Fireworks Over Toccoa (18 page)

At night, in Bartam’s Field, Jake lit the July 4th Toccoa Fireworks Show. Using a long “match,” a three-foot wood pole aflame on one end, he danced and moved rhythmically up and down and in between the rows and rows of mortars, lighting fuses in perfect timing as he went. In the falling sparks and rising smoke, his face half lit by the glow of sulfur, Jake Russo was a man driven by the substratal forces of the elements, a man moved by the perfect symbiosis of passion and pain, of love and loss, of life and death.

“I thought about jumping off that train, and running to the source of the magic, throwing my arms around him and going with him wherever he was going. I remember thinking,
My father is wrong, and Jake is right, there is no time, there is only ‘this, now,’ and I am letting it slip away
.”

As the train increased its velocity, quickly pulling away from Toccoa, Lily gripped the railing with her hands and leaned over the tracks shooting by underneath her. She leaned out farther to see the fireworks exploding brilliantly in the sky above. She leaned out still farther, her hands loosening their grip on the railing.

The ground moving faster and faster below her, Lily leaned out farther.

She looked up, taking in the fireworks growing in splendor and intensity, losing herself in their magnificence and all they had come to mean to her.

Leaning out farther, the wind whipping her, she felt overwhelmed by the division within her, by the two Lilys both pulling ever harder at her, by the simultaneous beauty and sorrow of the world. What had she done?
What had she done?
What did it all mean and how did this suddenly become her life?

The fireworks exploding over her, she was that nine-and-a-half-year-old girl again, hearing the first concussive booms and running through her house, past the bergamot-scented relatives with their glowing freshly scrubbed faces and the clinking ice cubes in highball glasses and outside by the sweet-smoking kettledrum grills and her parents in their tennis whites…her parents, so young, so full of hope and rue and tenderness as they watched her running from them out into the expanse of lawn, the fireworks exploding over her, and he took her hand….

“Something happens to people as they get older,” the young man said, taking in how mesmerized young Lily was by the fireworks. “They lose what’s important.” Then he pointed up. “Never forget this, Lily. Never forget this.”

They both looked upward, their faces cast with the dazzling colors exploding above them, and Lily could see Jonathan, her brother, so handsome, so kind, looking up with the same wonder and expansiveness and capacity for love that she felt in her own heart, a young man ready to make his own way in the world.

Lily leaned out over the tracks as the train leaving Toccoa continued to speed up, Jake’s fireworks filling the sky above.

And, finally, Lily began to cry. “It was you, Jonathan. Of course, it was you. I’m so sorry. I’m so deeply, deeply sorry. I did forget. Oh, Jonathan, I miss you so much. Oh my…I miss you.”

Just as it looked as though her hands might slip and she might actually fall from the train—her father grabbed her, pulling her inside to safety.

Standing on the platform between cars, he held her tighter than he ever had before and she finally broke down, letting go the heavy true cries of a child in her father’s arms, the deepest of cries, the fireworks over Toccoa disappearing into the distance.

Very quiet now, Lily sat at the table in the office of the Stephens County Historical Society, her weathered hands resting calmly before her, her eyes, wet, looking off into the distance as though she could still see her brother and Jake and the fireworks from those long-gone days of her life. Colleen and Stokes saw what the memories had done to her and they, too, were silent, nearly afraid to speak.

Finally, her voice cracking a bit, swallowing hard several times, Lily continued. “I left a part of me behind on the tracks that night,” Lily finally said. “Something that burned and fell away. Like ashes from a firework. Like a magnolia blossom in the Toccoa sun.

“When I got back from Washington, I tried to contact him. I tried reaching him in Nantucket, but it was impossible to get a long-distance line through to the island. I was able to reach the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and they put me in touch with the motel near Folsom Field where they were accommodating him. I called the motel, and they told me to call back in eight days, when he was to arrive. I did, and was informed that a local man who had worked in munitions for the Marine Corps was meeting the truck from Lawrence County and had replaced him. I went to Atlanta and did some research and I was able to get a call through to the home of Ernesto Russo in Pennsylvania, and I spoke to Jake’s mother, who told me in newly learned and still broken English that he had taken a series of shows in Brazil and was to return in ten months, and she gave me the family’s address in New Castle. I wrote him. And ten months later the letter was returned unopened in another envelope from his mother, which also contained an announcement from the
New Castle News
regarding the marriage of Jake Russo to Lara Medeiros in Ipanema. He had done what I’d begged him to do, out in the rain on Owl Swamp Road; he had found someone and given his passion to her.”

Colleen looked visibly shaken by the story. She’d come to Toccoa this day to reflect on some important decisions in her life, but she had no idea this was how the day would unfold. Colleen never could have imagined that her grandmother carried these secrets with her all these years, and it would take some time for the young woman to fully process that and all that the story meant. Seeing her granddaughter absorb the emotions of her past, Lily took Colleen’s hands in hers.

“I did visit the Visconde de Pirajá, in 1951, right after I got my art degree at the Sorbonne, right before I met your grandfather when he had just started teaching at UGA and who I loved very much, the way, I have no doubt, Jake Russo loved his wife from Brazil.”

Stokes was visibly moved by Lily’s story. “Excuse me for a moment,” Stokes said. She walked out of the room and a few minutes later returned with the framed formula for Lily’s Star. She set it on the table, removed it from the frame, and carefully handed it to Lily.

“How did you lose it?” asked Stokes.

“Lost in the storm” was all Lily could say. Clearly there was more on Lily’s mind about this, but the other women could see that it was time to let it be.

After sixty-two years, Lily Davis held the formula again in her hands; a gift from a man she knew for four days, days that forever changed her life. Holding it now in her hands, she could still see his face the day he wrote it, when she awoke that day in the cabin. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting the rush of memories sweep over her. And then she came back.

Stokes slipped the handwritten formula into a clear archival folder and returned it to Lily.

It was getting late. But before Lily and Colleen left, Stokes produced another clear Ziploc bag and put it on the table. It contained Lily’s old oil paints that had also been in the jar. “Lily,” Stokes said, touching the old woman’s arm. “I thought you might want these, too.”

Grateful, Lily picked them up.

Stokes thought about hugging Lily, felt the urge to do so, but that simply would not have been professional. Instead, Stokes offered her hand, which Lily took respectfully.

On the way out of the train depot, Colleen, who had been atypically quiet, took her grandmother’s arm. “Grandma, can I stay with you tonight?”

Lily knew that Colleen had important obligations with her fiancé back in Atlanta, but she did not ask about that. “Of course, dear. You can stay with me as long as you like.”

As Colleen pulled her big company car up to the front of her grandmother’s house, she and Lily could see a figure sitting on the front porch. Mouth beginning to fall open as she stared at him, a disconcerting brew of emotions rising, Colleen looked genuinely surprised. Lily saw the hospital parking placard on the new luxury car in front of her house and knew exactly who the tall young man sitting on her front stoop was.

“Looks like you have company, dear,” Lily said.

“I can’t believe he came up here.”

Turning off the ignition, Colleen jumped out of her car, slammed her door shut, jogged around to help her grandmother out, and then they both walked together up the front steps.

Drew Candler, in his slimly tailored tuxedo, collar open, black tie dangling, stood when he saw them. Then he walked down, meeting them at the top of the walkway.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said, very politely.

“Good evening, Andrew,” said Lily in a charged way that belied the simple response to his greeting.

“Hi,” he said to Colleen, who just looked at him.

After a moment that seemed to go on a little too long for everyone’s comfort, “I think I’ll go inside and let you two have some time together,” Lily said.

Colleen and Drew continued to look at each other as Lily walked into the house.

Leaving her granddaughter and her fiancé alone on the front porch, Lily made a late supper for them in her kitchen. A macaroni and cheese casserole, with fresh handmade pasta and two kinds of North Georgia farm cheeses, comfort food with an artisan touch. After about an hour, just as the dinner was about ready to come out of the oven, Lily heard the front door open and she went to it.

Colleen walked in, alone. She looked as though she’d been crying.

Lily saw Drew walk down her front steps and head to his car. “He won’t be joining us for dinner?”

“No. He has to get back.”

Lily did not ask Colleen the thousands of questions that Honey would have asked her. Lily just stood next to her granddaughter, close to her, and Colleen knew that she was not alone, which was all Colleen needed at that time.

They stood together in the open doorway and watched Drew Candler get into his car and drive off.

After a few moments, the wonderful smell from the kitchen pulled Colleen’s attention back into the house and she shut the door. “Boy, it smells good in here,” said Colleen, turning and heading toward the kitchen.

Colleen took a seat at the kitchen table, one of her favorite places on the planet, and Lily slid the clear folder containing Lily’s Star to her.

“I figure, everyone deserves their own star,” Lily said. “I want you to have mine.”

Colleen was extremely moved, but before she could speak, Lily stood up. “Come with me.”

While the casserole stayed warm in the oven, the two headed out the back door of the kitchen.

They walked into the garage and Lily flipped a switch, and bright halogen track lighting illuminated the room. The garage had long ago been converted into a large studio for Lily. Scores of spectacular glass mosaics, some quite large, in various states of completion, filled the room. A three-foot-high mountain of broken bottle glass sat up against a bricked rear wall. An elaborate collection of oil paints and glues and tools of every kind rested on nicely fabricated worktables. Colleen loved coming in here. In fact, this room, and what it represented, was always present in her life, one way or another.

Lily Davis mosaics were quite sought after throughout the South and increasingly in other parts of the country. Several major galleries carried her work in Charleston, Wilmington, and Hilton Head. Her work had also been acquired by a few prominent private collectors, mostly in Southern California. In more recent years, there was always more demand than she had ability or interest in meeting. Still, Lily worked or spent time in her studio nearly every day of her life when she was home.

Also throughout the studio were numerous framed photographs of inspiring and especially memorable moments over the last sixty years. There were several pictures of Lily with rural folk artists, mostly African Americans, a few Native Americans, in their studios and posing next to their work in Georgia and Tennessee and various parts of the Deep South. It was clear from the photos that Lily had become dear and close friends with these artisans. These sat next to other images taken on Lily’s travels, on safari in the Kalahari, in a café in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés, hiking in Tierra del Fuego, skiing in Telluride, drinking Singha on the beach in Koh Samui, on a dig at the Ziyaret Tepe site in Turkey. In most of the pictures, Lily was smiling, arm in arm, with her husband, a handsome professor of archaeology who beamed with joy and vitality as he shared life’s adventures with Lily Davis. In a few of the photos, they gleefully held a small bright-eyed child, Colleen’s mother. Honey’s framed photo of Jonathan that once sat on the jade-topped table in the foyer at Holly Hills now rested on a large oak writing desk on the far side of Lily’s studio.

Lily walked over to the desk, reached into the drawer, and removed an old sealed envelope. With tears in her eyes, she made her way back to where Colleen was standing and handed her the envelope.

“Somehow, keeping this closed all these years…it always made it…well, it just felt right to keep it closed. But I think it’s time to open it.”

Colleen turned the envelope over in her hands, seeing the three-cent stamp, and the address: Jake Russo, 577 Benjamin Franklin Highway, New Castle, Pennsylvania. From the expression on her grandmother’s face, Colleen immediately understood why Lily had to keep it closed through her life. Probably for the same reasons, Colleen guessed, that Jake Russo never tried to track Lily down.

Lily picked up a long silver letter opener, carefully inserted the tip in the envelope, and opened it. She removed a piece of fine ivory stationery, which matched the envelope, upon which a note had been handwritten in black ink. Lily set the paper down on a worktable and they stood over it and read it together.

Lily remembered those days searching for the lost jar that contained the formula. After everything she had been through, Paul’s death and finding and losing love so quickly and passionately, the discovery that Jake’s gift was lost put her over the edge. She spent an entire day and some of the night literally tearing through the kudzu with her bare hands, which were soon bleeding. She used her pole to tear up the roots and try to pull the kudzu back. She eventually returned with a shovel and spent two more days doing battle, removing as much of the wild rambling vine as she possibly could. Alone in the forest, exhausted and blistered and bleeding, much of the vine torn up but not all of it, Lily had no choice but to finally resign herself to the loss.

Colleen thought she knew her grandmother, thought she knew everything about her family. Until this very moment, she had no idea how little she really knew.

Despite the anguish teeming out of the letter, perhaps because of it, Lily was finally left with a renewed sense of peace, something she had made a long time ago with the events of July 1945. For Lily, Jake Russo never aged, never became gray, never changed in any way. In many ways, throughout her life, Jake Russo was an idea. A beautiful idea. One that transformed her and stayed with her always. He was like his fireworks. A moment that lasted forever.

Lily folded up the letter, put it in the envelope, and put it back where it had been for so many years.

At the house, Lily and Colleen refolded the wedding dress and placed it back in the box as best they could, its future yet to be decided. Then it was time to eat.

They sat on the front porch and ate their mac and cheese and drank real Coca-Colas and looked out at the stars over Toccoa.