Trying the Knot (3 page)

Their second chance meeting since his
returning to Portnorth occurred Easter weekend, prior to his
stumbling on a job at the local newspaper. He ran into her waiting
tables at Norris’ Lounge. He went there seeking Ginny Norris to get
her daughter’s address, but rather than leaving with Chelsea’s
whereabouts he ended up venturing with Vange to a hotel room.

Easter Weekend, 1991

Bored with picking his toenails and fearful
of post-coital intimacy, Thad slunk to an open window where he
stood naked and shivering. Tiny snowflakes drifted in from the
infinite blackness and melted against his skin. Evangelica sat in
bed with one hand on her abdomen, smoking a cigarette and studying
the stained ceiling. Of Portnorth’s four motels, she requested this
beachfront establishment so she could listen to the waves while
thrashing around in the throes of orgasmic ecstasy.

“Without moonlight, a person could get
totally lost in this shit-kicking hellhole,” Thad said. He stood at
the open sliding door to the balcony facing the lake. He marveled
that even in the heart of the small town, night meant complete
darkness. Streetlights did little to assist the moon and stars in
illuminating the middle of nowhere. “What’s this called, Easter
Eve?”

“More like morning. Who cares, it’s just
another depressing holiday,” Vange said disdainfully as she inhaled
on a cigarette. “So, who was she? What’s the story, morning
glory?”

“Who? What?”

“Who was she, oh-unrequited-one? What’s the
story?”

“No one, there’s no story.”

“Bullshit. Every man has a tale to tell, and
usually he thinks I wanna hear it.” She exhaled a plume of blue
smoke, stubbed out the cigarette and snatched her purse up off the
floor. After rummaging around, she retrieved an old metal Band-Aid
box, from which she fished a sandwich baggy. Deftly rolling a joint
with minimal effort, Vange asked, “Who is she, Tadzio, your first
true love – the reason you dropped out of school?”

“I didn’t quit. I left with a BA, Vadge.”

“Then why aren’t you gainfully employed,
Turd”

“English majors are not exactly in high
demand at the local limestone quarry.”

“Then teach,” she shrugged, and licked the
paper to form a seal.

“Teach? Like, I can’t even give out simple
driving directions.”

“Figure it out already.”

“I forgot how many stars you can see this far
north,” he said distantly. The moonlight outlined his pallid body
as he turned away from the sliding screen door to stare blankly at
her. Nearly six years had passed since they attended senior prom
together. She was better looking now than back in high school.
Little wrinkles framed her taunting eyes and her skin was
healthier, but her stomach was slightly swollen.

Currently, she was a small town girl living
alone, at least that is how she referred to herself at The Lounge.
She claimed to have inherited the mantle of town slut, when her
mother reformed after marrying Thad’s widower uncle. His former
homecoming date and newly acquired cousin possessed an overt and
irreverent sensuality that both tempted and repulsed him. But
earlier, cozied up to one another in the restaurant booth, her
thick Medusa tresses and wide, sneering mouth awakened an abject
longing inside him.

Once, he had been too afraid to kiss her
goodnight, and now they had just finished having sex. It was the
second time in as many months they found themselves naked together,
but it didn’t matter – she became someone else when he closed his
eyes and fumbled his way inside of her.

“Nope. There’s no story here, Cousin.”

“Bullshit. Stand there much longer, dickhead,
and you’ll freeze to death,” she said, trying to escape his empty
gaze.

“It’s almost April, but it doesn’t even feel
like spring.”

“You wigging out? Let’s get one thing
straight; I’m not exactly a hooker with the heart of gold. This
isn’t a movie, it’s not Pretty fucking Woman.”

“Sure thing, Vadge.”

“Listen, Turd, I told you not to call me
that.” She lit the joint and hit it deeply. “Come back to bed.”

Shivering, he complied and sat hunched over
at the far corner of the bed. Half wondering how he measured up, he
said, “You’ve slept with all three of us – Nick, Ben and I.”

“So what? There’s nothing to live for now
that I’ve done the nasty with the Three Stooges?” Vange said as she
cocked her head back with laughter. She held the joint out for him.
“C’mere and smoke a little. It’ll chill you out, I promise. It’s
compliments of Marley.”

“Your dealer?”

“My plant.”

He accepted the outstretched joint and
crawled to her, practically setting the bed on fire in the process.
She wrapped his rigid body close, gathering him into the comforts
of her fleshy warmth. In the absence of conversation, she
repeatedly smoothed down his unruly hair and messed it up again.
Uneasy and tense, Thad’s breathing became increasingly calm after
the prolonged silence. Eventually, they groped their way inside one
another. This time sex was not nearly so rough and lasted twice as
long.

Evangelica wrapped the dingy covers around
her, slid off the bed and marched through the early morning haze as
if mimicking a Greek goddess. Thad hurled a pillow against her
unsuspecting back and the placid impact caught her off guard,
causing her to trip over her own feet. She thrust her head forward
and placed the tip of her tongue between her teeth while emitting a
stream of throaty laughter. She cursed him and smiled secretly
while projecting complete ambivalence.

A line from an obscure Aztec Camera song
echoed in his head, “I understand the state you’ve reached of
becoming unreachable.” And he wondered if that is what they had
become, unreachable, remote wreckage cast mercilessly on an
unforgiving shore. Each had done haphazard, bang-up jobs of undoing
their dysfunctional childhoods.

Kneeling before the knotty pine dresser,
Vange searched for the cigarettes he tossed aside earlier. “You
know, you didn’t have to wait until we became family to screw,” she
said, and then she complained until finding the Camels nestled
between his boots. Charitably, she gathered his clothes and dumped
them in a pile on a vinyl chair.

“What’s this?” Vange asked. She swiped up a
silvery-blue necklace that sifted through the pile. A tiny
rhinoceros, how queer.”

“It was a gift.”

“From her?”

“Who?”

“That chick you’re so hung up on. From Li’l
Miss Can’t-Be-Forgotten.”

“I’m not hung up on nobody,” he said too
defensively and rolled over.

Vange theatrically ran her fingers through
her sweaty auburn mane, and she said, “Okay, have it your way. Who
am I to rob you of your delusions?” She sat down, crossed her legs,
and lit a cigarette. Studying her reflection in the mirror, she
grew sick with guilt after each drag.

“Real men usually tell me how beautiful I am
before boinking me,” she said acrimoniously. “And sometimes even
after.”

Unconsciously toying with the necklace, she
turned away from the mirror and focused on his exposed ass. It was
the same sickly color as his chest. She watched as he gathered his
clenched fists under his chest and burrowed his head deep into the
musty pillow. Wrapping herself in the faded, sunflower-splattered
bedspread, she observed, “You never lovingly whispered any corny
one-liners in my ear.”

“Already making demands?”

“Already trying to disappear?”

“What sort of cheesy one-liners do Ben and
Nick cough up?”

“Forget them, okay.”

He remained mute and flopped around. Behind
his shaggy dark bangs, his bile-colored green eyes were clamped
shut; she had told him last night that they were too brooding to be
considered beautiful. His stomach gurgled in agony, and he
attempted to recall one of his deceased aunt’s home remedies. She
could cure any ailment. “Once, I had this infected hangnail, and
when my mum tried to treat it, I screamed for my aunt because she
had these weird, shaman-like qualities.”

Evangelica shook her head incredulously, and
she asked, “Like, what the hell does that have to do with
anything?”

Groaning, he removed the pillow from under
his head and placed it strategically under his aching gut.

“I guess nothing compares to Li’l Miss
Can’t-Be-Forgotten,” she whispered, and she dropped the necklace on
the knotty-pine dresser. “What’s her real name?”

“Who?”

“Your dead aunt, for Chrissakes,” she said.
“You know damned well who.”

“Hester.” He smirked despite the pain in his
gut. “Hester Prynne.”

“Too funny,” she said dryly. “Want to take a
shower?”

Silence was her answer.

“Stay here and dream away, lover boy, but
I’ll tell you one thing, your hospitality really leaves something
to be desired.” Standing in the doorway to the bathroom, she
crossed her arms to constrain her overflowing breasts. “It’s better
to have lost in love, than to have never loved at all.”

“If you say so, Cousin.”

“Stop being such a pathetic dweeb. It must’ve
been love, but it’s over now. Be grateful and get over it.”

Thad laughed maliciously as he asked, “Which
is it, you’ve never loved anyone, or has no one ever loved you?
Who’s being pitiful now, Cousin?”

She cast him a look of pure contempt and
disappeared inside the tiny bathroom. Soon after he heard water
beating against the metallic shower stall. Thad imagined her
blocking out the impoverished surroundings with her feet recoiling
on a rust-stained bathmat home to a mossy substance, lukewarm water
trickling over breasts and down between thighs, and clenched hands
trying to avoid touching the filmy curtain. But it was not Vange he
imagined naked.

Depressed out of half-consciousness, Thad
reached for the cigarettes and lit one while gazing out at the pine
trees along Lake Huron. There was something peaceful about the
undisturbed northern countryside. He had never noticed until last
summer while separated from Her. It was unbelievably predictable
the way his thoughts drifted to Her while sitting on the beach
watching a setting sun dance across a glistening lake or when
running across a freshly mown lawn. With Her constantly on his
mind, he took a blue note of all the things previously taken for
granted. The separation heightened his lack of place in the world.
Even after Her I’ve-found-someone-new-but-let’s-still-be-friends
phone call, he continued to appreciate those understated moments of
isolation, but then they only reminded him of how alone he was.

Since their separation, he put his life on a
dusty shelf and he had forgotten exactly where he misplaced it;
moreover, couldn’t generate any excuse to reclaim it. Eventually,
Thaddeus, awoke too weary to remind himself it was a new day, a
fresh start, and time to build new memories, which would digress
into futile attempts at self-induced amnesia. The gray days blurred
together, and indifference blanketed his existence.

Jolted by a familiar burning sensation, he
mashed the cigarette against the bed frame. He felt more out of
touch than ever. She still issued him free rides aboard a
misery-go-round of self-doubt. Her whispers echoed, and Her crystal
eyes pierced, but too much time had passed to remember Her with
such immediacy and longing. If only he had inspired Her to wait
until autumn when they should have been reunited. His dying aunt
was the reason he had returned home at all last summer.

Maybe it was easy for Her to forget. They
were from two different worlds. She was a hardened suburbanite with
no discernible past, and he was an alienated small town hick who
ached for a time when he could no longer remember everything he
wished to forget.

Having forgotten he just stubbed one out,
Thad toyed with the idea of lighting another cigarette. His
attention fixated on the old vanity mirror. His scrawny reflection
was not dissimilar to the emaciated Jesus hanging a little too
languorously on a crucifix above the bed. He envied Christ’s
washboard abs and slowly became vaguely aroused by his own glaring
nakedness.

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.