Trying the Knot

by Todd Erickson

  With a little wink, Ginny paid the gas station attendant and drove off as if without a care in the world because for the most part, it was generally the case.

  The languid air was gentle and warm against Chelsea’s skin as her feet pounded their way into its caresses. Most of her chin-length blond hair was pulled away from her distinctly angular face. Her thick bobbed hair was her crowning glory, and she proudly advertised it had only ever been home permed once in her lifetime, back when she was a misguided eighth grader who sported an unfortunate butch mullet. Her face was a series of angles. Everything about her suggested a square, from her cheekbones to her disposition.

  Back in high school, she had been a record setting distance runner, the volleyball captain and all-around overachiever. Her accomplishments had made her cover girl of the local newspaper. For more than four years, barely an issue of the Portnorth Porthole did not contain her name somewhere multiple times. Her mother kept a scrapbook documenting her accomplishments. But overnight, college had transformed her into a mere nobody among a swarm of materialistic snobs raised on the New Yorker, L.A. Times or Chicago Tribune. The shock proved too jolting, and she felt washed up at twenty-three; she never anticipated she would rack up her greatest achievements before the age of eighteen.

  Although Chelsea spent her college years less than half an hour away from the largest metropolitan city in the Midwest, she squirreled her time away holed up in a studio apartment maintaining a 3.9 GPA, too afraid to step outside. What a waste, she thought now. But she never felt wasted when in her adopted hometown. Like Nick, Chelsea readily enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond, someone else’s pond she easily conquered and made her own.

  Her parents originally hailed from Southwestern Michigan, which was overpopulated and dominated by Dutch Reformed locals and wealthy upper crust conservatives, the same type of people she grew to despise at the University. Her father returned there after divorcing her mother. In Portnorth, on the sunrise side of Michigan, she felt like a lucky alien transplanted to the ideal place to carve out her own unique niche.

  Chelsea let her feet carry her along the highway parallel to the shoreline leading away from Portnorth. Today she felt like an extra strenuous workout, in order to prepare her for the crowd of people she would face later at the church rehearsal. She was beginning to find the whole wedding tiresome. Any joy accompanying the festivities would be forced now that a bridesmaid lay in a coma.

  No matter what mental games Chelsea played to distract herself, Evangelica’s face materialized like an imperishable hologram. Even while running, Chelsea could not help but wonder what it must have felt like to consume all those pills, one after another, knowing all the while each swallow was a little taste of death.

  When her legs hit the sand, they were not prepared for the shock, but she trudged onward barely breaking her stride. She ran along the blue water stretching outward as far as she could see. The water was like an infinite blanket beckoning her to submerge herself in its cooling depths.

  It was a perfect, day, not too hot or too humid. Billowy cumulus clouds lingered overhead creating brief reprieves from the shining sun. What no one else appreciated about the little town of Portnorth was its simplicity. Purely unadulterated and uncomplicated simplicity seemed such a cutting edge notion to her; she loved her adopted hometown as much as Evangelica despised it. With September being the kindest month, it was especially perverse that Vange should linger comatose, unaware in a black hole of timelessness.

  Chelsea was doubtful Evangelica would try to kill herself without calling anyone for help. Had she incoherently dialed the numbers too wrecked and weary to save herself? She wished more than anything Vange had called her during such her time of perilous vulnerability. It took no stretch of imagination for Chelsea to conceive how thoroughly desperate and alone Evangelica must have felt.

  In all probability, Chelsea was certain she was the last person Vange would ever think to call. Chelsea always eschewed Kate’s flamboyant grade school best friend. It was for Kate’s benefit that Chelsea had ever talked to Vange at all, but eventually Kate also ceased speaking to Vange after she seduced Nick at the senior year Christmas party, never mind Chelsea had been dating him at the time. So twisted and tangled, she thought. It was the sum of their shared history, a web ensnared with virtual strangers.

  She regarded Nick and Kate as positively mundane due to their premature descent into domestic oblivion. The mere thought of becoming Nick’s wife turned her stomach. No one ever made Chelsea feel quite so worthless as Nick. Before he dumped her for a few meaningless trysts with Vange, Nick had told Chelsea he ‘respected her too much’ and that she was ‘too good for him.’ Remembering those words only made her feel desecrated yet again.

  Chelsea became sickened whenever she looked across the room and saw Nick standing there. In her mind, his entering the medical profession was a mistake because his true calling was politics. Her reasoning being he was devoid of humanity, and that is what allowed him to be everyone’s best friend, whether it was a hick, slut, nerd, jock, or an uptight bitch he found respectable.

  Presently, Chelsea wished she had cultivated a better relationship with Evangelica. The coma victim seemed infinitely more interesting than the abysmal bores who littered her own socioeconomic stratosphere; especially Kate, who would remain forever blinded by the trappings of denial, unless she was provided the truth and an opportunity to free herself.

  It was immaterial to Chelsea that Vange never left Portnorth. Rather than opt for a promise of financial success, she had become a jaded, manic-depressive small town waitress. Evangelica at least had personality, but it was more than that, she was a personality – to the point of becoming a rural, folk-legend of sorts.

  Alive, Vange was held in contempt for her complete lack of humility, and her total disregard for excuses. Shamelessly flaunting her individual beauty and talent failed to win the hearts of friends and minds of neighbors, who always valued sameness over uniqueness. However, in death the town would undoubtedly mourn Vange as the tragic girl whose father killed himself and whose mother was anything except maternal, and despite those setbacks she had been equipped with a voice which could have made her a star under more nurturing circumstances. Chelsea thought it unjust and cruel if Vange should survive and remain the slut who could sing. Maybe the world was destined to only love Vange from afar.

  Chelsea’s body ached dully, but she pushed herself past the threshold of her endurance. She ran hard and fast until her legs and chest screamed in pain. As she came to a halt and doubled over with her hands resting on her knees, she vomited up the injustice and hypocrisy festering within for too long. Bent over near the water she felt empty and free. The cleansing aroma of pine trees saturated her lungs with astringent sap, and the waters of mighty Lake Huron beckoned her to explore its murky comforts.

  Falling into the cold water, she submerged herself in blueness. Seagulls fought nearby, and she splashed to rid herself of their screeching disturbance. She wanted to be alone. Gasping the fishy air lingering over the lake, her exhilarated mind implored of Evangelica, “Come back and swim against the current. Don’t opt for the safety of death, and a false promise of reverence!”

  Floating on her back, Chelsea thought, screw everyone who had ever called Vange white trash or found herself to respectable to screw. Suddenly emancipated, Chelsea found herself rolling in the sea amidst a fit of laughing fits. She struggled to tread water as the alluring liquid pulled her deep within its grip.

  When her arms and legs regained their underwater dance, she called out sadly to no one, Come back, Evangelica, come back. I need you to be my friend.

  By the time Chelsea entered her mother’s obsessively immaculate home, she had nearly dried off from her spontaneous swim. She trailed beach sand from her ankles through the doll-like house teaming with fresh cut flowers and delicate trinkets. It appeared a modern day Southern Belle might reside there. Even the antique furniture looked fragile and easily destructible,
but Ginny Norris never entertained more than a few carefully select guests at a time.

  Chelsea enjoyed eating ice cream and reading fashion magazines or practicing various yoga positions in the middle of the airy living room on the hardwood floor. Yet surrounded by the over abundance of bric-a-brac breakables inevitably put her on the edge. Like a bull in a china shop, she felt so trapped it was as if her flesh tingled electrically, and it was all she could do not to flail about until everything lay shattered at her feet. Initially, it was in this living room while anticipating leaving for university the combination of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and trendy magazines sent her scurrying to the bathroom to induce vomiting.

  Most of the time, Chelsea found herself cornered between envious and embarrassed, and ultimately resentful of Ginny’s indolently flirty disposition. The senior Ms. Norris was so carefree her daughter could not help but grow increasingly neurotic whenever she spent any time in her mother’s presence. Chelsea often wondered if anything actually mattered to Ginny, because nothing whatsoever seemed to affect her languorously calm demeanor, but perhaps her unhurried savoring of time passing was the secret source of her sex appeal. Chelsea had always expressively forbidden what few dates she ever had to enter the house without her for fear they would fall under her mother’s spell and never leave.

  Standing before the open refrigerator, Chelsea gulped bottled water and lingered in the comforting chill that washed over her hot tight muscles. Hurried footsteps approached from behind, and they did not resemble Ginny’s easy graceful stride.

  Chelsea jumped with fright.

  “Sorry for scaring you.” Kate yawned and rubbed her deep-set eyes, which were surrounded by purplish rings. “It feels as if I’ve been asleep for weeks. I should be checking last minute details, but I don’t feel like doing anything except hitting the sack.”

  Chelsea giggled uneasily and cherished the thought of spending the rest of the weekend in bed.

  “I just had the weirdest dream,” Kate began. Her ordinarily cautious and calculated veneer was clouded by fuzzy sleepiness. Chelsea often thought Kate’s automatic niceness made her seem untrustworthy or mechanical, but the sedative had a positive effect, and she appeared more authentically real.

  “Is an interpretation in order? My post-feminist, revisionist grasp of Freud is a little shaky,” Chelsea said.

  Not yet wide-awake, the Valium was still working on her defenses. “All of us were in it – you, me, Nick, Thad, Ben, and Vange. We were all competing in a contest. Remember the director of the Miss Portnorth Pageants?”

  “Of course, who could forget Nyda Czerwinski, the Home Economics teacher from hell?”

  “Well, in the dream she spoke to us over a giant movie screen. We were eliminated from a contest one by one, and dropped into a dungeon under a stage,” Kate explained. “It came down between Vange and I, and she won.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No, then it turned out Vange was really Nyda, like in the Wizard of Oz, except she sentenced us to death rather than granting our wishes.”

  “What were the wishes?”

  “You wanted to go home, Thad wanted courage, Nick a heart, and Ben a brain. And my wish was to be just like Evangelica. Isn’t it odd?”

  “Sounds like Vange’s revenge.” Chelsea nursed the bottled water and asked, ”Have you decided what to do about being short a bridesmaid?”

  “I’m sure my cousin, Alexa, will stand in if Vange is unable, I mean if she doesn’t recover by tomorrow.”

  “Kate—

  The bleary-eyed bride-to-be plopped herself dejectedly down on a barstool. “Oh, who am I kidding? Thad said Alexa would do it, but it doesn’t feel right, you know?”

  “Of course it doesn’t, how could it?”

  “Oops, one bridesmaid’s in a coma, let’s just fix up the dress and stick someone else in it.” Kate’s sunken eyes were swollen with sleep, and it looked as if she wanted to either bawl or scream. “Can things get any worse?”

  Chelsea countered, “Trust me, things can always get worse.”

  “This morning at the hospital, the first thing I thought was why now? Why not after the wedding? That must sound incredibly cold, but it really was my first thought. Then when I saw her laid out like a corpse, I didn’t know whether to hug her or slap her.”

  Chelsea sighed and mustered the energy to whisper, “You’re right, it does sound incredibly cold.”

  Lost for words, Kate shook her head and looked away from Chelsea’s judgmental gaze. “I always imagined my wedding day being so wonderfully perfect, like a fairy tale.”

  “Everyone does. No one anticipates anything like this.”

  “I wonder, what Emily Post suggests doing about a comatose bridesmaid, who just happens to be my stepsister?”

  “Isn’t she supposed to sing at the ceremony?”

  “We’re using prerecorded vocals, so she could be in the bridal party,” Kate said sniffling.

  Chelsea contemplated out loud, “What’ll they do when they hear her voice?”

  “Maybe we should light a candle for her. After all, we’re lighting one for my mom. While we’re at it why not light one for my granddad, and Vange’s dead father, Shayla’s first husband?”

  “It could be the first wedding crashed by dead people,” Chelsea said, injecting humor into the dire scenario.

  Kate rose to her feet and paced the length of the kitchen. “I need another Valium.”

  “Or Prozac. Pour us a drink while I brush my teeth, and I’ll drive you home,” Chelsea called from the bathroom.

  “I can’t go there – take me to Nick’s. I don’t have the energy to deal with my dad or Shayla.”

  Chelsea returned to the kitchen with a toothbrush in hand. While brushing her teeth, she stood near the telephone and checked the antiquated answering machine for messages.

  “Good morning, Katie, it’s me – Nick. Give me a call when you’re able —beep—Hey, Gin, this is the love of your life. I’ll be in the embalming room all day, so see yah tonight —beep— Hey, (hiccup) it’s Shayla Hesse. Ed and me we’re heading out to the cottage for a Labor Day weekend BBQ. Just wanted to remind you, we’ll be water skiing and what not. Come out for a wiener roast if you get the chance – beep.”

  With toothpaste dripping from her chin, Chelsea scampered from the kitchen. Kate poured two tall drinks, and from the bathroom Chelsea hollered, “What about your brother, how’s he handling all this?”

  Kate sipped the vodka and cranberry juice, unsure if anyone had told Jack about Evangelica’s condition. Unsure where or how to locate him, she stared out the kitchen window across the gravel parking lot at the lounge. Everyone would meet there later, and she suddenly thought it was a mistake to have the church rehearsal before the dinner. Her father and stepmother would arrive and make drunken fools of themselves in front of Nick’s relatives.

  The water running in the bathroom reminded Kate of rain showers, and she prayed the weather remained cooperative at least. Perhaps even that was too much to hope for. Her big day was predestined to be an abysmal disaster, or so it seemed.

  chapter seven

  As the ecru colored Chevy Malibu pulled onto the highway, Kate tapped her foot to the beat of the music. Driving, Chelsea was buzzing slightly from the drink Kate had made too strong. The car was half-packed as she was supposed to be heading to the U of M Law School on Monday. She was enjoying coasting down the tree-lined highway, but she imagined their destination was anyplace other than the Paull’s beachfront estate. Chelsea could brainstorm a hundred better ways to spend Labor Day weekend.

  Her favorite long distance drive was always the road trip home from Chicago at Christmas time. Blaring classic rock music, she sped past the snow covered evergreens and hilly fields and whizzed through small towns comforted by the knowledge she was headed home to Portnorth.

  Kate gnawed on her index finger knuckle to keep from chewing off her manicured nails. She sat mutely alongside Chelsea whom she suspected was dru
nk. For whatever reason, Chelsea chose to take the long way. Kate crouched down in her seat as they rode onto Main Street, which ran the full length of the town, approximately three and a quarter miles. Teenagers cruised this stretch all weekend long. The car wash and church parking lot were turnaround hotspots. It was a monotonous unending ritual culminating in either finding a buyer to purchase alcohol or directions to a kegger, which was usually held in some deep-wood, off-limits hunting camp.

  Back in high school, one of the few deterrents of Kate’s popularity was her aversion to alcohol. In order to get decent grades, she studied voraciously in all subjects except math. Like her deceased mother, Kate tended to butcher the English language, but with due diligence she managed to obtain all A’s. Like a majority of her classmates, she was the first one in her family to attend college.

  Kate thought it was humiliating to have such backward hillbilly blood coursing through her veins. In order to avoid being reminded of their tacky roots, her mother’s brothers had moved away and dispersed throughout the state. However, it never occurred to her mom or aunt to join the exodus from Portnorth. Her father’s family, the infamous Hesses, were true shit kickers who monopolized a small farming community a few miles from the city. They were a hard drinking crop of Krauts with attitude to spare.

  Kate could not imagine herself living in Portnorth, a member of the softball or bowling leagues, or even one of the civic-minded volunteer societies. She had always dreamed of marrying into a family that could trace its roots for more than three generations, and so she considered herself extremely lucky to have found Nick. He had his faults, but mostly he was a godsend.

  While attending a remote little university in the Upper Peninsula she had dated a series of duds, but one stuck out in her mind – the geek to whom she lost her virginity. He was the only other man besides Nick she had known intimately, and he had been as gentle as he was patient. His family was well established and cultured in ways her clan could not imagine. Together, they had planned to become engineers and settle down in the woodsy outskirts of a distant metro Detroit suburb, but then Nick came back into her life and put an end to such notions.