by Alan Cumyn
“No, I mean, it’s just a problem,” he said. What did he mean by that? The words slipped out. He would have to think it through later.
He had the sense that a lot of what had happened recently he’d have to think about at another time.
Feldon was nearly finished his soldiers. Stan checked the milk in the fridge. It smelled all right. His mother needed to do a proper shop for the whole week, not just grabbing stuff as she did from time to time on her way home. How much was in her bank account? He had no idea. But they were still going to eat. Weren’t they?
“Some things there’s no solution for,” Janine said.
He pictured her standing outside the school doors, the phone pressed against her left ear. He thought about leaning in and kissing the base of her neck. Just where the lizard sat.
How warm it would be.
“If you’re home alone looking after Feldon then maybe I should come over.” She said it just like that. Maybe I should come over.
Maybe this was where she was supposed to be.
Stan felt calm and yet his pulse steamed, as if he was driving for the hoop just a half step ahead of Karl Brolin.
“Come on over,” he said to Janine.
—
Come on over.
“A friend of mine is coming over,” he said nonchalantly to Feldon as he stood over the sink and scraped at the egg on the plate and the cutlery.
Maybe she could come over and Feldon might fall asleep and one thing might lead to another. Maybe he’d have a chance to lean toward the heat of her body — he could feel the heat of her, just thinking about it — and maybe he could . . .
Feldon was folding a business reply card from a magazine that had been on the counter. Tiny, precise movements.
Future neurosurgeon.
Confident fingers. The card was turning into something intricate.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Stan asked.
“My mom showed me.”
“Really? She’s pretty smart, I bet.”
Tiny, tiny folds. Feldon kept his eyes just inches away. Like a scientist looking through a microscope.
A bunny, maybe, with pointy ears? Feldon compressed it with his finger and it hopped.
“Amazing!”
Feldon set the paper bunny on the counter angled toward the door, as if it might scamper off any moment. He found a coupon in a pile of papers and began to fold that.
“You must miss her?” Stan said to Feldon.
“Who?” the boy asked.
“Your mother!”
Fold after fold.
“She can do butterflies,” Feldon said solemnly. “And Uncle Liam can do dragons!”
“Who’s Uncle Liam?”
“He comes to help Mommy sleep. But he has to leave really early. Sometimes he makes bacon.”
“He helps her sleep?” Stan said.
“When Daddy isn’t home.”
The doorbell then. Stan felt a surge — Janine! —
but summoned all his powers to ignore it.
“What do you mean? How often does your dad go away?” Your dad.
“Only sometimes,” Feldon said. “This time he brought me, too. Maybe Mommy won’t be home.”
The bell again. Stan saw Janine through the blurry front door window.
Janine Igwash in his house.
“Why won’t your mom be home?”
Feldon started folding something else from the pile of papers. “Because she went to Me-too Bay.”
“Where?”
Stan got up to let Janine in. There was an awkward moment at the door when really all he wanted to do was kiss her deeper and deeper for about half an hour until they both melted from the heat of it. Instead he stood too far back with his hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet.
“Hey,” she said.
She was crackingly beautiful.
Somehow Stan remembered himself.
“Me-too Bay?” he said to Feldon. “What?”
“That’s where she went,” Feldon said.
—
Montego Bay. That’s what Feldon was trying to say. It took a while for Stan and Janine to get the information out of him. First he had to tell them all about the new bathing suits that kept arriving in the mail and how his mother would stand in front of the mirror and turn this way and that but she couldn’t decide on pink or black. And every suit made her look fat, she said. And Uncle Liam would tell her she wasn’t fat and she would say she was and he would bring home pie for everyone.
Janine helped Feldon arrange the folded creations, some of which looked like animals and some were just shapes. Janine sat with her legs crossed and her body inches away from Stan.
“Is Uncle Liam her brother or — ?” Stan pressed.
“He’s her sleeping friend,” Feldon said.
All the folded creations were facing in the same direction, like cows in a field.
“He snorts pretty loud,” Feldon said.
Janine’s collar cut across the little lizard. It was an effort to keep himself from reaching out to touch it.
“And he makes funny noises in the bathroom.”
Stan laughed too loud. The air in the room was nearly boiling just because Janine was sitting there.
“And now your mother and Uncle Liam have gone to Montego Bay?” Stan pressed.
“Sometimes we went to the go-carts,” Feldon said.
“He let you drive a go-cart?”
“Brmmm! Brmmm!” Feldon said. He turned his hands as if he was steering.
“But what was your dad doing while all this happened?”
“Brmmm! Brmmm!”
Feldon was as bad as Lily. Stan put his hand on Janine’s shoulder, and she melted into the movement.
“Where’s your dad’s bedroom?” Stan said finally to Feldon, who squinted as if this was the most ridiculous question. “I mean, do your mom and dad . . . Do they sleep together, or does he have his own place?”
Feldon squealed, it was so funny. “Daddy doesn’t sleep! He works!”
—
How some people arranged their lives — good luck trying to figure it all out, Stan thought.
But maybe . . . maybe his father had good reasons to leave after all. It was hard to grasp what the situation might be. Stan wasn’t in his father’s shoes.
But he wouldn’t have abandoned his son, that was for sure.
Stan and Janine took Feldon to the park and played on the swings with other preschoolers. Janine asked Feldon if he went to kindergarten and he acted as if he’d never heard of it. He dug in the sand with his fingers and moved twigs and rocks into position so that the hole was surrounded by a barricade. So the ants wouldn’t get in.
Two or three mothers eyeballed Stan and Janine for looking too young to have a kid themselves, Stan guessed. But it was no one’s business. Janine lifted Feldon and hugged him for a moment before putting him on the high swing. She would make a terrific mother, Stan thought.
Feldon ran up and down the tall slide and Stan wondered what they were going to do with him if Kelly-Ann didn’t show up. What if she stayed in Montego Bay — in Jamaica! — with Uncle Liam, drinking fancy drinks and lying on the beach? What if Stan’s mother really did lose her job? What if something burst inside her from the pressure and she had to go to the hospital to die, leaving Stan in charge?
What would he do?
Stan watched Feldon run down the slippery steel. What kind of kid refused to slide? Janine was beside him, letting him do it. He was going to fall and break his front teeth and the other mothers would just cross their arms and say, “What are you doing having a kid at your age anyway?”
“Hey, Feldon, let’s go home, buddy!” Stan said suddenly. He clapped his hands like he was somebody’s coach. “Hey, Feldon. Stop running!”
“It’s okay,” Janine said.
Feldon was going to break his head on the steel post.
“Stop it!” Stan yelled.
The boy twisted, lost his balance. Stan lung
ed, caught Feldon by the arm, braced him with his body . . . and barked his own shin on the edge of the slide.
Stan said nothing, just held his half-brother and carried him down to the ground.
“Are you all right, buddy?”
Feldon squirmed, trying to get back on the slide.
“Let’s head home, okay?”
“He was all right till you tried to grab him!” Janine said.
A whole crowd of mothers was looking at them now — teenagers with a child.
Stan didn’t trust himself to speak till the wave of anger had passed.
Janine was looking so beautiful, it hurt not to touch her.
It was just a wave.
But he could see how a man could lose control and screw it up because of a wave.
Everything was tilted. The whole way home he felt like he had no idea what the next step might bring.
23
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 talki
ng.
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.
24
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.
