Trying the Knot

by Todd Erickson

“Stand still, will you?” Nick commanded. Ben was pacing, more like an expectant father than someone whose on-again off-again girlfriend lay in a coma. “You’re making my head spin.”

  “Drink too much?” Thad asked. Underweight and ambiguously bland, he stood blocking the doorway uncharacteristically rigid and uncompromising.

  “Something like that,” Nick answered. One look into Thad’s downcast eyes and Nick realized his probable knowledge of last night’s transgression. One knowing glance exchanged between the accuser and accused confirmed both their suspicions. In a split second, Nick knew he was being judged guilty, and it put him on the defensive.

  “I hate when that happens,” Thad said.

  “Well, it happens to some of us more than others,” Nick said pointedly.

  Ben was acting so distracted and Thad so obviously disapproving, Nick opted to shower in order to sort out his thoughts in solitude. Grabbing a towel from the back of a chair, he lifted it to his face and inhaled. Undecided, he sniffed again.

  “Trust me, it smells better than you do,” Ben said.

  On his way to the bathroom, Nick stopped before his brooding one-man jury. He placed a hand on Thad’s arm, which blocked the doorway, and he said, “Excuse me, it’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” Thad said unmoving, and Nick ducked past him.

  Basking in the comfort of the pulsating water, Nick forgot everything except for his unquenchable thirst. He swallowed the steamy water as it sprayed into his face and rinsed the previous night’s rendezvous with Vange down the drain. He washed away Thad’s knowing condemnation, Kate’s distress, Chelsea’s caustic impatience, and Ben’s masked nervousness. He flushed the entire wedding along with his mother’s lofty expectations and the disappointment that consisted of Kate’s alcoholic father.

  A nagging sense of responsibility tightened and situated in the back of his neck, and he longed to be as far as medical school would take him. Squatting in the shower, he let the water massage his knot of worries. Throughout his misspent youth, he drove his dirt bike mindlessly over country byways. Wearing only running shorts he basted in the heat and dust arising from gravel roads until a filmy sweat glazed over his bronze skin. Inevitably, he parked the motorbike alongside an isolated bridge and navigated barefoot down an embankment to jump without hesitation into the river. The swirling current never failed to exhilarate his exhausted flesh, and there he caught a pale full of crayfish to boil later and eat drowned in butter.

  Ordinarily, solitary rituals held an almost religious significance for Nick, mainly because they made him feel thoroughly self-sufficient. Growing up, he frequently indulged in such escapism, especially when the confines of Portnorth threatened to engulf the sprawling parameters of his imagination.

  The only other time he ever felt as carefree was while sunbathing and drifting on the boat without destination, or else during those long past, snowy Saturday afternoons he whacked away the hours on the family room floor. With his mom and dad toiling at the hospital and his sister off to boarding school, the house was his alone. Spent and half-tuned to “Apocalypse Now”, he was responsible for only himself, accountable to no one and free to indulge his mind in whatever lurid fantasies he was capable of conjuring.

  Long ago, while cruising through town with Ben and Thad, during yet another unproductive quest for an alcohol buyer, he asked each of them what they would do immediately after hearing the news of an impending Armageddon. Nick’s initial response was to hug his loved ones and then “run naked and free along the beach, until becoming swept up into nothingness.”

  He wished it were possible to experience pure unadulterated freedom. Such notions of escapism seemed ridiculously juvenile to him now considering his wedding day loomed ahead, approaching faster and faster, like a speeding train he failed to dodge quickly enough.

  chapter two

  Standing near rows of tattered novels and moldering National Geographics, Ben exclaimed with mock excitement, “Oh, man, check it out, one for each year of our high school career.” He snatched up the hardcover book and flipped through the pages. Laughing without bitterness, he made sarcastic comments about their former classmates.

  “Glad I could never afford one. What about you, Thad, ever buy a yearbook?”

  Mildly bored with the prospect of reminiscing his less-than-glorious heyday, Thad answered, “Um, yeah, just one. Senior year – PHS 1986. I ripped it up in a fit of drunken rage. I did keep snapshots of a deposed Imelda Marcos and Rock Hudson.”

  “Hey, they weren’t classmates.”

  “Neither was the crew of the Challenger, but I kept a picture of them blowing to bits.”

  “That’s bogus,” Ben said, flipping through the stiff pages.

  “I thought so.”

  “Whoa, Nick and Chelsea are practically on every page, no wonder they were voted Most Likely to Succeed,” said Most Artistic and Prettiest Eyes. “Hey, I don’t see your name anywhere. Didn’t you get voted anything for mock elections?”

  “Yeah, Most Likely to be Forgotten,” Thad said.

  “Hey, remember that time senior year, we road tripped to Saginaw to the Fashion Scare Mall to buy school clothes?” Ben asked, wearing a pair of tattered Girbaud jeans from the excursion.

  Ben tossed the book to an unsuspecting Thad, which he barely caught. As if by a twisted perversion of fate, it landed open to Evangelica’s senior picture. She pursed her lips wryly and looked surprisingly demure but knowingly sophisticated in black. A lump settled in his throat. They had shared the good fortune of being misunderstood and overlooked by the same lame classmates they had the nerve to think they could transcend. Perhaps in a more populated setting they would not have stood out for being poseurs in a sea of mullets and feathered-hair.

  “Hey, what’re you looking at? Pictures of Chernobyl?” Ben asked. “What’s so interesting?”

  His inquiry met only silence as Thad gazed transfixed out the bedroom window. The endless expanse of Lake Huron reflected a cloudless sky and the water appeared more blue-green than usual. It had been a few months since Thad had spent any meaningful time with Vange, but it felt much longer; all the more reason they should have gotten together to stoke the embers of their friendship.

  Their second chance meeting since his returning to Portnorth occurred Easter weekend, prior to his stumbling on a job at the local newspaper. He ran into her waiting tables at Norris’ Lounge. He went there seeking Ginny Norris to get her daughter’s address, but rather than leaving with Chelsea’s whereabouts he ended up venturing with Vange to a hotel room.

  Easter Weekend, 1991

  Bored with picking his toenails and fearful of post-coital intimacy, Thad slunk to an open window where he stood naked and shivering. Tiny snowflakes drifted in from the infinite blackness and melted against his skin. Evangelica sat in bed with one hand on her abdomen, smoking a cigarette and studying the stained ceiling. Of Portnorth’s four motels, she requested this beachfront establishment so she could listen to the waves while thrashing around in the throes of orgasmic ecstasy.

  “Without moonlight, a person could get totally lost in this shit-kicking hellhole,” Thad said. He stood at the open sliding door to the balcony facing the lake. He marveled that even in the heart of the small town, night meant complete darkness. Streetlights did little to assist the moon and stars in illuminating the middle of nowhere. “What’s this called, Easter Eve?”

  “More like morning. Who cares, it’s just another depressing holiday,” Vange said disdainfully as she inhaled on a cigarette. “So, who was she? What’s the story, morning glory?”

  “Who? What?”

  “Who was she, oh-unrequited-one? What’s the story?”

  “No one, there’s no story.”

  “Bullshit. Every man has a tale to tell, and usually he thinks I wanna hear it.” She exhaled a plume of blue smoke, stubbed out the cigarette and snatched her purse up off the floor. After rummaging around, she retrieved an old metal Band-Aid box, from which she fi
shed a sandwich baggy. Deftly rolling a joint with minimal effort, Vange asked, “Who is she, Tadzio, your first true love – the reason you dropped out of school?”

  “I didn’t quit. I left with a BA, Vadge.”

  “Then why aren’t you gainfully employed, Turd”

  “English majors are not exactly in high demand at the local limestone quarry.”

  “Then teach,” she shrugged, and licked the paper to form a seal.

  “Teach? Like, I can’t even give out simple driving directions.”

  “Figure it out already.”

  “I forgot how many stars you can see this far north,” he said distantly. The moonlight outlined his pallid body as he turned away from the sliding screen door to stare blankly at her. Nearly six years had passed since they attended senior prom together. She was better looking now than back in high school. Little wrinkles framed her taunting eyes and her skin was healthier, but her stomach was slightly swollen.

  Currently, she was a small town girl living alone, at least that is how she referred to herself at The Lounge. She claimed to have inherited the mantle of town slut, when her mother reformed after marrying Thad’s widower uncle. His former homecoming date and newly acquired cousin possessed an overt and irreverent sensuality that both tempted and repulsed him. But earlier, cozied up to one another in the restaurant booth, her thick Medusa tresses and wide, sneering mouth awakened an abject longing inside him.

  Once, he had been too afraid to kiss her goodnight, and now they had just finished having sex. It was the second time in as many months they found themselves naked together, but it didn’t matter – she became someone else when he closed his eyes and fumbled his way inside of her.

  “Nope. There’s no story here, Cousin.”

  “Bullshit. Stand there much longer, dickhead, and you’ll freeze to death,” she said, trying to escape his empty gaze.

  “It’s almost April, but it doesn’t even feel like spring.”

  “You wigging out? Let’s get one thing straight; I’m not exactly a hooker with the heart of gold. This isn’t a movie, it’s not Pretty fucking Woman.”

  “Sure thing, Vadge.”

  “Listen, Turd, I told you not to call me that.” She lit the joint and hit it deeply. “Come back to bed.”

  Shivering, he complied and sat hunched over at the far corner of the bed. Half wondering how he measured up, he said, “You’ve slept with all three of us – Nick, Ben and I.”

  “So what? There’s nothing to live for now that I’ve done the nasty with the Three Stooges?” Vange said as she cocked her head back with laughter. She held the joint out for him. “C’mere and smoke a little. It’ll chill you out, I promise. It’s compliments of Marley.”

  “Your dealer?”

  “My plant.”

  He accepted the outstretched joint and crawled to her, practically setting the bed on fire in the process. She wrapped his rigid body close, gathering him into the comforts of her fleshy warmth. In the absence of conversation, she repeatedly smoothed down his unruly hair and messed it up again. Uneasy and tense, Thad’s breathing became increasingly calm after the prolonged silence. Eventually, they groped their way inside one another. This time sex was not nearly so rough and lasted twice as long.

  Evangelica wrapped the dingy covers around her, slid off the bed and marched through the early morning haze as if mimicking a Greek goddess. Thad hurled a pillow against her unsuspecting back and the placid impact caught her off guard, causing her to trip over her own feet. She thrust her head forward and placed the tip of her tongue between her teeth while emitting a stream of throaty laughter. She cursed him and smiled secretly while projecting complete ambivalence.

  A line from an obscure Aztec Camera song echoed in his head, “I understand the state you’ve reached of becoming unreachable.” And he wondered if that is what they had become, unreachable, remote wreckage cast mercilessly on an unforgiving shore. Each had done haphazard, bang-up jobs of undoing their dysfunctional childhoods.

  Kneeling before the knotty pine dresser, Vange searched for the cigarettes he tossed aside earlier. “You know, you didn’t have to wait until we became family to screw,” she said, and then she complained until finding the Camels nestled between his boots. Charitably, she gathered his clothes and dumped them in a pile on a vinyl chair.

  “What’s this?” Vange asked. She swiped up a silvery-blue necklace that sifted through the pile. A tiny rhinoceros, how queer.”

  “It was a gift.”

  “From her?”

  “Who?”

  “That chick you’re so hung up on. From Li’l Miss Can’t-Be-Forgotten.”

  “I’m not hung up on nobody,” he said too defensively and rolled over.

  Vange theatrically ran her fingers through her sweaty auburn mane, and she said, “Okay, have it your way. Who am I to rob you of your delusions?” She sat down, crossed her legs, and lit a cigarette. Studying her reflection in the mirror, she grew sick with guilt after each drag.

  “Real men usually tell me how beautiful I am before boinking me,” she said acrimoniously. “And sometimes even after.”

  Unconsciously toying with the necklace, she turned away from the mirror and focused on his exposed ass. It was the same sickly color as his chest. She watched as he gathered his clenched fists under his chest and burrowed his head deep into the musty pillow. Wrapping herself in the faded, sunflower-splattered bedspread, she observed, “You never lovingly whispered any corny one-liners in my ear.”

  “Already making demands?”

  “Already trying to disappear?”

  “What sort of cheesy one-liners do Ben and Nick cough up?”

  “Forget them, okay.”

  He remained mute and flopped around. Behind his shaggy dark bangs, his bile-colored green eyes were clamped shut; she had told him last night that they were too brooding to be considered beautiful. His stomach gurgled in agony, and he attempted to recall one of his deceased aunt’s home remedies. She could cure any ailment. “Once, I had this infected hangnail, and when my mum tried to treat it, I screamed for my aunt because she had these weird, shaman-like qualities.”

  Evangelica shook her head incredulously, and she asked, “Like, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  Groaning, he removed the pillow from under his head and placed it strategically under his aching gut.

  “I guess nothing compares to Li’l Miss Can’t-Be-Forgotten,” she whispered, and she dropped the necklace on the knotty-pine dresser. “What’s her real name?”

  “Who?”

  “Your dead aunt, for Chrissakes,” she said. “You know damned well who.”

  “Hester.” He smirked despite the pain in his gut. “Hester Prynne.”

  “Too funny,” she said dryly. “Want to take a shower?”

  Silence was her answer.

  “Stay here and dream away, lover boy, but I’ll tell you one thing, your hospitality really leaves something to be desired.” Standing in the doorway to the bathroom, she crossed her arms to constrain her overflowing breasts. “It’s better to have lost in love, than to have never loved at all.”

  “If you say so, Cousin.”

  “Stop being such a pathetic dweeb. It must’ve been love, but it’s over now. Be grateful and get over it.”

  Thad laughed maliciously as he asked, “Which is it, you’ve never loved anyone, or has no one ever loved you? Who’s being pitiful now, Cousin?”

  She cast him a look of pure contempt and disappeared inside the tiny bathroom. Soon after he heard water beating against the metallic shower stall. Thad imagined her blocking out the impoverished surroundings with her feet recoiling on a rust-stained bathmat home to a mossy substance, lukewarm water trickling over breasts and down between thighs, and clenched hands trying to avoid touching the filmy curtain. But it was not Vange he imagined naked.

  Depressed out of half-consciousness, Thad reached for the cigarettes and lit one while gazing out at the pine trees along Lake
Huron. There was something peaceful about the undisturbed northern countryside. He had never noticed until last summer while separated from Her. It was unbelievably predictable the way his thoughts drifted to Her while sitting on the beach watching a setting sun dance across a glistening lake or when running across a freshly mown lawn. With Her constantly on his mind, he took a blue note of all the things previously taken for granted. The separation heightened his lack of place in the world. Even after Her I’ve-found-someone-new-but-let’s-still-be-friends phone call, he continued to appreciate those understated moments of isolation, but then they only reminded him of how alone he was.

  Since their separation, he put his life on a dusty shelf and he had forgotten exactly where he misplaced it; moreover, couldn’t generate any excuse to reclaim it. Eventually, Thaddeus, awoke too weary to remind himself it was a new day, a fresh start, and time to build new memories, which would digress into futile attempts at self-induced amnesia. The gray days blurred together, and indifference blanketed his existence.

  Jolted by a familiar burning sensation, he mashed the cigarette against the bed frame. He felt more out of touch than ever. She still issued him free rides aboard a misery-go-round of self-doubt. Her whispers echoed, and Her crystal eyes pierced, but too much time had passed to remember Her with such immediacy and longing. If only he had inspired Her to wait until autumn when they should have been reunited. His dying aunt was the reason he had returned home at all last summer.

  Maybe it was easy for Her to forget. They were from two different worlds. She was a hardened suburbanite with no discernible past, and he was an alienated small town hick who ached for a time when he could no longer remember everything he wished to forget.

  Having forgotten he just stubbed one out, Thad toyed with the idea of lighting another cigarette. His attention fixated on the old vanity mirror. His scrawny reflection was not dissimilar to the emaciated Jesus hanging a little too languorously on a crucifix above the bed. He envied Christ’s washboard abs and slowly became vaguely aroused by his own glaring nakedness.