Trying the Knot

by Todd Erickson

  Alexa loudly announced Kate’s arrival to everyone who had gathered in the church foyer, “They’re parking the Jeep right now!”

  Rather than join her parents, Tristana curiously waited for the bride alongside Ben, Chelsea, Nick, and the rest of the bridal party. After a few tense moments, Jack finally burst inside. Resembling a battered footman in his tuxedo, he held open the heavy church door.

  “What happened to you?” Alexa asked, eyeing his extensive cuts and abrasions. “You look like hell, Jack.”

  “This is taking self-mutilation to a whole new level,” Tristana added.

  “I ran into some old friends.”

  “Were they driving a monster truck?” Alexa asked.

  “Some friends,” Tristana said concerned, and she reached out to adjust his crooked bow tie.

  Looking serenely beautiful, Kate emerged with her bridal gown strewn over her arm. Her dark hair was pulled back severely into a ballerina bun, which was pierced into place with a metal pin. She swiftly dodged the quizzical inquiries of her attendants. Without uttering a word, she ducked into the vacant children’s cry room and assembled her wedding attire in private.

  Her eyes reflected the sad traces of pained finality, and her curt manner drove Ben from the church. Grateful he was only an usher, he intended to spend the duration of the ceremony outside decorating the horse and carriage that was to carry the newlyweds across town to the reception.

  Once outside the claustrophobic church entryway, he found himself crouched alone on the front steps next to a paper bag overflowing with tissue flowers. Fortunately, he was not the only one designated to do the job. Unable to move, he hung his head paralyzed as if recovering from a pulverizing blow, and his aching gut heightened his sense of crushing emptiness. His dark almond eyes focused on the cracks in the cement between his tuxedo shoes, and he blocked out Jack and Tristana as they debated the best way to decorate the horse and buggy.

  The still humid air was nearly as suffocating as the blanket of gray, cloudy indifference that suffocated the afternoon sun. Ben felt so overwhelmed it felt as if he would never again move from this spot. His eyes followed the meandering cracks in the pavement winding into a sea of dandelions, anthills and weeds, and he did not hear the footsteps behind him. Standing unnoticed at Ben’s side, Thad snapped pictured of the odd couple holding onto streamers and tissue flowers. As he clicked away with his camera, Thad rambled unaware his one sided conversation failed to register with his one-man audience.

  “So, there’ll be a wedding after all, but it looks more like funeral weather if there is such a thing,” Thad began. “Hopefully, the rain will hold out till after the bride and groom take their horse drawn carriage ride through town. What a weird custom. Hey, there might actually still be a chance for you to collect on that bet. It was a hundred dollars, wasn’t it? Seems a little steep, if you ask me, but I hope they go through with it because I was really counting on jamming to Polka tunes. What do you think?” Thad asked. With his knee, he nudged Ben’s shoulder to discover he felt stiff as a rock.

  “Yikes, are you breathing? What’s wrong with you?”

  Not taking his eyes off of the cracked pavement, Ben mumbled, “She’s gone.”

  “I know.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Some things, you don’t have to be told.”

  “She’s really gone.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  Looking far from anything resembling all right, Ben nodded slowly. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply in order to suppress what emotions threatened to projectile vomit from the inside.

  Thad watched Tristana turn up her nose at the sorry looking horse standing sadly regal in front of the beat up carriage. Staring down at Tristana, the elfin buggy operator sat high on his perch gripping the reins, and he only added to the freak show below. Thad thought no amount of retouching the photos could transform Jack’s face into anything resembling normal, nor would any amount of airbrushing minimize Tristana’s snarky cynicism.

  Tristana handed Jack flowers to paste around the carriage wheel. Dressed in black from head to toe, she looked like a character from an Anne Rice vampire novel. Her frightfully short messy hair separated into wavy spikes. Bruised and bandaged in his tuxedo, Jack could pass for her impish ghoul of a sidekick.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” she observed.

  “Don’t have much to say,” he said blankly, dabbing a tissue carnation with Karo syrup.

  “That shit is nasty,” Tristana said of the sticky substance. “Who the hell beat you to a bloody pulp? Was it your dead prom date’s brothers?”

  He nodded and cast Ben a concerned look from the corner of his blackened eye.

  “Well, I for one can’t believe Nicky and Kate are actually going through with this wedding. This entire debacle has been cursed from the start.”

  “She looks nice, don’t you think?” he asked.

  “Yeah, well, she must’ve swallowed an extra Valium this morning,” Tristana said sarcastically. She backed away from the mangy white horse, which gave only the slightest indication of being alive, and she noticed the elfin driver staring lecherously at her. She snapped, “What’re you looking at? They’re called breasts, mama, and every woman has them!”

  Jack laughed amused at her Stephen King reference, and she continued to hand him Kleenex flowers, which he adhered to the carriage. Occasionally, Jack glanced over at Ben, who looked positively haunted. Thad gave Ben’s shoulder a comforting squeeze, but Ben failed to respond or notice the old friends at his side. By then Nick had joined them on the front steps of the church, and he tilted Ben’s head up to inspect his swollen nose.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t do more damage,” Nick said regretfully, and he shrugged sheepishly, “I’m sorry for hitting you, Benny.”

  Not looking up from the pavement cracks, Ben responded with barely a shrug. When Nick smacked him on the back, he merely slumped forward.

  “You’ll get over it,” Nick said. He took Ben’s melancholic disposition personally and slowly made his way back inside the church vestibule accompanied by Thad.

  “So, are you pissed at me too?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Good to hear,” Nick said. “I’d hate to have a bunch of messed up wedding pictures over a stupid grudge.”

  Thad assured Nick the pictures would be as specified, pure photojournalism and no staged shots. Nick awkwardly smacked Thad on the back as if it was his only means of expressing affection.

  “You’re one helluva guy with one helluva name, Thaddeus Feldpausch, so get the hell to work.”

  Thad laughed and opted to change his film roll before snapping any more wedding pictures, and Nick entered the church alone. When he spotted Chelsea hiding out in a corner far away from the rest of the bridal procession, he requested she check and see if Kate needed any assistance getting ready.

  The organ music resumed, and Chelsea retreated to the cry room just in time to watch Kate step into her plain, medieval-looking wedding gown. The empire waisted dress looked vaguely medieval, and the intricate flowing veil threatened to turn her into an anonymous virgin. Kate hardly ever wore any make up, but today was an exception for she had inexpertly applied a bare minimum with only the help of a compact mirror.

  “Well,” Chelsea began awkwardly. “Do you have something borrowed, old and new? Is that the order?”

  “You forgot blue,” Kate said as she fumbled with the compact mirror. “The dress is borrowed, and my mom wore the pearls on her wedding day. So, I guess they’re old.”

  “What about new and blue?”

  “My earrings are new,” Kate laughed slightly. “I picked them up on the clearance rack at Hudson’s. But no, I don’t have anything remotely blue.”

  “This is kind of blue,” Chelsea said, fishing for Thad’s necklace. “Bluish-silver anyhow.”

  Kate took the necklace into her cupped hand and made a face suggesting the rhinoceros did not exactly compliment her pearls
, but Chelsea ingeniously transformed the chain into a bracelet for Kate’s wrist which was covered with long beaded sleeves that came to a V-shape over the back of her hand.

  “There,” Chelsea said, satisfied with her spontaneous ingenuity. “Something blue.”

  Chelsea finished buttoning up the back of the bride’s dress, and she secured the never-ending veil. Kate gazed nervously out the cry room window at the multitude of wedding guests.

  “Looks like a full house,” Chelsea said unnecessarily.

  “For sure,” Kate replied. “It’s the only reason I’m here at all.”

  “You were going to skip out on your own wedding day?” Chelsea asked, mildly impressed that Kate would even suggest such an intrepid idea.

  “It was either showing up here, or wheel in the corpse and conducting a funeral instead,” Kate said. She struggled with the clasp on her strand of pearls, and avoided registering her bridesmaid’s response.

  Wide-eyed, Chelsea backed away from Kate and said simply, “No.”

  “It happened early this morning,” Kate informed as she administered Visine drops into her swollen dark eyes. “They did everything to save her until finally I just begged them to stop and to leave her alone. Ben was there.”

  “Oh, God. Kate,” Chelsea gasped, her eyes misty with tears. “This is so awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me,” Kate insisted. “I’m not the one who’s gone. Lucky me, I’m about to marry the man of my dreams. Save your sympathy for Vange.”

  Lost for words, Chelsea raised her arms to give her friend a hug, but Kate turned away and faced the restless, inanimate crowd. For lack of anything else to say, Chelsea asked, “Who all knows?”

  “Nick’s dad and Jack,” Kate said, struggling to maintain her composure. “And Ben, of course. As unbelievable as it sounds, I swear I heard her whisper his name at one point.”

  “Makes sense. I don’t think we realize how close they were.”

  “Dr. Paull said it’d be a good idea to wait until after the ceremony to tell everyone,” Kate said, and she added without emotion. “Why spoil the party, huh?”

  “Haven’t you told Nick?”

  “The customary tradition is he can’t see me in my dress, right?” Kate reminded her. “So, I guess the news will have to wait until I reach him at the altar. You’d better let everyone know to get in their places so we can get this over with.”

  “Katie, you don’t have to go through with this if you don’t want to.”

  The bride was silent. One of her unspoken thoughts was if she did not become Mrs. Nicholas Paull then Evangelica would have died in vain. Not marrying Nick seemed to her as ridiculous a notion as taking Ben up on his Vange’s deathbed marriage proposal.

  “Are you serious? Why wouldn’t I marry him?”

  “Kate,” Chelsea broke off, striving to find the least offensive words to express her feelings.

  “Because he and Vange had a few one night stands?” Kate asked flatly. “Because he’s only human, and he’s made mistakes along the way? He doesn’t pretend to be perfect, unlike some people. Besides, this has been my fantasy ever since junior high, right? All m-my dreams are finally coming true.”

  “I guess whatever works for you,” Chelsea said, almost apologetically. Then she left Kate as alone as she had found her.

  Waiting for her cue, Kate remained inside the dry-eyed cry room and leaned all her weight against the door. It felt like the enormous brick structure was toppling down around her, and she was trapped within a mountain of wreckage. Her hands trembled uncontrollably as she flattened her palms against the door. She closed her eyes and said a Hail Mary or two because that is what she always did whenever she was about to enter unchartered waters.

  Thad entered the church with his sunglasses dangling from his ears and his camera strapped around his neck. He grabbed a little wooden wedge and propped open the heavy church door.

  “Good God, this place feels like the inside of a pressure cooker,” he said to Chelsea, and he tested the door to see if it would remain open. “It must be eighty friggin’ degrees in here.”

  Trying to remain calm, Chelsea asked casually, “Where were you?”

  “Taking pictures of the ushers decorating cars,” Thad replied, anxious to escape the bridal party hovering around in emotionally wrought patches. “And I had a smoke.”

  Unable to stop herself, she clutched his arm and asked, “Did you hear, about Vange?”

  “Not now, Chels,” Thad said. He glanced longingly through the second set of doors opening into the hot sticky church, and he tore himself away. “I’ve got to keep focused, this isn’t a dress rehearsal. These pictures have to be perfect.”

  “To hell with the damned pictures. What’s wrong with you? Have you drunk yourself numb?”

  “I wish,” he said. In disbelief, Chelsea watched him apathetically move away and migrate to one of his many strategically placed tripods. She backed out the front door and caught her breath. She made her way hastily to the end of the long sidewalk, where Ben sat on the steps watching them adorn the wedding vehicles. Eyeing the white horse suspiciously, Chelsea failed to notice the elfin carriage driver leering down at them.

  When Jack and Tristana completed their decorating task, they piled into her Saab. Jack reclined with his feet resting out the window on the side mirror. Tristana switched off the radio and asked, “Is there anything else we can deface before going back in that sweatbox of a church?

  “Beats me,” Jack said.

  “Looks like someone already beat you to the punch.”

  “I like your new haircut,” he said, trying not to laugh because it hurt too much. He looked up to the gray sky, which was the same washed out color as concrete. “It’s kind of crazy.”

  “Thanks, I was aiming for the look of a mental patient escapee,” she said sincerely. “Are you in much pain?”

  “Not too much,” Jack said, inspecting his various wounds. “The doctor gave me some pain pills.”

  “Oh, fun. We could take a ride,” she suggested.

  He remembered Carey Derry’s advice to lay low or leave town for a while, and he asked “Where to?”

  “A cousin of mine lives in Brooklyn,” Tristana said offhandedly. “She and I have a lot in common.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we’re both survivors,” Tristana said bemused. “Let’s go visit her, or do you have anything keeping you here?”

  “No, I’m game. No reason to stick around here.”

  Tristana nodded in agreement and turned the key in the ignition. “Then let’s go take a bite outta the Big Apple.”

  “Should we wait for Alexa?”

  “Nah, I’ll send her a plane ticket once we get there,” Tristana said, and she tossed her clove cigarette out the car window.

  “Should we at least stay for the ceremony?”

  “I don’t think we’ll be missed,” Tristana said as she pulled away from the church and cranked up the radio.

  Chelsea watched them drive off in the direction of the horizon. It was one of those overcast days where the hazy shade of dawn lingers until at last succumbing to an equally morose dusk. Chelsea reached out to Ben with a hand in need of a comforting squeeze. She longed for a gale force wind to extinguish the sweaty tension festering between them.

  With the shrug of his slumped shoulder, she found herself backing away from him. Surrounded by empty stillness, she said his name, but any attempt to make a connection was futile. He was lost and searching inside of himself for a time past when he did not seem so completely alone. It did not matter that she was standing next to him. It appeared Ben would remain forever lost, a piece of him had broken away and become unmoored, altogether irretrievable.

  “So, this is how it goes?” Chelsea asked. Consummate longing saturated her entire being. She was unable to fathom that each and every last one of them intended to grieve in his or her own personal, isolated hell. “Is this how it is?”

  “Don’t
you have somewhere to be? A wedding to stand up in?” Ben asked as if he was nowhere at all.

  “Oh, as a matter of fact yes, I do,” Chelsea said, eyeing her Chevy Malibu. She was packed and more than ready to hit the road.

  Ben had not intended it to sound so callous, but he did not have the energy to explain. He had merely wondered aloud if the wedding had started. Looking downwards, he was unable to remain focused on anything but the cracked cement between his shoes. He wiped his nose and bring himself to look up from the blurred pavement.

  “She-she was too great for this,” Chelsea stuttered. “She deserves more. She deserved better than you, better than any of us.”

  Chelsea ran away from him as fast as her fuchsia confines would allow, and when she discovered Nick waiting in the back of the church, she suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for him for the first time she could remember. With as much calm as she could muster, she informed everything was all set, and she gave him a spontaneous hug, which he returned appreciatively. It was time to begin the long awaited connubial proceedings.

  Nick assumed responsibility for corralling his groomsmen, and he took charge in his easy personable fashion. The bridesmaids lined up and were paired off with their respective partners. It was all they could do to suppress their natural state of obnoxiousness, but Nick’s mere presence commanded it. Rather than issue orders, he climbed the balcony steps to summon Alexa who was pounding out what had to be her eighteenth rendition of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.

  Alexa followed Nick, who made his way to the front of the church once she assumed Evangelica’s position in the bridal procession. Joining the others, Alexa picked up the atmosphere of suppressed mourning. For the first time that day, her mind was preoccupied with something other than the kiss she had shared with Tristana last night and her encounter with Nick. Now Alexa could only think about her missing mentor. She shut her eyes, and a subconscious dam blocked out any other thoughts whatsoever. She bit her lower lip, and the stagnant heat caused tiny beads of perspiration to run down her scrunched forehead. Sniffling, she clenched onto her bouquet of day lilies and pink roses, which trembled slightly.