Trying the Knot Read online

  “Just hurry! FYI, we were supposed to be at grandma’s three hours ago,” Alexa said. She folded her arms causing her thumbs to frame her breasts and her long fingers to dig in her armpits. She reprimanded, “So, why did you hook up with that floozy?”

  She was six years his junior, but his adopted sister acted as if she had been around since his conception. It was as if his questionable behavior somehow reflected inadequate parenting on her behalf.

  “It’s a real drag having two mothers,” he said. Knowing there was no getting rid of her, he hopped into the tub and tossed his underwear out at her.

  “Ugh, you suck so much,” she cried out. “Real mature.”

  His mind wandered freely despite a distracting cloud of smoke drifting from the other side of the shower curtain. She turned on the old clock radio he had brought in the bathroom fifteen years ago when he first discovered the joys of masturbation. She fiddled with the dials until she found a testosterone-fueled song she liked.

  “What is this noise? Turn it off.”

  “Grunge, buttercup. Welcome to the Nineties, the Eighties are dead already,” she said.

  A minute of the Nirvana song was all he could stand, and he shouted over the hiss of water, “If all you want is a cigarette, Al, take one and get out.”

  “Really, you shouldn’t smoke. It’s so bad for you,” she said. For a passing moment he thought perhaps she had left him in peace, but even in silence and separated by a curtain, he felt her daunting presence.

  “Grow up. It’s time to end this whole lost little boy act,” Alexa snapped. She threw the cigarette into the toilet and began scrubbing her hands. She silently fumed, preparing for a grand exit. “Don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself? Mom’s worried to death her oldest child will end up a deranged mailman shacked up with a skank, living in a trailer park.”

  The water ceased pulsing, and he reached out from behind the curtain for a towel, which she picked up off the floor and handed to him. Stepping out from the tub while dripping wet, he wrapped the damp towel around him as he shook water all over her.

  “You can’t even dry off right. You’re too skinny.”

  He squeezed her clammy flawless cheeks together and planted a kiss on her forehead. Alexa kicked him gently in the shin and brushed the water droplets from her flannel shirt. She ran her fingers through her longish tangled hair. Because they were adopted, he liked to imagine that his sperm source was a puny, effeminate librarian while hers was a hairy, burly lumberjack.

  “You’re impossible!”

  “Am not. I’m most agreeable,” he said, walking away. “You’re the one who’s difficult, always pointing out our flaws, rattling off your pertinacious observations. And you have the nerve to demand we work for your approval. Nope, there’s nothing unconditional about you.”

  Alexa followed him up the stairs and attempted to enter his bedroom, but he blocked her at the door. She rolled her eyes and said, “Hurry, we’re already late, you’re so busy yacking –

  “Hardly.”

  “I’ll pull the car around. It’ll save time.”

  She had never bothered to get a driver’s license, but he knew it was no use protesting. “Try and not kill yourself.”

  “Like you care,” she snorted and pinched his left nipple. Alexa enjoyed annoying him that way especially in public. He retaliated by smacking her, but she was too quick.

  Dropping the towel from around his waist, he thought about Evangelica. She had seemed so distant, and yet they had been as close as any two people hoped to be. It was doubtful she would attend Easter dinner at his grandmother’s. Like her mother, Vange tended to avoid all dealings with any extended family. It was as if she buried any notions of ever becoming a member of a family with her dad. Her uterus, despite its occupied state, must have felt as empty as the hole in the portion of her father’s head that ended up splattered across the living room ceiling.

  Faint car honks sounded in his ears, and he remembered how Vange had screamed at him, “I don’t care if you’re crying, get out of my truck!” He shivered. A sixth sense told him to expect the worst as far as Evangelica was concerned. The distant honks grew more urgent, and he barely thought about Vange again until he was awoken by Ben’s early morning phone call from the hospital six months later.

  chapter three

  Nick emerged from the bathroom naked from the waist up, and he rummaged the cluttered room for a clean shirt. His painstakingly arduous search was justified considering the mess. Seated, Ben bounced gently on the bed and reminisced fondly, “Hey, Nick, remember your graduation party – how I had sex with your sister? That was way wild. You always said she was hot for me, but I never believed you until you dared me to find out.”

  “And then you fucked her, right here in my bed,” Nick said, with a hint of disgust.

  “You know, I think she got off on the fact that all your relatives were partying upstairs,” Ben said. “I couldn’t believe how insatiable she was.”

  Nick grabbed clean socks and said, “Isn’t insatiable just a euphemism for in-orgasmic?” He had assembled an outfit of tattered chinos, a V-neck maroon sweater and navy T-shirt. For some reason, his clothes always seemed slightly too small, as if he were perpetually on the verge of outgrowing them. He would always be the epitome of an All-American boy scout. As he left the bedroom, he climbed the stairs and discarded the socks before stumbling into his penny loafers.

  “Hey, man, what’re you waiting for?” Ben asked of Thad’s backside. “Let’s get a move on, Nick’s ready. Besides, Chelsea is probably having a conniption fit it’s taken this long.”

  Thad tossed the yearbook he’d been gazing at aside. “Did you know she’s pregnant?”

  Ben’s face flushed with remorse. Unable to believe the words he just heard, he turned away and inhaled solemnly. “Thad, Nick’s waiting. Kate is tripping out.”

  “Is she still pregnant, even now?” Thad asked. He failed to move from the window, where he had lost himself in the yearbook.

  “Just drop it.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Later, man – I’ll fill you in later, but not now,” Ben said. He looked helplessly at his open palms, and then his hands disappeared up into the sleeves of his leather jacket. Thad relented, and they silently declared an uneasy truce. Ben put an arm around Thad’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring, yet firm squeeze. Together, they made their way up the stairs and walked to Thad’s rusted out Datsun where Nick patiently awaited delivery to his damsel in distress.

  Having resumed his cool, unaffected demeanor, Ben grinned broadly as he settled into the backseat. “I hope your sister comes home soon, Nick, a reunion might be nice.”

  Ignoring Ben, Nick murmured to no one, “Poor Kate. She planned the wedding for Labor Day weekend, so her family would be happy, or at least busy, not sad and depressed.”

  “It really doesn’t seem like a whole year since Aunt Kaye died,” Thad observed. “This is the worst.”

  “No, this car is the worst. Is that pavement I see under my feet?” Ben asked lightly. “Man, why don’t you break down and spring for a new set of wheels?”

  “I can’t. I have too many student loans, and I’m barely making six dollars an hour,” Thad whined.

  “That’s sad,” Nick said.

  “Besides, I’m saving up for a mountain bike since everything in this town is within walking distance,” Thad said. It took a few tries to start the ailing vehicle. While backing out of the driveway, the car stalled and rolled onto the road.

  Thinking aloud, Nick said, “This is insane what Vange has done.”

  “Well, she has manic-depression,” Ben offered.

  Nick corrected, “Bipolar Disorder.”

  “Which could explain the element of insanity,” Thad said. A large Suburban whizzed around them at full speed. The rear end of the immobilized automobile sat idled in the street.

  “What’re the chances of coming out of a coma?” Ben asked.

  Sounding ra
ther textbook, Nick said, “Whatever they are, they diminish as the duration of the comatose state lengthens.”

  “If she doesn’t wake up, who decides to pull the plug?” Ben asked grimly.

  “The next of kin would decide if and when to cease pursuing artificial life sustaining measures.”

  “In that case, I wouldn’t be surprised if her mother is pulling the plug as we speak,” Thad said.

  They grew more anxious as the ignition refused to turnover, and Ben said grimly, “Maybe there’ll be a wedding and a funeral all in the same weekend.”

  “That’d certainly kill two birds with one stone,” Thad said sarcastically, and he reached out to give Ben’s long hair a forceful yank. “Insensitive clod.”

  The engine roared to life and drowned out Ben’s cry, “Ouch.”

  They drove in silence as if one word, ouch, summed up everything.

  As soon as the Datsun pulled up to the main entrance of the hospital, Nick shot from the clunker like a rat jumping ship. Thad parked the car next to Ben’s motorcycle, and they reluctantly made their way to the small medical facility, which was sprawling by Portnorth’s quaint standards. Ben led the way, but he was less than eager to enter the building, and with each step he grew increasingly fidgety.

  The early morning air was brisk with an early autumn coolness. Thad flicked his cigarette into a shrub and wished he had remembered his wool blazer. Ben had phoned him a couple hours ago to tell him he had found Vange unconscious in bed. Thad in turn called Chelsea, who roused Kate. Thad had stopped off at work on his way to the hospital, and he left the newspaper building in such a rush he forgot the navy J.Crew blazer he wore all year round. It was not until Kate became an emotional minefield at the hospital that Chelsea ordered Ben and Thad to leave the waiting room in order to retrieve the missing bridegroom.

  The metal door handle was cold to the touch, and Ben held the door open for Thad. They entered the circular core lobby, which was painted aquamarine accented with mauve. It looked like an organ from a medical textbook, and hallways led to a labyrinth of appendage-like wings.

  Ben half-hoped to discover his boss, Ginny Norris, there waiting for them. He longed for her soothing presence. No one calmed his nerves like Ginny, especially when he took into account their afternoon sessions of slow languid lovemaking. Instead of Ginny, he found her polar opposite, which took the form of her hostile, agitated daughter.

  Chelsea Norris sat bored, flipping through a magazine for hungry horny housewives. When she saw Thad and Ben, she jumped to her feet and told them everything they already knew.

  “The priest left, and the police officer wants you to stop by the station, Benjamin, since you’re the one who found her,” Chelsea began. She tucked her straight, cropped-off blond hair behind her ears. Short bangs framed sharp Nordic features, which were more sun-kissed than usual. Her deep blue eyes looked sleepy. “Nicholas is with Katherine.”

  “How’s Vange?”

  “She’s been stabilized, but there’s no telling if or when she’ll regain consciousness.”

  “So, there’s no change except Nick is here,” Ben said, opting not to acknowledge Nick’s presence had a calming effect on the previously chaotic atmosphere.

  “Oh, Benjamin, my mom wants you to call her as soon as possible,” Chelsea said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  Thad nodded in the direction of a former classmate, who by chance happened to be standing across the lobby. He waved his upraised bandaged hand at them, and Thad remarked, “Suddenly, it feels like a class reunion.”

  “Someone bring me a barf bag,” Chelsea said. It was her favorite saying for as long as Thad remembered. With the regularity of which she said it, one would think she was sickened by the world and her stomach was permanently roiling.

  Smiling proudly, the Italian Stallion pointed his bloody wound at them. Everyone in the town called him Rocky, after Rocky Balboa, ever since anyone could remember. The pot-bellied brush cutter once belonged to a small but suspiciously sociopathic contingency that whittled their days away in the high school shop room.

  “Tree fell on me— or my hand anyway,” Rocky yelled, deaf from the incessant buzzing of chainsaws.

  “Redneck,” Chelsea said under her breath, smiling through her teeth.

  “He’s such a Dago,” Ben said.

  “Really? We’re still using derogatory racist terms to describe ethnic origins?” Chelsea asked, cringing at the epitaph.

  A ginger-headed toddler wrapped its dirty little arm around Rocky’s leg and stared blankly at them. The drooling dullard’s mother was a former Miss Portnorth beauty pageant winner, and she sat nearby glued to a sexual maintenance discussion unfolding on Phil Donahue. She yawned and swatted the kid away from the gawking crowd.

  Thad elbowed Chelsea and whispered, “Rocky has a nasty habit of knocking up girls from the same family. Her sister is pregnant with his kid.”

  “Make me barf, that’s so wrong.”

  “It’s like a Jerry Springer episode,” Thad said, and he added, “Vange lost her virginity to him.”

  “Ok, that’s more than I needed to know,” Ben said, and he walked away.

  Chelsea imagined it was Evangelica seated on the couch, hanging onto the grubby child rather than the washed up queen, and she shuddered with disgust. Fixated moronically on the elevated bandaged hand, the trio stiffly braved their way to Vange’s room.

  “Whenever I see people we graduated with, I always feel like the same dweeb I was back in high school,” Thad said. “It’s as if the last five years of my life become a nonexistent wasteland.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Ben asked.

  “The past five years of my life have been a nonexistent wasteland,” Chelsea insisted, and she wrapped her arms around her compact frame. “I knew college wasn’t going to be all I’d hoped when my roommate turned out to be a six foot model. Then at my first Womyns Space meeting, I discovered I’d lost my virginity during a date rape. It was all downhill from there.”

  “Like they say – the higher the pedestal, the further the fall,” Thad said.

  Ben nudged Thad and rolled his eyes. Thad was glad his own wasted high school career culminated in his having been voted Most Likely to be Forgotten. Unlike Chelsea, he longed to obliterate any memories of being a teenager, and he only had profuse gratitude that the whole horrible ordeal was behind him. He was still waiting for glory days to pass him by as if they had not already skipped over him.

  Lagging behind, Thad watched Chelsea interrogate Ben.

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “Nope,” Ben lied. He felt for the scrap of paper nestled in the watch pocket of his faded black jeans.

  “Listen, I find it rather unbelievable that, in her last hours, Evangelica was speechless,” Chelsea said doubtfully. “What did she overdose on?”

  “Sleeping pills,” Ben said as they neared Vange’s room.

  “Prescription or over the counter?”

  “Does it really matter? Ordinary ones, I think.”

  “You know, it takes fifty Seconal to kill yourself,” Thad said. They stopped outside the closed hospital door, and he continued animatedly, “If I were going to off myself, I’d buy a whole bunch of heroin and check into a dingy hotel and just lay around in my underwear, all sweaty and gross, bleeding from my pin cushion arms. I’d keep injecting the heroin until I finally choked on my own vomit.”

  Sickened, Chelsea sucked in the sterile ethanol hospital stench and flashed him a look of pure disgust as if she were about to wretch. “Gross, make me barf.”

  “Given it much thought, have you?” Ben asked, equally revolted. “That’s so sick, man.”

  “Ha, psych,” Thad said, but he was the only one laughing.

  The door to Evangelica’s room swung open, and to their surprise they waded into a river of muffled giggles. The nervous laughter ceased when the culprits of joy realized Ben, Chelsea, and Thad’s presence. Acting as if they had been caught executing a mischievous pra
nk, Kate’s father and Vange’s mother let go of one another’s hand. Ed and Shayla looked as if they had only recently crawled out of bed after a late night binge at the local tavern. Ed possessed a hollow confidence punctuated by an ill-fitting cowboy hat, and Shayla’s bloodshot eyes reflected world-weariness as hardened as her Aqua Net encrusted hairdo.

  The three visitors were speechless as they struggled to find an appropriate response to minimize the momentary awkwardness. Shayla focused on the ceiling and Ed Hesse stepped forward. He shook their hands and thanked them for coming as if they had boarded his freighter for a cruise around the Great Lakes. His sailing career had peaked on his having become chief engineer on a Great Lakes freighter; he was accustomed to wresting control of stormy situations at sea.

  “Hello, there,” Chief Hesse bellowed.

  “Hello, Chief,” Ben said.

  “Has there been any change?” Chelsea asked.

  Shayla shook her head and leaned heavily against her sturdy husband. She lovingly placed a hand on his big belly.

  “Nick’s here now,” Ed announced, “he’ll see to it our girls are well taken care of.”

  “From what I’ve seen already, he’s a real miracle worker,” Thad said.

  Shayla nodded and pressed her face into Ed’s thick tattooed bicep. Ed ignored his nephew, and he informed the trio they were hosting an afternoon barbeque at their cottage. Ben, Chelsea and Thad were more than welcome to join in the festivities, which were being hosted for the sake of the various out-of-town guests – mainly a mess of cousins and the wedding attendants, which were mostly made up of Nick’s fraternity brothers and Kate’s ragtag gaggle of gal pals.

  Ed promised, “A fun time will be had by all.”

  “We’ll see,” Ben said.

  “Forgive us if we’re no-shows,” Thad said. “You know how it is when tragedy rears its ugly head.”

  Chelsea hit him in the arm and extended her sympathies to Shayla. Despite the fact she never prayed, Chelsea informed them Evangelica would be in their prayers. Then the oddly contented couple walked away and waited until safely turning the corner to resume holding hands. It was as if they were Kenny Rogers and Dottie West cast as Romeo and Juliet, wallowing in a star-crossed love affair.