Trying the Knot (14 page)

“Probation,” Chelsea repeated, “for
what?”

“Setting fire to an abandoned building on
Main Street,” Thad answered.

They could not understand Kate’s bristling
disapproval. She was acting positively middle-aged.

Ben assured, “It’s just a prank, Kate, nobody
knows except for us.”

The long, cool woman in black said, “I want
to meet this kid, Jack.”

Nick stepped forward, “Kate, you remember my
sister, Nanette.”

“It’s Tristana now,” Nanette corrected. She
spent her formative years locked away in an expensive disreputable
boarding school, which was renowned for accepting mildly disturbed
girls from Nouveau Riche families. Once freed from boarding school,
she enrolled in a university and made it a point never to come back
to Portnorth, except when her presence was required to celebrate
the milestones in her baby brother’s life. She took Kate’s
outstretched hand and announced she currently stayed in Royal Oak,
Michigan.

Unimpressed, Kate turned to Nick and said, “I
can’t believe this. You’re stoned, aren’t you?”

Despite Nick’s protestations to the contrary,
Kate whirled around and marched to the house. She climbed the patio
steps two at a time and disappeared through the second story
sliding-glass doors. Nick offered his guests an apologetic shrug
and sheepishly followed his fuming wife-to-be.

“And everyone thinks I’m uptight,” Chelsea
said loudly. Nick called out he would bring more beer if anyone
wanted any, and they all wanted more. Chelsea muttered, “Such an
accommodating asshole.” She decided she could retrieve the beer
faster, and she jogged to the house after taking drink orders.

By then the Bob Marley CD was over, and the
mood dampened as the three remaining dancers burned palm leaves one
at a time. Thad stood in his bare feet and stoked the fire. Then he
rolled his jeans past his scrawny ankles, and frothy waves lingered
around his feet.

A haze was rolling in off the lake, and it
momentarily obstructed the blazing sun. Ben inched closer to
Tristana, and his mind raced with the possibility of rekindling the
romp they shared at Nick’s graduation party. They eagerly
anticipated Chelsea’s return. She emerged carrying a paper sack and
handed everyone a Molson Ice. From the cupboard, she had stolen
marshmallows, a jar of peanut butter, chocolate bars, and a box of
graham crackers.

Ben laughed, “Sweet, let’s have a sacred palm
burning feast.”

With her mouth full, Chelsea lamented
gleefully, “We need music, to make it even more sacrilegious.”

Wistfully looking toward the lake,
Tristana/Nanette smoothed her hands over her black mock turtleneck
dress and lit a clove cigarette. Unlike Nick, his sister had never
received the memo that her only duty was to be satisfied. In order
to go along to get along in Portnorth, she was to project an image
of healthy small town happiness. Naturally, she perfected a
disposition of disenfranchised detachment. Consistently sullen and
indifferent, she made it a point never to take notice of the world
around her.

Typically nervous and hyper, Ben fidgeted
from side to side and tossed around his long black hair. As
Tristana moved nearer to him, Ben recalled the kinky details of
their naked twister match in Nick’s bedroom. When Tristana was
still Nanette, she had taught him every pleasurable trick in her
book of love torture. Ben studied her bored eyes for any hint of an
invitation to a repeat performance, maybe even on Nick’s old bed
where their original encounter took place.

Tristana turned her full attention to Ben and
ran her fingers enticingly across his thigh. “Tell me more about my
future brother in-law, the arsonist. Is Jack a genuine hick?” she
asked sincerely. “I want to spend time with real, Grade-A hicks.
You people are future suburbanites.” Tristana took Ben’s hand into
her own. “What about Jack? Tell me, is he the real deal?”

“Jack’s my sweet inspiration,” Chelsea cried
out. She took a swig of beer and steadied herself as she threw
another marshmallow at Ben. It soared over his head and rolled past
the bonfire into the endless lake. The waves lapped it out to sea.
“I will quit law school and set fire to all the vacant buildings in
Portnorth in the name of rural development, if only Jack will run
away with me.”

“Not if I get to him first,” Tristana said
competitively.

“I guess it’s good to want things,” Thad said
as if their burgeoning aspirations to become female pedophiles were
not at all unusual. Thad toyed with the fire until the music
resumed, and then he grabbed another beer and attempted to open it,
but it was not a twist-off.

“That’s my microbrew,” Tristana said, taking
the bottle from him. “Does anyone have an opener?”

They looked questioningly at Chelsea, who
seemed like the only one anal retentive enough to carry around an
opener. She admitted, “Well, I do have a Swiss Army knife in my
car.”

Tristana suggested, “Why don’t you be a doll,
and run along and fetch it?”

“I would, but it’s just I’ve never used it
before,” Chelsea said, torn as to whether or not she wanted to
break out the can opener for its maiden voyage. “It’s a gift from
my aunt, she bought it in Europe.”

“How about you and I, together, let’s
devirginize that tool,” Tristana said, but Chelsea failed to move
on cue.

Ben reached over, grabbed the bottle and
opened it with Thad’s lighter.

“Yikes.”

Chelsea hollered drunkenly, “Hey, throw me
another brew-ski”.

“Aim for her head,” Tristana offered as she
kissed Ben’s sore thumb.

After twisting off the cap, Thad handed her a
beer and Chelsea took a long swig before joining the others.
Laughingly, they waved their palms and swayed to the beat of the
music, “The Salvation Army Band played, and the children drank
lemonade, and the morning lasted all day –

“Hey, I remember this song,” Chelsea said,
and all at once she burst, “Life in a Northern Town!” She hummed,
listening for any lyrics she could recall, “In the winter of 1963,
it felt like the world was free –

They continued dancing and swaying to the pop
song from their youth; all the while Chelsea brooded solemnly until
the song was over. Then she said morosely, “It wasn’t until I got
old I realized how depressing that song is.”

“You’re hardly old,” Thad protested, “that’d
make all of us old.”

“Hell, it’d make me a freaking geriatric,”
Tristana said, who was all of twenty-eight.

“I propose another topic to ponder,” Chelsea
began, “I wonder what Portnorth was like back in 1963.”

“Is it even there yet?” Tristana asked
doubtfully.

“Everything must’ve seemed innocent and
untouched back then,” Chelsea said. “Just imagine it.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not,” Tristana said,
shuddering at the thought.

“Then came the dirty hippies.”

“Oh, but they were innocent and untouched, in
their own naive way,” Chelsea said, staring dreamily into the
fire.

“Peace, love, and granola – it all makes me
sick,” Tristana snapped, and Chelsea looked crushed.

“Were there any hippies in Portnorth?” Ben
asked, moving the conversation along.

“Doubt it,” Tristana said, and she added as
if it was at all relevant, “I used to make Nicky play Charlie
Manson and the Creepy Crawlers with me. We’d lay my Barbie Dolls
around the pool outside the dream house, and then we’d attack them
with his GI Joe and Skipper, who doubled as Squeaky Fromme.”

“Hey, I used to imagine my GI Joes were
shell-shocked Vietnam Vets,” Ben said. He felt a renewed sense of
kinship with Tristana, who had forgotten him for the mere thought
of Jack. “They always died in fiery stake outs.”

“Thank God for Desert Storm,” Thad said
drolly, and he confessed, “I used to be afraid of long-haired
freaks. My uncle and his friends would hang around the courthouse
lawn playing Frisbee, smoking pot and drinking PBR. They all
sported handlebar mustaches, but that was back during the
bicentennial.”

“The Spirit of Seventy-Sex,” Tristana
interjected.

“So, I guess they weren’t really
hippies.”

“Just gross cling-ons to a bygone era,”
Tristana said. “All overly hairy men scare the shit out of me.”

“Listen, I wish it were 1963 right now,”
Chelsea said, sadly nostalgic for a time she had never known. “I
wish some worthwhile cultural icons shaped my formative years.”

Chelsea purged them of their mutually
embarrassing Eighties history, which climaxed in a benignly
depressing present – no fun 1991. Belonging to the first generation
expected to achieve less than its parents, they insisted on living
a sort of prolonged adolescence in order to stave off their
inevitable inheritance, which amounted to a stagnant economy and a
calcified conservatism that smacked of an isolationism still
formulated by the Greatest Generation, who still had one racist
foot in the Cold War and the other in the grave; their overly
entitled Baby-Boomer children gladly evaded any responsibility of
leadership to pursue mindless mass consumerism.

Ben assembled a sticky S’more, and he
interjected an “Amen, sister” into her tirade against Reagan, Bush,
Oliver North, Dan Quayle, Trickle Down Voodoo Economics, Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Tristana lit a cigarette, and she said
sarcastically, “But what about all the high fashion, like stirrup
pants, parachute pants, neon tiered skirts, and banana clips?”

Thad imagined them in support groups, trying
to Twelve Step from their shameful pasts all the horrible trends
that invariably became outdated faster than their parents’
overdrawn credit cards had a chance to cool.

“Speaking of outdated fashions,” Tristana
said, eyeballing Ben’s leather coat.

“If the world doesn’t become a better place,
I’ll just hide away in Portnorth forever,” Chelsea vowed.

“I could never put my trust in this small
town,” Tristana said. She lit another clove cigarette and asked,
“This place is literally a pit, what do they do with all the rock
they dig up from that hole in the ground anyway.”

“That despoiling crater is our pride and joy
– our forefathers’ livelihood,” Chelsea said, and she held up four
fingers. “Well, not my forefathers, mind you, but maybe
Evangelica’s four fathers. Ha! Get it?”

“I hate puns.”

“Too funny,” Ben said, and he turned to
Tristana. “I think the limestone is used to make steel, which is no
longer made in Pittsburgh, for all the cars no longer made in
Detroit.”

“So, this town is like at the bottom of the
industrial food chain, and Detroit is at the top,” Tristana said,
and she ashed her cigarette upwind of Chelsea.

“What a horrible thought.” Chelsea grimaced
as she swiped the ashes from her face and fleece. Then she paused
for a few minutes and said, “I’ve got to get the hell out of the
Midwest.”

Hand in hand, Nick and Kate emerged from the
sprawling house and they looked very much like picture perfect
newlyweds. The warm breeze tousled her long dark hair and tugged at
the tails of her chambray shirt. She resembled a young housewife
dressed for a trip to the market while Nick could pass for a
medical resident. They were a sight to behold, and they inspired
envy or revulsion depending on whatever the company they kept. As
they approached the bonfire, it became obvious Kate had been
crying, and Nick unquestionably reassured her with his comforting
words and gentle touch. Their song was playing on the radio, More
Than Words.

They were visibly consumed with one another
to the point of infectiously brimming over. Radiating mutual
adoration, Nick grabbed a couple marshmallows and proceeded to
roast them while Kate prepared graham crackers and broke apart
chocolate bars for the S’mores. She admired his steady command of
any group he encountered, and his ability to remain humble only
compounded her respect for him. Kate could feel Tristana’s brooding
disapproval, but her glowing disposition remained unaffected.
Tomorrow promised to make her the happiest woman above the 45th
Parallel.

Since Kate emerged from the house, Ben put a
respectable distance between himself and Nick’s sister. Jokingly,
he attempted to knock Nick’s roasting stick into the fire, and he
informed, “We were just discussing the relationship between
Portnorth and Detroit.”

“Symbiosis,” said Nick. “You know, the quarry
is only one of three manmade structures you can see from outer
space.”

Tristana said, “No one wants to hear it.”

Nick gave Ben a friendly shove and taunted
him with a flaming torch of marshmallow, but Ben dodged away. “Hey,
man, watch the hair. You always threw the best parties.”

“Remember that one time when we all went
skinny dipping?” Thad asked. “Nick kept spitting out Bacardi 151
and setting it on fire all over the lake.”

“Oh God, then I puked my Bacardi all over the
lake,” Chelsea added.

“And remember the homecoming bash?” Ben
asked.

“Who could forget when Vange kicked off her
shoes when she did the can-can. One of them landed right in the
punch bowl,” Kate said, handing Nick a S’more.

“I always called her WVAN-TV, because she
always acts as if a camera is recording her every move,” Ben said,
“as if she were on MTV’s Real World.”

“So, why isn’t she here to liven things
up?”

In response to Tristana’s questioning gaze,
Thad said flatly, “Coma.”

Heavy silence befell the bonfire, and
everyone remained quiet until Thad said, “Catch her in syndication
because she won’t be doing any live performances for a while.”

“Ha!” Chelsea guffawed, covering her mouth as
beer spewed out. She wiped the liquid from her chin and continued
chortling until everyone joined in except for Kate.

“Girlfriend in a coma?” Tristana asked.

“I know, it’s serious,” Ben added.