Tilt

by Alan Cumyn

  She did not seem ready to send Lily to remedial classes. In fact, Lily was sitting in the principal’s office, too, and her face was lit with some new kind of fire. She and the principal had obviously been talking quite a bit in the last while.

  But Stan’s mother started in anyway.

  “I know what you’re going to say and I’m really sorry. Things have not been as settled at home as I would like and so it’s hard to spend as much time with Lily as I really need to. Stanley does his best with her but he’s busy in high school. Normally I’m there to supervise and to keep her focused . . .” The principal was looking at Stan’s mother oddly. “She can be a real handful sometimes as I’m sure you know!”

  Ms. Shorey beamed for a moment at Lily. “The results of the comprehensive cognitive testing came in today.” She shuffled some papers and put them back down on her desk.

  “Oh, God, not more tests,” Stan’s mother muttered.

  “Lily has scored exceptionally high in particular aptitudes,” Ms. Shorey said. She could not seem to contain herself. “In all my years in education I have never —”

  “I’m sorry,” Stan’s mother broke in. “Aptitudes?” The word did not seem to go with “Lily.”

  “Lily is not only above average in imaginative actualization,” the principal said. “She’s stratospheric.”

  What was the word for her smile?

  Toothpastey.

  “But her math, her reading — I mean, this girl has never had a strong report card in her life!” Stan’s mother said. Lily turned a sour look on her. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but you haven’t.”

  “All those conventional scores have probably been suppressed by Lily’s imaginative capabilities,” Ms. Shorey said. “She is light years beyond what most children —” Lily nodded slightly, like a princess receiving a tiara.

  “Her head is in the clouds,” Stan’s mother said.

  “In the most refreshing ways,” Ms. Shorey continued. Stan’s mother blew through her pressed lips, pffft.

  “At any rate,” the principal persisted, “what I’m trying to do today is open a dialogue with you about possibilities for Lily’s future. As you know the regular school system is not geared for children with exceptional abilities . . .”

  Stan could almost hear the sequence of thoughts clicking over in his mother’s mind: there was no extra money for any special education program; no extra money for anything, actually; Lily was going to have to fit in with the regular kids.

  “So I’m thinking about putting Lily’s name forward for Gifted Exceptions. She’ll have to submit to more testing, of course, and you’d have to agree.”

  “Gifted Exceptions?” Stan’s mother was on the edge of her seat, nearly standing. “I’m afraid we —”

  “We don’t run the program here. But it is part of the regular school system. Completely funded. I wrote about it in the opening week newsletter.” Ms. Shorey looked almost hurt that someone had failed to read her article.

  But it was the word “funded” that worked its magic on Stan’s mother. She eased slightly back into her chair.

  “You’re telling me that Lily has above-normal intelligence in —”

  “Intuitive actualization. She creates whole worlds, other parallel realities, and peoples them at the same time that she functions in the so-called normal modes of reality. I was completely the same way when I was young. I recognized it in Lily as soon as we started chatting. She’s an exceptional child.”

  Lily quivered. Stan tried to remember the last time she’d stayed this quiet this long.

  “My Lily is . . .”

  “An exceptionally gifted child. And there’s a program for her at Barclay Heights school. It’s a farther bus ride away . . .”

  Lily nodded lightly in time with the rhythm of the words, like she had composed them herself and was now hearing them in someone else’s song.

  —

  On the ride home Lily gazed, beamingly, out the window. Stan could just see the edge of her face in the rearview mirror.

  The car nearly drove itself. It really wasn’t that difficult to stay in line, to follow the signs and the lights, turn the wheel and press the pedals and get from A to B.

  Stan’s mother seemed distracted. Was it more than this situation with Lily? Maybe it had to do with the governance committee at work. Stan had no idea what such a committee did. They governed something, perhaps, and at times she talked about it a lot.

  Stan’s mother had worked in the same office for years. She was pretty high up by now, but she wasn’t running the place.

  It was hard to imagine his mother running anything.

  “How was work today, Mom?” Stan asked. “Everything all right with the . . . governance committee?”

  No reaction. Did she even hear?

  Lily started humming. She didn’t like people talking about things that didn’t concern her.

  “The governance committee has got its head up its ass,” Stan’s mother said finally. “I’ve stopped worrying about the governance committee.” She let out a long stream of breath through taut lips.

  Stan could remember when she used to smoke. He was very small then and she would hug him fiercely and blow the smoke over his head. He remembered the sting of it in his eyes and nose.

  “We did get an unusual memo today from head office,” she said then. “All nonessential travel has been canceled. There’s a general staff meeting called for 9:15 Monday morning. With a video link-up, too . . . Stanley!”

  It was nothing. Two children crossing the road on the yellow. He wasn’t planning on running the light anyway.

  It was all under control.

  “So you think the place is —”

  “Shaky. The accountants have been walking around not looking anybody in the eye for weeks now. Of course, the downturn has meant that funders are far less likely to . . .”

  Stan’s mother’s organization, New Page, sent books to disadvantaged countries all over the world. This much Stan knew. Most of the books were donated, but they still had to be shipped and there still had to be a partner at the other end to make sure they got to waiting schools and libraries. Languages had to be coordinated. The books had to be collected, sorted, evaluated, catalogued and warehoused before they were sent.

  It all took a lot of organization. Somehow this crazy woman beside him kept herself together during the work day to do her part.

  “It’s not, like, bankruptcy, is it?” Stan asked. He was just driving now, his hands and his feet controlling the car. He was driving and talking at the same time. He had a vague idea that nonprofits couldn’t go bankrupt, but he wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she said.

  They were almost home. A couple more blocks.

  Lily suddenly stopped humming and said, “Dad is coming for dinner, okay?”

  Stan’s mother slammed her foot against the floor. If she’d been driving she would have set off the airbag.

  “Lily, don’t tell such lies!”

  “It’s not a lie. He’s coming! He’s coming!” She made an angry song of it and twisted in her seat in time with the words.

  “I don’t care what your principal calls you. Don’t lie, young lady! You know the difference between truth and lies.”

  “He’s coming! I saw him!”

  “If you can’t show me that you have at least one foot in this reality there’s no way I will ever let you go to that special school. Do you understand?”

  Stan didn’t hear Lily’s reply. He was distracted by something — someone — sitting on the front porch. Stan had to concentrate to glide the car up the narrow driveway. All he saw, at first, was a flash of gray.

  Then he parked and they could all look at the strangely bearded man sitting on the steps as if he’d forgotten his keys.

  “Daddy!” Lily squealed, and she was out of the car and squirming in his arms.

  10

  It wasn’t Stan’s father. Couldn’t be. For one thing, Stan’s father w
as taller than this mopey man. He was tall and angular and athletic. Stan’s father used to skate right past all defenders — two, three quick strides — and cut around the net with his long reach and tuck the puck inside the post before anyone even knew what had happened.

  Stan’s father could whip a baseball the length of the driveway and curve it so wickedly you had to watch the spin on the seams to have any chance of knowing what the ball might do. And if you missed it you’d have to run all the way through the backyard and under the hedge and into the Farquardsons’ garden to get it.

  Stan’s father could pick up a kid and twirl him like a helicopter blade so fast you were almost flying.

  This man — this imposter — had to straighten himself up just to avoid looking Stan in the eye. He had soft shoulders and a paunch and weak eyes, saggy in the corners. Not the dark, glinting ping-pong champion beamers that Stan remembered.

  He looked like a man who’d abandoned his kids years ago.

  “Ron,” Stan’s mother said.

  “Isabelle,” Ron said.

  They stood on the little walkway in front of the house. Lily was still draped all over him. He pressed her thick hair to his neck as if hanging on to a cliff-face vine.

  All right, his father would do that. But this man — Ron — was crumbling in the corners. He looked like all the other middle-aged men Stan’s mother had dated in the past few years.

  “What are you doing here?” Stan’s mother asked.

  Ron buried his pudgy hand in Lily’s hair and mumbled something about bus fare.

  “What’s bus fare got to do with anything?”

  “There was a special on. I saw a flyer for it and so I thought I’d come.”

  Ron still hadn’t looked Stan square in the eye. Stan might as well have been a fence post. It was up to his father to say something.

  Up to Ron, who wasn’t up to much.

  “That wasn’t our agreement,” Stan’s mother said. “You can’t come here and disrupt everything just because there’s a special on.”

  “I’m special,” Lily blurted. “I’m going to go to a special school!”

  “Please get down, Lily,” her mother said.

  “Why can’t we just have a visit?” Ron pleaded.

  “They tested me and I’m extraordinary,” Lily said, not getting down. Ron gripped her tighter.

  This man made Gary look good.

  “I just hopped on a bus. That’s all —”

  “You just owe us four years, three months’ worth of child support!” Stan’s mother turned her icy gaze on Lily. “Lily.”

  Lily hugged the man — Ron — all the harder. Stan imagined taking out the side of his knee with a sweeping kick. He’d collapse like a broken tent pole.

  “Look, I’m not here to make any trouble,” Ron said. He put Lily down. She clung still, a koala bear grappled to a tree limb. Ron squatted and blew a quick puff to clear the hair from her eyes.

  That was something his father used to do.

  “Did you bring your checkbook?” Stan’s mother said. “Or I’d be happy to take cash.” Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she said again, “Lily.”

  Lily didn’t move.

  If Stan had his broom handle he could sidekick the innocent grin off Ron’s face.

  “Look. This wasn’t meant to be a big thing. I just saw the ad —”

  “What are you doing for work these days, Ron?” Stan’s mother asked.

  Ron laughed bitterly. “That’s what it always comes down to with you. What’s the bottom line? What’s the measure of a man’s worth?”

  Stan’s mother’s chest shivered with quick little phony breaths. Either she was going to faint from lack of air or claw his eyes out.

  “I’m a carpenter,” Ron said finally. He opened his hands — his pudgy, white, non-callused hands.

  “From law to real estate to carpentry,” she snapped.

  Then a miserable gaze between the two. Stan fell into the trap of it for a time. It was hard to look away. But finally he stepped in and took Lily’s wrist — not harshly, not softly — and pulled her into the house.

  “He’s not going to stay,” she whined in the vestibule. Stan wanted to wait close enough so he could spring to his mother’s aid if need be.

  “He doesn’t deserve to,” Stan said.

  He couldn’t make out what they were saying out there.

  They weren’t screaming. That was something.

  Carpentry? Stan remembered his father trying to replace a spoke on Stan’s bicycle years and years ago. He remembered the wrenches, the sweat, the swear words rising to the basement rafters. And the new spoke broken, poking through the replacement inner tube. The blood on Stan’s father’s knuckles.

  Carpentry.

  Stan’s mother came through the door. Stan glimpsed the front walk. Ron was gone. He’d left on foot for somewhere.

  “The end of a bloody marvelous day,” she said and closed the door by leaning all of her weight against it.

  —

  Stan made dinner. Pancakes, his one dish. The recipe was in a beat-up old family cookbook with stained and smelly pages. They were low on fresh milk so he used powdered, which they were also low on. Stan’s mother usually did the weekly grocery shopping Saturday morning, so often Friday dinner was sparse.

  Flour was in short supply, too, so he used more baking powder than usual and slipped in extra sugar to keep Lily happy.

  Not too much of the batter splashed on the stovetop. And there was bacon — last week’s, still hanging tough.

  If she’d just give him the money he’d do the shopping and they wouldn’t run out like this.

  Stan’s mother wandered the house glued to Gary through her telephone.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do? . . . I didn’t! I didn’t invite him! . . . I suppose somehow he’s been in contact with Lily. Despite our agreement! Why the hell would I be surprised by anything he does at this point?”

  Ron’s phone was still in Stan’s backpack. But if he told her . . .

  Now was not the time.

  There was no oil so the pancakes didn’t stick together particularly well. They burned to the nonstick pan instead. The smoke alarm was going to go off any minute.

  Water-paste pancakes, charred and crumbling. At least there was syrup. Lily might eat them yet.

  “He told me that Kelly-Ann and Feldon have gone to stay with her uncle . . . She’s in pre-law. He’s got money to pay for that. Maybe they’re still using her family money. And he’s a fucking carpenter.”

  She was in her work outfit still, her blouse and pressed pants, but with the sorry yellow knitted slippers she tended to wear around the house. Little pom-poms bounced when she thudded across the floor.

  “I don’t know if she kicked him out or not!”

  The smoke alarm sounded then. Not the family-room alarm, which was closest, but the upstairs-landing alarm. Stan called out to Lily to whack it with the broom.

  “You’re going to have to do it yourself,” Stan’s mother said.

  He only had batter left for another few pancakes. “Lily!”

  “It’s a madhouse here,” his mother said into the phone.

  Stan charged up the stairs and swatted the alarm off the ceiling. It howled on the floor until he pried it open with his fingers and released the battery into silence.

  —

  Later, when the blackened remains of dinner had been cleared away, the three of them, the rump of a family, watched a dating show on television in which former celebrities tried to give romantic advice to contestants whose prize was to end up with each other in full public view. Even Lily stayed quiet, hypnotized by the quick cuts, the glitzy narration, the thunderous commercials. Here was a troubled young woman lying on her bed in semi-darkness — without pants, for some reason, the whites of her legs glimmering — moaning about how easily she’d shed her clothes, and was she too inviting, and would he ever call the number she had made sure he had?

  “The weir
ded-out thing is,” she said, “like, do I even like this guy? Is it, like, too late to be asking?”

  She was wearing bangley earrings and her lips seemed puffed out. Nothing about her was attractive except . . .

  . . . except Stan felt himself possessed of a ridgepole for no good reason whatsoever.

  Sitting on the sofa with his mother and his sister as this young woman in her underwear moved her legs.

  Where was the blanket? On the back of the sofa.

  The young woman said, “Sometimes I just really want to jump a guy and I have no idea why.”

  Stan twisted to retrieve the blanket, trying hard not to press — anything — against anybody.

  “What’s wrong?” his mother said. Waking up from some thought.

  The young woman wiggled her butt and said, “There’s nothing wrong with, like, healthy sexuality. But I really should be able to remember his last name.”

  Stan settled the blanket on his lap. The young woman disappeared, replaced by a ripped guy pumping weights in the gym who said, “She let me in, why wouldn’t I?”

  “Lily, I don’t think you should be watching this,” his mother said. She picked up the remote and pressed a button. Nothing happened.

  “Why not? Why can’t I?” Lily howled.

  “Stanley? Stanley, can you fix this?”

  Stan took the remote. The veins in his head throbbed as he skipped through from show to show.

  Lily hit him with the pillow.

  “But I want to see it!” The blanket shifted and Stan pulled it back.

  He stayed exactly where he was, waiting for the bubble of the evening to settle somewhere and die.

  —

  In the middle of the night, long after he’d gone to bed but failed to sleep, Stan sat on the front porch in the chilly air, his feet near freezing, bare on the wood. He fingered his father’s phone.

  It glowed in chill darkness. He hit the buttons.

  “Hello?” came a voice at last. “Lily? Is that you?”

  “Hi, Ron.” Stan shocked himself addressing his father that way, and yet — why not?

  “Oh,” Ron said.

  Breathing on the other end. The street lamps, everything, so still.