Trying the Knot (45 page)

“What happened to you?” Alexa asked, eyeing
his extensive cuts and abrasions. “You look like hell, Jack.”

“This is taking self-mutilation to a whole
new level,” Tristana added.

“I ran into some old friends.”

“Were they driving a monster truck?” Alexa
asked.

“Some friends,” Tristana said concerned, and
she reached out to adjust his crooked bow tie.

Looking serenely beautiful, Kate emerged with
her bridal gown strewn over her arm. Her dark hair was pulled back
severely into a ballerina bun, which was pierced into place with a
metal pin. She swiftly dodged the quizzical inquiries of her
attendants. Without uttering a word, she ducked into the vacant
children’s cry room and assembled her wedding attire in
private.

Her eyes reflected the sad traces of pained
finality, and her curt manner drove Ben from the church. Grateful
he was only an usher, he intended to spend the duration of the
ceremony outside decorating the horse and carriage that was to
carry the newlyweds across town to the reception.

Once outside the claustrophobic church
entryway, he found himself crouched alone on the front steps next
to a paper bag overflowing with tissue flowers. Fortunately, he was
not the only one designated to do the job. Unable to move, he hung
his head paralyzed as if recovering from a pulverizing blow, and
his aching gut heightened his sense of crushing emptiness. His dark
almond eyes focused on the cracks in the cement between his tuxedo
shoes, and he blocked out Jack and Tristana as they debated the
best way to decorate the horse and buggy.

The still humid air was nearly as suffocating
as the blanket of gray, cloudy indifference that suffocated the
afternoon sun. Ben felt so overwhelmed it felt as if he would never
again move from this spot. His eyes followed the meandering cracks
in the pavement winding into a sea of dandelions, anthills and
weeds, and he did not hear the footsteps behind him. Standing
unnoticed at Ben’s side, Thad snapped pictured of the odd couple
holding onto streamers and tissue flowers. As he clicked away with
his camera, Thad rambled unaware his one sided conversation failed
to register with his one-man audience.

“So, there’ll be a wedding after all, but it
looks more like funeral weather if there is such a thing,” Thad
began. “Hopefully, the rain will hold out till after the bride and
groom take their horse drawn carriage ride through town. What a
weird custom. Hey, there might actually still be a chance for you
to collect on that bet. It was a hundred dollars, wasn’t it? Seems
a little steep, if you ask me, but I hope they go through with it
because I was really counting on jamming to Polka tunes. What do
you think?” Thad asked. With his knee, he nudged Ben’s shoulder to
discover he felt stiff as a rock.

“Yikes, are you breathing? What’s wrong with
you?”

Not taking his eyes off of the cracked
pavement, Ben mumbled, “She’s gone.”

“I know.”

“Who told you?”

“Some things, you don’t have to be told.”

“She’s really gone.”

“Will you be all right?”

Looking far from anything resembling all
right, Ben nodded slowly. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply in
order to suppress what emotions threatened to projectile vomit from
the inside.

Thad watched Tristana turn up her nose at the
sorry looking horse standing sadly regal in front of the beat up
carriage. Staring down at Tristana, the elfin buggy operator sat
high on his perch gripping the reins, and he only added to the
freak show below. Thad thought no amount of retouching the photos
could transform Jack’s face into anything resembling normal, nor
would any amount of airbrushing minimize Tristana’s snarky
cynicism.

Tristana handed Jack flowers to paste around
the carriage wheel. Dressed in black from head to toe, she looked
like a character from an Anne Rice vampire novel. Her frightfully
short messy hair separated into wavy spikes. Bruised and bandaged
in his tuxedo, Jack could pass for her impish ghoul of a
sidekick.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she observed.

“Don’t have much to say,” he said blankly,
dabbing a tissue carnation with Karo syrup.

“That shit is nasty,” Tristana said of the
sticky substance. “Who the hell beat you to a bloody pulp? Was it
your dead prom date’s brothers?”

He nodded and cast Ben a concerned look from
the corner of his blackened eye.

“Well, I for one can’t believe Nicky and Kate
are actually going through with this wedding. This entire debacle
has been cursed from the start.”

“She looks nice, don’t you think?” he
asked.

“Yeah, well, she must’ve swallowed an extra
Valium this morning,” Tristana said sarcastically. She backed away
from the mangy white horse, which gave only the slightest
indication of being alive, and she noticed the elfin driver staring
lecherously at her. She snapped, “What’re you looking at? They’re
called breasts, mama, and every woman has them!”

Jack laughed amused at her Stephen King
reference, and she continued to hand him Kleenex flowers, which he
adhered to the carriage. Occasionally, Jack glanced over at Ben,
who looked positively haunted. Thad gave Ben’s shoulder a
comforting squeeze, but Ben failed to respond or notice the old
friends at his side. By then Nick had joined them on the front
steps of the church, and he tilted Ben’s head up to inspect his
swollen nose.

“You’re lucky I didn’t do more damage,” Nick
said regretfully, and he shrugged sheepishly, “I’m sorry for
hitting you, Benny.”

Not looking up from the pavement cracks, Ben
responded with barely a shrug. When Nick smacked him on the back,
he merely slumped forward.

“You’ll get over it,” Nick said. He took
Ben’s melancholic disposition personally and slowly made his way
back inside the church vestibule accompanied by Thad.

“So, are you pissed at me too?”

“No, not at all.”

“Good to hear,” Nick said. “I’d hate to have
a bunch of messed up wedding pictures over a stupid grudge.”

Thad assured Nick the pictures would be as
specified, pure photojournalism and no staged shots. Nick awkwardly
smacked Thad on the back as if it was his only means of expressing
affection.

“You’re one helluva guy with one helluva
name, Thaddeus Feldpausch, so get the hell to work.”

Thad laughed and opted to change his film
roll before snapping any more wedding pictures, and Nick entered
the church alone. When he spotted Chelsea hiding out in a corner
far away from the rest of the bridal procession, he requested she
check and see if Kate needed any assistance getting ready.

The organ music resumed, and Chelsea
retreated to the cry room just in time to watch Kate step into her
plain, medieval-looking wedding gown. The empire waisted dress
looked vaguely medieval, and the intricate flowing veil threatened
to turn her into an anonymous virgin. Kate hardly ever wore any
make up, but today was an exception for she had inexpertly applied
a bare minimum with only the help of a compact mirror.

“Well,” Chelsea began awkwardly. “Do you have
something borrowed, old and new? Is that the order?”

“You forgot blue,” Kate said as she fumbled
with the compact mirror. “The dress is borrowed, and my mom wore
the pearls on her wedding day. So, I guess they’re old.”

“What about new and blue?”

“My earrings are new,” Kate laughed slightly.
“I picked them up on the clearance rack at Hudson’s. But no, I
don’t have anything remotely blue.”

“This is kind of blue,” Chelsea said, fishing
for Thad’s necklace. “Bluish-silver anyhow.”

Kate took the necklace into her cupped hand
and made a face suggesting the rhinoceros did not exactly
compliment her pearls, but Chelsea ingeniously transformed the
chain into a bracelet for Kate’s wrist which was covered with long
beaded sleeves that came to a V-shape over the back of her
hand.

“There,” Chelsea said, satisfied with her
spontaneous ingenuity. “Something blue.”

Chelsea finished buttoning up the back of the
bride’s dress, and she secured the never-ending veil. Kate gazed
nervously out the cry room window at the multitude of wedding
guests.

“Looks like a full house,” Chelsea said
unnecessarily.

“For sure,” Kate replied. “It’s the only
reason I’m here at all.”

“You were going to skip out on your own
wedding day?” Chelsea asked, mildly impressed that Kate would even
suggest such an intrepid idea.

“It was either showing up here, or wheel in
the corpse and conducting a funeral instead,” Kate said. She
struggled with the clasp on her strand of pearls, and avoided
registering her bridesmaid’s response.

Wide-eyed, Chelsea backed away from Kate and
said simply, “No.”

“It happened early this morning,” Kate
informed as she administered Visine drops into her swollen dark
eyes. “They did everything to save her until finally I just begged
them to stop and to leave her alone. Ben was there.”

“Oh, God. Kate,” Chelsea gasped, her eyes
misty with tears. “This is so awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Kate insisted. “I’m
not the one who’s gone. Lucky me, I’m about to marry the man of my
dreams. Save your sympathy for Vange.”

Lost for words, Chelsea raised her arms to
give her friend a hug, but Kate turned away and faced the restless,
inanimate crowd. For lack of anything else to say, Chelsea asked,
“Who all knows?”

“Nick’s dad and Jack,” Kate said, struggling
to maintain her composure. “And Ben, of course. As unbelievable as
it sounds, I swear I heard her whisper his name at one point.”

“Makes sense. I don’t think we realize how
close they were.”

“Dr. Paull said it’d be a good idea to wait
until after the ceremony to tell everyone,” Kate said, and she
added without emotion. “Why spoil the party, huh?”

“Haven’t you told Nick?”

“The customary tradition is he can’t see me
in my dress, right?” Kate reminded her. “So, I guess the news will
have to wait until I reach him at the altar. You’d better let
everyone know to get in their places so we can get this over
with.”

“Katie, you don’t have to go through with
this if you don’t want to.”

The bride was silent. One of her unspoken
thoughts was if she did not become Mrs. Nicholas Paull then
Evangelica would have died in vain. Not marrying Nick seemed to her
as ridiculous a notion as taking Ben up on his Vange’s deathbed
marriage proposal.

“Are you serious? Why wouldn’t I marry
him?”

“Kate,” Chelsea broke off, striving to find
the least offensive words to express her feelings.

“Because he and Vange had a few one night
stands?” Kate asked flatly. “Because he’s only human, and he’s made
mistakes along the way? He doesn’t pretend to be perfect, unlike
some people. Besides, this has been my fantasy ever since junior
high, right? All m-my dreams are finally coming true.”

“I guess whatever works for you,” Chelsea
said, almost apologetically. Then she left Kate as alone as she had
found her.

Waiting for her cue, Kate remained inside the
dry-eyed cry room and leaned all her weight against the door. It
felt like the enormous brick structure was toppling down around
her, and she was trapped within a mountain of wreckage. Her hands
trembled uncontrollably as she flattened her palms against the
door. She closed her eyes and said a Hail Mary or two because that
is what she always did whenever she was about to enter unchartered
waters.

Thad entered the church with his sunglasses
dangling from his ears and his camera strapped around his neck. He
grabbed a little wooden wedge and propped open the heavy church
door.

“Good God, this place feels like the inside
of a pressure cooker,” he said to Chelsea, and he tested the door
to see if it would remain open. “It must be eighty friggin’ degrees
in here.”

Trying to remain calm, Chelsea asked
casually, “Where were you?”

“Taking pictures of the ushers decorating
cars,” Thad replied, anxious to escape the bridal party hovering
around in emotionally wrought patches. “And I had a smoke.”

Unable to stop herself, she clutched his arm
and asked, “Did you hear, about Vange?”

“Not now, Chels,” Thad said. He glanced
longingly through the second set of doors opening into the hot
sticky church, and he tore himself away. “I’ve got to keep focused,
this isn’t a dress rehearsal. These pictures have to be
perfect.”

“To hell with the damned pictures. What’s
wrong with you? Have you drunk yourself numb?”

“I wish,” he said. In disbelief, Chelsea
watched him apathetically move away and migrate to one of his many
strategically placed tripods. She backed out the front door and
caught her breath. She made her way hastily to the end of the long
sidewalk, where Ben sat on the steps watching them adorn the
wedding vehicles. Eyeing the white horse suspiciously, Chelsea
failed to notice the elfin carriage driver leering down at
them.

When Jack and Tristana completed their
decorating task, they piled into her Saab. Jack reclined with his
feet resting out the window on the side mirror. Tristana switched
off the radio and asked, “Is there anything else we can deface
before going back in that sweatbox of a church?

“Beats me,” Jack said.

“Looks like someone already beat you to the
punch.”

“I like your new haircut,” he said, trying
not to laugh because it hurt too much. He looked up to the gray
sky, which was the same washed out color as concrete. “It’s kind of
crazy.”

“Thanks, I was aiming for the look of a
mental patient escapee,” she said sincerely. “Are you in much
pain?”

“Not too much,” Jack said, inspecting his
various wounds. “The doctor gave me some pain pills.”

“Oh, fun. We could take a ride,” she
suggested.