Trying the Knot (15 page)

“I really hope she pulls through,” Thad
concluded, and the three of them could not help but erupt in a fit
of hysterics.

“You guys are cruel,” Kate said, suppressing
her own mounting laughter. Her seriousness only made everyone laugh
harder. Ben threw a marshmallow at her and jokingly called her a
hypocrite. Eventually, Kate could not contain her own giggles, and
she pelted the crowd with fluffy ammunition.

“Start burning these palms. I don’t want
anyone to see the evidence all over the beach,” Nick said. He
grabbed a handful and threw them into the fire. “Thankfully, I
don’t have any criminal siblings, just Nanette here –

“Tristana,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” Nick said. “Hey, Kate, does your
family know what time the rehearsal is?”

“I left Jack a note,” Kate replied as she
warded off Ben’s onslaught of palms. “Should I call the bar and
remind my dad, or just hope he forgets?”

Nick failed to suppress his disapproval, and
Ben sang out obnoxiously, “Kate Hesse’s brother is a punk and her
daddy’s a drunk.”

Chelsea doubled over, and once again foam
shot out of her straight little nose. “To my best friends in the
whole world,” she cried out, toasting them. She then took another
pull from the beer. “I love you guys.”

Tristana lit yet another clove cigarette and
said, “I swear I’ll leave if you haul out the yearbooks and start
reminiscing.”

Chelsea slurred, “Don’t be tho thynical,
right Thad?”

“She’s drunk,” Thad said. He poked at her
with a stick, and they all watched Chelsea topple over in a fit of
giggles. After she crawled to her feet, she staggered behind
overgrown yew bushes to throw up.

As they yelled words of encouragement if not
exactly support, Kate said softly, “She still does this every
time.”

Nick observed, “She has a better disposition
when drunk.”

“Yeah, I can actually stand her,” Ben
added.

“For instant personality, just add alcohol,”
Thad said.

“You’d know firsthand,” Tristana said

“Maybe she’s an alcoholic,” Kate said
worriedly.

“She doesn’t have any tolerance, that’s all,”
Nick corrected.

Looking a little green, Chelsea returned from
the bushes and asked for anything to drink besides beer. Thad
fetched a cold Faygo Red Pop from the walkout basement and returned
out of breath. Chelsea drank it slowly and leaned against him for
support. She smelled faintly of beer, sweat, and Lake Huron. He
thought the not-altogether unpleasant aroma should be bottled and
sold as her signature scent – Chelsea’s Morning Dew.

“Would you like another S’more?” Kate asked
her future husband.

“No thanks,” he replied, chomping on a
handful of chocolate. Unconcerned he asked, “Do you have any idea
where our wedding attendants are?”

“At the cottage. We’re supposed to stop out
there,” Kate said, disinterested in the idea.

“Maybe I should check to make sure they’re
still safe and relatively sober,” Nick said annoyed as he gathered
up the last of the palms.

“Wait, I want one, please,” Chelsea grabbed a
palm from his hand, and she watched him pass one to each one of his
guests as a keepsake to commemorate the occasion. “What a great guy
– always thinking of everyone, never leaving anyone out.”

“I’ve never left you out, have I, Chels?”

“Certainly not,” Chelsea said. She flashed
him a forced knowing smile, but Nick chose to ignore her.

“Hey, give me two,” Ben demanded. “Vange will
want a stolen palm when she’s out of the hospital.”

Nick looked doubtful, but he passed Ben two
anyway. To celebrate the once in a lifetime palm-burning bash, Nick
pulled out a bundle of firecrackers from his pocket, and he
requested everyone take a step backward. Instead, they all inched
closer.

Nick cleared his throat and announced, “Now
for the grand finale.”

“In honor of what?” Tristana asked.

“Vange,” Ben suggested.

“Something more universal,” Chelsea said,
feeling left out.

Nick tossed the last of the fronds into the
flames, and he ceremoniously held out the firecrackers for Ben to
light. Kate winced, backed away and plugged her ears.

“How about in honor of a generation so
pathetic, it’s doomed to be less successful than any of its
predecessors,” Thad said, and Tristana nodded in agreement.

“Real cheery,” Ben said as he slugged Thad’s
arm.

“Rephrase it,” Chelsea insisted. She thought
for a moment, and Ben waited to ignite the illegal explosives.
“Let’s see, how about in honor of an irreverent and incongruous
age.”

Grinning, Nick added, “Or as Thad says, the
pathetic generation.”

Ben lit a long wick, and Nick tossed the
firecrackers near the bonfire. They backed up in unison and awaited
the festive bangs. Deafening silence erupted in the wake of the
explosions. When the air cleared of gunpowder, smoke, and noise,
Kate suggested, “Hey, how about a trip to the hospital to check on
Vange while Nick goes to the cottage?”

“That doesn’t really sound like fun,”
Tristana said.

“I’m supposed to take Alexa to the tailor to
get the dress altered,” Thad remembered, checking his watch.

Chelsea offered, “I can take you since your
car is dead in the Derry Kafe’s parking lot.”

“Don’t look my way, I don’t even know her,”
Tristana said.

“Okay, I’m getting the picture,” Kate said
disappointed, and finally she turned to Ben.

“I’ve got to meet Nyda Czerwinski, to
estimate the cost of painting her house,” Ben said. “Maybe next
time.”

“They’re painting the house?” Kate asked. She
wondered what other ways the new owners were transforming her
childhood home.

“Yup, holy roller red with bible belt blue
trim,” Ben joked. He smiled awkwardly and offered her a sympathetic
hug.

“Considering the accident and all, maybe it’s
a good idea if Jack doesn’t help you with that job. It might make
Nyda uncomfortable,” Kate suggested.

“What accident?” Tristana asked annoyed.
Small town life seemed to her to be a series of inside jokes and
highly unclassified information. Glaring at Kate and Nick, she
wrapped her arm around Ben. “No one tells me anything around
here.”

No one was about to start as they all ignored
her while she lit one more clove cigarette. Kate finished gathering
up the empty beer bottles and snack stuff, and she walked alone to
the house without looking back. She did not need their company; she
merely thought it would be nice to take a group trek to visit
Vange. Kate was not sure why she felt compelled to visit her
stepsister’s bedside, especially since they were no longer close
and had nothing in common. She said she did not want to think of
Evangelica as being alone, or maybe it was a way to fill the
nagging void within her.

chapter eight

“If Evangelica hadn’t really wanted to die,
don’t you think she would have called Ben, or you, even me, if she
had to?” Chelsea asked. “Wouldn’t she have tried to get a hold of
at least one of us?”

“I don’t know.” Thad was not so in tune with
the suicidal mind he could answer such a hypothetical question.

He tapped his foot, not to the beat of the
music but rather with impatience. Chelsea drove her ecru 1972
Malibu with typical grandmotherly caution. She did not have it in
her to be a female Evil Kenievil, plus it was a gift from her
father and those were few and far between.

Chelsea chose this slightly buzzed moment to
get up close and personal; she focused her rapt attention on him by
kept her eyes off the road for what seemed like a dangerous length
of time. “What’re you thinking? Are you really happy?”

Slightly taken aback as to the point of her
inquiry, he placed his hand instinctively on the dash. Although she
was motoring along at a relatively slow speed, she had not bothered
to look at the road for several blocks.

“Really, being the local newspaper man?
You’ve always hated this town –

“No, not the town itself, just everybody in
it,” Thad interrupted jokingly as he pointed in order to save the
life of a random pedestrian.

Chelsea swerved nonchalantly and asked, “So,
what are you still doing here, living with your parents, lingering
like bad morning breath?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know? Anything – anything at
all?” she asked exasperated. “There are two types of people,
Thaddeus. People who value things and people who value doing
things.”

“I guess you mistook me for a person of
action.”

“So, you’re satisfied being a fledgling
nobody?”

“It’s a good time to be back, Chels, that’s
all,” he said defensively. “With Alexa starting her senior year
next week, and Vange being in a coma and all.”

“Make me barf. Let’s take off for San
Francisco tomorrow. It’ll be an adventure,” she said.

“Would I have to be Thelma, or could I be
Louise?”

She stopped the car in front of the boutique
and waved at Alexa, who stood forlorn in the front window. She
disregarded his reference to the suicidal feminists and said, “I
have an Aunt who lives on the East Bay. She could harbor us like
fugitives.”

“I’ll think about it,” Thad said, with little
intention of doing any such thing.

“Hey, did you ever call the girl you’re so in
love with?”

Thad sighed as he opened the car door.

“That’s what I figured,” she said gloating.
“Do you still love her? Don’t you have any dreams?”

“I did,” he said and quickly exited the car.
“Die young and leave a beautiful corpse, but it looks as if Vange
might beat me to it.”

Still barefoot and carrying his shoes, he was
thankful to be alive and outside the vehicle. He pulled open the
paint-chipped boutique door. Chelsea called after him in small
worried voice, and he turned to face her.

“I’ll see you later, at the church, okay?”
she said pointlessly.

As she slowly drove away, Thad wondered why
she was acting so strange. He hoped she too was not also
considering killing herself. A series of copycat suicides from the
same bridal party would merit national media coverage. Thad
imagined the matron of honor, who spent last night with Ben, would
be the next to off herself in the tragic chain of events. He would
win a Pulitzer Prize for capturing the entire macabre weekend on
film. He imagined caskets lining the Catholic school gymnasium,
like in the 1950s when the Carl D. Bradley freighter sank, drowning
a quarter of the townsmen with it.

The lights beamed brightly inside the cozy,
rosy smelling boutique, and they warmed him like a toaster oven set
on low. Against the sapphire blue sky, Alexa Feldpausch squinted
and shifted uncomfortably on a little red stool. Although her
tangled hair hung past her shoulders, she looked especially lean
and unfeminine in the gaudy bridesmaid gown. She looked like a
skater punk dressed in drag about to burst into tears.

“I’m a pink cow,” she protested. Under her
breath, she cursed the person responsible for her predicament.

The round little Polish seamstress’ fingers
fumbled with the excess material around Alexa’s hipless midsection.
Although her mouth clamped onto several pins, the woman managed
groans of sympathy as she inspected the tall girl’s less than
perfect body. The tight, strapless bodice gave way to a full skirt,
which would have accentuated Evangelica’s hourglass figure, but it
simply hung limply on Alexa and rendered her shoulders more broad
than usual.

“This isn’t going to work,” Alexa said. “It
was a bad idea for me to stand in for Vange. Jesus Christ, she’s
got the body of Marilyn Monroe, and I’m built like –

“A quarterback? Watch your mouth.”

“Oh, eat shit and die, Thaddeus,” Alexa
mumbled, and the round grandmother lost a few pins. Alexa jumped
off the stool and gazed out at the desolate street. “This sucks!
Tell Kate to find someone else to stand up in her stupid
wedding.”

“You don’t look half bad,” he lied.
“Honest.”

“I look like total shit. What’s this hot neon
pink color called, anyway – Cap’n Crunch Berry? Didn’t Kate get the
memo, neon is so out.”

“It’s fuchsia, dear,” Mrs. Rotundowski said
gently, and she placed a comforting hand on Alexa’s shoulder. “It’s
quite a popular color these days. Trust me, we’ll make it work.
After a few nips here and tucks there and there, this dress will
feel custom made. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

“Except I look like a big ugly float,” Alexa
said with resignation. With the help of Rotundowski, she sadly
resumed her elevated roost on the stool. “Doesn’t Kate realize big
tacky weddings are so five years ago? Christ, this is the Nineties,
Dynasty went off the air ages ago.”

“It’s only for one day,” Thad said, trying to
sound sympathetic because she really did look awful. “What about
shoes? Have you tried on Vange’s heels?”

Alexa smoothed the dress flat against her and
looked down at her own exposed bare feet, which looked all of their
size nine. The hem ended at the middle of her calves. The three of
them shuddered at the thought of her feet stuffed into high heels.
She exhaled deeply, which caused her curly bangs to bounce off her
jutting cheekbones. It looked as if she were about to burst into
tears.

“How can we hide them?” Alexa asked while
wiggling her toes.

“With the length of this dress and your
height, I think you could get away with wearing tennis shoes,” said
Mrs. Rotundowski. “No one will see your shoes with this full
skirt.”

“But it’s so short.”

“Tea length for the junior bridesmaid,” Thad
said.

“I’m going to let out the bottom, and we’ll
make it a smidgen too long.”

Thad thought his sister looked a mess at
best. He only hoped no one else noticed, but at that moment Jack
sped by on his BMX bike.