Trying the Knot (40 page)

“You should be arrested!” Alexa yelled.

“Me?! For what?”

“Butchery of the English language for
starters,” Thad quipped.

Once again Alexa slammed the window shut, but
this time she locked it and begged her mother to be quiet. Jane
staggered away from them and fell into a heap in the dining room.
Soon afterward, the flashing lights were extinguished, and officer
Czerwinski sped away to resume his night beat across town.

Entering the house, Mr. Feldpausch sprung to
his wife’s side. He found her moaning under the dining room table,
and he demanded to know where was the missing purse, which
contained whatever was left of his paycheck. Jane groaned she was
in too much pain to recall where she stashed the purse. But she
mustered up the strength within herself to demand he oversee Alexa
clean up the spilled lime Kool-Aid. Their father insisted Thad and
Alexa go look for the purse while he mopped up the sticky green
mess.

“Screw this shit. If I find any money, I’ll
keep it,” Alexa spat.

“Listen here, your mother and I have given
all we have to you,” said Feldpausch. “We’ve sacrificed everything
to give you a home.”

“Well, your everything doesn’t amount to
much.”

Feldpausch’s blue-collar angst was released
with a slam of his fist on the kitchen counter. He cried out, “I
work my ass off for what?”

“So that fat bitch can lay on hers,” Alexa
said, pointing to the moaning pile rocking on the floor.

“That’s your mother, for God’s sake,” he
wailed. Their father swayed unsteady on his feet. “Where’s the
respect?”

“You tell her, you tell the little bitch,”
Jane encouraged, in between gasps of pain.

Close to tears, Alexa shook her head and
whispered, “She was never a mother to me.”

What she meant was Jane was hardly the mother
she would have chosen, and Thad guessed, given a choice in the
matter, he would have gladly taken a different father had one been
offered. Thad envied orphans who were never adopted, because their
parents were whoever they imagined them to be.

The Feldpausch’s drunken antics were not
usually this explosive or melodramatic. Generally, the intoxicated
couple only taunted one another with mere talk of domestic
Armageddon; rarely did they ever make good their empty
promises.

Mr. Feldpausch reached out, grabbed his
daughter by the collar and shook her. “You think you got it so bad?
Tonight, at the bar, we ran into your Uncle Ed and Shayla. They’re
moving into the country, and they’re not taking Jack.”

“So what!”

“Think about it, your cousin will be put out
onto the streets, he’ll be homeless, and you think you’ve got it so
rough.”

She struggled to free herself of his grasp
and rushed past them out the door. Her combative nature and
continuous acts of rebellion made Thad embarrassed of his own
passivity, but it was not quite enough to spur him into action. He
walked past his father and descended the basement steps into the
family rec room.

“Thaddeus, go look for that purse,” Mr.
Feldpausch ordered from the top of the stairs. “Two weeks pay is
laying out there, waiting to be stolen.”

Thad paid no attention and poured himself a
tumbler of vodka. His parents confused their remote hometown with
the anonymous inner city neighborhoods portrayed nightly on TV
shows like “COPS”. If anyone happened to find a purse, he or she
would drop it off at the police station. If someone was curious
enough to look inside, they might even go out of their way to drop
it off at the house. However, having spent the past decade sprawled
in front of the TV eating potato chips and drinking beer had
distorted the Feldpausch’s own sense of reality. Television had
brainwashed them into thinking themselves as setting on the edge of
a seething ghetto. When in reality, Portnorth sat forgotten at the
edge of the world, slowly being washed away by the endless waves of
Lake Huron.

“Thad, go find that damned purse!”

In the family room, Thad remained seated
cross-legged on the floor despite a crashing noise, which sounded
like a sack of potatoes rolling down the steps. In the subsequent
blissful silence, he stared blankly at the silvery blue rhinoceros
necklace, and he thought of the girl who’d taken it off her neck in
what seemed like the previous lifetime.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number
to the downstate subdivision seemingly so far away it might as well
have been in a foreign country.

“Hello - Hello,” a hoarse voice stammered
groggily.

Hesitantly, Thad began, “I - I was just
wondering if I could speak w—

“Who is this, do you know what time it is?”
the woman demanded, roused from her suburban slumber.

“About two a.m., ma’am.”

“Is this you again, Thad?”

“Yes.”

“She’s not here.” The voice explained curtly,
“She lives in Ann Arbor now with her fiancé.”

“Oh, Okay.”

“I’ll tell her you called, when I see them on
Sunday for dinner.”

“You want my number?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, bye,” she
said, and his momentary connection with civilization was
severed.

Thad hung up the phone and rolled over onto
the floor. Marooned in a fetal state of apathetic indifference, he
finished off the bottle of vodka and passed out on the floor with
the chain entwined in his fingers.

chapter twenty

Ben crawled across The Lounge floor past
flitting shadows in order to retrieve his randomly discarded
clothing. He scurried low to the floor so he could dodge headlights
sporadically streaming through the dining room windows. They had
come here with the intention of treating his wound with a First Aid
kit, but one thing led to another and they ended up having sex in a
circular booth across from the bar, and now he was attempting to
slip out unnoticed.

His only objective was to escape without
facing her, and once safely home he would bury himself in sleep
without dissecting the evening’s skewed turn of events. Ben did not
want to contemplate anything except the empty king-sized waterbed
awaiting him. On his hands and knees, he found his ripped, bloody
T-shirt on one of the vinyl swivel chairs. He sighed with relief,
stuffed it in his back pocket, and ambled toward the main exit.

As he opened the door, an obstinate voice
said, “How typical.”

He guiltily turned around to face Chelsea.
She was scantily clad in one of the floral tablecloths, and her
arms were crossed. She inquired, “Is this the shoddy good bye
treatment my mother and Evangelica get?”

“I-I’m sorry.” Ben struggled to find the
right words. “I thought you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.
It’s so late, and you need to get some rest, with tomorrow being
such a big day and all.”

Chelsea nodded her head, swiped her cropped
blond hair away from her steely eyes and walked away. She called
over her shoulder, “Well, then don’t let me keep you.”

Ben followed her back to the bar area where
she poured a tumbler of club soda. While drinking slowly, she
pretended to be disinterested in the way his black leather jacket
rested seductively against his bare chest, which was the color of
raw honey. She acted as if the glimmer of the hoop earrings
piercing his nipples held not the slightest bit of intrigue, and
she could care less about his tattoos or his ass hugging jeans. As
long as Chelsea kept her eyes focused on the ice floating in her
glass, she could smother the fire smoldering in her eyes.

“I-I don’t have to leave if you don’t want me
to,” he said, and he pointed his bruised, swelling nose. “It’s just
my face. It hurts.”

“Don’t you have a date with your boss?”
Chelsea asked. She gathered the tablecloth tighter across her chest
and flattened her already small breasts. “On your way out, check to
see if my mother’s left a light on for you.”

“Please, leave your mom out of this,” Ben
requested. “I thought if I stayed it might make things awkward in
the morning, that’s all.”

“For me, you, or mother dearest? How do I
know you weren’t thinking of her when you were with me? Or
Evangelica for that matter?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably when
he stepped closer. “How do I know you weren’t thinking of them, or
that airhead matron of honor?”

“You don’t. What does it matter?”

“Ugh, all of the sudden I feel so cheap.
Maybe you should go.”

Ben placed his hands on the bar and leaned
directly in front of her. He propped himself up on the counter top
and removed the glass from her trembling hands. Kneeling on the
bar, he lightly kissed her forehead and placed his hands on her
bare, tanned shoulders.

Chelsea backed away, out of his reach and
said, “I don’t think a repeat performance is necessary.”

“Chels, I don’t have time for games.”

“It appears to me, Benjamin, that time is one
thing you have an overabundance of,” she said icily.

“What does that mean?”

“Please, give me some credit. What could you
possibly not have time for? Your obligations amount to tending my
mother’s bar and bed.”

Ben jumped off the counter and joined her
next to the cash register on the other side of the bar. Unable to
believe he was actually defending himself, he protested, “But
that’s not all I do. I paint houses in the summer, and I help coach
the cross country and track teams.”

“You’re a glorified gigolo is all,” she said
flatly. “And a relatively cheap one at that.”

“Where do you get off judging me?” Ben asked.
“You’ve got no right, you don’t know me.”

“What is there to know, except you’re easy on
the eyes and so-so in the sack?” she asked. “Vange knew you well,
and look where she ended up. The bottom line, Benjamin, is you’re
not to be counted on.”

His face flushed at the mention of
Evangelica’s name and what she was insinuating, and Chelsea
immediately regretted having mentioned their indisposed friend. “I
give up,” he said shaking his head, and he made his way around the
bar and stormed off. She called out his name and followed him to
the main entrance. At the door, she grabbed his sleeve when he
reached for the dead-bolt lock. Naturally, he pulled away.

“I’ll give you some advice,” Ben said
bitterly. “Law school is the perfect place for you. You’re so
hell-bent on prosecuting everyone who surrounds you. You don’t know
one thing about my relationship with Vange, so stick it up your
lily white ass.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I was out of line.”

“Maybe?”

“All I’m trying to do is better understand a
few things, that’s all,” she said softly with regret.

“The best defense is a good offense,
right?”

“I’m sorry if it sounded as if I was
attacking you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Would you like a drink on the house, before
I drive you to your bike?” Chelsea asked remorsefully. Her eyes
pleaded for him to accept the peace offering.

He planted a small sympathetic kiss on her
cheek, and they made their way to the liquor stash. With little
modesty, she climbed over the counter and poured him a cold beer
from the tap. He accepted it and thanked her without any trace of
hard feelings.

“Are you in love with either of them?”
Chelsea asked without thinking.

Exasperated, Ben rolled his eyes and flashed
her a look of warning. “Wracking up future ammunition?”

“No, positively not. Honest.”

Ben sighed as he twirled the beer mug in a
circle with his index finger hooked around the handle. He felt
uncomfortable discussing the details of his relationship with Ginny
Norris with her only child. “Your mom is totally accepting and
carefree. Nothing brings her down, Chels.”

“Do you love her?”

“I feel like a grown up when I’m with her. We
both know it’ll end sooner rather than later, and it’s purely
accidental we ever hooked up in the first place.”

“Sounds like a pleasant mistake.”

“No, I wouldn’t call it a mistake,” Ben
corrected as he watched her sip her soda. “Your mom’s the best, she
doesn’t have a care in the world.”

“Hence there lies the problem, she doesn’t
have a care in the world,” she protested. “Ever since the third
grade it’s always been she and I against the world, but I never
felt we were a team, she’s always just never had a care in the
world.”

“You’re mom is devoted to you,” Ben said.
“You mean more to her than anything in the world. What does she
have to do, throw herself in front of a bus?”

“Maybe. I’ve always watched the way she was
with her customers, and she’s always the same with everyone, so
diplomatic, so kind and so caring. There’s no special
treatment.”

“Because they all get the special
treatment.”

“She keeps her professional distance.”
Chelsea shrugged and added, “Maybe most of the time, I feel like
one of her patrons.”

“You’re overreacting,” he said, reaching out
to give her a hug.

“What about your relationship with
Evangelica?” she asked, and he folded her into his arms. “Are you
in love with her?”

“I don’t think anyone could make sense of
us.”

“Try me.”

Ben’s face grew warm with affection as he
thought about Vange. To prove his point, he dug in his pocket and
handed Chelsea a tattered slip of stationery.

“So long and sorry, Darling, when we found a
rip in heaven, we should have just ascended then,” she read
incredulously. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly. It’s a song lyric from Aimee Mann.
Your guess is as good as mine,” Ben confessed. “It’s her suicide
note.”

“That’s it? How cryptic. How vague.”

“That’s our relationship in a nutshell,
vague,” Ben said, and he grinned slightly as he envisioned Vange.
“She was more than my best friend. We got really close when
everyone else left for college, and it got to the point where we
were always there for one another, no matter what, no strings.”