Fireworks Over Toccoa (3 page)

June 30, 1945

Swing music blasted so loud from the kitchen radio inside that Honey Davis could hear it quite clearly as she marched up the front steps of her daughter Lily’s house. Reminding herself to go easy on Lily, who was after all barely twenty years old, Honey walked across the porch and knocked loudly on the door several times. There was no response, and there most likely wasn’t going to be a response, because the music was so loud that nothing else could be heard. Honey felt that familiar frustration rising inside her.

Clenching her jaw and straightening her blouse, Honey opened the door and let herself in. She nearly tripped over the unpacked boxes of newly acquired house wares still in the foyer. Lily should be much further along, thought Honey. Lily’s husband would be returning in four days and the place was simply a mess.

When Paul Woodward left for the war in 1942, just a short time after marrying Lily and purchasing the house for them, Lily had moved back into her parents’ home a few miles away at Holly Hills. Aside from the matter that the house was simply too big for a teenager, albeit a married one, to live in alone, maintaining a property this size for one person regardless of age was downright frivolous during war time. However, even though she didn’t live there, Lily had spent much of the last few years putting the home together. Initially, Honey tried to help, but that didn’t go over so well. Lily wanted to do things her way, and she certainly put great effort into collecting wonderful items and furnishings while Paul was away. Lily acquired things that were fun, ornamental, as opposed to utilitarian. The living room was stunning. The kitchen was bare. Until very recently. There was a sudden rush to get it set up when Paul’s return was announced.

Honey couldn’t help but be annoyed by Lily’s efforts over these years, feeling her decorating and furnishing was more hobby than household building. More girlish amusement than womanly pursuit. The fact was, although she was married and had accepted the full responsibility of adulthood, at twenty Lily was still very much a child at heart.

Honey navigated around the boxes of practical household items and made her way into the kitchen, where she found Lily bopping to the loud swing music. Hands out, locked with those of an imaginary partner, Lily danced quickly and joyfully around mounds of pots and pans.

Honey watched her for a moment. While most of the world saw a beautiful young woman who was fair, fit, and well proportioned, the graceful and poised daughter of an important Coca-Cola executive, this private Lily was precisely the Lily, unrestrained, sweating, who worried Honey so. Honey had hoped that marriage would provide the sort of structure that would channel what ever drove her daughter to dance like this into something quietly satisfied, rendering Lily, wholly and entirely, a lady of Toccoa, Georgia. But of course there hadn’t been much of a marriage. Fortunately, though, like the world around them, everything was about to change.

Honey pulled the radio plug out of the wall socket. Startled by the sudden silence, Lily looked up to find her mother in her kitchen.

“You really shouldn’t sneak up on me like that,” said Lily, exasperation superseding embarrassment.

“And you really should be getting your home ready. Do you want your husband to come back to something that looks worse than the rubble in Berlin?”

Just rolling her eyes, Lily returned to her task of unpacking. She pulled a beautiful chrome-and-ivory-framed picture of her husband in his officer’s uniform out of a box, unwrapped it, and placed it on a nearby counter. As she leaned over and started pulling china from another box, Honey picked up the picture and moved it carefully to a more prominent location in the room. Lily watched as Honey gazed at the picture for a moment, satisfied, and then bent over and took a cup and a saucer from a box, gingerly removed the packing paper, and began to put the items away. Though the act was more imposition than help, Lily tolerated it. This was a familiar dynamic, and though it was ultimately annoying to Lily, there was comfort in the familiarity.

“They go in there, Mother,” said Lily, pointing to an open waist-high drawer.

“Cups and saucers in a drawer? Lily, what are you thinking? Drawers at this level are for flatware. Cups and saucers go in the upper cabinet or cupboard, hence the name,
cup
board.”

“Well, in my home, Paul and I will do things our way, even if we break a few ‘rules.’”

“What you’ll break is all your fine coffee cups. Every time you carelessly open that drawer and they bang into each other.”

“Mother—”

Honey could hear her husband’s voice telling her to relax and let her daughter live her own life a bit. Staid and vigilantly professional, he was, in fact, much more like Lily than anyone really knew, except perhaps Honey.

“Suit yourself,” Honey said. “Your house. Do things your way. My mouth is shut.”

“Thank you.”

Honey put the cup and saucer on the counter, refusing to participate in what she deemed certain madness, something she was confident her daughter would soon come to see, the hard way. Lily picked up the items and put them away in the drawer, pleased.

“Fine,” said Honey, unable to stay silent. “And why not just put your pots and pans on top of the refrigerator? Or your fine linens under the sofa? Or your—”

“Mother!”

“My mouth is shut.”

“Thank you.”

“Lily!” Honey exclaimed, glaring at a box of salt that had spilled onto the floor. So much for keeping her mouth shut.

Honey hurried over, tore a page from a
Good Housekeeping
magazine, and swept up the salt onto the cover. She poured it in a small glass. “You can boil it off when you unpack your pots,” said Honey.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Lily, primarily to appease and silence her mother. After the War Between the States, when the only way to get salt was to boil the dirt from the floors of the ravaged smoke houses, pour off the water, and use the residue in the bottom of the pot, wasting salt was a sin in Georgia.

Honey opened the refrigerator, took out two Cokes, and opened them with a nearby bottle opener. Lily grabbed one, Honey the other. Unconsciously repeating one of their longstanding rituals, they both took swigs, swallowed, and took deep, calming breaths. Even with sugar rationing making Coke hard to come by throughout most of the country, Davis households always had some cold ones on hand.

Looking at Honey, Lily thought,
You’d never have known that the entire world had been at war
. It was as though time stood still for Honey Davis. She never went without nylons, and her figure showed no signs of the flour and sugar shortages that most in Toccoa endured. Most in town attributed such things to the benefits of wealth and influence, but Lily knew it was more. In her own ways, Honey worked hard for what she got. It was just that she made getting what she wanted look effortless. But Lily knew better. Lily saw that under her mother’s air of entitlement was a profound resourcefulness, a will that you did not want to cross.

This was a woman whose hair, despite season or time of day or weather, was always, audaciously, perfect. Honey had been wearing a smart pageboy bob with the ends rolled under for as long as Lily could remember. During the later years of the war even Garbo and Hepburn began to eschew the bob style they had helped make fashionable, but not Honey Davis. Her tresses were always impeccably parted and curled, set and sturdy, even in the middle of summer. And Lily knew that someone who possessed what it took to maintain her hair so well in Georgia in June was not someone to be taken lightly.

Lily and Honey looked up as an oversized wasp flew into the kitchen. Honey recoiled. “Those damn yellow jackets. They are so aggressive.”

Honey quickly grabbed a newspaper, rolled it up, and began swatting. This enraged the predatory wasp, which buzzed angrily around the kitchen, scaring Honey, who swatted wildly at it. The big yellow jacket landed on the counter, buzzing tentatively. Honey approached nervously, pulled back the newspaper, and just as she was about to swat at it, in a flash, Lily brought a mason jar down over the wasp, trapping it.

“Lily!”

“Now what did that yellow jacket ever do to you?”

“I don’t know if you are brave or just plumb stupid. Sometimes both, I suspect.”

Lily ripped off a piece of cardboard from one of the boxes, slid it under the mason jar, and carried the jar to the kitchen door. She pushed open the screen door, released the wasp, and came back inside.

Honey just watched, both amazed and annoyed. Lily was constantly doing these sorts of impulsive things that upset Honey, who was certain that Lily often behaved this way specifically for that purpose. But Honey had to confess, she admired her daughter’s fearlessness, as well as her tenacity. Lily was an original.

“You know you can stay at our home tonight if you want,” said Honey.

“I’ll be fine, Mother.”

“I know that. I’m just saying that if you need something your father and I will be in Atlanta, so feel free to come by anytime and get what you need.”

“I think you’re going to miss having me under your roof,” Lily teased.

Honey searched for an equally pointed retort but, finding the moment had gotten away from her, discovered herself throwing her arms around Lily and giving her a fast but unexpectedly warm hug. The embrace said more than any words either could have produced.

“I’ll miss you, too, Mother. But Paul and I will be right here, right across town. And you can come see us any time you want.” Lily smiled. “Well, most any time. Feel free to call first.”

The women shared a laugh. Then, suddenly, a percussive
boom
, from an explosion of some sort off in the distance, gently rocked the house. “The pyrotechnics man,” said Honey.

Quickly Honey and Lily went to the front door, stepped out onto the porch, and saw a massive waterfall of sparkling luminescent light, so brilliant and radiant that even in daylight it streaked much of the western sky copper and gold.

Lily watched the firework, silent and breathless.

There hadn’t been a fireworks display in the area since the war started. Nearly every fireworks company in the country had switched their factory over to weapons manufacturing. Instead of making colorful pyrotechnics displays that exploded in the sky, they were making mortar shells for use on the battlefield. In 1945, many young people, particularly those from small towns, couldn’t remember ever seeing a fireworks display. Lily was one of them. Though her parents assured her she had seen fireworks at Holly Hills when she was nine, her memory of it was vague. Lily wasn’t sure what she actually remembered and what she simply thought she remembered from hearing about it over the years. Needless to say, Lily was very much looking forward to the display the Toccoa Ladies Auxiliary Club had arranged for the homecoming on July 4th.

The women watched as the sparks faded and fell, leaving behind gently glowing and expanding traces of quiet alabaster smoke. Honey squeezed her daughter’s hand and, finally, broke the silence of the moment. “These are very fine days we have ahead of us, darling. Very, very fine days.”

Lily just nodded.

“We’ll be back from Atlanta in a few days. Just in time for the homecoming festivities,” said Honey. “I had GiGi put the rest of your clothes in your closet, so you can pick them up any time you want.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Oh, and Jenna’s in town with Mark Morgan. I told her mother that you’d get in touch with her. Do that please.”

“Yes, Mother.” Lily made a mental note to get in touch with her old friend and then willed her mother to leave before she thought up a hundred more things for her to do.

“Oh, and Mrs. Keener is expecting you at the market. Get what ever you need and she’ll put it on our bill. If you need anything else, we’ll be staying at the company apartment at the Biltmore and—”

“I’ll be fine, Mother. Don’t worry about me.”

“Of course not, dear,” lied Honey as she headed down the front porch steps. “Of course not.”

Lily watched her mother growing smaller as she moved down and away, under the enchanted sky.

Though the firework was gone from sight, it remained, engraved in memory.
Such a beautiful thing
, thought Lily. Why, then, did it make her feel so emotional, so…
melancholy
? No, it was more specific than that. It made her feel sad. Why?

Her life was perfect. She had her dream house. And her husband was finally coming home to join her in it. She’d been thinking about him so much lately.

Paul was easy to love pretty much from day one. He was so earnest and straightforward, being with him was effortless. He didn’t dance, but he didn’t mind if she did. In fact, whether she was dancing in the kitchen or telling an impassioned story over dinner, Paul was content just watching Lily.

Toccoa, 1941

Enjoying a lavish but casually tasteful company picnic, several well-dressed executives and their spouses ate Green Goddess salads and barbequed chicken near the back patio of the house at Holly Hills.

In the middle of the sprawling green lawn behind and away from the house at the estate, on a beautiful knit blanket, Lily, seventeen and radiant, sat next to Paul Woodward, a tall, broad-shouldered young man in a flawless blue seersucker suit and white bucks. It was a picturesque and complete sight, of which Lily was well aware.

“So tell me, Paul Woodward, what kind of a boss is my father?” said Lily with a teasing air.

“A fair one,” replied Paul, holding his own with her.

“And I suppose he would be even fairer to a bright young man with a promising future who showed affection for his daughter.”

“No. I wouldn’t say that about Mr. Davis.”

“No?” Lily clasped her hand to her chest as though shocked.

“No, but I think he’d be quite positively inclined toward a young man for whom his
daughter
showed affection.”

They shared a hearty laugh. Paul leaned back on his arms, enjoying the warmth of the sun on this fine afternoon, while Lily took a sip of champagne from a fluted crystal glass with which she’d snuck off.