test on Monday is worth twenty percent of your term mark,” Mr. Stillwater said, loud enough for everyone’s benefit. “I’m not going to ask you anything about —” and he paused for effect — “female reproduction, or menstruation, or the male and female sexual response.”
Explosions of hilarity, which set perspiration streaming from Stan’s pits to his belly and down his legs. Even sitting, he seemed to be naked in the shower in front of them all.
He could not look at Janine.
No way he could tell her after this.
Mr. Stillwater was playing it like a stand-up comedian. But it couldn’t last forever.
He was done in maybe a minute at most.
The rest of the class took forever.
—
At the end of the day she was standing on the sidewalk in her clingy black top despite the cool wind. From the front door he could see her nipples straining against the fabric. She was standing all alone, not looking at anything in particular. As far as he could tell she was just silently . . . attracting him.
He felt himself pulled out to where she stood. The closer he got, the stronger her powers.
“Stillwater has some kind of thing for you,” she said.
He was ready with his own opening remarks, but they fled as his face turned into a furnace again. He stood far enough away that she couldn’t just reach in and tug his belt loop.
She was absolutely beautiful.
“I thought . . . I thought I should tell you something before we go tomorrow,” she said.
He cut her off. “I was going to say something about . . . my mother.” It was self-preservation. She was about to tell him about
her preferences, because she was a decent person after all.
“Your mother?”
“Yeah, my mom is . . . uh . . . sick.”
“Really?”
It felt like someone had fired a staple into the back of his throat. He could lie to this girl but it wasn’t easy.
He coughed and tried to swirl some spit in his mouth to dislodge whatever was clawing back there.
“Because that’s what I was going to say to you,” she said. “My mom has cancer. She’s been through everything — chemo, radiation. She had the surgery. She just looks a little odd. When you meet her. But she’s fine. I mean, she’s not fine. But she’s just a person, too.”
Stan could barely swallow. The staple had closed down nearly everything.
“You know how survivors are. That’s all I’m saying. She comes on pretty strong sometimes. Are you all right?”
Stan bent over and coughed. He didn’t want to spit in front of her but he couldn’t see any way around it. He turned away from the wind and did what he had to do to clear his throat.
“Fine,” he croaked.
“What’s your mother dealing with?” Janine asked.
“She’s, uh . . . she’s romantically obsessed,” Stan said, surprising even himself.
“Is that an illness?” Janine’s teeth beamed at him. Stan remembered his father telling him once — years ago, of course — to be careful of a girl’s teeth. It had been an odd thing to say at the time and now he wondered about it.
He was only inches away from kissing her. How did he end up only inches away? And how did one go about kissing, anyway? What was the protocol? In movies the guy always seemed to know when to do it. Or the girl jumped the guy and they kissed.
Janine looked like she might be about to jump him. Stan braced himself.
“Romantic obsession?” she said again. “Is that an illness?”
“It is with my mom,” Stan said. And then suddenly the staple was gone. “My mom and dad are divorced.” He pulled out the phone. “But Dad is back in town now. I keep expecting him to call any minute. It’s all a big secret. He had a kid with somebody else. And he’s not supposed to be here and he hasn’t paid us any support in, like, forever. But he gave this phone to my sister and . . .”
Why was he telling her all this? He’d never told anybody.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” he mumbled.
Janine didn’t blink. “She’s amazing, really. She might still live way past what we think. When was the last time you saw your father?”
Stan was about to say, “Five years ago.” But a flash of something caught his eye — a gray beard on a man who was leaning against the wall of the coffee shop across the street, staring at him.
Was that his father?
Stan honestly couldn’t tell. This man looked stockier than his dad, shorter — but of course men gained weight, especially in middle age, and Stan had grown taller over the past few years. The beard was full and hid the man’s face.
Was that his father?
Janine’s hand just casually touched his. Stan’s senses sprang into high alert. A girl was wrapping her fingers around his!
“Are you all right?” she said.
The man — his father? — was gone. Slipped into the coffee shop, maybe.
“I don’t see anybody,” Janine said.
“My family got hit by a crazy bomb five years ago, and nobody’s been anywhere near sane since,” Stan said. “That’s what I want to tell you before tomorrow. Just to give you fair warning.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to go?”
Her fingers were interlaced with his now. How did that happen? One little tug from either of them — just the way she’d pulled on his belt loop before — and they’d be kissing. Right here on the open sidewalk in front of the whole world.
In front of his father, maybe, who’d probably stepped into the coffee shop and was looking at them through the darkened window.
“Did I tell you I’m a terrible dancer?” Stan said.
She was not looking away. She just kept standing there looking highly kissable.
“I can’t dance, either,” she said.
He laughed. She moved like — Stan didn’t know what. Like a river. Like a sleek, tawny animal slipping through the brush.
Tawny. Lily’s word gave him the strength to unlace his fingers and step away.
“Maybe we both should wear steel-toed boots,” he said. Then his legs were taking him off, off to safety.
9
Stan wasn’t home a minute before his mother ordered him into the car.
“It’s the appointment!” she said. “With the principal. For Lily!”
“That’s now?” he said.
“It’s in six fucking minutes!” she said. “Sorry for my language. Don’t you ever swear like me.” He could see her jaw was nearly locked. There was no point asking her why she hadn’t told him until just now.
Stan’s mother got in the car and fumbled with the ignition key, her hands shaking.
It wasn’t just Lily. What else had happened?
“Do you want me to drive?” Stan asked.
“Drive? You?” Stupid of him to even mention it. His mother was in a state. She had to be almost Zen calm to drive with him.
She was never Zen calm.
“Forget it,” he said. He settled back in his seat beside her. She swore again under her breath and crumpled against the steering wheel.
“I suppose you should,” she said.
“No, no, it’s all right!”
Too late. She opened the door and jerked herself out.
“You’re sixteen, you need to learn these things. I can’t keep holding you back!”
Stan slid over awkwardly. His mother jolted into the passenger seat.
“If I were a better parent I’d be taking you out driving every night.” She thrust over the keys.
“Mom.”
“If I were a better parent you’d be in driver’s ed. You’d have your license by now.”
“You’re a great parent, Mom.”
“Shut up. Do up your seatbelt!”
If he could drive with his mother, Stan thought, he could drive with anybody. He clicked his belt, adjusted the mirrors, flicked the lights on and off.
“What was that for?”
“Just testing.” Stan switched on the left turn signal, and the wipers.
“For God’s sake, Stanley! We’re already late!”
It had been so long since his last practice session he’d forgotten what all the controls were. That’s all. He pressed down the clutch with his left foot.
It was all in the balance. As the clutch came out, the gas went down.
He wiggled the stick shift. Reverse was toward him, down the slot.
“Any time this afternoon, Stanley,” his mother breathed.
He turned the key and the engine coughed to life. This was all going to be fine. Lots of idiots learned how to drive. Stan pulled the stick into reverse. He let up on the clutch. Don’t rocket out. Don’t —
The car lurched back, then stalled.
“All right!” his mother said, undoing her seatbelt. “This isn’t the time for a lesson.”
“I can do it! Honest!”
“You’re going to kill the car!”
Stan stayed quiet, didn’t move. She did up her belt again.
“Just take it easy . . .”
Stan had drained the winning shot against Karl Brolin in a high wind on a bent rim from too far away. He could do this, too. It was all about balance. Clutch and gas. Release one, press the other . . . and the car reversed down the driveway as smooth as butter.
He was doing it!
“Which way should I signal if I’m backing left, but going right?” he asked calmly.
“Nobody signals going backwards! Look out!”
A woman with a stroller was half a block down the road and going in the opposite direction.
Stan didn’t bother signaling. Technically,
he knew he was supposed to signal. He remembered that at least from the driving regulation book he’d spent some time with months ago. It was the balance that was important. Clutch went in, gas went out . . . gas in, clutch out. How many times did people tell him? But until you actually knew it in your body . . .
“We can’t take forever!” his mother nearly shouted. Stan shifted into first, then proceeded down the street. He left ample room for the woman and stroller. Second was easy.
“I’m going the speed limit,” Stan said. It was hard not to keep his voice a deadpan in reaction to his mother’s rising anxiety. But inside, trumpets were blowing.
He was driving the stick shift!
“You’re close to the ditch!”
Stan eased over slightly. His mother wasn’t used to sitting in the passenger seat. Everything looked close to the ditch from there.
“Do we know what Lily has done this time?” Stan asked. He turned onto Broadlane, shifting gears like a professional, and stayed beautifully in sync with the traffic. It was Friday rush hour. Worst time to be driving. But they didn’t have far to go.
“The principal wouldn’t say anything on the phone,” Stan’s mother said. “Honey —!”
A boy on a bicycle wobbled on the sidewalk nowhere near where they were. Even if he fell he was too —
Stan braked, a little harshly, for the light, and the engine bucked and his mother lurched forward and was caught, roughly, by her seatbelt. She glared at him.
But it was all right. No damage. Everything started again. He liked the feel of the vehicle. He liked pressing ahead smoothly, that harmony between left foot and right, and the way the car took a turn and how the steering wheel spun back more or less by itself as the road straightened. He could feel it now in his body. In a couple of months he was going to be a better driver than his mother.
Well, maybe that wouldn’t be so hard.
He had another thought that seemed profound: the car wants to stay on track.
If you stayed between the lines you eventually got to where you were going.
Which was Lily’s school.
When Stan parked finally — perfectly between the yellow markers — his mother’s face was deathly white.
—
The new principal, Ms. Shorey, looked too young to be sitting where she was sitting.
