Trying the Knot (24 page)

Shayla straightened her husband’s hat and
assisted with the massive video camera. Her shaggy platinum hair
looked even more tarnished than her dangling earrings. Her sleepy
bloodshot eyes were framed with smudges of frosted blue, and her
downturn slash of a mouth was a burnt shade of orange. Shayla’s
bedazzled red leather pants disappeared into her white boots. An
excess of black fringe shimmied from the shiny purple shirt Tucked
into her too tight pants. She appeared to be headed to a Dottie
West memorial concert.

Shayla held one hand firmly gripped around
her beer bottle as if it anchored her to the table, and she waved
to the video camera. Despite half-hearted attempts to stand poised
in ladylike fashion, it seemed she might be more comfortable
bellied up to the bar. Fringe flailing, she tipped her sloshing
bottle repeatedly at Kate, and she sipped daintily but often. One
futile attempt to initiate conversation began with her informing
the entire table Ed was moving her to the country since her
childhood dream was always to live on a farm of goats and
chickens.

Kate’s insides tightened, and her senses
clammed up. Oblivious to Nick’s hand turning blue due to her
tourniquet-like grasp, she wished to vanish. When Nick kissed her
neck and left her side to visit with his groomsmen, Kate stood
dazed and alone. Her future mother in-law, a picture of sturdy
elegance, spotted Kate and summoned her over. Anne Paull extended
Kate a comforting smile and told her she looked positively
lovely.

Tristana agreed with her mother, but silently
she wondered if Kate was so backwards as not to realize her dress
should have made a pit stop at the tailors. Kate said thank you and
sat next to Anne. To her empty plate, she whispered, “This is the
dress my mother was going to wear to the wedding. It came in the
mail at our old house, and Nyda Czerwinski brought it by this
afternoon.”

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Paull stammered, attempting to
stifle her mounting astonishment. Tristana nudged her mother and
choked down a swallow of water suppressing a coughing fit. Still
searching for a tactful response, Anne Paull was unsure what she
was expected to say in such an awkward situation. She could not
very well say the dress would have looked beautiful on Kate’s dead
mother. Finally, she summoned up the words, “That’s a fine gesture,
you must feel especially close to her tonight.”

“Just today at the hospital, I was trying to
remember what she looked like,” Kate said flatly. “I think the
Valium the doctor gave me was playing tricks on my mind.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Spoken from a true voice of authority,”
Tristana assured, and Anne Paull glared at her daughter. Tristana
asked, “Well, didn’t you pop them for years?”

“Those were nerve pills, honey,” Anne said,
and she looked waxen at her secret ex-husband, who leered casually
at the matron of honor. They were deeply engrossed in a
conversation about the cardiovascular benefits of an anaerobic
workout versus an aerobic one. With the hope the good doctor would
be later entertaining his most recent object of passing affection,
Anne silently imagined herself torching the Pontoon boat later in
the evening.

“Did you happen to notice Nick’s father’s
cufflinks?” Mrs. Paull asked. “Nick’s grandfather wore them on his
wedding day, as did Dr. Paull. Tomorrow Nick will wear them proudly
as one day will your son. It’s a family tradition.”

Tristana rolled her eyes, and just then, Ed
Hesse squeezed between Kate and Anne Paull and he bellowed out a
request for a dance with his daughter’s future mother in-law. With
all the grace of hog-tying a steer, he tugged her to her feet and
spun her around the dance floor several times while Shayla
admonished, “Smile for the camera!” Tristana laughed out loud as
her mother’s eyes bugged out of her head, and she grabbed onto a
speechless Kate.

“This sure is some shindig,” Tristana said in
a fake Southern drawl. She flashed Ed thumbs up, and yelled with
mock encouragement, “You go, Daddy-O!” Spotting Ben across the
room, Tristana fled what she considered a lost episode of Hee-Haw
for a moment of normalcy.

At the salad bar, Tristana stood behind
Benjamin, who was debating whether the mushrooms looked fresh or
not. Quickly losing patience, she interjected, “Oh for God’s sake,
it’s a fungus no matter how fucking fresh.”

Tristana wished to scarf down a salad and
flee the ungodly floral lounge before Kate’s pirate/cowpoke father
made any more asinine toasts, or he grabbed her to dance, or Kate
revealed what other articles of clothing she had lifted from her
dead mother’s wardrobe. Seth Poole was waiting for her at The
Portnorth Porthole, where the newspaper crew was working away to
meet their weekly deadline. The paper threatened to become a
bi-weekly because Thad was so preoccupied with photographing the
wedding, and Tristana consumed all Seth Poole’s precious time since
breezing back into town.

Tristana glanced at the clock and asked Ben
if he had a cigarette for her to bum.

“I don’t smoke, remember?” he answered
regretfully.

A small voice from behind the salad bar
startled them. “I could get you one from the kitchen.” They backed
away, and Jack swapped the nearly empty salad bowl for a full one.
Sweat dripped from his forehead onto his ruddy cheeks, and he tried
to look tough. “Menthol or regular?”

“Wait a minute, aren’t you Kate’s kid
brother?” Tristana asked. Placing a hand over her breast, she posed
wanton confusion while extending her hand.

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re all everyone talks about around here,
except for the chick in the coma,” she observed. As she sized him
up, she nodded approvingly. A dishtowel hung from his front pocket,
and he carelessly wielded the empty bowl as if it were a dangerous
weapon.

‘Who’re you, anyway?”

“I’m Nick Paull’s sister, Tristana,” she
said, “but don’t hold it against me.”

Ben leaned in close to listen in on the
future in-laws’ conversation. He was clearly enjoying Jack’s show
of nervousness.

Tristana asked perplexed, “Shouldn’t you be
out here suffering with the rest of us?”

Jack shrugged unconcerned. “I’m working.
Besides it’s not my kinda party.”

“What exactly does your kind of party
entail?”

“Tail?”

“Tail!” Ben echoed loudly, laughing. “His
kind of party is the naked kind.”

“Are you suggesting you’d like to get naked
with me, Jack?” Tristana asked, unable to suppress a wry smile.
“Why, tomorrow we’ll be in-laws, and that’s slightly
incestuous.”

Mortified, Jack was lost for words. They were
laughing at his expense, and he wondered if she had heard rumors
about his having fooled around with his cousin Alexa. Presently, he
had the attention of the most beautiful woman in the lounge, and he
was rendered speechless cast under her flirty spell of bewitching
ridicule. He hoped she found the uneasy nervousness of a backwater
hooligan attractive. “Well, I-I do get around, it’s a small
town.”

“They don’t call him lady-killer for
nothing,” Ben said offhandedly, not realizing the offensiveness of
his comment. After the fatal prom accident, lady-killer was what
his classmates chanted at him from passing cars.

“I gotta get back to work,” Jack said,
flashing a look of discomfort.

“Exactly how old are you, Jack?” she asked.
Ben moved away all too aware a juvenile delinquent had usurped his
Goth rock pleasure princess’ sole attention.

“Um, seventeen, why?” he stammered, and
immediately he regretted not having aged himself a few years.

“Too bad, you’re kind of cute,” she said and
flashed a drop-dead gorgeous smile. “Potentially dangerous, but
still cute.”

With that said, Tristana walked seductively
away, carrying her salad back to the table. Jack’s eyes followed
the long black seams that disappeared under her short black skirt,
and he stood in awe of her lean curvaceous body. Tristana
approached her mother and informed she would have to leave soon due
to an oncoming migraine. After taking a seat, she ravenously
stabbed her fork into the iceberg lettuce and inserted a large bite
into her wide-open blood red mouth.

“Quit drooling, Jackal,” Ben snapped, and he
dejectedly left Jack’s side.

Jack remained alone, far away from the
guests, and he waved for Tristana to come back to him. She
sauntered to his side and was quiet while he struggled to find the
words to express his desire to spend more time with her, especially
before they became family and all. Amused and flattered, Tristana
generously offered him a spin in her new Saab if he could meet her
outside in 45 minutes. Unable to contain his excitement, Jack
eagerly agreed without considering who would do the remainder of
the dishes. Tristana nodded to Alexa and suggested he bring his
girlfriend.

“Oh, her – she’s only my cousin.”

Tristana winked and said knowingly,
“Consensual incest is cool by me.”

Suddenly, Kate interrupted them by angrily
demanding, “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Making a date with this cute little
dishwasher,” Tristana said.

Flustered, Kate said nothing and watched Jack
dodge quickly away. She followed her brother into the kitchen,
where he continued to scour dishes without looking at her.
Outraged, she asked him once again, “What are you doing, Jack?”

“The dishes,” he said evenly. He continued to
scrape food from the plates as he rinsed them off. “It’d be obvious
to any dimwit that I’m working.”

“Why?” When he failed to respond, she
demanded, “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Jack. Why are you
doing this?”

The bustling kitchen was relatively noisy
with the scraping of plates, incessant hiss of running of water,
and sizzling of the deep fryer.

“You can’t ignore me forever,” Kate said
loudly. She folded her arms and leaned against the wall and watched
him ignore her for what seemed like forever. After loading the
dishwasher, he inexpertly lit a cigarette and proceeded to blow
smoke in her direction despite her small, irritated coughs.

“You don’t even smoke,” she pointed out
annoyed. “If you just give me a chance and listen –

Apathetically, he snapped on the garbage
disposal and puffed away.

“Dammit, just listen for one second,” she
hollered over the roaring noise. Water splattered from the faucet
against her bare arms. The anger he felt toward her was
palpable.

Kate was rudely bumped out of the way by a
waitress, who flung her ponytail about as she pinned up an order
while yelling, “Six cod and four loin!”

The server moved Kate to one side, snapped
off the garbage disposal and grabbed her long Salem cigarettes. She
peered inside the pack and shook them while giving Jack the evil
eye. “You’re kind of in the way here, princess.”

Kate bit her bottom lip and her eyes grew
misty with tears. She moved closer to her brother, but he slipped
away as he tossed the cigarette into the sink. “I’m sorry, Jonathon
Gerard Hesse. I’m sorry for whatever it was I did to make you hate
me so. I’m sorry about mom dying and dad remarrying, and for
whatever else you blame me for.”

“Okay, whatever.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Just you remember, Jack, we’re family, you
and I always, no matter what.”

Feigning apathy, he turned away and said
coldly, “The only family I got now is in a coma.”

Kate backed away and wiped her runny nose.
The humidity from the kitchen had made her thick hair limp, and she
was sweating at her temples. Visibly wounded, she said, “That
hurts, Jack. It really hurts.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I loved Vange, too,” she whispered. Her
forehead was sweaty now, and her eyes were watering. “You don’t
know this, but at one time back in junior high, when we were just
kids, Evangelica was like a sister to me.”

“If you say so,” Jack shrugged, and he put
further distance between them. He added, “Then you walked away from
her, too, just like you did me.”

She said in disbelief, “It wasn’t like that,
Jack. It’s not how you think it was.”

Fractured by his indifference, she covered
her mouth, wiped her nose and wandered out of the kitchen. It took
a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit dining room,
and the site before her resembled a ringmaster cowboy raising the
arm of an unsuspecting circus attendee.

“You heard it hear first, folks,” Ed Hesse
announced proudly. With his arm wrapped around Nick, he trembled
excitedly about to deliver breaking news. Off to one side, Shayla
recorded the spectacle. “It’s official, this fine young specimen of
a man here has promised me at least six grandchildren. Put your
hands together for my future grandkids!”

Amongst the laughing and chatter of her
expected litter, Kate shivered and ran her hands through her thick
dark hair. She shook her head unbelievingly as she grew
increasingly nauseated. Escaping the echoing applause, she fled to
the restroom in order to splash water on her face and to regain
composure.

“Christ Almighty,” Alexa muttered. “They’re
plotting to turn Kate into a breeding mare.”

“Kaye would’ve never approved,” Jane
Feldpausch said, and she took a gulp of champagne. “This here is a
three ringed-circus.”

“Literally. When will they bring out the
dancing bear?” Thad asked.

Jane shuddered. “I can’t believe one of my
sister’s kids is marrying for money, and the other one, well, he’ll
end up in jail before he ever gets the chance to marry. Or even
worse, he’ll knock up my daughter.”

Kindly Father Tim put a comforting hand on
Jane’s shoulder and massaged gently.

Chelsea nudged Thad and pointed to Shayla,
who passed the video camera back to her husband. She rolled her
eyes and said, “This is the height of hillbilly narcissism.”