Fireworks Over Toccoa (15 page)

Honey waved a happy greeting to a friend and headed toward Keener’s Market.

Lily wiped perspiration off her nose. Southern women didn’t sweat, of course. They glistened. Like peaches in the dew. Especially in downtown Toccoa in July.

Lily followed her mother, now in her wake of perfect composure.

The small brass bell over the door rang as Lily and Honey entered Keener’s Market. It had been ringing so much today, thoughts of Christmas came to the minds of many who shopped there. Indeed, a festive atmosphere filled the general store.

“Don’t you look pretty, Lily,” said Evelyn Tabor. Her daughter, Mary, stood by her side holding a small American flag on a stick.

“Thank you, Mrs. Tabor.”

“Did Marvin get the Cadillac contract?” asked Honey.

“He’s still working on it. But it looks very promising.”

While Honey and Evelyn discussed how exciting it would be for Toccoa to have its own Cadillac distributorship, Lily watched the dark-haired boy working for Mrs. Keener. Lily saw Mary exchange a smile with the boy, who couldn’t have been more than a few years older than the little girl.

Lost in the moment, Lily didn’t notice the man approaching the counter where Mrs. Keener and the boy were working.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” he said.

“Good afternoon.”

“Might you have any rice in the store?” the man asked politely.

Lily recognized the voice. Her heart quickened, surging something through her blood that made her feel that she should run—either to the man or out the door.

“Sure, we got rice.”

Mrs. Keener turned to the boy. “Vincent, get me a box of rice please. White box. Over there.” Mrs. Keener pointed to a row of Uncle Ben’s white rice.

The boy grabbed a box and swiftly brought it to Mrs. Keener. “Thank you, Vincent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said shyly, a thick Sicilian accent notable in his speech.

Mrs. Keener handed the box to the man and moved on. He turned to the boy and, now with him facing her, Lily could see that it was Jake. She watched from her distance as Jake spoke to the boy in Italian.

“
Salve. Di dove sei?
” asked Jake.

“
Di Catania
,” Vincent said.

“
Sul mare. Scommetto che nuoti bene
.”

“
Si.
”

“
Che ci fai qui?
”

“
Mia madre ha sposato il Luogotentente Horton.
”

“
Ho capito. Mica sai dove potrei trovare del risotto da queste parti?
”

“
Da queste parti?
” The boy laughed. “
Mi sa che per trovarlo deve arrivare fino a Milano, signore.
”

Jake laughed, too.

Mrs. Keener marched over to Jake.

“Hey. Hey, what are you doing?”

“I was just—”

“Don’t talk to him like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Vincent, there’s a crate of watermelons in the back. Please unload them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the boy as he scurried off.

“We don’t speak the enemy’s language here, mister.”

“I’m sorry.” Jake placed the box of rice on the counter next to the register.

“That be all.” It was really more of a statement than a question.

Jake just nodded. As Mrs. Keener began to ring him up, he watched the boy disappear into the back of the store. Jake felt a surge of sadness and frustration rising in his throat, but he knew enough not to put words to these emotions and just stared silently at this place around him, this town, this world.

Having overheard the exchange, Honey and Evelyn were watching now.

“The pyrotechnics man,” Evelyn whispered.

“Handsome.” Honey took him in.

“Lily, are you okay?” asked Evelyn. “You look a bit peaked.”

“It’s so hot in here. I’ll wait for you outside, Mother.”

Before Honey could say anything, Lily headed for the door, the brass bell jangling as she quickly walked out into the humid air.

On the sidewalk, Lily caught her breath. She looked over her shoulder and saw him through the shop windows, standing there at the counter, in his work shirt and jeans, buying his boxed item like any other person in Toccoa, but of course he was nothing like anyone else. He was a man from another place, a man from another land, with another language—hands that were now holding a box of rice were just hours ago holding her—and any moment now he was going to walk out that door and bump right into her, and one way or another that would be the end of her. She scanned the sidewalk across the street and saw Mark in his wheelchair. She crossed Doyle and went to him.

Mark was parked in the shade of a live oak tree on the sidewalk in front of a storefront with
DR. DELBERT REED GENERAL PRACTITIONER
lettered on frosted glass windows. Dr. Reed, Barbara Johns’ father, provided a variety of medical services, ranging from setting broken bones to obstetrical care. Mark had a small, sharp pair of scissors in his hands and was lazily cutting a sheet of thick black paper. Lily stood beside him.

“Nice hair.” Mark smirked without looking up.

“Stop it.”

“It’s nice to see you, Lily.”

Lily stared silently across the street at Keener’s.

“I’ve thought about you,” he said.

“Everyone was surprised that you and Jenna moved west,” she said with affection.

“Amazing how simple and small the world seemed not so long ago,” he said.

“Why didn’t you come home, Mark?”

“Why’d you marry the tall, blond Coca-Cola guy?”

“You know why.”

“Yes. Because he fit.”

“I think you and Jenna fit.”

“I’ve known you since you were ten years old, Lily Davis. You can’t lie to me. Jenna’s a rich girl who fell in love with a bad boy in uniform. Didn’t you hear? I married Jenna for her family’s money,” he said bitterly.

“Did you?”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I
was
a bad boy, some stupid kid who didn’t know what he wanted to make of his life. Didn’t think about it. Didn’t care about anything. Except one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“Boy, you’re clueless.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know why I didn’t come home?”

“To get away from Toccoa,” Lily assumed.

“Yeah. And to get away from you.”

As Lily absorbed this, Jake walked out of Keener’s Market, down the sidewalk, and headed toward his truck.

“Trousseaus and wedding gowns, spring flowers and bridal showers. It’s all so meaningless. I knew I’d never be anything to you. And I was fine with that. Everyone, everything, it was a lark to you. Your life was like a stone perpetually skipping across the lake, never dipping into it. But when you married that guy just because he fit the town’s definition of what Lily Davis’ husband was supposed to be, it tore me up inside.”

Shifting uncomfortably in the heat on the sidewalk, Lily felt herself being torn up inside, listening to Mark, watching Jake. “Mark, I had no idea,” she said, eyes downcast.

“Yes, you did. You just didn’t want to.”

She knew that he was right and she began to hate herself for it, for being so carefree about someone’s affections, so frivolous with someone’s feelings. Listening to him, she could see now that she really was like that. “Mark—”

“It’s okay now. Listen, Jenna might be a silly girl, but she has the courage to follow her heart. When I was lying in that field outside Le Havre, I promised myself that if I survived, I’d take Jenna and make a life for us, some place where we weren’t subject to the strings of her family’s money, and the definitions of Toccoa, Georgia. Well, I got that second chance and I plan to live my life with no regrets. What ever you do with
your
life, Lily, I truly hope that you can say the same.”

Down the street, Jake opened the door to his truck. Listening to Mark, watching Jake, the sights and sounds and smells of downtown Toccoa, Lily felt like a little girl spinning on the lawn at Holly Hills, arms out, the world whizzing by, losing her balance, about to fall. But there was no joy to this, just the escalating sense that everything was spinning out of control.

As she watched Jake, Mark put something in her hands, the black cardboard silhouette, on top of white paper, that he had been cutting. It was a cutout of a girl looking up into a moon-filled sky while holding someone’s hand. The image was cut off before it was clear whose hand she was holding.

Lily took in the picture.

She looked up and watched as Jake drove by.

She looked hard at Mark, realizing just how clueless she truly had been and perhaps truly was. After a moment, Jenna walked out of the doctor’s office and kissed Mark on the head just as Honey appeared with a large shopping bag in her arms.

“Well, there you are,” said Honey. “Are you coming?”

As Lily thought long and hard about that question, the silhouette of the solitary girl dangling in her hand, Jenna smiled and began to sing, slowly, almost hauntingly.

“‘You smile, and the angels sing. And though it’s just a gentle murmur at the start. We kiss, and the angels sing. And leave their music ringing in my heart.’”

“Lily, are you coming?” asked Honey.

Swept up by the proximity of such sweetness and sorrow, Lily just stood there in the thick air.

“Lily?”

In the afternoon, storm clouds, the western edge of a growing tropical storm that had blown in from the Atlantic, typical for this time of year, gathered rapidly over northern Georgia. Preoccupied with things more important to her than the weather, Lily did not notice.

She stood in the sprawling white-tiled kitchen at Holly Hills wearing a fine robin’s egg blue dress and a pearl necklace and helped her mother roast a goose. Honey loved entertaining and she was pulling out all the stops for Lily’s in-laws, the Woodwards. As always at Honey’s events, everything had to be perfect, including Lily.

Between stuffing and basting and incessant seasoning, Honey talked excitedly and relentlessly. GiGi, who had worked for the Davises for over three decades, stood nearby removing plates from their protective coverings. Unlike Honey, she noted Lily’s lack of enthusiasm.

“Your father and I really want to give you and Paul a proper honeymoon,” said Honey.

“Mother, that’s really not necessary.”

“Now I’ve given this a great deal of thought and I’ve looked into The Peabody in Memphis, though I understand they still allow those insufferable ducks in the lobby, which is a tradition I for one can live without, and I was leaning toward the Biltmore in Coral Gables, which of course is gorgeous, but apparently they’re still using it as a hospital. Oh, can you just imagine! The good fortune of those poor boys, convalescing on those plush red carpets, under the palms in the Florida sun!”

Lily pulled the remaining entrails out of the goose and tossed them into a steel bowl. Accustomed to her mother’s monologues, she did not respond.

“Now there
is
the Cloister at Sea Island,” Honey continued, crumbling some bread for the stuffing. “And I understand the Coffin family has done a simply marvelous job of retiling that fabled pool, and you know Paul will simply adore the beach, don’t you think?”

Lily just shoved a handful of bread crumbs into the goose’s innards. The smell of the bird’s internal organs mixed with the scent of Honey’s Evening in Paris was dizzying.

“I know, I know, what about the links?” Honey said, plucking a few tiny overlooked feathers from the goose’s wings. “Well, I’ve toyed with the idea of Augusta, but I think he’d rather have his wife in a bathing suit! What young man wouldn’t, right? So the Cloister it is. Unless, well…”

Lily and GiGi exchanged a look as Honey lost herself in the fantasy of honeymoon possibility.

“There
is
the Waldorf-Astoria,” Honey said.

“Yes, Mother, there’s always the Waldorf,” said Lily, who had heard all about her mother’s Big Apple shopping trips.

“Imagine—Waldorf salads in the Starlight Roof, holding hands over Park Avenue, dancing under the stars.” Honey actually started to do a few steps of a waltz as though she could hear the orchestra playing in the Waldorf ’s Starlight Roof, which Lily had heard, as it was so often broadcast on the radio.

Suddenly, Honey froze with a thought. “Oh, Lily!”

“Yes, Mother, what is it?”

“The Breakers! Palm Beach. Your father is attending a conference down there Labor Day weekend. We could meet you and Paul. Now
that
is an idea. Oh, and about that bathing suit which you most certainly would need, let me show you some ideas I have for you.”

Honey produced a page that she had torn from a recent
Redbook
magazine featuring “scandalously marvelous” two-piece bathing suits from France, the latest style, which allowed a section of midriff below the breast to be exposed. Honey wanted to order one for Lily, in yellow, with a matching frilled swim cap, and nothing Lily could say would change Honey’s mind, so Lily found herself agreeing to the gift. GiGi shared a conspiratorial look with Lily about all this.

Lily’s in-laws, the Woodwards, arrived at 4:30 and cocktails were served soon thereafter in the living room. Peter Woodward was a large man who spent much of his time on the golf course and the rest of it serving on a diverse assortment of corporate and philanthropic boards. BethAnne Smithgall Woodward was an unobtrusive southern lady whose family’s long-held real estate wealth enabled her husband’s predilections for the greens. Both possessing remarkably rich southern drawls, words loitered on their tongues like drunken drifters when they spoke, and Lily found herself leaning forward impatiently, awaiting and seeking a point in their wandering and melodious speech. At times, they made Lily crazy, but they were good people and they absolutely adored her.

Between wickedly dry Tanqueray martinis and the requisite warm buttered saltines—a traditional staple of the most prestigious southern country clubs, soda crackers literally soaked in clarified butter and then toasted—Lily sat quietly while the Woodwards and the Davises engaged in loud and generally self-congratulatory conversation that seemed to go on interminably. There was a great deal of extremely animated discussion regarding the new models of automobiles that the manufacturers would soon once again make available to the consumer market. Mr. Woodward remarked repeatedly about the great sacrifice this country had made by forgoing new models since 1942 while the manufacturers in Detroit contributed their resources and production might solely to the successful prosecution of the war. With the fighting now finally terminating in Europe and soon to be ending in the Pacific, 1945 promised to be a very exciting year for new car models. While Mr. Davis and Mr. Woodward discussed which model of Cadillac they felt Paul would like most from the company, Mrs. Woodward shared her wishes to take Paul to the Buckhead Men’s Shop soon after his arrival, since he would most certainly need an entire new wardrobe, as styles had changed significantly since he left. Mrs. Woodward, who seemed to have much of her son’s schedule for the next week or so preplanned, including a lunch at the Piedmont Driving Club—the PDC, as she called it—had already set up an appointment for him with a tailor whom she seemed to know a great deal about. Lily participated as much as she could, offering her thoughts on Paul’s tastes in fashion, a subject she realized she knew virtually nothing about.

Mainly, Lily looked out the window and watched heavy drops of rain pummeling the scorched magnolia leaves.

The conversation, now lubricated by copious amounts of fine gin, carried over into the dining room and continued throughout the highly fashionable Green Goddess salad with anchovy fillets, the cucumber soup, the low country–style crab cake, and Honey’s famous roast stuffed goose, which she explained once again was an Alsatian dish and not a German one. Lily talked politely, sipping at cold and notably unremarkable rosé in a huge crystal balloon glass. Watching the others at the table, drinking from the Waterford and eating off the Wedgwood with the Reed & Barton, she felt as though she was getting a glimpse of what the rest of her life might very well look and sound and smell like. Clinking bone china, the ghastly aftertaste of silver polish on corpulent hunks of rare goose, thin red fluid sloshing around in oversized goblets, it all made her think about death, and the discussion about the great wealth that Henry Coffin had left the remaining Coffin family members who inherited the Cloister, where it was decided that Lily should in fact honeymoon, put her over.

She felt a chill up her spine, and then she began to hyper-ventilate. She’d always been wired for these kinds of odd feelings, like how she felt in Auraria, but somehow the last few days had connected her to something that kept sending these currents through her, and this one amidst all this dreadful imagery made her feel that something terrible was going to happen and she became convinced that if she didn’t get out of here immediately she would pass out.

Lily stood, a sort of panic in her eyes. She had to get to Jake. She had to get to him now.

By the time the fresh peach cobbler with basil garnish was served on the antique Royal Worcester dessert plates accompanied by the dessert forks and extra-long sterling teaspoons with the matching coffee service for the Stewarts, no one noticed that Lily had excused herself to get home before the roads got bad from the storm.

No one except Walter.

It was dark when Lily pulled out of Holly Hills and onto Highway 123. Rain pounded on the Packard, reverberating through the car and into her bones. The wipers going full speed, banging on the steel frame of the windshield like a metronome out of control, she still could not see more than a few feet in front of her. Feeling the banging of the wipers in her teeth, she gripped the rigid wheel so tight, sweat from her palms began to drip down her wrists.

Boom!
A thunderclap shook the car and Lily jumped in the seat.

Catching her breath, she wiped perspiration from her forehead and cursed herself. She’d been in a daze, since leaving Jake and then seeing her father, all afternoon, into the evening, a daze.
How could I have let it get so late?
She told Jake she’d meet him in the afternoon and somehow the hours got away from her and she had to see him. She had to snap out of this. She
had
to see him.

Despite the thick, dark sheets of rain, Lily sped up. The pounding increased, the banging got louder. Water along the road shot through the grooves of the wide rubber tires as they raced along ever faster.

Leaning forward over the wheel, Lily tried to see through the hazy windshield out into the rain and darkness. Headlights reflecting off the fog, she squinted, trying to make sure there was nothing ahead of her in the road, her foot pushing even further on the accelerator, engine pistons firing harder, tires turning even faster in the building water along the road. Her insides jumped as she thought she saw a deer in the road, but it was just the fog, and she pushed even further on the gas.

Her head jolting to the right, she saw the sign for Owl Swamp Road, the turn she needed to make, flying by in the streaming rain.

“Damn it!”

Lily hit the brakes hard, and they locked up, the tires hitting more water than they could disperse and the Packard losing traction with the road. Frantically Lily turned the steering wheel and jammed the brakes, but there was no response as the tires slid along a slick layer of rainwater covering the surface of the asphalt like a bowling ball flying down a waxed lane, like an unsteered sled on a sheet of ice, until the car flew off the road and onto the shoulder and hit the thick, soaking clayous dirt and skidded and splashed to a muddy stop just inches in front of a massive oak tree.

Tilted sideways in the mud on the side of the road, the Packard’s red brake lights shone bright through the murky rain.

Inside the car, Lily stared at the tree right in front of her as bucketfuls of wet Georgia red clay, the color of blood, just sprayed up from her car, dripped slowly down the trunk.

Rain still pounding, wipers still beating, Lily took a deep breath and tried to compose herself, but the mud running down the tree seemed to point out to her just how serious the state of her life had become.

Sitting in that car on the side of the road in her robin’s egg blue dress and her pearls, the rain falling all around her, Lily felt like nature was trying to keep her from Jake. For her own good? She didn’t know. Were forces conspiring to keep her in her place? She didn’t know. But among the haze of questions, strangely, she could feel a clarity rising. If nothing else, a childlike determination, manifest in adult woman form.

For if she was in fact destined to be some eighty-year-old lady sitting on her porch with nothing in her life on which to reflect and savor but Tanqueray and tonics and buttered saltines and silver and china and goose, that stinking bloody goose, and a heart kept comfortable but never heated or stirred or truly known, she would surely go mad, but one more time…if she could have just one more time to touch Jake Russo again, to feel the warmth of his face, the embrace of his arms, to look into his eyes just one more time…that might be enough. Could she give him up after that? She did not know. But she was sure beyond all boundaries of doubt that if she did not have one more time with him she might as well hit the accelerator right now and put this vehicle and herself into that oak tree, because she truly felt that from this moment on her life would be unlivable if she could not see Jake Russo one more time. And it was going to take a hell of a lot more than rain to keep her from him.

Lily hit the gas again and the Packard’s rear wheels spun in the mud. She could not believe this. She was not going to be stuck here by the side of the road. No way! Steeling her grip on the hard ridges of the wheel, she hit the gas again hard, dangerously so. The tires threw mud into the black sky, but the car didn’t move.

Lily didn’t care if this was nature trying to stop her or test her, or kill her, she didn’t care about anything except seeing him again, and a determination, even a recklessness that she had never before known she was capable of, raged through her and she shook the wheel, turning it back and forth, her foot pumping the gas, and finally the Packard lurched out of the red mud and onto the road and she whipped the wheel around, quickly turning the Packard, and headed back in the direction she had just come.

Her mind and body as alert and focused as they were designed to ever be in a time of crisis, Lily saw the road she had missed, slowed the vehicle, and made the turn, and then she pressed hard on the gas again, increasing her speed as she drove anxiously through the fog, her heart pounding, her mind running, as she prayed that he was still there, prayed from a place in the core of her core, please, please, let him know she was coming, let him know she would be there, please, let him wait, oh, please—
let him wait
. Racing in the pouring rain down Owl Swamp Road, Lily pleaded with all that she was and all that she would ever be that she be given one more chance to see and touch and hold and kiss Jake Russo.

She threw open the door of the cabin and just stood there, breathless, completely drenched and covered in wet mud, illuminated by a crack of lightning behind her.

After a moment, Jake walked over to her.

He had waited. All afternoon, into the evening, of course he had waited.