Trying the Knot (39 page)

The streets were as lifeless as a hosed-down
after hours morgue. Splicing the silence, Alexa raged on, “I wish
we’d find that bitch face down in a ditch.” The car hydroplaned
passed boarded up buildings and through the town’s only traffic
light. Rather than locating her mother, Alexa was on a mission
dislodge her very being from the past as if it was a joint she
could pop out of place. They whizzed past a faded sign boasting
politely, “Thank you for visiting Portnorth, Limestone Capital of
the World.”

Heading away from town, the Datsun chugged
onto the highway and sped along the vast waters of Lake Huron.
Perhaps they would find their mother washed up on shore in a heap
on the beach.

Self-inflicting an excruciating pain, Thad
pressed the rhino charm between his thumb and middle finger. The
tiny metal horn burrowed into his skin. How had he come to
repossess this gift from his only girlfriend? They had said their
final good-byes months ago in a cold impersonal stairwell. She had
slipped the necklace around his neck and let her fingers trace the
V that it made as it dangled below his collarbone. It was a trite
notion, but Thad had always imagined he would marry the first girl
he ever made love to, and he told himself that is why was he never
pursued any local Portnorth girls— for fear that such drivel were
actually possible. Even now, Thad still believed he would marry the
first girl he ever had sex with, and he wondered what she was doing
now three hundred miles away while he was searching the dead of the
night for his drunk mother.

“Is that her, over there in a pile?” Alexa
asked hopefully. Scrunching up her unibrow, she pointed to the curb
across from their parent’s quaint house on the corner.

“It’s only trash.”

“Same difference,” she quipped. “Let her
sleep in the streets. She can rot in hell for all I give a flying
fuck.”

“Circle the block one more time, Al.”

She did so without protest. As they rounded
the corner, they noticed a door was open to a sprawling old garage
behind their house. The enormous structure was now storage, but it
once belonged to a gas company. Longhaired, grimy gas guys used to
cruise around the neighborhood in their monstrous gray trucks. Back
then, they spent more time cruising the local high school parking
lot for girls to party with in their hotel rooms than searching for
gas. Presently, someone had opened the doublewide garage door and
wandered inside, perhaps looking for the remnants of a long
forgotten good time.

“This can’t really be happening, tell me this
is only a bad dream,” Alexa said. She stopped the car at the end of
the driveway, not far from the open door.

“This nightmare is your life.”

“Should we leave her here and go call the
police?”

Their squat mother had trapped herself in the
sprawling innards of the garage, and she now crawled mindlessly out
from the blackness toward the headlights. Blinded, she was a maimed
animal grasping for the white light at the end of the proverbial
tunnel. From the bleeding gash above her left eye and the dirt
smudged across her clothing, Thad deduced she had been fumbling
through the cluttered darkness for no small amount of time.

Stopped in the driveway, Alexa realized how
truly pitiful the sight was before them, and her foot instinctively
pressed on the gas pedal. The Datsun lunged forward and rammed into
a pile of old tires, which toppled over and besieged their mother
with bouncing abandon.

Thad slugged her on the arm and yelled, “What
the hell’s wrong with you? You want to add matricide to list of
character defects?”

“Screw you.” Alexa focused her wild gray eyes
on the wreck of a woman who stumbled blindly toward the glowing
beams of the headlights. Her square jaw was clenched. At that
moment, Jane Feldpausch had the same effect on her daughter as a
lone, unsuspecting soccer ball in the backyard – it was too
tempting not to run fast and give it a hard kick. Alexa put the car
in reverse and once again attempted to mow down the brightly
illuminated road kill.

“Are you crazy?” asked Thad. He grabbed hold
of the steering wheel and swerved the car from its murderous
course. The Datsun veered sharply to the left and collided into the
garage. Once the sound of crunching rusted out metal subsided, the
car rattled to a stop.

“Christ, Al, get a grip!”

She hung her head low, and her dark shoulder
length hair fell forward. She muttered coldly, “You shoulda let me
kill her.”

A smattering of litter trailed behind him as
he exited the car. With all the gracelessness of someone feigning
sobriety, he fetched his mother and stuffed her into the front
seat.

Oblivious, Jane Feldpausch sat ignoring the
matted wound on the side of her head and drying blood trickling
from the cut above her eye. The scratches across her cheek looked
painfully raw, but she appeared numb. Thad wondered if the
all-consuming anguish ripping at her insides outweighed the pain of
all else. Her defunct ovaries had squelched her existence of any
sort of life-purpose.

“Should we split the loot in her purse?”

“Let’s just get her home to bed,” Thad said
wearily.

As he inspected the gash in his mother’s
head, he impulsively licked a smear of clotted redness from his
thumb. He half expected his mother to taste of alcohol. Jane
blathered nonsense while Alexa attempted to revive the dead
automobile. Finally, she ordered Thad into the driver’s seat so he
could put the car in gear and steer. She pushed the car homeward
wearing Tristana’s A-line faux fur coat.

Once in the house, Jane charged to the
refrigerator and cracked open a can of Miller High Life. She raised
the beer to her lips with two hands and guzzled it down as if
starring in her very own TV movie of the week. She pressed the cold
can against her lacerated face and then flung it across the kitchen
as she flew into a rage.

“Go-ta bed! Where’s your father?”

“He’s out looking for you.”

“Don’t lie to protect him. I know where he
is.”

“He’s out looking for the paycheck you lost,”
Alexa said.

“He’s with her!” screamed Jane. “He’d screw a
snake if he could.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“See how she stands up for her precious
daddy,” Jane said. “Like father like daughter.”

Alexa’s voice cracked with regret as she
said, “I wish you were dead instead of Aunt Kaye.”

Jane lovingly whispered her dead sister’s
name, but then she exploded crazy mad. Her eyes became two slits of
hatred, and her lips disappeared into crinkled slits. “You don’t
know nothin’. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a sister. I
know, I’ve been there!”

“She’s sorry,” said Thad. “Al, say you’re
sorry.”

“She’s sorry?”

“Say it!”

“She’s sorry?!”

“Ok, I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry! That’s right, I’m
barren, and she got cancer,” said Jane, and she covered her mouth.
Unsure whether her mother was going to vomit or cry, Alexa dodged
out of the way and backed into Thad. Jane, ever a pillar of
strength, fought tears. “I’ll tell you one thing, little girl, I
loved my sister.”

“Then why did she hate you?”

“She was jealous! She was living a lie! If
she were alive today, would her daughter be marrying for money, and
would her son be a juvenile delinquent? Would her husband be with
that whore?” Spittle showered past her lips as she emphasized, “I
loved her, loved her, do you understand?”

“So what? You’re crazy, and she was a
miserable bitch,” Alexa snarled. “I’m only sorry she’s dead, and
you’re not!”

Jane snatched up a half-full glass of lime
Kool-Aid from the kitchen counter and tossed the contents into her
daughter’s face. Alexa automatically grabbed the plastic pitcher
and hurled it at her mother. Falling to her knees, Jane was blinded
as the fluorescent green liquid ran freely down her face, unlike
the blood coagulating around her cuts. Dripping green and gasping
for breath, Jane struggled to her feet, but her hand felt something
damp. She held up a pair of green-stained underwear.

“Whose are these?”

“Mine,” Thad lied.

“Liar!” countered Jane. She did their laundry
with religious devotion and knew better. She pointed at him
flustered until she could manage to expel the words, “Boxers, not
briefs.”

“I’m into tighty-whities now. They’re all the
rage.”

“Don’t you cover up for that tramp!”

Hoping to appease their mother, Alexa said
off-handedly, “Okay, they’re mine. I got sopping wet in the
rainstorm, and had to change my clothes in a hurry.” She was caught
off guard when Jane sprang to her feet and pelted her with the
elastic waistband of the underwear.

“Freak!” Jane screamed. Beating on her
towering daughter, she reprimanded, “My baby girl, a lezzie,
wearing Fruit of the Looms!”

“Christ almighty,” Thad burst, and he feebly
pried his pit bull of a mother off his sister.

On the verge of tears, Alexa turned to him
and asked, “What’s wrong with you? Why would you ever come back to
this hellhole? You don’t belong here anymore than I do.”

She had a point. Flashing red lights shone
through the kitchen window, and Thad wondered what the hell he was
doing here. When he and Alexa were much younger, their father would
impulsively follow fire trucks. Once, it was to a farmyard fire.
Unexpectedly, the incredible blaze, which they generally
anticipated was accompanied by a horrifying sight of half-charred
piglets running into a burning barn. “It’s their home,” their dad
explained, “it’s where they feel safest.” With the air smelling
cloyingly of bacon frying on a roaring campfire, Thad and Alexa
wept for the baby pigs. Even now on Sunday mornings, with his
mother in the kitchen making breakfast, he sometimes choked up
thinking about the torched piglets.

“It’s the police.” Alexa peered outside. From
the window, it appeared as if the sheriff’s deputy was
interrogating their father.

“Tidy up, Wilma, Fred’s home,” said Thad, as
he wiped off his mother’s face with the green-stained briefs. She
swatted him aside and pushed Alexa out of the way of the window.
She yanked it open wide.

“He tried to kill me!” Jane screamed at
Deputy Czerwinski. “Throw his ass in the slammer and toss away the
key.”

“Mom!”

“He tried to shove me down a flight of stairs
in cold blood!”

Flushed, Alexa pulled her mother out of the
open window, and Thad slammed it shut. Jane spun around like a
wobbly top and stopped in Thad’s face. She emitted the sour, boozy
stench of a tavern, and spit showered Thad as she yelled, “It’s
Screw-n-ski! That swinger couldn’t even raise his own kids right,
let alone all the bastard babies he’s fathered all around town!”
She stumbled to the fridge and grabbed another beer, “I told your
father to buy a 30-pack!”

“Mom, go to bed, please.”

“We have cousin Kate’s wedding tomorrow.”

Jane ignored the pleadings of her children
and attempted to crack open the last beer. She blathered drunkenly,
struggling with the can, “This wedding is a fiasco, a mess, and if
my sister were alive, none of this shit would be going down.”

“It really is time for bed.”

“Here,” she handed Thad the can, “open this
goddam sonofabitch!” He cracked it open and guzzled down most of
the contents before handing her the last swallow.

“You know what Screw-n-ski is? I’ll tell you
what he is; he’s an asshole!” Her drunken tirade came to an abrupt
halt when she remembered her husband was being accosted by the same
police officer outside. “Yous wanna know what I heard tonight,
straight from the mouth of Shayla-whore? Hop-along Czerwinski is
her daughter’s real father—

“What?” Thad interrupted.

“You heard me right, and now the daughter may
never know because she’s in a coma!” Jane began taste testing the
empty cans on the counter, drinking whatever swill were fermenting
at the bottoms. “That’s not all, now Screw-n-ski’s snooty-assed
wife— that board up her ass bitch— is ditching him.”

“Czerwinski is Vange’s father?”

“Yup, and Nyda-the-Livin-Dead is also leaving
The Church for the cult of bible beaters up on the hill! Can you
believe it? That trash got caught embezzling from the Little League
and the Dollar Store, and now she’s a holy roller!”

“I can’t believe it,” Thad whispered.

Alexa ran from the house to see what was
happening outside while Thad remained behind, half-heartedly
listening to his mother’s meandering, alcohol-fueled stream of
conscience, blathering. He felt for the necklace in his pocket as
if it were the Great White Hope.

Thad was never amazed by the complete and
utter senselessness of these drunken episodes. To him, everything
not bolted down was completely senseless; the more he fastened
himself to his fleeting reality, the less it all made sense.
Paralyzed, he could only watch the mayhem unfold. Lately, he had
been going nowhere and doing nothing except revisiting all the old
places he had already been. Surrounded by relics from the past, and
none of it meant anything.

His mother pried the kitchen window open and
shouted, “Czerwinski, you’ve got a daughter in a coma, and your
wife is leaving you for Jesus! And everyone hates you!” Satisfied
she had told the police officer exactly how things stood, she lit
and proceeded to smoke the wrong end of one of Thad’s
cigarettes.

Fuming, Alexa barged back into the house and
begged, “Shut that freak up, or they’ll arrest dad.”

“Oh, no, not her precious daddy! He tried to
kill me! Shoved me down the steps so he could go home and make
Shayla-whore another bastard, ‘cause I’m incapable!” Jane stuck her
head out the open window and let loose a tirade. “I can’t help it
my ovaries never worked! That scumbag tried to murderize me. Take
him away! I’m afraid for my life, and the safety of my selfish,
ingrate children who aren’t even born of my womb!”