A Marriage Made at Woodstock by Cathie Pelletier

Author:Cathie Pelletier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc
Published: 2014-10-07T20:24:12+00:00

Eleven

On Monday, Frederick’s car wouldn’t start. He had left the parking lights on Friday night, little beacons out in his driveway. The car had been sitting there all weekend, drinking up electricity, while Frederick was inside drinking up gin. Now the engine was dead, not even a sputter when he turned the ignition key. He got out and slammed the door. The noise of it resounded inside his head and rattled his teeth. He went into the garage and led his bicycle out. He hadn’t used the thing in years and now he dusted off the seat. It would hurt his ankle a great deal, but he would pedal to Cain’s Corner Grocery for a bottle of Tylenol. If he didn’t, he would die. He was experiencing the worst hangover of his entire forty-four years on the planet. He rued the day that his supply of prescription Percodan for his ankle had run its course. He wasn’t sure which hurt more, the ankle or his head. The Big Drunk, like some insensible Mardi Gras gone awry, had spread into the next day and the next. He had spent the entire weekend in a maudlin stupor. Sunday was only a blur to him. He vaguely remembered falling asleep to the words of “Woman, Woman,” and waking up to the sound of the phonograph needle batting against the last ridge of the record, as though it were the last ridge in the roof of Gary Puckett’s mouth. Then he had fallen asleep again to “Lady Willpower.” And speaking of Lady Willpower, to hell with Chandra Kimball-Stone—that had been his weekend philosophy. He didn’t need her. He had his own friends. He had Gary Puckett and the whole goddamn Union Gap. He hadn’t leaned out the bathroom window and shouted at poor Walter Muller, had he, some horrible obscenity during this period? He conjured up a mental picture of watching Walter plant a tree in his front yard, of undoing the latch of the bathroom window, of leaning far out. Please let that vague memory be a dream! He supposed he wouldn’t know the truth until the next time he saw Walter Muller out in his yard.

The only positive element of the three-day stupor was that his ankle had not hurt at all. But it did now; it hurt a lot. What had he done to torture it so? Had he kept up a steady Scottish reel for three days, dancing from room to room? Had he used the sore foot to keep time to the Union Gap? Theirs wasn’t exactly foot-stomping music. Whatever he did, the ankle pained him terribly.

“You take care of that ankle now,” Mr. Cain cautioned him, and Frederick promised to nurse it back to health. He then left with his Tylenol. Had anyone at the monstrous IGA ever inquired as to his health? Never. Oh, sure, if he was to have a coronary in the frozen foods, some complaining bag boy would be sent with a shopping cart to haul the body away.

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