Trying the Knot (34 page)

When Seth Poole finished snorting the coke,
he placed it carefully aside, Tristana knelt across his lap and
reached between his stretch-marked thighs. She flicked her long
manicured fingernail against his lolling cock.

“It doesn’t seem to be working,” she said
bored.

Seth Poole playfully tickled her breasts with
his damp fishy smelling beard. Kneeling perfectly straight, she
licked the top of his balding head while he pulled her close and
greedily mouthed her prized breasts.

“Try to be gentle,” she said, tugging on a
handful of his chest hair.

“Say please, daddy,” he ordered, and he added
excitedly, “or would you like me to give you another spanking, like
the one I gave you outside the jailhouse? You’re a very bad girl,
Nanette.”

“Tristana,” she corrected him sadly, but
Poole ignored her and licked the mirrored tray clean of powdery
dust. His heart beat so fast, she thought he would implode and
crush her beneath his weight if she did not stay on top of the
situation.

She made him lay on his back so she could
massage his hairy potbelly as she wrapped her hand around his limp
cock. When semi-aroused, he tugged on her long curly hair and
pulled her to him. The dim streetlights below illuminated the
stuffy room with alternating flashes of red, gold and green, and as
the occasional car stopped under the traffic light, headlights cast
dancing shadows of against the cracked walls.

Rolling across the dirty hardwood floor,
Tristana and Poole felt the mounds of forgotten old pastel colored
wedding invitations stick sporadically to their naked sweaty
skin.

It was as if they were desecrating an ancient
marriage burial ground.

chapter seventeen

Kate gripped the keys to Evangelica’s
apartment and climbed the stairs as if the answers to every
question she had ever pondered in her life were contained behind
the awaiting red door. After fitting the key in the lock, she
barged into a veritable Garden of Eden.

Flashing white Christmas lights bounced off
every imaginable plant – prickly cacti, overflowing ferns,
gargantuan palms, African violets, hanging ivy, and spider plants.
Exotic greenery filled every crevice and consumed every corner, and
Kate was a bug lading in a Venus flytrap. Her sudden intake of
breath and subsequent long weary sigh was greedily consumed by the
voracious plant-life.

She forged through the jungle and searched
for a small trace of hope. In the tiny kitchen, she noticed the
archaic refrigerator looked freshly polished, like a 1950s Buick—
all chrome and curves. Stuck on the surface was a newspaper photo
of Deputy Czerwinski grinning as he held up a marijuana plant and
the caption read, “Drug Bust!” Across the photo, Vange had
scrawled, Marley’s been taken into police custody! She found an old
fashioned watering jug under the sink and filled it up to give the
thirsty plants a drink.

Kate opened the fridge to find it nearly
empty except for various assorted condiments, a gallon jug of
Lambrusco and a lonely jar of marshmallow cream. Kate grabbed the
wine and poured herself a glass, which she left on the kitchen
cupboard in order to search the remainder of the apartment.

In the bathroom, which was a haven for
lavender scented candles, Kate rummaged the medicine cabinet to
discover an assortment of outdated prescription drugs, only a few
of which she was familiar. There were uppers and downers and diet
pills galore – it was as if she had stumbled into the boudoir of a
Hollywood starlet. Vange’s purse sat on the counter, and Kate
emptied it into the sink and sifted through still more medicines
and drugstore cosmetics. The leopard print wallet was empty, so
Kate scoured through Vange’s checkbook. Then she stopped cold as
she stumbled on a recent entry. It stood out like Vange did on
those infrequent occasions she entered a local church. Recorded
between the lines reading $12.24 for Chinese take-out and $22.04
for an Electric bill, was scrawled $315.00 for an abortion. Kate
clutched the checkbook to her chest and staggered backwards and
leaned against the door. Her only consolation was if Nick had been
responsible, he would have surely stepped up and paid for the
termination of Vange’s pregnancy, but what if she had not even told
him?

Kate left the bathroom in such a rush she
forgot to turn out the light. By the time she was done, every light
in the apartment was turned on. Inside the bedroom, she found
Vange’s bed floating in a bottomless cesspool of junk food
wrappers. The walls were lined with a library of tattered books.
The only pieces of furniture were a huge paisley chair and a stereo
painted with polka dots. Mavis Staples was on the turntable, and
Kate wondered if Evangeline had been listening to her while
slipping into her suicide-induced coma. Setting on a stack of old
records, which included Odetta and Louis Armstrong and other people
Kate had never heard of, was a carefully gift wrapped package. The
card attached was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Paull.

Reaching for the package, Kate nearly toppled
it to the floor, but she retrieved it in the nick of time. In order
to steady herself, she placed a hand on the stereo and
inadvertently switched on the power button. The room filled with
the harmonies of Crowded House, “Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s
over,” and Kate’s face lit up with a wry smile of recognition.

Snapping off the music, she said, “Don’t
dream it’s over. More like a nightmare that’s never over.”

Kate hugged the square gift box close to her.
She fell backwards onto the bed, and she rocked holding onto the
present. She remained seated there for as long as possible. Kate’s
eyes misted over, and her trembling hands ripped open the card. She
deciphered the barely legible words: Dah-lings, I wish you a most
blissful trip through the country called matrimony – may all your
wedded days be holidays! I love you with all my soul. Yours,
Evangelica Kirsten Whiley

Kate slipped the card back into its coffee
stained envelope, and she carried the box into the kitchen. Placing
the tastefully wrapped present on the counter, she picked up the
glass of wine and took a large sip. She leaned against the fridge
facing the gift, and her free hand clutched her hair at her temple.
Her head felt as if it was about to explode, and so she tugged at
her temples to relieve the pressure smashing against her skull.

She unconsciously sloshed wine down the front
of her off-white dress. Realizing what she had done, Kate hurled
the plastic glass into the sink and watched it bounce around. The
throbbing echoing inside her brain prevented the noise from the
hurtling object from even registering.

Her knees buckled, and she slid against the
fridge. Crumpled in a heap on the floor, Kate called out to the
surrounding emptiness, “Why? Why did you do it? Isn’t it bad enough
you sleep with my fiancé two nights before my wedding, but then you
try to kill yourself?”

While beating the back of her head against
the metal door, she said vehemently, “You vengeful bitch.”

Kate’s fingers tugged wildly at her temples,
and she prayed for the crashing waves to subside. The inside of her
brain felt tender and bruised, and she wished more than anything
Vange was standing in the middle of the kitchen; if nothing else,
it would be nice to scream accusatory obscenities at her sublimely
beautiful face.

With trembling hands, Kate reached for the
wedding present and opened it slowly. Her nervous delicate fingers
pulled a large crystal platter from the box. A note was taped on
the serving plate, which Kate read aloud, “I hope this always
reminds you of your quaint lakeside hometown – don’t ever forget
where you came from!” Kate crumpled the note in her hand. Overly
sensitive of Evangeline’s tone, she took the note to be more
sarcastic than sincere. On the face of the platter were sea gulls
soaring above a sailboat.

The nautical scene did nothing to move Kate.
Dry-eyed, she held the big round glass plate to her chest and
remained rocking on the kitchen floor.

Summer, 1985

Having just completed her hippie-dippy dance
routine to an old Donovan tune, Kate remained off stage in the
wings, where she waited for Evangelica to perform. The sweat poured
off of her body, which was concealed under the confines of a foam
rubber conifer costume. Ordinarily, the dreary scholarship pageant
was hardly the social event of the summer, but tonight the whole
town appeared to be packed in the teeming bleachers. They had come
to see whether the rumor was true if the Whiley girl could really
sing.

Dressed in a tight black velvet gown,
Evangelica strutted down to the end of the runway as she had been
specifically instructed not to do. For the past three weeks,
pageant director and Home Economics guru, Nyda Czerwinski, had made
it her private mission to eradicate any show of personality or
evidence of individuality from her contestants. All her attempts to
curb the excesses she saw in Evangelica’s stage presence were a
resounding flop.

“Vangie,” Nyda reprimanded during the dress
rehearsal, “you’re swaggering again. This is the queen’s runway,
not a catwalk.”

“It’s my pony walk,” Evangelica protested to
the woman who peered over her glasses like a nibbling gerbil.

“Whatever it is, it’s terribly provincial,”
Nyda said. “And fix those lips!”

“What’s wrong with my lips?”

“Can’t you make them smaller? Stop moving so
much. This will never work, can’t you do something about those
breasts?”

Evangelica’s milky cleavage was ammunition in
her arsenal to thrust in the direction of the other girls. Like
boulders released from a slingshot, she seized any opportunity to
aim her ample gifts at the other contestants. Despite the
director’s admonishments, Kate, along with everyone else, was
overtly jealous of Vange’s ample bosom. Eventually, Evangelica grew
more outraged with each new attack on her body until she finally
yelled from the stage one afternoon, “Listen, the requirements of
this pageant never said you had to be light as a feather and stiff
as a board.” She tormented the pageant director by grabbing her
crotch for emphasis.

Whenever Nyda caught Vange sauntering, she
clapped her hands and called for odds-on-favorite Heidi to
demonstrate the graceful stride of a genuine lady. “Girls,” Nyda
instructed, “watch Heidi, now this is how a queen walks.”

With exaggerated abandon, Vange rolled her
eyes, hunched her back and made a gagging face sending Kate into
hysterics. Heidi was the daughter off the local hunchback baker.
Her own back was beginning to show signs of a slight hump, but it
did not detract from her sunny temperament. Heidi had been sent to
dance classes ever since she was a toddler as it was her parents’
hope dance would afford her enough refined agility to detract from
the dreaded hunch whenever it finally decided to reveal itself.
Tall and lean, Heidi was also fortunate enough to have a long thick
mane of red hair to cover up the emerging eyesore.

Perhaps cut throat competitiveness was to
blame, but the endless rehearsals, where everyone acted so
painfully fake, only served to drive a deeper wedge between Kate
and Vange’s waning friendship. Against Chelsea’s objections, Kate
let Nick and Vange talk her into wasting the summer before her
senior year by entering the inane pageant to vie for the title of
Miss Portnorth. The closest Kate and Vange came to rekindling their
rocky friendship was during the dress rehearsal, when they found
Heidi huddled in the shower bawling her eyes out.

If she did not win the pageant Heidi’s
parents would not disown her, but rather they would not buy her a
car. “Then how will I be able to come home every weekend from
college to see my boyfriend?” Heidi wailed. If she lost the
pageant, her life would be doomed – her boyfriend would leave her,
and she would never get married. The look of horror Kate and Vange
exchanged while comforting the sobbing probable queen was one of
the few genuinely intimate moments of their friendship.

“Smile like Heidi! Walk like Heidi! Stand
like Heidi! Pretend you’re Heidi!” echoed from Nyda’s mouth for the
three weeks during rehearsals. Being a decent human being, Heidi
did all she could do to alleviate the dictator’s obsession with
her, but it only made the potential queen more sickeningly sweet.
On more than one occasion, Kate glanced over at Heidi, who smiled
without any trace of conceit or bitterness, and she thought,
Idiot.

The night of the actual pageant was on of the
most anti-climactic of Kate’s entire life. Beginning with her
opening line, “Hi! My name is Katherine K. Hesse, and I’m proud to
introduce my parents, Kaye and Chief Ed Hesse!” Even though her
parents beamed proudly in the spotlight at the front of the
gymnasium stage, Kate knew they were embarrassed to have to witness
this display of exhibitionism; they were as uncomfortable there as
she was.

Compared with Vange, the rest of the
contestants were an excruciatingly unimaginative lot, and it was
torture that each girl was required to perform a talent-less skit.
Heidi had the dance moves she had been perfecting since birth, and
Vange had her God-given voice, but everyone else had to miserably
fake it. Kate wanted to shrivel up and die of embarrassment for her
talent skit, but instead she took the easy way out and donned a
pine tree costume covering her from head to toe. Totally concealed
as a conifer, she had danced around the stage to the song, Jennifer
Juniper.

“You should really show a little leg,”
Evangelica advised. “They make green tights.”

The scholarship pageant droned on until every
girl except Evangelica had performed her pathetic talent number.
Even Heidi, the presumed queen, had resorted to a series of
backflips to the tired Bette Midler song, “The Rose”. From a
Distance, she looked like an arachnid carnival sideshow freak.