Fireworks Over Toccoa (12 page)

They locked eyes. He was so beautiful like that, she thought. She watched him as he moved over her and with her, his hand on her cheek, on her breasts, on her face again, cradling it, and he was whispering to her as though she were the most important thing that had ever been and would ever be, and she thought about the way he had covered her body with his in the field that very first time and touched her leg and blown on her knee, and the way he made coffee and cooked and drank wine, and now he was focusing all of that passion onto and into her, sating her entire body and soul with it, and with his release imminent there was more fullness, and she again began contractions, wet spasms, waves rippling through every part of her in still greater implausible ways, words again rushing forth wildly, mixing with his, responding to his, her hands gripping his shoulders and arms, an open palm sliding and slipping along his back as she felt like she was being gently but powerfully taken to some place that she had never before been, the Spanish moss parting like a velvet curtain when she was eight years old and the vast and improbable ocean before her for the first time, and she was nine and a half in her backyard looking up wide-eyed at the fireworks, exploding in ways that she now felt and shared and saw in Jake’s eyes above, taking her beyond the bounds of home, beyond everything she knew and understood, taking her away from Toccoa, away from this world, and bringing her to a place where she was only her bare and true self.

There was no lasting resolution to their lovemaking but pauses through the night, when breathing slowed, sweat-soaked hair was wiped tenderly from faces, soft kisses exchanged, sweet words murmured, as they lay in each other’s arms before beginning again, hours pouring into hours.

Enwrapped in this closeness so completely, cocooned by it, Lily knew that this was what had been missing from her life, this feeling of wholeness and connection, fulfillment of her capacity to share the entirety of herself with all of another. This man. She knew it with the same force of nature flowing through any spent creature slumbering in its silk. And now that she had found it, and him, how could she go back to her life as it was?

She took comfort in knowing that at least for a little while longer she didn’t have to think about it.

Lily lay back in Jake’s arms looking at the timbered roof overhead, planks and beams smooth and worn, antiqued by a century of summers, and she noticed a small hole, charred neatly around its rim as though some piece of a thing from far beyond had come flaming, crashing neatly through the roof as if marking her cabin had been its calling. Somehow, the discovery moved her. Although she had no way of knowing that the hole was in fact made by an errant piece of the fireworks shot over Bartam’s Field on July 4th eleven years ago, the fireworks that she saw from her parents’ house, she knew, somewhere, that there was an order and a purpose that defied the gravity of reason and joined faraway things together. But Lily didn’t think about all that now. She made an effort not to think about much at all but just to absorb the feelings around her, allowing herself to be swept away in her lover’s arms.

A whitetail buck browsed through the vines in the darkness outside the cabin and then moved on. Inside, pools of blue-green moonlight rippled along the floor and walls.

“Do you think if we lie here long enough the kudzu will come get us?” Jake wondered aloud. He lay on his back while Lily, spooned against him and propped up on an elbow, fed him corn soufflé with her fingers.

“Fear not, my darling. I will protect you.”

“Thank you. That gives me great comfort, O killer of the vine.”

“You don’t kill the kudzu. You can’t kill the kudzu. It’s like the moon and the stars. It is always there. You see, you have to make peace with kudzu.”

“I see. Befriend the vine.”

“Exactly.”

“You are wise beyond your years.”

Jake sucked soufflé off her fingers and kissed playfully up her arms, rapt with the scent and softness of her ruddy, glowing skin. She smiled teasingly and rolled atop him, continuing to feed him the sweet corn pudding and kissing him, first on his face, then his neck, and slowly along his chest.

“You realize you are going to kill me!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, but, mmm…what a way to go,” she said mischievously between kisses, her lips moving unhurriedly across his taut belly, moisture from her tongue lingering on him as she spoke. “They found them, surrounded by a mass of vines which had climbed on everything in sight—”

“—except, strangely and inexplicably, it had not touched their decomposing bodies. Because they had ‘befriended the vine.’”

Lily laughed as she kissed his body.

Jake loved this playful, fun, curious side of her, but where was she finding this stamina? he wondered. She seemed to be making up for all the time they had not been together like this. Trying to wrap the past, and perhaps the future, into the here and now. What she was doing now did something to him, and he gave himself over to her.

He stroked her hair as she came across a deep scar that started on his side, just above his hip bone. She stopped and traced the scar, which became deeper and broader across his lower back.

He pulled away a little and she could feel the entire tone change. She had stumbled across a ghost, and her touch had conjured the apparition. She knew instantly not to ask about it, but at the same time her lack of words left a void that promised to engulf this precious and newfound thing between them that he did not want to go. Jake lay back, and after a long moment, he spoke again.

“People listen to the reporters and they read the papers and they see the newsreels, but they don’t understand. They can’t. War is a private experience. And the longer you’re at it and the more you see, and the more you do…” Jake’s voice cracked ever so slightly. He paused for a moment, then continued, “The more private an experience it becomes.”

For the first time, Lily got a glimpse into what Jake Russo had been through, what had hurt him so deeply and caused him to wander cross-country without home or community. More than anything she wanted to soothe that pain, kiss away the anguish, but she dare not approach that place. She dare not battle an apparition she could not see or touch or know. So she remained silent and let instinct take over once again, running her hands through his hair. He liked that. His body was so responsive to her touch, so sensual. Could you love someone you’d known for barely one day? What if you felt that you’d known that person your whole life, even though you just met him?

“You can share anything with me, Jake. Even that,” she said as gently as a person possibly could.

Jake inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. What could he say to her?
I am sharing everything with you
, he thought.
Every time my chest expands with breath against yours, every time my heart beats in tempo with yours, I am sharing everything
. How could he make her understand? He opened his eyes. “You asked me when we had dinner in the field if I had changed,” he said. “What I’ve come to believe is that you have to cherish…this, the present. Life and death…it’s a matter of a breath, a heartbeat…a single footstep.” He thought about Lorena, who had stepped on a mine in her vineyard, and he held Lily even tighter thinking about the simple timing of things. He had seen so much that was arbitrary—things you couldn’t make sense of, let alone try to explain with words. He held her even tighter and tried to convey these thoughts with the stroke of his hands, the pound of his pulse, tried to pass them to her through his touch. “This, the here and the now, Lily, this is what you count on.”

“I lost my brother in the war,” she said evenly.

He sat up, a little taken aback by this. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you. His name was Jonathan. He was a paratrooper in the Solomons. He was older than me and had his own life. I didn’t know him all that well, but I loved him very much. Everyone did. He had that effect on people, especially my parents. They don’t talk about him much. My mother doesn’t talk about him at all.”

Jake took this in, watching her, evaluating, seeing the pain that she kept away. He understood, perhaps in a way no one else Lily knew ever could, that her brother was more in her life now than he was when he was alive. Now Jake was the one who spoke gingerly.

“Ghosts are hard to live with,” he said.

“Yes, Jake. They are.” There was a long moment of understanding between them. “Sometimes I wonder…why him? You know? Was someone aiming at him or did he just step the wrong way for a second? Sometimes I wonder if I had used rayon instead of silk for my wedding dress, would there have been one more parachute for one more soldier to jump out of that plane with him and save his life?”

“I know those thoughts.”

“I know you do.”

She pulled him close again and they smiled at each other, a hundred lifetimes of expressions exchanged with that look. He had never thought he would be alive like this again, and now he had found someone not only whom he allowed near but who truly understood him, who was truly with him. She had always thought this kind of closeness was just a dream, but in an instant he had shown her that such fancies were real—but how much did all this matter? She had already given herself away. Yes, in this life, so much was arbitrary and timing was everything.

Lily found herself wondering what would have happened if she had never gotten out of her car to walk into that field and never met Jake Russo. What if the arbitrary winds had sent a friend walking to her on Doyle Street, delaying her and keeping her from seeing the firework? What if a deer had crossed the road, causing Lily to slow or stop her car for a few moments? What if she just never looked up? She would have lived out her days with…what? A feeling that something was missing. A sense of longing. Temptation never acted upon. Would that really have been a fate so terrible? Wasn’t that how so many people lived their lives?

Because now that she knew what this was, what exactly had been missing, and how it had rushed into the void she had felt, how could she now unfill it? How could you empty a great natural lake? How could she ever extract Jake Russo from the emptiness that had once been her soul? And if she could not—and if she could not be with him, which of course was even more impossible than forgetting him—how could she live the rest of her days with such a weight, such a voluminous thing that most certainly would turn heavier with each minute he was gone and bluer with each hour he was not holding her until finally, unbearable, it pulled her down? To think about it, even for a brief pained moment, was to fall into a chasm, to lose herself in the deepest of trenches, spirit bubbling out of her in silent screams, where she would be physically present but otherwise gone from those around her, those in her life, Paul. Like some limp rag doll, she would be in attendance, taken along, smiling, but that wouldn’t be her. She wouldn’t really be there, and they would never find her. They might as well dredge the ocean for a trinket.

Sensing her inner turmoil, Jake held Lily tightly and kissed her on the forehead, and her doubts were instantly allayed. She smiled and hugged him back. No, she thought, looking at him, feeling his arms around her, no, she would rather have a few days of this and know what it was than spend the rest of her life standing on a porch, looking out at the sky, a cocktail in her hand, dressed up and empty, made up and lost, just like so many people she had seen at her parents’ parties, just like so many in Toccoa. No, she would rather be underwater with her eyes open than aboveground, a phantom of a woman in a soulless world.

Being here with this man right now, she was certain that she had never been happier and more fulfilled in her life. But was this really all there was to that, Lily thought further, the here and now, as he had said? How could it be? How could there not be something beyond this moment to how she felt? She took in the beating of his heart, as he had told her, listened to his breath, as he had directed, sensed the currents running through the fibers of his flesh, and looked into his eyes—chance be damned! How could what they had in each other’s arms, the infinity of emotion they saw when they looked into each other, soon be banished to the confines of memory just because of the simple timing of things? Was the world really and truly so cruel that it would taunt the spirit with such joy and then rip it away a few days later because of temporal matters? And even if so possessed, was it even capable? Could what they had really be cast aside even if
they
tried to do so?

Although logic told Lily otherwise, the whispering in the breeze through the kudzu said surely there must be some plan that could not yet be seen. Like hearing laughter in a stream, she wanted to believe.

He hugged her tightly. While doing so, he came across a small scar on her shoulder. He touched it, giving her a questioning look.

“You want to hear
my
war story?” she said, changing the tone of their conversation with a little playfulness.

“I do,” he said.

Lily took a deep breath, then decided to tell him. “I was babysitting my little cousin, Margie, and we came across a bear, not far from here actually.”

“Really?” Jake said, with eyebrows raised. “A bear?”

“Yes, oh yes, he was huge, ferocious, a massive grizzly, and very hungry, yes, and he was trying to get at our picnic which we’d just set out and I’m sorry, but there was no way I was gonna give up a freshly baked pecan pie without a fight, so I picked up this long sycamore branch and I—”

He began to smile. “Lily, as far as I know, there are no grizzly bears in Georgia.”

Lily couldn’t suppress her laugh. “Right. Well, actually, I was chasing Margie around the living room with a pillow and I slipped and hit an end table. Broke my mother’s lamp, and trust me—a grizzly would’ve been preferable.”

Jake laughed. “A sycamore branch? You’re bad.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who makes corn soufflé this good can say or do anything she wants.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

She rolled onto him and they laughed together and began to kiss again.

Dawn, July 2, 1945

Lily opened her eyes, the new day awash in gossamer light, to find Jake Russo in her secret cabin, sitting across from her, writing in his moleskin journal. He had lit a small fire in the fireplace sometime in the night, which made the cabin very cozy.

“You don’t happen to have any of that great coffee of yours around, do you?” She smiled and yawned.

“Oh, how I wish.”

“You’re not drawing a picture of me sleeping with drool coming out of my mouth, are you?”

“Thought about it, but no. Something else.”

Lily got up and went to him, watching him work. He was writing something, which was not in English. It was in a language that posters in the Toccoa Post Office called “the language of the enemy.”

“Practicing your Italian?” she asked lightly.

Without looking up, Jake smiled. In careful, precise handwriting, he had written something out in Italian, what looked like verses of poetry. Then Lily saw that Jake was writing the title at the top. It read:
LA STELLA DI LILY
. “I’ve never been much of a poet or a painter and I can’t buy you a fancy gift,” he said with a smile. “This is the best that I can do for you. It’s a very special firework, Lily. A great blue one. True deep blue, like your eyes, is the rarest of all pyrotechnic colors. Very few Americans have ever seen a real blue firework. Even in Italy, it is rare. There are only a few families that know how to do it. Centuries ago, my family learned how to distill this wonderful material, magnalium, and use a composite of it in the formula. It is a difficult and laborious process. For years, the men in my family have made variations of the blue firework. My great-grandfather made a ‘blue,’ still talked about in Naples, called ‘La Stella di Contessa.’ My great-grandmother was Contessa. I updated it a bit with some things I learned.”

He very carefully tore the page out of the journal and handed it to Lily.

Lily read the title. “‘La Stella di Lily.’”

“Lily’s Star. I figure, everyone deserves their own star.”

Looking over the beautiful words as her hands held the paper before her, Lily was overcome with emotion. This was the most romantic gesture she had ever encountered. She opened her mouth but was speechless. As if its words could seep into her and pump through her, she pulled the paper to her chest, and she felt a force, that connection to others, a link to links through time and space and centuries of rare passion, something whose truth lived beyond the fibers of the paper and the ties of the present.

“Jake, I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll see me again today.”

This was insane, she knew that. Her husband was returning in two days. There were a million reasons why she had to end this, but as she looked at the paper in her hand she didn’t want to think about anything except Jake Russo.

“I’d love to see you later today.”

“Early afternoon again?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“You know this is crazy.”

“Not seeing you is crazier.”

They began to get ready to go. Jake threw on his jeans and started straightening up the cabin. But he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Lily. He watched hypnotically as she gathered her clothing. The way she moved, carried herself, her hair shimmering in the sunlight, the depth of expression across her lovely face when lost in her own thoughts, the perfect curves of her body, oh, the curves of her body, excruciating not to reach out and trace with his touch. She was breathtaking, Jake thought, simply breathtaking.