Trying the Knot (25 page)

Jane refilled her tall glass and took another
guzzle of bubbly. She no longer had the stomach for her former
brother in-law and his new wife. They looked like a demented Roy
Rogers and Dale Evans.

In an orderly efficient manner, the
waitresses distributed all the dinners except one. It was Kate’s
idea to give their guests the option of the two cheapest items on
the menu, smoked loin or deep fried cod, but neither dish appealed
to Chelsea, who demanded she be brought a meatless morsel. Chelsea
considered it a personal offense her own mother refused to place
anything on the menu that did not at one time possess fur or
scales, and she would not stop harping on the subject. Thad
suggested she eat a salad.

“Salad!” she yelled. “I’ve been eating
lettuce in this joint for the past 20 years. I’m sick of salad. My
mother’s deliberately torturing me into eating meat, and you’re
telling me to eat a salad? Do you consider salad sustenance?”

“Well, no.”

“I should hope not,” she slurred. “I’m
totally plastered. I could drive away from here and careen my car
into a family of six, all because all I’ve ever eaten in this
slaughterhouse is rabbit food.”

Jane Feldpausch offered Chelsea her dinner
roll and exchanged a wide-eyed glance with her daughter. Alexa
pushed her plate toward Chelsea, and taunted, “Try the smoked
loin.” Under the table, her foot entwined its way around Thad’s
ankle. “It’s the other white meat, and it’s a real pretty color, it
matches your shirt.”

“Don’t you carnivores get it?” Chelsea asked.
“All I want is a vegetarian entree, is that so wrong?”

As if dropped from heaven above, a waitress
plopped a plate down in front of the incredulous dinner guest.

“What is this?” Chelsea demanded, “yet
another one of my mother’s unholy attempts to thwart my life and
ridicule me?”

“Nope, just French onion soup with garlic
bread and mozzarella. Ginny prepared it especially for you,” the
waitress said. Then she set down another dish before an outraged
Chelsea. “For dessert, cottage cheese on a bed of lettuce, topped
with a peach half and maraschino cherry.”

“Is this a sick joke? I’m a Vegan!” Chelsea
roared loudly for everyone at the table to hear. “Hasn’t anyone
around here ever heard of a macrobiotic diet?”

From a few seats away, Tristana announced
facetiously, “I’m also a vegetarian. I don’t eat any meat
whatsoever, except for Notdogs.”

Chelsea pushed the plate away and demanded in
a fit of rage to the waitress, who stood back amused, “Get rid of
this garbage and bring me my mother.”

Before the plate could be whisked away, Thad
speared the peach half with his fork and stuffed it into his mouth.
With her napkin, Alexa dabbed at the juice dribbling down his
chin.

“Really, dear, you shouldn’t take food so
personally,” Mrs. Feldpausch said lightly, and then she asked Thad
for a cigarette. When Alexa pulled her shirt collar over her nose,
Jane shook her head in dismay. “You kids today are so weird, I
can’t stand it. I’ll be at the bar, where I can drink myself into
tomorrow.”

As she moved her chair away from the table,
eager guests clanked their silverware against their glasses, and an
all too familiar voice bellowed, “Another toast!” Rolling her eyes
at her ex-brother in-law, Jane plunked back down in her seat and
buried her face in her hands.

“Oh, just great, here we go again,” Jane
remarked, slumping in her chair.

Ed Hesse stood in the middle of the room, and
he prepared to make yet another toast in honor of his mortified
daughter. It seemed to Jane many sailors, including her own father,
lacked the most basic, everyday social graces required to conduct a
normal existence on land. Twenty-odd years ago, she purposefully
steered clear of the seafaring breed in her search for a husband,
who was presently at home where he should be in front of the
television.

Openly disgusted, Jane watched Chief Hesse
with the too-fresh memory of his treatment of her dying sister.
They had called him ship-to-shore and begged him to get off the
freighter because his family needed him. It was not until after
finding the courage in the bottom of a fifth of scotch, he
staggered to his oblivious wife’s deathbed. Kaye passed away the
next day, and a year later Ed was married to the bimbo presently
hanging off his arm.

“A toast to my lovely wife,” Ed chuckled. “I
never knew married life could be so marvelous.” Champagne bottle
upraised, he searched for Shayla. This time, Nick had the honors of
capturing the ineloquent, tasteless toastmaster on video. Nick
scanned the room for Kate, who had momentarily slipped away, and he
was grateful she was spared this latest tacky display.

With his arm around Shayla, Ed called out,
“We’re not losing a daughter, we’re gaining free medical care – Ha
ha ha!”

Jane Feldpausch shook her head
incomprehensibly at the polite smattering of laughter and applause,
and she made her way to the bar where she indulged in a shot of
whiskey. Smoking without interference, she glanced up at the TV
screen and watched CNN coverage of a Bangladesh cyclone that had
wiped out a mere 125,000 people. That was approximately 50
Portnorths. She was sorry there was no chance of catastrophic
weather annihilating her surroundings. When finished with her
cigarette, she made a beeline for the restroom, where she found
Shayla picking at a blemish in the mirror. The bright fluorescent
lights enhanced the dull ash tint of her hair, and her heavy black
eyeliner emphasized the sagging bags beneath her half-closed
eyes.

Looking haggard, Shayla lifted a burning
cigarette off the sink and puffed deeply. She pointed at the stall
with her thumb and said, “Someone’s on the pot.”

“I’ll come back later,” Jane said. She
paused, and then added, “I’m sorry about your daughter being in the
hospital. I hope everything works out for Vangie.”

“Should I be touched by sympathy?” Shayla
asked loudly. “I know you all think I’m a gold digger.”

“Let’s not go there,” Jane said. She treated
her dead sister’s replacement like a kind of aberrant freak of
nature and refused to get too close.

“I might’ve been a tramp once, but at least
the plumbing worked, and I was woman enough to birth a child,”
Shayla shrilly referred to Jane’s scarred ovaries. In reference to
her adopted brood, Shayla asked, “You’re kids don’t much look like
you, do they?”

“This is no place for a fight,” Jane said.
She backed away and eyed the occupied toilet stall.

“I’m not fighting with you, but as the new
Mrs. Edward G. Hesse, I’m telling you something here and now,”
Shayla said haughtily. Her words bounced off the bathroom tiles.
“Yous people act like I’m scum of the earth.”

“It’s not true.”

“If you think I’m so bad, just ask Ed who he
was balling when Saint Kaye was suckin’ her last breaths. If you
only knew, you’d get down on your knees and thank God Almighty he
married me!”

“So crude,” said Jane. “So vile.” Before she
could rip Shayla to shreds, the stall door flung open wide, and
Kate emerged with the back of her hand covering her mouth. Kate
looked at neither her aunt nor her stepmother, and she fled the
restroom as fast as her feet could carry her.

Shayla’s sallow cheek felt the stinging blow
long after Jane’s reflexes overpowered her rationality.

Mountainous and bearded, Ed Hesse maneuvered
himself around the room while skillfully balancing a cigar between
his teeth and carrying the video camera over his shoulder. He
towered above the crowd, and his booming voice frightened everyone
he snuck up behind with his recording equipment. “Gotta get you for
pros-pear-tee sake, aye,” was one line catch phrase with which he
coerced his unsuspecting subjects into posing for the video camera.
He scanned the room for his daughter, but she was nowhere to be
found, and he figured she was hiding behind her out-of-own
guests.

“Hey, let’s get Friar Tuck on film.” Chief
Hesse aimed his camera at Father Tim and commanded, “Say,
Th-th-that’s all folks!”

The priest smiled and waved politely.

When Ed turned the camera loose on his future
son-in-law and requested that he record another toast, Nick
replied, “Dad, too much of a good thing would only spoil them.”

Chief Hesse bypassed the snooty
out-of-towners to the dismay of the familiar faces that were no
longer related to him. Whenever Ed neared their table, Alexa
sniffed and said, “Is that Scent o’ Farm I smell?” And mistaking
them for friendly locals, Ed swung by often.

Attempting to encourage Alexa to spew soda
from her nose, Tristana insisted they were related. “He’s your
uncle.”

“Hell no,” Alexa said. “He’s my dead aunt’s
husband.”

“Well, I imagine the camera loves you,”
Tristana said, waving to summon Ed back over.

“All right!” Chief Hesse boomed. “A working
man has come to slave for the camera.”

“Hey, dad,” Jack waved. He let his father
affectionately rough him up. While being manhandled, Jack
enthusiastically whispered to Alexa, “Dude, meet me outside in 30
minutes.”

“I’ve already extended her an invitation,”
Tristana said, and she gave Alexa a little wink.

On his way back to the kitchen, Jack noticed
a monster truck patrolling the restaurant parking lot. The
Czerwinski twins were home on leave from the Army. They had
forewarned him after Jule’s funeral the next time they came to town
they would avenge their sister’s death. He shuddered to imagine
what injuries the newly buff twin brothers would inflict on
him.

Trembling fearfully, Jack gave his father’s
camera one last wave and returned to work. Chief Hesse carried his
camcorder wherever he went, much like hunters carried their guns in
racks fixed to the rear windows of their pickup trucks. There was
nothing he enjoyed more than to cruise a country byway with a
six-pack, filming graceful deer herds sweeping across autumn
fields. Not all his video footage was so highbrow, for he also had
high hopes of one day catching a spectacularly funny sequence to
submit to America’s Funniest Home Videos. One time he thought he
obtained it when he videotaped a cow unloading on Shayla’s red
stiletto shoe, and she failed to notice until it was too late. A
surefire award winner was lost due to a low battery, but that
happened back when he was still an amateur.

“Dance a Polka for the camera, pretty
lady!”

Ginny Norris jumped, startled by the loud
voice still echoing in her sore ear. “Geez, you scared the hell out
of me.”

“You’re too pretty not to film for
pros-pear-tee sake,” Chief Hesse complimented.

Ginny groaned. “Oh nice, I’ve become a sex
symbol for old men with video cameras.”

“Young men, too,” Ben added. A wicked grin
spread across his face as he fondly remembered the last time he and
Ginny videotaped fornicating against the old, swing-set slide
decaying in the Dooley’s fenced in backyard.

“Oh, stop your needless torture.” Ginny
laughed heartily and flashed Ben a look of invitation as she
excused herself to check for more lettuce in the walk-in cooler.
The salad bar needed replenishing.

Ben, under the guise of having to use the
restroom, followed her inside the refrigerated room. She playfully
slipped her fingers between the buttons of his fly and pulled him
close. Her tongue slid from his adams apple up his neck and over
the slight trace of his Fu Manchu whiskers. He tongued her mouth
vigorously, and she moaned, “You make me so crazy.” Her whole body
was instantly swept up in a state of frenzied arousal, and she
collapsed against his compact frame. With the fingers of one hand
entwined in hers, he massaged her buttocks with his free hand.
Ginny gasped and hungrily sought out his pierced nipple. He undid
his pants as she melted, but the sound of someone entering the
walk-in cooler fearfully froze her close to him.

“Um, oh, uh, oh,” Kate sputtered shakily.
“I’m so sorry.” She remained immobile and looked as if she had fled
a gruesome crime scene. Ben immediately reached out to comfort her,
but she shirked away and backed closer to the door.

“I’m so sorry,” Kate repeated needlessly. She
scurried from the chill of the icy tomb and collided with her
stepmother, who had stumbled wildly from the bathroom.

“That bitch hit me!” Shayla exploded, rubbing
her red cheek. She mindlessly toppled Kate over sideways, and
before she could regain her balance, she bumped into Father Tim as
he was putting on his coat. The priest grabbed hold of Shayla and
suggested she calm down, but she shook free of his grasp and
slugged him until he staggered backwards.

As she hurled herself through the swinging
restroom door, Shayla screamed viciously, “Who the hell do you
think you are? I’ll clobber you, fucking cunt!”

Shayla’s vehement assertion summoned a number
of the guests to the small intersection outside the kitchen and
coat rack between the walk-in cooler and the restrooms. On the
floor, Kate sat crouching among the coats, and she drew her knees
to her chest. Shaking inconsolably, it was as if she was suffering
from an epileptic seizure to the beat of the yelps and shrieks
echoing from the restroom. As an oblivious mob encircled around
her, Kate curled up in a fetal position amongst a sea of ankles.
The crowd stepped past Kate as they curiously peered into the
bathroom to catch a glimpse of the unfolding fiasco.

Unaware of the melodrama transpiring in the
toilet, Chelsea stormed around the corner and pushed her way
through the crowd. She also failed to notice Kate curled up in a
ball on the floor as she stumbled over on her way inside the
walk-in refrigerator.

“Mother, I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,”
Chelsea called out, watching her own breath stream out of her like
a fire breathing dragon.

Ginny replied nervously, “But, honey, you
don’t eat meat, remember?”