Trying the Knot (4 page)

Without taking his eyes from a Lori Davis
hair care infomercial featuring Cher, he said casually, “Don’t let
any feelings of family obligation keep you, Cousin.”

Yawning, she stretched languidly and looked
away. “Just because my mom is married to your uncle, that doesn’t
mean we’re related, asshole. So, cut the cousin crap.” Vange
snatched up the chain she discarded earlier and whirled it around a
few times. Then she placed the silvery-blue rhinoceros against her
lips to cherish its momentary metallic chill.

“For the record, your new stepfather is no
longer my uncle, he was just my dead aunt’s husband,” Thad
stressed. “Hey, Cousin Vadge, how is Cousin Kate?”

Evangelica perked up at the mention of her
recently acquired stepsister, Portnorth’s very own prodigal
daughter. “She’s such a Yuppie now. She tools into town in her
boyfriend’s Jeep whenever there’s wedding stuff to plan.” Vange
found it amusing to watch Kate interact with her own mother,
Shayla. Kate had always done her best to deny her blue collar past,
but the new Mrs. Edward G. Hesse served as a constant reminder of
her less than genteel roots.

It was not any secret Vange barely tolerated
her own mother. Her first real memory was hearing her father blow
out his brains across the living room ceiling on Christmas Eve; she
was five years old. Afterward, Shayla Whiley proceeded to marry and
divorce every eligible bachelor in town. Those whom she could not
coerce into marrying or moving in, she merely seduced into
supporting her. Shayla’s most recent conquest had been Thad’s
widower uncle. Although he made a boatload of money, Chief Engineer
Hesse spent most days drunk and indentured to the Great Lakes; his
only real homes alternated between a massive rickety freighter and
shoddy taverns.

“All Kate ever talks about is her boring
wedding to boring Nick,” Vange said.

“I remember a time when you didn’t think Nick
was so boring.”

“Why, he’s the most fascinating bore I know,
and all this talk of them is boring me to tears. Who cares, so
what?” she asked, twirling the necklace. “Do you always wear this
stupid thing?”

“Always.”

“You know, there are better things to
symbolize love for someone than a rhinoceros. What possessed her?”
Vange pondered aloud, “Surely, you didn’t remind her that rhinos
have the largest penises of any land mammal.”

Thad laughed loudly and said, “It reminded
her of a story we read to one another all the time.” He looked down
at his feet. Picking his toenails was a pastime he treasured as
much as Vange relished smoking. He also smoked, but it was
joylessly and more out of habit. Each vice came with its own risk –
cancer or ingrown toenails – one painful and deadly, and the other
just painful. If you were really unlucky, you got both.

Trying to visualize his dead aunt, who had a
few ingrown toenails removed in her short lifetime, he fiddled with
his feet. He speculated that his aunt’s ingrown toenail problem had
contributed to her shoe obsession. Immediately after marrying his
uncle, Vange’s mother had a garage sale and sold all of his aunt’s
possessions. Maybe the women of Portnorth did not mind wearing her
shoes because she was so respected, but more than likely it was
because she never wore the same pair twice. It was ironic his uncle
went from being married to a saint to a sinner within eight months.
The scandal provided Portnorth’s coffee klatch with plenty of
gossip.

“What did your mom do with all the money she
made from selling my aunt’s things?”

Evangelica’s curiosity shifted to concern.
“What’s up with the dead aunt obsession already? I don’t know, they
probably went on a Caribbean cruise or bought something totally
ridiculous like a riding lawnmower.”

His moribund silence made her shiver. “I
can’t vegetate here any longer. Let’s go eat. You lured me here
with the promise of a real holiday feast, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s Easter,” Thad said. He
inspected his throbbing toe while he imagined his aunt limping
toward him. She was wearing a pink bathrobe with curlers in her
hair, carrying a box of day old jelly donuts, and she warned him
against a fate cursed with one-night stands that lingered like
ingrown toenails.

Abruptly, he sprang to his feet and jumped
into his Pepe jeans. He threw on her silky purple shirt because she
was wearing his forest green shaker-knit sweater with holes in the
elbows. He did not bother to wash before venturing outside because
apathetic uncleanliness seemed the most natural attitude to sport.
There was no one to impress. It was seven o’clock and the town’s
entire population was home, lethargic from holiday ham anticipating
the series finales of Dallas, thirtysomething, and Twin Peaks.

Thad snatched the driftwood crucifix from the
wall. Vange smeared lipstick across her mouth, and the matte red
Cherries in the Snow made her look even more ghostly.

While riding in the truck, Thad noticed the
buildings that were not boarded up were closed. The streetlights
had not yet turned on, and the dismal vacancy of their surroundings
was uninspiringly grim at best. As time stood still, tiny
snowflakes drifted from the sheet-like gray sky. They had checked
out of civilization and returned to a post-Apocalyptic aftermath.
Vange drove the lone vehicle down the salt-stained Main Street with
reckless abandon, and each time she accelerated he found himself
pressed further against a figurative brick wall. Dread oozed from
her pores as her stomach gurgled with nausea.

As they drove over railroad tracks running
through the middle of town, Thad pulled his long bangs over his
eyes. As a kid, he used to imagine far off destinations as
locomotives carried limestone into the distance away from town. It
never occurred to him to ask any one of his three generations of
quarry-employed relatives where the tracks led. He only knew that
they stretched far away from the one-company town’s cavernous hole
in the ground.

Thad thought aloud, “When did the train stop
running like a getaway car at all hours?”

“Want to picnic on the beach?”

“No matter how hard you try, you can’t ever
see Canada,” Thad said. From behind his bangs he peered deep into
the hazy horizon, past the frigid succession of endless waves.

“Want to know something totally gnarly,”
Vange began, and she slowed the truck down as they drove past the
beach. “I’m in real deep shit.

“How so?”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?”

“Not by you, dork,” she said and slugged his
arm. “It’s some other unlucky bastard’s little bastard.”

“This town smells like winter all year
round.”

“And everyone’s overweight, but they don’t
call this Porknorth for nothing.”

“Don’t you ever think about leaving, starting
over?” Thad asked. Consumed with his own thoughts, he failed to
press the issue of her baby’s paternity as he looked over his
shoulder at the icy lake.

“Fuck’n-A, I got big plans of sailing across
the Great Lakes, just me and this kid.” Vange patted her stomach.
“You went away to college, look how far you got.”

“Ouch.”

“You’re right back here, in this shit kicking
hellhole in case you haven’t noticed. What’s the plan, Thad, you
going to pick potatoes, clear-cut trees, or dig for rocks in the
quarry?”

“How do you start over when you’ve never
started in the first place?” he wondered.

The truck pulled into a gas station, and Thad
agreed to buy dinner with the last of his cash. Looking like total
crap was her excuse for staying behind inside the truck. As he
exited the vehicle, she clanked her head against the rear window
and punched away at the radio knobs. She finally settled on NPR,
where a congressman was discussing the U.S. led invasion of Iraq,
along with the heroic exploits of Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf
and the inevitability of at least one of them becoming a
presidential contender.

“See, opportunities to be a hero abound,”
Vange said, pointing to the radio. “You should be in the Persian
Gulf, fighting for our rights to the world’s oil supply.”

“Real funny.”

“Hey, you never said what you think of my
predicament?”

“You’ll get fat, and then out pops some brat
who’ll hate you in twelve years,” Thad said, and he cocked his
eyebrows and slammed the door.

Once inside the minimart, peppy harmonies
belonging to the daughters of some washed up, drug-addled Sixties
superstars accompanied Thad’s hunt for dinner. They admonished,
“Release Me” as he gripped the stolen crucifix. The disproving
checkout woman monitored his every move. She wore a gray zippered
sweat suit and a bulbous nose dominated her face. Little hairs
encrusted with snot spewed from her snout, and whiskers compensated
for the sparse tuft of gray hair crowning her too large head. Thad
recognized her from going to church as a kid, and he guessed her
name was Bulbous-ski.

Nothing seemed appealing, and he tried to
remember the last time he ate because his insides felt hollow.
Shocked, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and barely
recognized the entity staring back at him. The overhead lights cast
a peculiar jaundiced glow. His hair hung in dirty strings, and his
eyes were tired from lack of sleep. What was the term, heroin chic?
His arms strained under the weight of the processed food as he
became increasingly aware of Bulbouski’s evil eye.

Losing himself in the freezer department,
where Vange’s silky rayon shirt provided little warmth, he
remembered the two of them used to share pints of coffee ice cream
while reading about stampeding rhinos; he would spoon it into Her
mouth between paragraphs.

“What the hell was the name of that
story?”

How many times while driving her Mercury
Tracer had She whisked them to the outskirts of nowhere? Thad
closed his deep-set eyes, and they were parked next to some
suburban wasteland. She read aloud as he sat mesmerized. Her bobbed
copper-hued hair hid Her pale eyes that reflected a childhood
dulled by too many unrealized expectations. With the hope of
dissecting Her secrets, he listened intently to every word falling
from Her lips.

Finished reading, She said, “One day the herd
will trample over us.”

Before starting the car, She let him nibble
on her long fingers and applied Her purple lipstick to his lips.
She insisted on heavy petting as if it were 1951. Other times, She
regaled Thad with tales of past lovers who dog-eared the pages of
Her life script.

Shivering, Thad felt the scrutiny of the
glutton in gray as he wandered toward her chilly gaze and away from
the freezer department. Bulbouski smacked her gum, unaware of the
saliva caked in the corner of her mouth. He felt as if she were
about to unleash a stampede of charging beasts.

He bagged the groceries while she rang them
up. Concerned what was taking so long, Vange met him at the glass
door. She pried the paper sack from his grasp and rattled off the
menu, “Cigs, Sunny-D, and Combos. What, no squirrel, muskrat, or
deer jerky?”

“Sorry.”

“This isn’t exactly a holiday feast.”

Watching Evangelica take a sip of neon
colored orange drink, Thad turned red with embarrassment when she
subsequently wiped the sweat from his furrowed brow and took his
hand into hers.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I have a fear of rhinos,” Thad said. A burst
of juice exploded from her nose, and she doubled over in a coughing
fit. Grabbing his arm for support, she regained her composure and
searched his bloodshot green eyes; although it was Easter, they
made her think of all the disappointment of Christmastime.

Thad suddenly leaned close, and he let his
tongue guide a trickling stream of juice up her chin and into her
quivering mouth. Unnerved by this sudden intimacy, Vange backed
away and tugged at the necklace. She thrust the sack of groceries
at his chest and made her way back to the pickup truck. Suddenly,
she stopped and pointed to a clump of matted fur and batting which
lay soaking in an oil slick in the middle of the parking lot.

“Look,” she said, “it, it’s a dead
bunny.”

The stuffed toy was nearly soiled and
flattened beyond recognition. The moment seemed so fraught with
symbolism and irony, she laughed until her eyes welled with tears.
Evangelica placed the back of her hand against her mouth and turned
away in an attempt to pull herself together. Thad wrapped her close
and ineffectively soothed her bottomless sobs.

She repeated between breaths, “I’m so
sorry.”

“Don’t cry, it’s Easter,” he pleaded. “Sorry
for what?”

“I’m just sorry, that’s all,” she repeated.
He wiped away her tears while she held her stomach as if cradling
everything inside her for one last time.

Inside the truck, they sat in paralyzed
silence. Feeling bonded because neither knew quite where to go from
there, they both dreaded every second proceeding the next. Soon,
not even the damp chilly air whipping against his face kept Thad
seated beside her. In his mind, he found himself alone, kicking a
rock along the shoulder of the road. When he was a boy, his aunt
told him in her all-knowing authoritative manner, “Kick a limestone
rock as you walk along. Then before you stop, make a wish and give
it a good swipe.”

He wondered if she kept kicking rocks even
with her ingrown toenail. He wondered if she kept kicking rocks and
making wishes even after cancer stopped her for good. Thad’s finger
felt for the chain he never took off. Although the silvery blue
rhino was gone from his neck, he still had Jesus in his pocket.
When the rock he was kicking became lost among all the other rocks,
he pulled out the crucifix and began kicking Christ.

Thad wished for many things, but he mostly
hoped for a few feature-length experiences to treasure, rather than
mere isolated snapshots. Nothing ever changed for the better.
Everything pleasant always digressed and filled him with revulsion
and a longing to forget. So he closed his eyes and gave the
crucifix one good swift kick across the highway into a half-frozen
field. There in the middle of the countryside wilderness, he stood
watching his breath waft toward a lone seagull.