Trying the Knot

by Todd Erickson

  “It’s the police.” Alexa peered outside. From the window, it appeared as if the sheriff’s deputy was interrogating their father.

  “Tidy up, Wilma, Fred’s home,” said Thad, as he wiped off his mother’s face with the green-stained briefs. She swatted him aside and pushed Alexa out of the way of the window. She yanked it open wide.

  “He tried to kill me!” Jane screamed at Deputy Czerwinski. “Throw his ass in the slammer and toss away the key.”

  “Mom!”

  “He tried to shove me down a flight of stairs in cold blood!”

  Flushed, Alexa pulled her mother out of the open window, and Thad slammed it shut. Jane spun around like a wobbly top and stopped in Thad’s face. She emitted the sour, boozy stench of a tavern, and spit showered Thad as she yelled, “It’s Screw-n-ski! That swinger couldn’t even raise his own kids right, let alone all the bastard babies he’s fathered all around town!” She stumbled to the fridge and grabbed another beer, “I told your father to buy a 30-pack!”

  “Mom, go to bed, please.”

  “We have cousin Kate’s wedding tomorrow.”

  Jane ignored the pleadings of her children and attempted to crack open the last beer. She blathered drunkenly, struggling with the can, “This wedding is a fiasco, a mess, and if my sister were alive, none of this shit would be going down.”

  “It really is time for bed.”

  “Here,” she handed Thad the can, “open this goddam sonofabitch!” He cracked it open and guzzled down most of the contents before handing her the last swallow.

  “You know what Screw-n-ski is? I’ll tell you what he is; he’s an asshole!” Her drunken tirade came to an abrupt halt when she remembered her husband was being accosted by the same police officer outside. “Yous wanna know what I heard tonight, straight from the mouth of Shayla-whore? Hop-along Czerwinski is her daughter’s real father—

  “What?” Thad interrupted.

  “You heard me right, and now the daughter may never know because she’s in a coma!” Jane began taste testing the empty cans on the counter, drinking whatever swill were fermenting at the bottoms. “That’s not all, now Screw-n-ski’s snooty-assed wife— that board up her ass bitch— is ditching him.”

  “Czerwinski is Vange’s father?”

  “Yup, and Nyda-the-Livin-Dead is also leaving The Church for the cult of bible beaters up on the hill! Can you believe it? That trash got caught embezzling from the Little League and the Dollar Store, and now she’s a holy roller!”

  “I can’t believe it,” Thad whispered.

  Alexa ran from the house to see what was happening outside while Thad remained behind, half-heartedly listening to his mother’s meandering, alcohol-fueled stream of conscience, blathering. He felt for the necklace in his pocket as if it were the Great White Hope.

  Thad was never amazed by the complete and utter senselessness of these drunken episodes. To him, everything not bolted down was completely senseless; the more he fastened himself to his fleeting reality, the less it all made sense. Paralyzed, he could only watch the mayhem unfold. Lately, he had been going nowhere and doing nothing except revisiting all the old places he had already been. Surrounded by relics from the past, and none of it meant anything.

  His mother pried the kitchen window open and shouted, “Czerwinski, you’ve got a daughter in a coma, and your wife is leaving you for Jesus! And everyone hates you!” Satisfied she had told the police officer exactly how things stood, she lit and proceeded to smoke the wrong end of one of Thad’s cigarettes.

  Fuming, Alexa barged back into the house and begged, “Shut that freak up, or they’ll arrest dad.”

  “Oh, no, not her precious daddy! He tried to kill me! Shoved me down the steps so he could go home and make Shayla-whore another bastard, ‘cause I’m incapable!” Jane stuck her head out the open window and let loose a tirade. “I can’t help it my ovaries never worked! That scumbag tried to murderize me. Take him away! I’m afraid for my life, and the safety of my selfish, ingrate children who aren’t even born of my womb!”

  “You should be arrested!” Alexa yelled.

  “Me?! For what?”

  “Butchery of the English language for starters,” Thad quipped.

  Once again Alexa slammed the window shut, but this time she locked it and begged her mother to be quiet. Jane staggered away from them and fell into a heap in the dining room. Soon afterward, the flashing lights were extinguished, and officer Czerwinski sped away to resume his night beat across town.

  Entering the house, Mr. Feldpausch sprung to his wife’s side. He found her moaning under the dining room table, and he demanded to know where was the missing purse, which contained whatever was left of his paycheck. Jane groaned she was in too much pain to recall where she stashed the purse. But she mustered up the strength within herself to demand he oversee Alexa clean up the spilled lime Kool-Aid. Their father insisted Thad and Alexa go look for the purse while he mopped up the sticky green mess.

  “Screw this shit. If I find any money, I’ll keep it,” Alexa spat.

  “Listen here, your mother and I have given all we have to you,” said Feldpausch. “We’ve sacrificed everything to give you a home.”

  “Well, your everything doesn’t amount to much.”

  Feldpausch’s blue-collar angst was released with a slam of his fist on the kitchen counter. He cried out, “I work my ass off for what?”

  “So that fat bitch can lay on hers,” Alexa said, pointing to the moaning pile rocking on the floor.

  “That’s your mother, for God’s sake,” he wailed. Their father swayed unsteady on his feet. “Where’s the respect?”

  “You tell her, you tell the little bitch,” Jane encouraged, in between gasps of pain.

  Close to tears, Alexa shook her head and whispered, “She was never a mother to me.”

  What she meant was Jane was hardly the mother she would have chosen, and Thad guessed, given a choice in the matter, he would have gladly taken a different father had one been offered. Thad envied orphans who were never adopted, because their parents were whoever they imagined them to be.

  The Feldpausch’s drunken antics were not usually this explosive or melodramatic. Generally, the intoxicated couple only taunted one another with mere talk of domestic Armageddon; rarely did they ever make good their empty promises.

  Mr. Feldpausch reached out, grabbed his daughter by the collar and shook her. “You think you got it so bad? Tonight, at the bar, we ran into your Uncle Ed and Shayla. They’re moving into the country, and they’re not taking Jack.”

  “So what!”

  “Think about it, your cousin will be put out onto the streets, he’ll be homeless, and you think you’ve got it so rough.”

  She struggled to free herself of his grasp and rushed past them out the door. Her combative nature and continuous acts of rebellion made Thad embarrassed of his own passivity, but it was not quite enough to spur him into action. He walked past his father and descended the basement steps into the family rec room.

  “Thaddeus, go look for that purse,” Mr. Feldpausch ordered from the top of the stairs. “Two weeks pay is laying out there, waiting to be stolen.”

  Thad paid no attention and poured himself a tumbler of vodka. His parents confused their remote hometown with the anonymous inner city neighborhoods portrayed nightly on TV shows like “COPS”. If anyone happened to find a purse, he or she would drop it off at the police station. If someone was curious enough to look inside, they might even go out of their way to drop it off at the house. However, having spent the past decade sprawled in front of the TV eating potato chips and drinking beer had distorted the Feldpausch’s own sense of reality. Television had brainwashed them into thinking themselves as setting on the edge of a seething ghetto. When in reality, Portnorth sat forgotten at the edge of the world, slowly being washed away by the endless waves of Lake Huron.

  “Thad, go find that damned purse!”

  In the family room, Thad remained seated cross-
legged on the floor despite a crashing noise, which sounded like a sack of potatoes rolling down the steps. In the subsequent blissful silence, he stared blankly at the silvery blue rhinoceros necklace, and he thought of the girl who’d taken it off her neck in what seemed like the previous lifetime.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number to the downstate subdivision seemingly so far away it might as well have been in a foreign country.

  “Hello - Hello,” a hoarse voice stammered groggily.

  Hesitantly, Thad began, “I - I was just wondering if I could speak w—

  “Who is this, do you know what time it is?” the woman demanded, roused from her suburban slumber.

  “About two a.m., ma’am.”

  “Is this you again, Thad?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not here.” The voice explained curtly, “She lives in Ann Arbor now with her fiancé.”

  “Oh, Okay.”

  “I’ll tell her you called, when I see them on Sunday for dinner.”

  “You want my number?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, bye,” she said, and his momentary connection with civilization was severed.

  Thad hung up the phone and rolled over onto the floor. Marooned in a fetal state of apathetic indifference, he finished off the bottle of vodka and passed out on the floor with the chain entwined in his fingers.

  chapter twenty

  Ben crawled across The Lounge floor past flitting shadows in order to retrieve his randomly discarded clothing. He scurried low to the floor so he could dodge headlights sporadically streaming through the dining room windows. They had come here with the intention of treating his wound with a First Aid kit, but one thing led to another and they ended up having sex in a circular booth across from the bar, and now he was attempting to slip out unnoticed.

  His only objective was to escape without facing her, and once safely home he would bury himself in sleep without dissecting the evening’s skewed turn of events. Ben did not want to contemplate anything except the empty king-sized waterbed awaiting him. On his hands and knees, he found his ripped, bloody T-shirt on one of the vinyl swivel chairs. He sighed with relief, stuffed it in his back pocket, and ambled toward the main exit.

  As he opened the door, an obstinate voice said, “How typical.”

  He guiltily turned around to face Chelsea. She was scantily clad in one of the floral tablecloths, and her arms were crossed. She inquired, “Is this the shoddy good bye treatment my mother and Evangelica get?”

  “I-I’m sorry.” Ben struggled to find the right words. “I thought you were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you. It’s so late, and you need to get some rest, with tomorrow being such a big day and all.”

  Chelsea nodded her head, swiped her cropped blond hair away from her steely eyes and walked away. She called over her shoulder, “Well, then don’t let me keep you.”

  Ben followed her back to the bar area where she poured a tumbler of club soda. While drinking slowly, she pretended to be disinterested in the way his black leather jacket rested seductively against his bare chest, which was the color of raw honey. She acted as if the glimmer of the hoop earrings piercing his nipples held not the slightest bit of intrigue, and she could care less about his tattoos or his ass hugging jeans. As long as Chelsea kept her eyes focused on the ice floating in her glass, she could smother the fire smoldering in her eyes.

  “I-I don’t have to leave if you don’t want me to,” he said, and he pointed his bruised, swelling nose. “It’s just my face. It hurts.”

  “Don’t you have a date with your boss?” Chelsea asked. She gathered the tablecloth tighter across her chest and flattened her already small breasts. “On your way out, check to see if my mother’s left a light on for you.”

  “Please, leave your mom out of this,” Ben requested. “I thought if I stayed it might make things awkward in the morning, that’s all.”

  “For me, you, or mother dearest? How do I know you weren’t thinking of her when you were with me? Or Evangelica for that matter?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably when he stepped closer. “How do I know you weren’t thinking of them, or that airhead matron of honor?”

  “You don’t. What does it matter?”

  “Ugh, all of the sudden I feel so cheap. Maybe you should go.”

  Ben placed his hands on the bar and leaned directly in front of her. He propped himself up on the counter top and removed the glass from her trembling hands. Kneeling on the bar, he lightly kissed her forehead and placed his hands on her bare, tanned shoulders.

  Chelsea backed away, out of his reach and said, “I don’t think a repeat performance is necessary.”

  “Chels, I don’t have time for games.”

  “It appears to me, Benjamin, that time is one thing you have an overabundance of,” she said icily.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Please, give me some credit. What could you possibly not have time for? Your obligations amount to tending my mother’s bar and bed.”

  Ben jumped off the counter and joined her next to the cash register on the other side of the bar. Unable to believe he was actually defending himself, he protested, “But that’s not all I do. I paint houses in the summer, and I help coach the cross country and track teams.”

  “You’re a glorified gigolo is all,” she said flatly. “And a relatively cheap one at that.”

  “Where do you get off judging me?” Ben asked. “You’ve got no right, you don’t know me.”

  “What is there to know, except you’re easy on the eyes and so-so in the sack?” she asked. “Vange knew you well, and look where she ended up. The bottom line, Benjamin, is you’re not to be counted on.”

  His face flushed at the mention of Evangelica’s name and what she was insinuating, and Chelsea immediately regretted having mentioned their indisposed friend. “I give up,” he said shaking his head, and he made his way around the bar and stormed off. She called out his name and followed him to the main entrance. At the door, she grabbed his sleeve when he reached for the dead-bolt lock. Naturally, he pulled away.

  “I’ll give you some advice,” Ben said bitterly. “Law school is the perfect place for you. You’re so hell-bent on prosecuting everyone who surrounds you. You don’t know one thing about my relationship with Vange, so stick it up your lily white ass.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I was out of line.”

  “Maybe?”

  “All I’m trying to do is better understand a few things, that’s all,” she said softly with regret.

  “The best defense is a good offense, right?”

  “I’m sorry if it sounded as if I was attacking you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Would you like a drink on the house, before I drive you to your bike?” Chelsea asked remorsefully. Her eyes pleaded for him to accept the peace offering.

  He planted a small sympathetic kiss on her cheek, and they made their way to the liquor stash. With little modesty, she climbed over the counter and poured him a cold beer from the tap. He accepted it and thanked her without any trace of hard feelings.

  “Are you in love with either of them?” Chelsea asked without thinking.

  Exasperated, Ben rolled his eyes and flashed her a look of warning. “Wracking up future ammunition?”

  “No, positively not. Honest.”

  Ben sighed as he twirled the beer mug in a circle with his index finger hooked around the handle. He felt uncomfortable discussing the details of his relationship with Ginny Norris with her only child. “Your mom is totally accepting and carefree. Nothing brings her down, Chels.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “I feel like a grown up when I’m with her. We both know it’ll end sooner rather than later, and it’s purely accidental we ever hooked up in the first place.”

  “Sounds like a pleasant mistake.”

  “No, I wouldn’t call it a mistake,” Ben corrected as he watched her sip her soda. “Your mom’s the best, she d
oesn’t have a care in the world.”

  “Hence there lies the problem, she doesn’t have a care in the world,” she protested. “Ever since the third grade it’s always been she and I against the world, but I never felt we were a team, she’s always just never had a care in the world.”

  “You’re mom is devoted to you,” Ben said. “You mean more to her than anything in the world. What does she have to do, throw herself in front of a bus?”

  “Maybe. I’ve always watched the way she was with her customers, and she’s always the same with everyone, so diplomatic, so kind and so caring. There’s no special treatment.”

  “Because they all get the special treatment.”

  “She keeps her professional distance.” Chelsea shrugged and added, “Maybe most of the time, I feel like one of her patrons.”

  “You’re overreacting,” he said, reaching out to give her a hug.

  “What about your relationship with Evangelica?” she asked, and he folded her into his arms. “Are you in love with her?”

  “I don’t think anyone could make sense of us.”

  “Try me.”

  Ben’s face grew warm with affection as he thought about Vange. To prove his point, he dug in his pocket and handed Chelsea a tattered slip of stationery.

  “So long and sorry, Darling, when we found a rip in heaven, we should have just ascended then,” she read incredulously. “What does that even mean?”

  “Exactly. It’s a song lyric from Aimee Mann. Your guess is as good as mine,” Ben confessed. “It’s her suicide note.”

  “That’s it? How cryptic. How vague.”

  “That’s our relationship in a nutshell, vague,” Ben said, and he grinned slightly as he envisioned Vange. “She was more than my best friend. We got really close when everyone else left for college, and it got to the point where we were always there for one another, no matter what, no strings.”