Fireworks Over Toccoa (8 page)

“A shooting star!”

Though Jake was looking up, he just stared, not seeing it, and it was gone.

“It was right there, where you were looking, just under Cassiopeia.”

“I love the stars, I really do. But, honestly, when I look up like this, I don’t see them.”

“What do you see?”

“A blank slate.”

Lily looked up, then back at him, not understanding.

Jake thought for a moment, then he handed her his notebook. “Here. This is what I see.”

She looked at it, confused, and started reading what looked like a recipe of some sort.

“‘Sixty-five ounces BP plus fifty ounces magnesium.’”

“Sixty-five ounces of black powder,” Jake explained. “It’s a precise mixture of sulphur, charcoal, and saltpeter. That’s the lifting charge. A big one. It’ll give a strong
bang
to kick things off. The shell pops out of the mortar, flies high and fast into the sky, five thousand meters up, leaving a comet trail of flittering white sparks. That’s the magnesium.”

Lily was fascinated, realizing that she was looking at the handwritten formula for a firework. She continued reading. “‘Ten BP, one hundred stars—strontium carbonate.’”

“First break explodes,
boom
, red stars shoot across the sky in a perfect sphere twenty-five hundred meters across.”

“‘Twenty BP, two hundred stars—barium chlorate.’”

“Second break,
boom
, green stars, like jade and emeralds, twice as many, five thousand meters across.”

“‘Thirty BP, three hundred stars—sodium oxalate, five-sec. fuse…’”

“There’s a time-delay fuse, three, two, one, third break,
boom!
three hundred yellow stars…it’s like sunlight piercing the heavens.”

“‘Fifty ounces aluminum.’”

“And a quick flash of light, for punctuation, as the stars flare out and fade.”

They sat there a moment, looking up at the sky, envisioning it.

Strontium, barium, sodium oxalate; it was a poem, Lily thought. Its words, chemistry; its paper, sky. “It’s beautiful,” she finally said.

“A triple-break chrysanthemum. Yeah, that would be something.”

Jake went on to explain that nearly all the fireworks were premade by hand in Lawrence County, in the traditional style, as they had been for centuries. Jake described in heartfelt detail the way his family made fireworks on their property in the northern rural part of the county, in New Castle. There were numerous small concrete buildings with grounded corrugated iron roofs, called magazines, scattered about one hundred feet from each other so that if one exploded, the others would be spared. Some of the small buildings were entirely packed to the roof with finished fireworks shells of every size and shape imaginable. Others stored vats of raw explosives and chemical powders. And others were used for manufacturing. In these production buildings, Jake’s family members and several close friends from Italy and their families would assemble fireworks shells. They would mix and bake special chemical batters, from which they would cut small stars that looked just like holiday cookies. They would create colorful compounds from secret substances, which would be packed into the outer layers of multibreak shells. They would produce and pack entire pyrotechnics shows of all sizes and all ranges of spectacle to be shipped to destinations all over the globe. A dozen friends and family members, in a small concrete room, sitting and laughing and working together, creating magic to delight people far away whom they would never meet but to whom they would always be connected. This was how it was always done. This was how it was still done.

While on the road, Jake simply set up the mortars, loaded the preconstructed shells, planned out the fine points of a specific show in his journal, and then fired it in the right sequence. But he also liked to do some design work while he traveled. He liked to write and dream and experiment a little. He traveled with enough raw materials so that, when inspired, he could do a little design as well as repair work.

Continuing to share his thoughts, Jake rose, retrieved the
moka
pot, leaned in over Lily, and poured more steaming coffee into her glass. Just inches away from him, watching him intently talk and pour, her eyes moved over him, studying his body up close, that fascinating understated combination of strength and grace to his movements.

He pulled back and poured more coffee for himself, continuing to talk about science and the elements and old pyrotechnic traditions. Lily leaned back in her chair, cupping the coffee in her hands, taking in the night sounds of the field and the rich scent from her glass and the intensity of this man. It was mesmerizing to hear him speak about his work, thrilling to be near him while he did so, indeed, like listening to a poet speaking about words, an artist discussing paints, a man talking to a woman about love. Being so near such ardor gave Lily a heady feeling, as though some kind of intoxicant was flowing into her bloodstream.

He had no reason with which she was accustomed for doing the things he did with fireworks. This was not a man talking about business or college football or golfing. This was a man who had something to say that went far beyond any of that, that rose above the limits of spoken language. Lily realized that Jake Russo had no reason to pursue his craft the way he did other than the need to express himself, to stir, to touch. Listening to him talk, captivated, she again found her mind wandering and wondered what it would be like to be the focus of such a man capable of such desire. What would it be like to be wanted by him?

She continued looking at him, thinking about him this way, and realized how much these feelings were overcoming her. His gaze into her was so deep and so true—could she really keep these inner thoughts from him? Her heart began to panic. Could he hear it? Lily found herself overtaken with a nervousness, a lack of control she’d never really felt before. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

What was she doing? Of course she was getting nervous. It was getting late. Much later than the time that two people who were simply sharing a meal were still together.
Is this what he is thinking, too?
she wondered. She could ask for more coffee. But she didn’t really want more coffee. No, she needed to get home. Of course she needed to get home. She had a house to put together. A kitchen to organize. A husband who would soon be returning. A husband! Why then was she still sitting here? What was she waiting for? What was
he
waiting for?

“Well, I’ve got mortars to set at sunup.”

There. It was time for her to go. She took a deep breath, feeling a discordant mixture of strong emotions, mainly relief and regret, strangely at odds with each other. “Yes. I have a lot to do tomorrow.” She stood up.

He stood, too. And he just looked at her for a long moment, close to her; finally, that curious smile of his that was less of a smile and more of an expression of knowing beyond what was being spoken took hold of his lips.

“What?” asked Lily lightly, breathlessly.

“When I saw you in that field, your hair back, your face looking up into the sky, the breeze blowing your dress against you…I thought you were a ghost.”

“A ghost?”

“A spirit that had come for me.”

“I’m just a girl, Jake.”

“I think you’re that, and much, much more.”

Another long moment. Lily found herself returning his smile, finding her own sense of knowing. And suddenly she felt at ease, a sense of mysterious calm.

“I should go,” she said.

“Yes.”

They exchanged the expected niceties about the dinner as Jake walked Lily through the field to her car. But there was a detectable bit of distance. A quietness. They did not talk much. They just strolled together in the lambent moonlight, the grass licking at their legs, a lovely ballad crooning slowly from the truck radio in the distance. The night had come to an end, and inauthentic pleasantries about staying in touch seemed more than forced and silly. To utter the speech of daily life was to diminish the simple but rare closeness and truth that they had shared on this night, a night that was already becoming memory.

They came to the Packard. As she reached for the handle of the door, Lily half expected another hand to appear from the darkness and grasp hers and pull her away from the car and keep her from leaving. But of course that did not happen. Lily opened the door to the Packard and got in.

Sitting behind the wheel, the door wide open, she looked up at him. He put his hand on the open door and leaned in toward her. She saw the muscles in his shoulders and arms expand and become clearly defined through his thin shirt as he did this, and again she found herself intrigued by his subtle strength.

The moonlight on their faces, they looked deeply into each other. And right then Lily felt that the simplicity and purity of this moment must surely have some purpose or plan beyond the plain serendipity of things coming together, and as she closed her eyes, in a lingering blink, her pulse racing, she was sure that right now at this second this moment was being repeated a thousand times across the planet in a thousand thousand heartbeats, all part of some great and natural design of connection driving human beings together through forces of attraction and affection.

He moved ever so slightly closer to her, lips seemingly parting, and Lily felt sure that he was about to kiss her. As she felt an instant surging in her blood and an electric current through her nerves at the realization that she might have to decide how to respond, she saw that he was not coming any closer.

She just stared at him, pondering. Had he changed his mind? Had she imagined it? Was she the one initiating it? She suddenly realized that she was sitting in this car, but she wasn’t starting it. She was ready to stay and ready to go, the maddening battle between impulse and reason getting worse than what ever fate action had in store. While instincts deep inside pushed her to lean forward, toward him, she willed these forces to stop. It was time to go home.

“It was nice meeting you,” she said. “Good luck in your travels.”

Jake just continued looking at her.
What is he thinking?
she wondered. What was going through his head? Finally, smiling to her, he said, “Lily,
anche se il cielo già è riempito di stelle, potete fare sempre il vostri propri
.”

“One of your father’s sayings?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Even though the sky is already filled with stars, you can always make your own.”

As she took that in, Jake shut her door and stepped back from the car. She started the ignition. After a moment, she put the Packard in gear and drove off down Owl Swamp Road.

Slowly steering the Packard up her driveway, Lily parked it next to Paul’s Cadillac in the garage behind the house. She had made a mental note earlier in the day to get Paul’s big car washed before he came home, but she didn’t want to think about that right now and left the garage quickly.

Making her way up the rear walkway, Lily entered the back door and turned on the lights in the kitchen. The unpacked boxes were still there, just as unpacked as they were this morning. Lily sighed. When she started her day, she never would have guessed that this was how it would have turned out. In the familiarity of the brightly lit white-tiled kitchen, the last few hours seemed dreamlike and surreal. However, like a schoolgirl who doesn’t want to get up, Lily wanted the dream to last.

She kicked off her dirty sandals, walked out of the kitchen, and headed for the stairs. However, before she went up them, she walked right into a pile of hanging clothes she’d recently thrown from an unpacked box. She scooped up an armful and ascended the stairs, mindlessly dangling clothing behind her.

She entered her bedroom and turned on a single lamp. Its mica shade cast a flesh-toned glow throughout the room. Walking by her lovely four-poster bed, she slowed and looked at it for a moment.
How silly
, she thought,
the bedrooms in movies where even married people slept in separate beds
. Was the closeness shared in a single bed really so morally unacceptable that simply suggesting it on-screen was shameful?

Carrying the clothes, Lily went to her closet, moved aside a row of hanging dresses, and began to hang up the new additions. Straightening them, her fingers came across the pearled bodice of her wedding dress. She caressed the silk throughout the flowing full skirt and held a pearl bead in her hand. Wedding gowns were one of the only items exempt from the cloth restrictions imposed by the War Production Board, but most people used rayon, a new synthetic material made from wood pulp, saving silk for parachutes. However, Honey was not most people and she insisted on the silk, obtained from cocoons of the Chinese mulberry worms, the absolute finest of course, and the dress was simply stunning. So beautiful. So much effort for something that lasted such a short time, Lily thought. Then she smiled, remembering:
A moment in the sky, forever in the heart
. She let go of the bead and took in the silky dress, hanging hollow and lifeless, its inhabitant long gone.

Walking into the bathroom, Lily switched on the bright lights, a little taken aback by the thin trail of dirt she realized she had tracked in. Putting the stopper in the drain of the large clawfoot bathtub, she turned on the water, drawing a hot stream into the tub. Unbuttoning her dress, she let it fall to the floor. She took off her slip, unclasped her bra, and removed her underwear. Realizing that her hair was a mess, she shook it out, and errant pieces of dried grass fell to the tiled floor.

Being this dirty was most certainly something strange for Lily. She took in the sight of her soil-stained dress lying rumpled—how different from the gowns in her closet—and the feeling of her skin, matte with dirt and dried perspiration, and she smiled, enjoying the carefree sensations running through her. Forgotten memories came over her, of when she was ten, returning home from a camping trip, and when she was twelve, playing in the creek with her friends, even when she was seventeen, planting corn out in the gardens at Holly Hills, something her mother hated because it wasn’t appropriate for a woman of marrying age to work in the dirt.

Feeling as she did now reminded her how much had changed since then, before she was married, when doing these kinds of things seemed so natural.

Running her hands down her body, she thought, too, about how much she had physically changed over the last few years. She’d lost much of the adolescent plumpness, the “baby fat,” her mother called it, that she had three years ago. Her breasts were rounded and firm, her stomach flat, her hips curved but slender. Her figure was much more defined and shapely, more womanly. What would Paul think of her now? she wondered. Would he like her like this? Would he even recognize her?

Lily squinted a little as specks of sharp light, refracted from her engagement ring, shot across her face as she removed it and put it aside on the counter. People often noticed the heavy ring, which seemed its point, but how strange the metal and polished gemstone looked on the counter, alone and cold. What was it like, she wondered, when the diamond was pulled from the ground, covered in dirt and soil, unadulterated and pure? She removed the ring from the counter and placed it in a drawer.

Lily turned off the bright lights, allowing only the soft glow from the mica-shaded lamp to illuminate the bathroom. That was better. Then she slipped into the bath and, when the water level was near the top, turned off the faucet handles with her foot. Leaning back, eyes closed, Lily felt herself lulled by the warmth. After letting the water soothe her for a moment, she picked up a bar of soap and a razor and began to shave her legs, as she did almost every day. Her girlfriends balked when they found out that Lily did this. Why shave so much if your husband is away? But Lily liked the way it made her feel, something she did for herself, a purely womanly action that was part of her daily routine.

Three years of living alone and she would soon have a man in her house. Three years of sleeping alone and she would soon have a man in her bed. She relished the idea of Paul coming home, but she was increasingly aware these past few weeks that it was the
idea
of Paul more than the reality of him that she relished. Paul was like the lead in an old movie short, a loop that ran over and over in the cinema of her head. While there were a handful of quick, barely comprehensible phone conversations and a series of congenial letters, the movie was set in the past. A tall blond young man in a seersucker suit impassively watching her eat an ice-cream sundae on a hot summer night. On a picnic in the forest, she talks excitedly about the beauty all around them, and he just watches her, not sharing her interest in the plants and the birds, not even understanding it, just watching, and finally silencing her with a kiss. Two virgins splayed and ungainly as newborn birds rolling around on brand-new sheets in a brand-new bed.

Her smooth legs, the warm water lifting and cradling her body; a bath always made her feel good, but tonight even more so than usual. Her eyes naturally shut as her mind quieted and thoughts slipped in and out—images and dreams and feelings. But it wasn’t Paul’s face that she saw. It was Jake, in the moonlit field, blowing on her knee, running his hands on her legs, his dark eyes on her.

The thoughts and sensations were strong and fierce, but instead of rushing them, Lily let them linger. Though she felt guilty at her mental betrayal, she didn’t want to extinguish the vision of Jake just yet. She wanted to savor and reexamine the moment.

Lily put her hands on the edges of the tub, sinking a little deeper in the water, and thought about the man in the field. The way his body felt on top of her when he leapt to her protection—pushing into her back as the burning embers fell around them. His scent. His breath in her ear.

Quickly she stood up, breaking the dreamlike trance and letting the water drip off her body, and stepped out of the bath. She grabbed a thick towel and slowly dried herself off, then pulled the plug, letting the water drain, taking the memories of Jake with it.

Taking another towel from a nearby stack, Lily began to dry her hair. She sat in front of the mirror, too lost in thought and emotion to really pay much attention to her reflection, and meditatively brushed out her hair for a long time. When it was generally dry, she brushed her teeth and applied some cocoa butter, from a block given to her by her father, to her face. As she began to walk out of the bathroom, smelling clean, feeling warm and relaxed, she came across her dress and underwear lying on the floor, dirt on them and around them. Lily picked up the clothes and the scent of them immediately transported her back to the field, and dinner, and Jake Russo—images and feelings that simply did not want to leave.

Lily tossed the clothes in a hamper, walked out of the bathroom, turned off the lamp, and got into bed. So much on her mind, but she felt warm and cradled and comfortable.

From her bed she could see pictures on her dresser and nightstand—one of herself and Paul sitting together at Holly Hills, another of Paul in his uniform, smiling at her. Looking at those beautifully framed photographs was part of her evening routine and it always grounded her before sleep, but tonight she did not feel such footing and her mind drifted, mulling over the images and sensations from the day.

She looked at the stars from her bedroom window. So many of them, in the same place they always were; how could you see a blank slate?

Finally, with the stars and Jake and the pictures of Paul floating in the restless pools of her mind, she fell asleep.

July 1, 1945, just before dawn

A little before sunrise, Lily opened her eyes feeling surprisingly full of energy. As she lay there, cozy soft sheets all around her body, head deep in pillows and hair tossed out among them, Jake Russo was immediately on her mind, the way he had listened to her, the way he seemed to understand her. No, he
did
understand her. But she wanted to understand
him
more, she wanted to unravel the puzzle that was this mysterious stranger in the field.

She loved this time of morning when the world was waking but dreams were still palpable. But soon it would be day, and Lily had quite a lot to do, and here she was still lying around thinking about him. Somehow, she had to get this man and yesterday out of her mind and come back to the present and come back to reality. She took a deep breath and rose. She put on an oversized shirt and headed downstairs.

The cool oak-planked floors on her bare feet, Lily made her way into the kitchen, scooted around the boxes, opened the refrigerator, and got a Coke. Finally finding an opener, she popped off the cap, tossed it across the room into the garbage, and took a deep drink. Looking around the kitchen, Lily felt her insides sink at the mess and the realness of it all. She so much preferred the wonderful thoughts and feelings of upstairs, and she felt guilty about that, but guilt did little to assuage this truth.

She took another swig of her Coke—oh, how she loved the carbonation sliding down her throat, the caffeinated coldness hitting and expanding in her stomach, waking the rest of her body moments later.

On the balls of her feet, a childhood habit, Coke in hand, Lily made her way across the foyer, opened the front door, and walked outside.

She inhaled deeply, tossing her head back, the air a fresh blanket, warm and pine scented. A sparrowlark cooed from a mist-covered fence post. Lily sat down in one of the high-backed rocking chairs and sipped her morning Coke. The midsummer sun rose behind the house, but the western sky, which the porch oversaw, was still dark with dawdling night. She sat and rocked and awaited the dawn.

This was her home, and in just a few days her husband was going to walk up these steps and slip his hands around her body and kiss her, just as he had three years ago when he left, and she would begin her life. But there was something about the way she felt—perhaps it was the lingering images of Jake, the sensations of his cooking, the sentiments that he had brought out in her over dinner, his touch on her leg, her thoughts about him in the bath, his passion—and as much as she tried, or didn’t try but knew she should, she just couldn’t seem to shake it, and him, from her mind. And now all these things seemed even more evocative and alive at this magic moment, this middle moment, in the diffuse gray between night and day, between emotion and reason, that made her feel that she was on some kind of a precipice, like she had some kind of decision to make and with each passing second the sun continued its rise and the sky changed its tones and a pressing sensation gripped her breathing tighter and tighter like something was about to break and in moments rush out and be forever gone. She took another gulp of the sweet caramel drink and looked out.

Without warning of any kind, a silver needle shot into the sky, perforating the great expanse of dark fabric before her and trailing a thread of flittering brilliant white sparks. Then there was a dull boom and a spherical explosion of red stars, followed by another burst, twice as big, of green stars and, five seconds later, a massive, nearly unfathomable, torrent of yellow. And a quick flash, and the stars began to fade and fall.

It was the firework Jake had described to Lily last night. And seeing it before her like this, moving from mind to sky, from memory to actuality, from dreams to reality, made it seem as though the whole of nature had conjured its forces, animal and elemental alike, to move her. It was more than a sign. It was more than an appeal to her heart. In a world of rules, of men in uniforms, of clearly defined right and wrong and good and evil, it was an urgent and critical plea to listen to instinct, to take a chance.