Trying the Knot (42 page)

The digital clock hanging above the
monstrously huge hospital bed indicated it was almost three in the
morning, and Nick found it impossible to believe tomorrow was his
wedding day. He felt unnerved and exhausted, but there was no way
he could plunge into sleep with so many issues unresolved between
them. Unnoticed, he watched her, and he was impressed with her
facade of resolute calm. He speculated the extent of her feelings
of betrayal and guessed she was churning inside with bitterness,
but he had no way of knowing her exact emotional state because she
gave no indication of her feelings.

When Kate rose to her feet, she picked up the
clothes he had set aside for her and walked dazed into the
bathroom. He waited until she emerged wearing scrubs he borrowed
from a nurse, and he followed her down the hall to the lounge,
where she extracted a pungent cup of coffee from an unreliable
looking vending machine.

Kate stepped around Nick as if he was an
inanimate object, and she remained frozen when he reached out and
touched her arm. Moving away from his grasp, she encircled him
without speaking, and she fixated her gaze coldly on him.

“Honey, we need to talk,” he began.

“About what?” she asked, with determined
intensity to sound calm and rational, which only made her seem
insane.

“Don’t you think we need to discuss a few
things?” Nick asked, and he continued pointedly, “Tomorrow is our
wedding day and you’re acting like a complete stranger. How can we
walk down the aisle like this?”

Unsure whether or not she wanted to be
anything more than strangers, Kate said blankly, “I don’t know, you
tell me.”

Nick motioned to the mauve, half-circle
couch, and he invited her to sit down to discuss what had happened
in the past twenty-four hours.

“What’s there to talk about? You slept with
her, and she tried to kill herself,” Kate said. “End of story.”

Nick sighed and regretfully shook his head.
Still wearing his crumbled sandstone suit. His open chambray shirt
revealed a too tight U of M T-shirt, and he seemed pathetic for the
first time she could remember. His bloodshot eyes and look of loss
compelled Kate to take a seat on the ugly sofa.

She refused to look up at him and demanded,
“Well, start talking.”

“Why did you attack Ben like that?” he asked,
swaying before her. “Especially when you saw me outside the door.
What was that all about, some sort of revenge?”

Kate expelled a burst of ironic laughter. Her
feet instinctively threatened to carry her away. “You want to
discuss my behavior? I don’t think so.”

Nick sat and folded his hands together under
his chin as if praying for everything to work out. “Please, Katie,
we have to start somewhere.”

“Well, let’s start with this – do you know
how worthless you’ve made me feel? Can you even imagine the
humiliation?” Kate asked, and she sat back down across from him on
top the coffee table. “Maybe that’s why I did what I did with Ben,
to make you feel as small as I felt.”

“It worked,” Nick whispered. “I can’t believe
I lost it so bad I slugged him like that. I feel horrible.”

“So what? Does this mean we’re even because
you feel bad about punching out a high school buddy you barely talk
to anymore?” Kate asked angrily. “Is that how this works?”

Nick moved to sit closer to her, and she
shirked away as if he posed a threat of contamination. She was
disgusted by the mere thought of him touching her. They remained
silent for a long time while Kate sipped the coffee and Nick sat
stooped over with his hands resting on his chin. The minutes
dragged with the silent exchange of her animosity and his
brooding.

Finally, he turned to her and said with
complete sincerity, “I’m so sorry. You can’t know how much I mean
it. There’s nothing I can ever do to make this up to you, but
please at least let me try.” He did not understand what she was
thinking or feeling, but he needed her to help him to understand.
He paused and then added, “I never intended to jeopardize our
future together.”

“The only thing you never intended was
getting caught,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d have to deal with
this crap until you were at least out of medical school.”

“Kate, I-I love you,” Nick stammered, and he
leaned forward so he could look directly into her eyes. “Believe
me, above all else I love you more than anything.”

Kate reached out for his unsuspecting hand
and leaned into him. She rested her other hand against his chest
and flattened her open palm against him. Then she balled up a fist
and calmly slugged him several times.

“Damn you,” she whispered. “My whole heart is
filled with nothing but hatred for you.” She detested him and hated
that he made her hate him so much there was no room for anything
else. “Sitting there in the hospital room, I want to feel something
for Vange, to feel sympathy, but all I can do is think about how I
hate and despise you.”

“Kate—

“How will I ever be able to trust you ever
again?” she asked hopelessly. Tears streamed down Kate’s smudged
cheeks. “Is this how you’re supposed to spend the eve of your
wedding day? I don’t think so, Nick, I don’t think so at all.”

“I can’t stand what she’s done to us,” Nick
said. He was painfully aware his future wife was more than anything
inconsolable.

“Don’t blame this on her. She’s given us more
than we deserve.”

He shook his head, unable to fathom her
faulty logic. “What has she given us, except reduce our lives to a
melodramatic soap opera?”

“Don’t you see? She’s given us the truth,”
Kate said. “How can I deny she’s in a coma, and the two of you were
together last night – two nights before we’re supposed to be
married?”

Kneeling before her, Nick took her trembling
hands into his own, and he said softly, with his voice breaking, “I
can’t change what’s happened, and maybe I don’t deserve a second
chance, but it seems I’ve lost you in the worst way possible. If
it’s the last thing I do, I want to make this up to you.”

“Really?”

He glanced away, trying to contain his
remorse. “I love you, Kate.”

“You can’t bring her back, Nick,” she said.
Tears rolled down Kate’s olive cheeks, and silence confirmed her
deepest fears. “You can’t bring her back.”

“Right now, Vange has been stabilized, but
she’s in critical condition,” Nick said, and he gently caressed her
hands and rubbed her forearms. “With each passing moment, her
chance for recovery grows slimmer. Honey, you don’t want to hear
this, but I’ve got to be honest.”

“Why start now?”

“Things don’t look so good, Katie, you’ve got
to face the possibility –

“I don’t want to face anything, it’s too soon
to give up hope.”

“Just be prepared for the worst,” he warned.
He rose from his kneeling position and sat down beside her. “I just
wish I knew why she did it. I never thought she would try to get to
get even by swallowing a fist full of pills.”

“Is that why you think she did it, out of
spite for you?” Kate asked, shocked by his egotistic outlook. She
pulled her hands from his and smoothed her soiled dress over her
thighs. “Maybe she did it because she couldn’t face me.”

“Kate, don’t be ludicrous.”

“Don’t even think about twisting the facts –
just to ease our conscience. If only I was different, then she
wouldn’t have taken such extreme measures. If I was half the person
she was, she could have just told me what happened, and I would
deal with it –

“Maybe she couldn’t live with herself,” he
said. “Honey, you can’t blame yourself.”

“Who’s to blame then, you alone?” Kate asked,
and she shook her head. “She couldn’t have cared less about you,
Nick, so why would she kill herself over you?”

He turned away frustrated by her reasoning.
He was not altogether convinced Vange cared about Kate. It did not
make any sense, and he was unwilling to accept the guilt she was
straddling herself with – and even more, he could not accept the
guilt she was unloading onto him. It was as if they were
co-conspirators in Evangelica’s impending demise.

“I wish I could walk away from this whole
mess,” Kate said to his back. More than anything, she wanted to
fast forward their lives into the future in order for this whole
weekend to be in a distant memory, with an option never to look
back.

“If you’d like, I can call our dads and have
them postpone the wedding,” he offered. “I don’t think anyone would
blame us under the circumstances.”

“Who am I to rob you of a second chance? It’s
sad to say, but I don’t want to walk away out of principle and then
spend the rest of my life wishing we were married.”

“We can elope at a later date, when things
calm down. Anyone can run, Kate, but you’re not made like that,”
Nick said.

From across the room, she looked lost sitting
alone on the long couch, like Princess Diana stranded at the Taj
Mahal. He moved closer to emphasize his point, “Chelsea that
nitwit, is running off to California, Thad runs to the bottle, and
Ben runs from one one-night-stand to the next. Vange has run into
the open arms of death itself, but that’s not you, Kate. You’re
stronger than that.”

She shook her head in disagreement and looked
up at him. “No, we’re all one and the same – because tomorrow at
the altar, I’ll be running to you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Maybe it’s the truth that has everyone
running scared, but Vange has given me a truth I can’t deny or run
from.”

“What truth?”

“It was a one night stand, wasn’t it, Nick?”
Kate asked, dreading his response. Her knuckles were white as she
clenched her hands into two fists at her side. “I mean, you only
slept with her this once, right, except for the time way back in
high school? Right?”

Speechless, he studied her tormented brown
eyes, which brimmed with resignation. “You’re needlessly torturing
yourself.”

“She wasn’t in love with your or anything
like that, was she?”

“No, of course not, she’s always loved
Ben.”

“When was the last time you were with
her?”

“Kate—

“I need to know, tell me.”

Nick shook his head, and his silence
confirmed her suspicions. She sighed deeply and said, “That’s what
I thought. I was in her apartment earlier tonight, and I found her
checkbook, on one line she had written, where it states the
purpose, she wrote Abortion.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“You tell me, Nick. What would her abortion
have to do with us, with you?”

“So, you think Evangelica aborted what was my
baby?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“For chrissakes, Kate, who is to say it
wasn’t Ben’s baby, or Thad’s for that matter? Jesus, for all we
know, it could’ve been half this town’s kid,” he only stopped
because she placed two fingers over his mouth. Nick slipped away
and said, “Don’t do this, not to me, and not to you.”

Holding onto herself, Kate walked away and
faced the vending machines. It was as if she were trying to make
one last selection, and for a handful of change the rest of her
life would spit out, neatly wrapped and uniformly mass-produced. It
would be what she always longed for, a picture-perfect
cookie-cutter existence like her suburban gaggle of galpals.

Kate thought about her mother working
tirelessly to be the perfect wife, mother and citizen. Her mother’s
need for harmony and balance had been thrown out of whack by the
harsh realities life had to dish out. It had been a struggle for
her mother to realize that life is not a place where people can be
made to fit preconceived views of perfection. And it now seemed
Kaye Hesse had taken on the weight of her home, neighborhood,
community and world until it crushed her. All Kate’s life, her
father had told her she was the best, simply because she was a
Hesse, but it was her mother who showed her how to be her best
self.

“My mom spent her whole life waiting to be
happy. She worked so hard to be perfect, all just to minimize the
cold hard truth that seems so obvious now,” Kate whispered blankly,
staring into her reflection at the vending machine.

“Honey, what’re you saying?”

“I don’t want my life to be an all-consuming
lie that drains me of every last thing until there’s absolutely
nothing left to do except wither away and die,” she said morbidly.
Then she turned to face him, and she asked, “Tell me if I die after
we’re married twenty-five years, would you dredge the gutter and
marry anyone, all because you couldn’t face being alone?”

“I—I don’t understand what you’re getting
at,” he said, struggling to comprehend her line of thought.

“This whole town laughs at my father for
marrying Shayla Whiley, but it’s only because they don’t want to
admit it could happen to them,” Kate said. “Tell me, Nick, will you
treat me the way your dad treats your mom? Will you have affairs
and lie about them? Or even worse, flaunt them in my face? Will I
put up with it and stay with you, because I’m too afraid to be
alone?”

“We don’t have to become our parents,” he
assured.

“The funny thing is, we already are,” she
answered, and she wrapped her arms around him as if he were all she
had. She felt his heart beating against her cheek, and she longed
to be reassured that everything would work out fine, but she could
never truly believe it now.

Shivering, Kate pulled away. Looking down at
hospital-issued slipper clad feet, she wondered, “What am I even
doing here. What’s the point?”

Nick held onto her and said, “You have to do
what makes you happy. That’s what it’s all about, Kate, and it’s
the hardest thing of all.”

“Did having sex with Evangelica make you
happy?”

Before he could reply, an intrusive commotion
erupted at the end of the brightly lit hallway, and it had spilled
over infringing on their private moment. In a mad dash, Jack came
running toward them with his one open eye reflecting terror. With
his abrasions showing through his skimpy hospital gown, he looked
like a freshly minted pint-sized Frankenstein monster.