Trying the Knot (21 page)

“The love of your life.”

“My mortician?”

“No, your lawyer, your ex-husband.”

“Well –

“He doesn’t want to talk to me, he
specifically asked for you,” Chelsea said.

Taking the phone, Ginny regretfully watched
her daughter grab her water and quickly descend the backstairs
leading outside. Chelsea let the door slam behind her, and she
collapsed against her old Malibu. Her father insisted when he
bought her the car it was a classic from her childhood. She didn’t
think anything from the 1970s could be considered worthy enough to
be considered a classic, nothing except maybe her less than ideal
upbringing. Surrounded by boxes littering the lawn, Chelsea
realized she had gone overboard packing for her road trip out west.
In a few short hours, she had boxed up the entirety of her worldly
possessions. Certainly, she would have to start over if she planned
on driving away after the wedding ceremony tomorrow.

Along the road in front of the house, Alexa
and Jack whizzed by. She was on roller blades while he was riding a
BMX bike. The cousins looked like young lovers, and Chelsea
wondered what it was like to be young and in love. That’s what she
would be reduced to if she stayed in Portnorth – incest, she
thought. Why didn’t she have any cousins? It was enough to make her
wish she were related to anyone within the city limits besides her
mother.

“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.