By Pat Foran

Can you put me on tilt? my leaning son asks. He can’t help this leaning, even though he’s seat-belted and secure in this wheelchair he’s been sitting in living in declining in the past dozen years. He can’t grip the chair’s controls he can’t control his grip he doesn’t have a grip not anymore. His muscles are wasting away, he’s losing strength, he needs someone to put the chair-back back. He needs someone to put him on tilt. Tilting relieves the pressure on his neck his spine his back his butt he’s got no padding there no padding anywhere not on this young man my son who’s wasting away. Tilt makes me dizzy but it’s better sometimes, he says. So I put him on tilt and he’s ok for a moment — suspended, he’s at peace or looks like he is, like the dream is over, like the worst has passed, like a decision’s been made. I make a joke like I do, it’s a joke he usually laughs at, it’s a thing we do, the two of us, a thing we have, the two of us, but he doesn’t laugh at this joke he doesn’t smile he doesn’t respond. Not while he’s on tilt. And I feel this flash this bolt it’s more like a shiver — the dream that ended, the worst that’s over, the decision made: He’s giving up, I think, and I have no reason to think this no reason not really not now not yet where’s this coming from so I bite my tongue or my lip or my left arm or is it shame I chomp down on — I chomp down on it hard as in hard without holstering. But it is here in this moment, with trapdoors and trapezes, among horsemen and hangmen, that I know what I know, that I’m not what I thought that I’m not what I believed that I’m not what I hoped. This kid who doesn’t complain never about pain not once not ever this young man of a kid who never feels sorry for himself not once not ever this darling young one the strongest one I know — the one I lean on, I lean on his strength — he takes a moment for himself he takes a moment to regroup he goes on tilt and he found him some peace yet here I shiver and I simper and I dizzily posit if-thens: If he’s giving up, how am I going to lean on him, lean on his strength? If I can’t lean on his strength, how am I going to be strong, strong enough to be there for him? I mean he’s tilting. I mean how can you lean on a guy who’s tilting? I mean he’ll fall. I don’t understand what I’m positing I don’t understand what I’m saying to myself but I fear the worst a worst that’s not over a weak moment that isn’t a moment but a river of them a river that says Uncle a river that says Quittin’ time a mirror of a river that says Look hard look hard look real hard whose face do you see? I look at my tilting son’s face that darling young face he looks so peaceful I mean peace like a real river and I remember something he’d say after I’d tell a joke he didn’t get Why do I have to understand what you’re saying all the time? he’d say and I hear that river the peaceful one the river that turns tables on unsuspecting levees the one that turns cartwheels at crunch time. Can you put me on tilt? I say to my son Are you just kidding? he asks I don’t know I say and I picture a pinball heart riding shotgun on the peaceful river the one that’s leaning the one that’s lurching the one that’s letting go I’ll try I say in words neither one of us understands.

Pat Foran is a writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We met in journalism school at Marquette University. Pat’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in WhiskeyPaper, Little Fiction, Gravel, Bending Genres, formercactus and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter at @pdforan

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash