Trying the Knot Read online

  Instantly stunned by a freezing shock of cold water, he sprang into the air and spun around in a quick whirl. Landing on his knees and lurching forward, he prepared to attack. Vange hurled the remaining contents of a plastic ice bucket in his face.

  “Happy Easter, dickwad!” she cried merrily.

  “What the?” he yelled. After a lengthy struggle, in which she dragged him off the bed and inflicted rug burns on half his body, he managed to pin her on the shag carpet.

  “C’mon, let me go,” she pleaded, thrusting her hips under his ass.

  “Such a sadistic freak of nature.”

  As she struggled to free herself of his weak stronghold, she said, “You’re making me wet.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” he asked, maniacally peeling the bedspread from her writhing body.

  “C’mon, this floor reeks. Get off!”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Oh, that’s it,” she moaned, feigning pleasure, “make it feel like date-rape.”

  He recoiled. “You’re so twisted.”

  “You know you want to,” she said seductively and yanked him back down on her as he sat up. “My body, your choice.” Straddling her, his hands probed between them and kneaded away what little resistance she clung to. Practically gnawing on his collarbone, she whimpered, “Oh, yes.”

  “You need to find other hobbies, you’re a sex fiend,” he protested, but she stuck a finger in his mouth for him to shut up and suck on. As if acquiescing in a newly discovered addiction, their moist bodies connected once again on the matted, shag carpet.

  At dusk, when lamps are least efficient, Evangelica sat wrinkling his clothes in the orange vinyl chair. With her elbows resting on her crossed knees and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, she sat with her eyes glazed over as if her esophagus had closed up. Lounging on the bed below the driftwood crucifix, Thad held the TV remote and mindlessly channel surfed always back to CNN. Images flickered of Wolf Blitzer interviewing soldiers in the sand along with shots of rebel Iraqis, interspersed with the occasional mention of President Bush addressing the lagging economy, and Entertainment Tonight’s Mary Hart covered the one-gloved odd couple, Madonna and Michael Jackson at the Oscars.

  Without taking his eyes from a Lori Davis hair care infomercial featuring Cher, he said casually, “Don’t let any feelings of family obligation keep you, Cousin.”

  Yawning, she stretched languidly and looked away. “Just because my mom is married to your uncle, that doesn’t mean we’re related, asshole. So, cut the cousin crap.” Vange snatched up the chain she discarded earlier and whirled it around a few times. Then she placed the silvery-blue rhinoceros against her lips to cherish its momentary metallic chill.

  “For the record, your new stepfather is no longer my uncle, he was just my dead aunt’s husband,” Thad stressed. “Hey, Cousin Vadge, how is Cousin Kate?”

  Evangelica perked up at the mention of her recently acquired stepsister, Portnorth’s very own prodigal daughter. “She’s such a Yuppie now. She tools into town in her boyfriend’s Jeep whenever there’s wedding stuff to plan.” Vange found it amusing to watch Kate interact with her own mother, Shayla. Kate had always done her best to deny her blue collar past, but the new Mrs. Edward G. Hesse served as a constant reminder of her less than genteel roots.

  It was not any secret Vange barely tolerated her own mother. Her first real memory was hearing her father blow out his brains across the living room ceiling on Christmas Eve; she was five years old. Afterward, Shayla Whiley proceeded to marry and divorce every eligible bachelor in town. Those whom she could not coerce into marrying or moving in, she merely seduced into supporting her. Shayla’s most recent conquest had been Thad’s widower uncle. Although he made a boatload of money, Chief Engineer Hesse spent most days drunk and indentured to the Great Lakes; his only real homes alternated between a massive rickety freighter and shoddy taverns.

  “All Kate ever talks about is her boring wedding to boring Nick,” Vange said.

  “I remember a time when you didn’t think Nick was so boring.”

  “Why, he’s the most fascinating bore I know, and all this talk of them is boring me to tears. Who cares, so what?” she asked, twirling the necklace. “Do you always wear this stupid thing?”

  “Always.”

  “You know, there are better things to symbolize love for someone than a rhinoceros. What possessed her?” Vange pondered aloud, “Surely, you didn’t remind her that rhinos have the largest penises of any land mammal.”

  Thad laughed loudly and said, “It reminded her of a story we read to one another all the time.” He looked down at his feet. Picking his toenails was a pastime he treasured as much as Vange relished smoking. He also smoked, but it was joylessly and more out of habit. Each vice came with its own risk – cancer or ingrown toenails – one painful and deadly, and the other just painful. If you were really unlucky, you got both.

  Trying to visualize his dead aunt, who had a few ingrown toenails removed in her short lifetime, he fiddled with his feet. He speculated that his aunt’s ingrown toenail problem had contributed to her shoe obsession. Immediately after marrying his uncle, Vange’s mother had a garage sale and sold all of his aunt’s possessions. Maybe the women of Portnorth did not mind wearing her shoes because she was so respected, but more than likely it was because she never wore the same pair twice. It was ironic his uncle went from being married to a saint to a sinner within eight months. The scandal provided Portnorth’s coffee klatch with plenty of gossip.

  “What did your mom do with all the money she made from selling my aunt’s things?”

  Evangelica’s curiosity shifted to concern. “What’s up with the dead aunt obsession already? I don’t know, they probably went on a Caribbean cruise or bought something totally ridiculous like a riding lawnmower.”

  His moribund silence made her shiver. “I can’t vegetate here any longer. Let’s go eat. You lured me here with the promise of a real holiday feast, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s Easter,” Thad said. He inspected his throbbing toe while he imagined his aunt limping toward him. She was wearing a pink bathrobe with curlers in her hair, carrying a box of day old jelly donuts, and she warned him against a fate cursed with one-night stands that lingered like ingrown toenails.

  Abruptly, he sprang to his feet and jumped into his Pepe jeans. He threw on her silky purple shirt because she was wearing his forest green shaker-knit sweater with holes in the elbows. He did not bother to wash before venturing outside because apathetic uncleanliness seemed the most natural attitude to sport. There was no one to impress. It was seven o’clock and the town’s entire population was home, lethargic from holiday ham anticipating the series finales of Dallas, thirtysomething, and Twin Peaks.

  Thad snatched the driftwood crucifix from the wall. Vange smeared lipstick across her mouth, and the matte red Cherries in the Snow made her look even more ghostly.

  While riding in the truck, Thad noticed the buildings that were not boarded up were closed. The streetlights had not yet turned on, and the dismal vacancy of their surroundings was uninspiringly grim at best. As time stood still, tiny snowflakes drifted from the sheet-like gray sky. They had checked out of civilization and returned to a post-Apocalyptic aftermath. Vange drove the lone vehicle down the salt-stained Main Street with reckless abandon, and each time she accelerated he found himself pressed further against a figurative brick wall. Dread oozed from her pores as her stomach gurgled with nausea.

  As they drove over railroad tracks running through the middle of town, Thad pulled his long bangs over his eyes. As a kid, he used to imagine far off destinations as locomotives carried limestone into the distance away from town. It never occurred to him to ask any one of his three generations of quarry-employed relatives where the tracks led. He only knew that they stretched far away from the one-company town’s cavernous hole in the ground.

  Thad thought aloud, “When did the train stop running like a getaway car at all hours?�
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  “Want to picnic on the beach?”

  “No matter how hard you try, you can’t ever see Canada,” Thad said. From behind his bangs he peered deep into the hazy horizon, past the frigid succession of endless waves.

  “Want to know something totally gnarly,” Vange began, and she slowed the truck down as they drove past the beach. “I’m in real deep shit.

  “How so?”

  “I think I’m pregnant.”

  “Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?”

  “Not by you, dork,” she said and slugged his arm. “It’s some other unlucky bastard’s little bastard.”

  “This town smells like winter all year round.”

  “And everyone’s overweight, but they don’t call this Porknorth for nothing.”

  “Don’t you ever think about leaving, starting over?” Thad asked. Consumed with his own thoughts, he failed to press the issue of her baby’s paternity as he looked over his shoulder at the icy lake.

  “Fuck’n-A, I got big plans of sailing across the Great Lakes, just me and this kid.” Vange patted her stomach. “You went away to college, look how far you got.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You’re right back here, in this shit kicking hellhole in case you haven’t noticed. What’s the plan, Thad, you going to pick potatoes, clear-cut trees, or dig for rocks in the quarry?”

  “How do you start over when you’ve never started in the first place?” he wondered.

  The truck pulled into a gas station, and Thad agreed to buy dinner with the last of his cash. Looking like total crap was her excuse for staying behind inside the truck. As he exited the vehicle, she clanked her head against the rear window and punched away at the radio knobs. She finally settled on NPR, where a congressman was discussing the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, along with the heroic exploits of Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf and the inevitability of at least one of them becoming a presidential contender.

  “See, opportunities to be a hero abound,” Vange said, pointing to the radio. “You should be in the Persian Gulf, fighting for our rights to the world’s oil supply.”

  “Real funny.”

  “Hey, you never said what you think of my predicament?”

  “You’ll get fat, and then out pops some brat who’ll hate you in twelve years,” Thad said, and he cocked his eyebrows and slammed the door.

  Once inside the minimart, peppy harmonies belonging to the daughters of some washed up, drug-addled Sixties superstars accompanied Thad’s hunt for dinner. They admonished, “Release Me” as he gripped the stolen crucifix. The disproving checkout woman monitored his every move. She wore a gray zippered sweat suit and a bulbous nose dominated her face. Little hairs encrusted with snot spewed from her snout, and whiskers compensated for the sparse tuft of gray hair crowning her too large head. Thad recognized her from going to church as a kid, and he guessed her name was Bulbous-ski.

  Nothing seemed appealing, and he tried to remember the last time he ate because his insides felt hollow. Shocked, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and barely recognized the entity staring back at him. The overhead lights cast a peculiar jaundiced glow. His hair hung in dirty strings, and his eyes were tired from lack of sleep. What was the term, heroin chic? His arms strained under the weight of the processed food as he became increasingly aware of Bulbouski’s evil eye.

  Losing himself in the freezer department, where Vange’s silky rayon shirt provided little warmth, he remembered the two of them used to share pints of coffee ice cream while reading about stampeding rhinos; he would spoon it into Her mouth between paragraphs.

  “What the hell was the name of that story?”

  How many times while driving her Mercury Tracer had She whisked them to the outskirts of nowhere? Thad closed his deep-set eyes, and they were parked next to some suburban wasteland. She read aloud as he sat mesmerized. Her bobbed copper-hued hair hid Her pale eyes that reflected a childhood dulled by too many unrealized expectations. With the hope of dissecting Her secrets, he listened intently to every word falling from Her lips.

  Finished reading, She said, “One day the herd will trample over us.”

  Before starting the car, She let him nibble on her long fingers and applied Her purple lipstick to his lips. She insisted on heavy petting as if it were 1951. Other times, She regaled Thad with tales of past lovers who dog-eared the pages of Her life script.

  Shivering, Thad felt the scrutiny of the glutton in gray as he wandered toward her chilly gaze and away from the freezer department. Bulbouski smacked her gum, unaware of the saliva caked in the corner of her mouth. He felt as if she were about to unleash a stampede of charging beasts.

  He bagged the groceries while she rang them up. Concerned what was taking so long, Vange met him at the glass door. She pried the paper sack from his grasp and rattled off the menu, “Cigs, Sunny-D, and Combos. What, no squirrel, muskrat, or deer jerky?”

  “Sorry.”

  “This isn’t exactly a holiday feast.”

  Watching Evangelica take a sip of neon colored orange drink, Thad turned red with embarrassment when she subsequently wiped the sweat from his furrowed brow and took his hand into hers.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I have a fear of rhinos,” Thad said. A burst of juice exploded from her nose, and she doubled over in a coughing fit. Grabbing his arm for support, she regained her composure and searched his bloodshot green eyes; although it was Easter, they made her think of all the disappointment of Christmastime.

  Thad suddenly leaned close, and he let his tongue guide a trickling stream of juice up her chin and into her quivering mouth. Unnerved by this sudden intimacy, Vange backed away and tugged at the necklace. She thrust the sack of groceries at his chest and made her way back to the pickup truck. Suddenly, she stopped and pointed to a clump of matted fur and batting which lay soaking in an oil slick in the middle of the parking lot.

  “Look,” she said, “it, it’s a dead bunny.”

  The stuffed toy was nearly soiled and flattened beyond recognition. The moment seemed so fraught with symbolism and irony, she laughed until her eyes welled with tears. Evangelica placed the back of her hand against her mouth and turned away in an attempt to pull herself together. Thad wrapped her close and ineffectively soothed her bottomless sobs.

  She repeated between breaths, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t cry, it’s Easter,” he pleaded. “Sorry for what?”

  “I’m just sorry, that’s all,” she repeated. He wiped away her tears while she held her stomach as if cradling everything inside her for one last time.

  Inside the truck, they sat in paralyzed silence. Feeling bonded because neither knew quite where to go from there, they both dreaded every second proceeding the next. Soon, not even the damp chilly air whipping against his face kept Thad seated beside her. In his mind, he found himself alone, kicking a rock along the shoulder of the road. When he was a boy, his aunt told him in her all-knowing authoritative manner, “Kick a limestone rock as you walk along. Then before you stop, make a wish and give it a good swipe.”

  He wondered if she kept kicking rocks even with her ingrown toenail. He wondered if she kept kicking rocks and making wishes even after cancer stopped her for good. Thad’s finger felt for the chain he never took off. Although the silvery blue rhino was gone from his neck, he still had Jesus in his pocket. When the rock he was kicking became lost among all the other rocks, he pulled out the crucifix and began kicking Christ.

  Thad wished for many things, but he mostly hoped for a few feature-length experiences to treasure, rather than mere isolated snapshots. Nothing ever changed for the better. Everything pleasant always digressed and filled him with revulsion and a longing to forget. So he closed his eyes and gave the crucifix one good swift kick across the highway into a half-frozen field. There in the middle of the countryside wilderness, he stood watching his breath waft toward a lone seagull.

  With his hands crammed in his pockets an
d his collar upturned, he wondered how people became so important they left only a gaping emptiness once dispersing into the ether.

  And there he waited as if there were no such thing as good byes.

  When Thad entered the back door, his sister rushed toward him in a huff. She was a few inches taller and a couple pounds heavier than him. Their lack of physical resemblance was due to their having different sets of parents. They were both adopted.

  “What the hell, gone for nearly three days? What were you doing?”

  “Getting laid, I suppose,” Thad replied, kicking off his boots. He and Vange sat outside in the truck for the past hour while Alexa rubbernecked from the house. Vange’s shouts for him to get out of the cab still rang in his ears.

  “Real mature.”

  He wiped his runny nose and clenched shut his watery eyes. She sighed shaking her head and asked, “What’re you wearing? Good God, is that a chick’s shirt?”

  Thad threw Vange’s soiled shirt at her and walked away.

  Alexa stalked after him through the galley kitchen and scooped up his trail of discarded filthy clothes. She wadded them in her largish hands, of which she was overly self-conscious. Usually, she hid them under long sleeves. “Mom’s spent the last couple nights sitting at the table all weird, just like when Aunt Kaye died, remember? She’s at the end of her rope.”

  “No, she’s only fallen off the wagon yet again.”

  “Oh my god, you leave for three days, hole up in a scum pit motel with that skank ho, our own cousin of all people. Yuck,” Alexa berated him. She followed him into the bathroom and tossed his dirty clothes into the hamper. “It doesn’t help that mom has to hear about your incestuous sex-capades while buying groceries.”

  Standing in only his saggy briefs, he turned on the shower and tested the water. Thad asked curiously, “How did she hear about me at the store?”

  “Who knows? Christ-on-a-stick, hurry up!”

  “Everyone in this twisted little Peyton Place know everyone else’s business,” Thad said.