“Spinster,” she said to herself contemptuously, and she gulped down the lukewarm contents of her water bottle.
In all probability, she thought, maybe she would never know what love was.
chapter ten
part ii – slide
Chelsea walked into the church as if she was walking onto a yacht because the sprawling cathedral was constructed to resemble a Great Lakes freighter. The nautical theme permeated the entire town, from the unappetizing name of the local bakery, Barnacle Bob’s, to the local newspaper, the Portnorth Porthole. She kept one eye on the Holy Water as she failed to make a sign of the cross. Purposefully underdressed and resembling a mountain climber, she wound her way through the gaudy, overly ornate Catholic Church. All eyes turned to Chelsea, and she flushed from the attention. She was doubtful everyone was strewn about the church atwitter over her arrival. Nick’s fraternity brothers, or Brothers Grimm as she referred to them, appeared restless in their mix-n-match Gap getups, Garanimals for grown ups. Their combustible energy supply threatened to explode, sending the resplendent church mushrooming to bits over the quiet little town.
To her embarrassment the wedding rehearsal crowd groaned at seeing her, and it became apparent they were impatiently awaiting the arrival of someone else. Disappointed she was not the reason for the delay, Chelsea explained when asked she had not seen Kate’s father or stepmother.
The best man acted as a mouthpiece for the Frat boys; his continual requests to get the show on the road were obviously a source of annoyance for Nick. The Frat Pack sported floppy haircuts, goatees and single stud earrings, and they smelled of Calvin Klein cologne. To Chelsea, they all looked suspiciously gay, except for their designated leader. The best man’s hair was in a ponytail, and tiny hoops hung from his double-pierced ear. Kerouac, as he was commonly called, had spent a summer at his parent’s cottage in the Upper Peninsula; all the while he lived on LSD and The Doors music. Her lack of common sense and the stirring in her loins kept her encircling him like a cat in heat.
The gaggle of bridesmaids looked hungry, bored and overly tanned. Their bleached hair was stuffed into identical scrunchies, which they adjusted with compulsive regularity when not rolling their eyes and laughing giddily at the Frat Pack antics. The best man and Nick’s father paid an excessive amount of attention to the Matron of Honor. She had been Kate’s first college roommate, and once during a drunken dormitory all-nighter, the bored housewife and Kate made a pact to one-day be one another’s maid of honor.
Unable to fathom sharing Kerouac’s attention with the trollop who spent last night with Ben, Chelsea plopped down next to Thad on an uncomfortable church pew. Her yawn set off a chain reaction. She decided the wedding attendants fit the qualifications of what had once been referred to as “Reagan Youth.” She imagined everyone one day settling down in cookie cutout subdivisions, and the remainder of their natural lives would be spent conspicuously consuming.
Chelsea squeezed Thad’s leg, leaned in close and said glibly, “I’ve died and gone to hell.”
Festering with guilt, Thad failed to respond as he watched Nick playfully grab Kate and put her in a loving headlock. His future wife laughed, swatted away her bridegroom and then gave him a heartfelt hug. She wore a tasteful off-white dress that was a few sizes too large, and it made her look especially flat chested. Thad grew queasy with the knowledge of the groom’s rendezvous with the comatose bridesmaid. Damn Nick and Vange, he thought.
Sporting a faux fur, A-line coat, Tristana-Nanette made her way toward her younger brother and motioned to her watch. Her royal blackness had plans to meet the newspaper editor later, and she was presently exhausted from bouncing between her estranged parents. Fat and quasi-classy, Anne Paull stood at the opposite end of the church from her physically fit doctor husband, who brimmed full of lust for the matron of honor.
Hot and frustrated, Tristana surrendered her human tennis ball act and took her seat far from the maddening crowd. She was the most beautiful woman who had ever fled the city limits, and there was no use trying to fit in. Unnoticed, the modern day Morticia hacked up a phlegm globber, spat in the aisle and let a little fart.
“I admire Nanette – I mean Tristana’s aloof, ironic Gen X attitude,” Chelsea whispered to Thad.
“Gen X?”
“You know, Generation X, like Baby Boomers but without the narcissism and more ironic.”
“Oh.”
“Do Tristana’s breasts seem larger?”
“Ben seems to think so.”
“That’s depressing if she had an enlargement,” Chelsea said.
No matter what the conversation, Chelsea’s eyes urged him to tell Kate of her philandering fiancé. Thad imagined her climbing over the pews in her cargo shorts and boots toward Nick, and with her arms flailing she yelled out at Kate that Nick had slept with her stepsister only last night. “He’s a dog, Kate!” she screamed, and to prove her point, she pulled out a clipboard and asked, “Whom here hasn’t Nick Paull slept with?”
“Don’t you think it’s horrible?”
“Huh?” Thad asked, and then he remembered the topic of their conversation. “What’s the big deal about Tristana’s tits?”
“Thad, an augmentation mammoplasty procedure is pandering to the patriarchal dictatorship of what’s attractive on a woman’s body,” Chelsea informed, shocked by his political incorrectness. Then she asked concerned, “Do I sound like a militant feminist?”
He let the drawn out silence speak for itself. Without looking at her, he excused himself to smoke a cigarette. Once outside, Thad wondered whether Chelsea was on the right track. Maybe it was his duty to inform Kate of her fiancé’s tryst with her comatose stepsister. Just the sound of it flustered him, and Chelsea’s constant glances of knowing disapproval didn’t help matters. At all times, Thad could feel her judgmental eyes piercing up at him with soap opera intensity, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of discussing his intentions.
Emerging from an outrageously practical station wagon, Thad’s round compact mother and his tall gangly sister made their way toward the church. Thad extinguished his cigarette, and Mrs. Feldpausch waved cheerily. She looked like a red-faced elf next to her towering pissed off daughter. Following them, he reluctantly trudged back inside the church while explaining that Kate’s father had not yet arrived. All eyes turned hopefully to them, and then he could feel the collective disappointment of the crowd.
Alexa said loudly as she sat down next to Chelsea, “They’re probably too wasted to find the church. Why’s everyone in this family a damned drunk?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Thad said.
Alexa erupted with laughter and Jane Feldpausch smacked both her unruly adopted children. She hastily changed the subject from the genetic likelihood of alcoholism to parental negligence.
“Why would Ed and Shayla bother to show up? His family values became real clear when he had to be dragged to my sister’s deathbed,” Jane said, referring to her ex-brother in-law with customary distaste. “Kaye got a real prize when she married that S-O-B.”
“Why anyone would want to get married is beyond me,” Chelsea said.
Alexa bemoaned her plight. “Do I really have to go through with this? Just look at them, a coven of brazen, blond barracudas.”
“You have my deepest sympathies,” Chelsea said glumly. She didn’t want to be a bridesmaid either.
Halfway up the main aisle, Tristana joined Ben and the priest. Alexa remarked Tristana looked like a Satan worshiper next to Father Tim. Ben was an usher along with Kate’s brother, Jack, who had also gone missing, but no one seemed to notice because sole attention was focused on the glaringly absent father of the bride.
The priest was a family friend who was routinely imported for weddings. Thad wondered aloud if weddings were like notches in his belt.
“Over sixty-billion married,” Thad announced.
“Maybe that’s what they brag about when they congregate with other men of
the cloth,” Alexa said.
“Well, they can’t very well advertise over sixty-billion molested,” Chelsea said, and Alexa guffawed loudly while their mother shrank in horror.
The family recruited their own priest because the parish regular was the latest in a series of senile dolts making one last, seaside pit stop before being put out to pasture. The present priest was a heinous home-wrecker with tentative plans to retire to Florida with his grandfatherly, Knights of Columbus boyfriend.
As it became more obvious that Ed and Shayla Hesse were not likely to arrive any time soon, Nick approached Father Tim and inquired in a businesslike manner whether anyone else could take the place of Kate’s missing father. The priest agreed that for the time being a paternal substitute sounded like an excellent idea. When he determined Kate’s brother should assume the duty, Nick suggested it was not a satisfactory option, and he recruited Ben for the job of stand-in. Nick presented the scenario to Kate, and she reluctantly agreed to let the practice proceedings begin.
“Places everyone, places,” the priest whispered meekly. Father Tim seemed a somewhat uncommanding Mr. Roarke in black, and this church was his Fantasy Island. All that was missing was a little person to ring the bell and cry out the ritualistic, “The plane! The plane!” and inquire, “Does she have a fantasy, boss?” Thad wondered what was Kate’s fantasy exactly, and whether he had any right to shatter her illusions of love, especially on the day before her happily ever after was slated to begin. Maybe it was better not to reveal the dark side of her prince charming.
In his usual ostensible fashion, Nick hung in the back of the church monitoring everybody as they assumed their positions. The wedding attendants anxiously coupled up as if desperate to escape a flood of boredom, and Nick lingered, waiting for the music to sound from nowhere.
Ben felt in his pockets and smacked his forehead. “Oops, I forgot the tape in my other coat.”
“Try to remember tomorrow,” Nick reprimanded.
Ben nodded at the best man, who was doing handstands next to the Holy Water, and he suggested, “Maybe it’d be safer with Kerouac.”
Nick placed a hand on Ben’s triceps and said quietly enough for only him to hear, “Believe it or not, he’s the only one I can tolerate, but they come as a package deal.”
Ben offered no response, and Nick continued to hover like an overseer until Ben walked away with one hand in his pocket. He thumbed the suicide note he had snatched from Evangelica’s fingers. It was a constant reminder of his failing to be there when she needed him most. Watching Nick, a surge of remorse shot through Ben, and he protectively linked arms with the bride. Radiating perfect calm under duress, Kate was appreciative of her stand-in father’s squeeze of support, and she gave him a peck on the cheek before whispering a heartfelt thank you in his ear.
“For what?” he asked.
“For being so sweet,” Kate said, smiling warmly.
While Nick double-checked to make sure the wedding attendants were appropriately positioned, Chelsea leaned surprisingly close to him and muttered, “Sizing up which one of us you’d like to screw tonight?”
Coughing and bug-eyed, Nick abruptly stepped away as if she were contagious with the plague. He shot her a questioning look full of animosity. She cast him a knowing and hostile grin, and reveled in his retreat to the front of the church where he stood beside Father Tim.
A few minutes later, Chelsea lumbered up the aisle in her hiking boots. At her side was T-bone, the Frat boy who drunkenly offered to flash her the source of his nickname.
Alexa lagged sullenly out of step, two paces behind her preppy escort. Halfway up the aisle, she tripped over her own feet and lost a sandal in the fall. As everyone laughed, Nick’s sister scurried to assist Alexa upright as her escort stood benignly to one side. Tristana handed Alexa her wayward Birkenstock, and she smiled genuinely sympathetic, for which Alexa was grateful.
With a wink, Tristana said, “I can hardly wait to see how you manage this catwalk in heels.”
Last in the procession was the pony-tailed best man, and he accompanied the bleached-blond matron of honor. Noting her synthetic transparency in the light of the day, Ben wondered why he had been too busy entertaining this married woman to respond to Evangelica’s call for help. It was not uncommon for him to wonder what he had been thinking the mornings after his dick had lied to his eyes the night before.
Kate looked concerned and asked if he was okay.
“Yes, why?”
“You look a little sick,” she said, feeling his forehead. “Maybe you’re just having doubts about whether or not to give me away.”
“What do they say, if you love something set it free?”
“And if it returns to you, it’s yours—
“And if she doesn’t, hunt it down and rip its heart out with your teeth,” Thad interjected. With his camera dangling from his neck, he snapped occasional pictures of the practice proceedings. Laughing, Kate beckoned him, and he reluctantly let his cousin and her substitute father detain him near the rear of the church.
“Thad if my brother doesn’t show up tomorrow, will you take his place and help Ben seat the guests?” Kate asked. “You’re the only one skinny enough to fit in his tux.”
“Trust me, he wouldn’t miss out on the main event,” Ben said hopefully because he half-expected Kate to ask him to give her away during the actual ceremony. Despite his optimism, her brown eyes remained doubtful.
Thad could not think of a reasonable excuse to refuse her request, so he agreed to act as an usher in case Jack skipped the wedding.
“And what if your dad is a no show?” Thad asked. “Who’ll give you away?”
Kate was quiet for a long moment, and she said, “I guess Jack will have the honors if he’s around.”
“And if he’s not?
She ignored his inquiry altogether as she did not want to entertain the prospect of what to do if her entire immediate family should boycott her wedding. The three of them had not been especially close since her mother’s death. Only Kate had been there to witness her mother’s deterioration. Jack, who practically moved in with Ben while her father who was out to sea, had not been there for them at all. Therefore, Kate felt only the most lavish wedding her father’s money could buy would compensate for her obligatory deathbed vigil.
Finally, Ben and Kate stiffly made their way toward the crowd at the front of the church. Kate appeared to be a martyr being led to her own execution, a lamb to the slaughter. But halfway down the aisle Ben whispered into her ear, and she whirled around as his supportive grasp kept her from doubling over with laughter. Thad caught the light moment on film, with Nick looking out of focus in the background.
Thad took a seat behind Tristana, and he wondered why Nick’s sister was not a bridesmaid. Perhaps Kate had not wanted to be upstaged by a freak in fuchsia. More likely, Tristana would have traded her funeral garb for formal wear if only her brother had not insisted on marrying a country bumpkin.
In front of the church at the altar, Kate and Nick were clamped together as they followed the priest’s instructions to become comfortable with the gilded portable pew. Tomorrow’s full-fledged, grueling Wedding Mass Ceremony would stretch their cherished moment to infinite proportions, but at least while repeatedly sitting, standing and kneeling, Nick and Kate could squeeze in one more cardiovascular workout. They had been hitting the gym hard and looked the epitome of health and happiness.
During this practice ceremony, Kate glanced back only once with the hope her father might have slipped in unnoticed. But her searching eyes merely confirmed her nagging suspicion that Ed Hesse was never anywhere he was expected. She imagined his corpse would be misplaced for his own funeral. What had God been thinking, she wondered staring up at the altar, when he took away her mother who so obviously loved and enjoyed her life while sparing her father who obviously wanted nothing whatsoever to do with his life. Catching a sidelong glance of her future mother in-law, Kate felt reassured by Anne Paull’s war
m smile and supportive thumbs up.
Settling down in Portnorth, Anne Paull chanced the dreary possibility one of her carefully cultured children potentially marry one of the barbaric natives one day. A suppressed look of dissatisfaction in Mrs. Paull’s eyes revealed her secret displeasure with Nick’s choice of a life-partner. She had always maintained high aspirations for her offspring, and now her beloved only son was becoming, of all things, a Catholic. She blamed this lapse of judgment on her own intensely upwardly mobile aspirations. Rather than sending her children to the local public school, she enrolled them in the only parochial institution the town had to offer; however, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine it would lead to a complete and total Conversion. It had been all she could do to sit through his Baptism and First Holy Communion without strangling her compliant husband with a Rosary. Mrs. Paull thanked her Protestant Lord that Nanette had spent the bulk of her formative years in a boarding school far away from Portnorth.
Anne Paull belonged to a few of the same civic groups as had Kate’s dead mother, but she had always considered Kaye Hesse to be dutiful, kitchen help. Being a full time nurse, Anne never had the time to invest in civic charities the way Kaye, a housewife had. Having been a chief engineer’s wife did not detract from Kaye’s salt of the earth roots, but at least Kate’s mother had possessed dignity, unlike the current Mrs. Ed G. Hesse. Shayla was nothing more than a floozy. With any luck, she thought Ed and Shayla would spare everyone a lot of embarrassment and show up sober for the wedding.
Although the fussing wedding attendants created a teasing ruckus around them, tomorrow’s newlyweds nervously surrendered their sole attention to the good Friar. The kindly priest guided them through their matrimonial vows, and he informed them when to expect what. He reminded the attendants when it was time for their readings, which they practiced, and then he summoned Tristana for her sole contribution. She casually made her way to the podium and read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and she took perverse pleasure when she concluded with a resounding “to the edge of doom.”
Trying the Knot Page 16
