Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649)

by Jerome, Celia

  I relaxed some when we got underway with no problem. Barry went forward for a better view, so I took out my sketch pad to capture him looking heroic in a black T-shirt and surfer baggies with the sea and the sky as background. If I concentrated on him enough, I wouldn’t notice the distance from shore, or the doom-laden table.

  About twenty minutes later, Marty announced we had to collect water and seaweed samples and whatever else we found in the shallows, for his students’ experiments. He turned the engine off, having more confidence than I did that it would start again. We were close enough to shore that I figured I could swim.

  The boat drifted while he leaned over the side with a long net, directing a suddenly giggly Ellen to lean next to him with a pail.

  Barry came back and started asking Martin about the shore and the village and the events of the summer.

  “Can you point out where the drugs were stored? How many people came to watch? Where did that yacht blow up, and how did they rescue the kid?”

  The She Crab was drifting sideways, rolling with the tide, roiling my stomach. Memories of those awful events weren’t helping. Nor were Martin’s answers. He wasn’t there, wasn’t a sensitive, wasn’t aware of the otherworldly actions. What he was doing was feeding Barry’s curiosity.

  “Isn’t it time for lunch?” I chirped, although food was the last thing I wanted. They ate the sandwiches Martin had packed. I ate some crackers. Then they went back to filling bottles and plastic bags for the science lab while I sketched some more.

  “Hey, look at that,” Martin said, calling Ellen and Barry to where he leaned over the rail.

  Three passengers on one side? Were they crazy or just plain stupid? I held onto that old table as if my life depended on it. Maybe it did. They caught an eel.

  If there is anything in the world worse than a writhing snake with slime, it’s knowing what Barry wanted to do with it.

  “Why don’t we skin it, then slice it up for sushi?” While it was alive.

  I lost my lunch—and my hero. Barry Jensen looked a lot better on paper than he did in person.

  Being sick excused me from cleaning the boat and going out for beers and burgers after. What I did instead was go home, get the dogs, and head for a secluded, residents-only beach. The rocky shoreline kept it pretty empty, the way I liked it. We walked some, the big dogs played in the warm shallow water for a while, and Little Red barked at the seagulls. Then I spread an old blanket, set up an umbrella so the dogs didn’t get hot, and contemplated the waves and life.

  That’s what writers did: consider plots, characters, and the human condition.

  That’s what fearful introverted idiots did: retreat and worry. All my efforts led to one conclusion. Maybe I could never be as comfortable with any man as I was with my dogs.

  I still had to get through all day Sunday and the fireworks after dark.

  Barry moved in with his new best friend Martin, having found Aunt Jasmine and Uncle Roger not as welcoming as he wished, and not as forthcoming with information for his story. Martin had no problem telling everything he knew, which, as seemed usual, wasn’t as much as he thought he knew. Ellen thought I was being overcritical and old-maidish. I thought she was too eager.

  Either way, Barry learned more about Paumanok Harbor and me than was healthy. He tried to be attentive and caring, bringing coffee and buns for breakfast, telling me how amazing everyone thought I was, what joy he heard the town took in having a successful writer, a brave heroine as one of their own, how lucky he was to know me. What a great story he’d get out of this visit.

  My eyes saw his wide smile. My head saw that wriggling eel on the old table. I told him I changed my mind. I didn’t want that kind of publicity. Reviews of my books were one thing, excursions into my private life—and Paumanok Harbor’s—were another. He wouldn’t listen. Modesty, he told me, couldn’t help anyone climb the ladder of fame. So I gave up a little privacy. Every celebrity did.

  I replied that I had to help my grandmother at the farm.

  No matter what anyone told him about me or Paumanok Harbor, they had to mention my grandmother and the genital warts. No one messed with Eve Garland.

  Explaining the fireworks was safe. Ragging on East Hampton Village was always fun for those of us who belonged to East Hampton Township but couldn’t use the village beaches, although they could use ours. We also had to pay sky-high school taxes to the village for our high schoolers, without any say in how our kids were educated. And their tourists were snobs, their main street stores were snooty. So we were glad when their Fourth of July celebration got screwed up.

  In what might be its most ordinary ritual, Paumanok Harbor always held its festivities on the Fourth, whatever day of the week it happened to be. We had a concert on the village green, then fireworks over the bay beaches. The weather always cooperated. With our resident weather dowsers, it had no choice.

  As for our other near neighbors? Southampton had a big parade on the Fourth. Sag Harbor’s fire department ran a carnival and a light show for three nights on the nearest weekend. Montauk, as ornery as a wild Western steer, to use my Texan friend Ty Farraday’s expression, had to postpone their fireworks two years in a row due to rain, wind, or fog. So they moved July Fourth to Columbus Day weekend when the weather was still more uncertain and a lot colder, but the fireworks companies charged less. And their Chamber of Commerce, we all figured, decided the last town on the South Fork had enough tourists in early July, but not enough in mid-October. The Montauk Library did hold a huge book fair in the center of town on the Saturday of the long Independence weekend, which clogged up the roads back to Amagansett.

  But East Hampton, that beautiful elm-shaded village with its swan pond and windmills and proud colonial history, could not hold a traditional holiday celebration until Labor Day. A certain shore bird nested on the only beach deemed suitable, big enough for the masses of viewers, far enough away from the mansions. Any crowds at Main Beach could step on the hatchling piping plovers; the noise could frighten the parents into abandoning the chicks. And the endangered species regulations forbade endangering the small gray sandpipers until they were hatched, fledged, and on their way.

  It wasn’t the Boston Pops or a Macy’s Manhattan extravaganza, but East Hampton usually put on a nice show for the end of summer if you liked firecrackers, smoky beach fires, burned marshmallows, and parking miles away.

  On our way there, stuck in traffic, Barry wanted to chat about this summer’s horse show at the school’s playing field. Paumanok Harbor had hosted Ty Farraday, his Lipizzaner mare, and some other entertainers in a huge fund-raiser to purchase an abandoned ranch.

  “Martin said it was spectacular, but he couldn’t remember how it ended.”

  The equestrian show had ended with the mayor telling the audience of thousands to forget they’d seen a prancing line of riderless, iridescent white horses rise up in majestic synchronicity, then disappear into the night sky. It was awesome. And impossible.

  Mayor Applebaum often forgot to attend the board meetings and his lunch and his trousers, but when he ordered ordinary, un-para people to forget, a haze settled over their memories. The mayor’s real job was keeping Paumanok Harbor out of the news and off the Close Encounter radar.

  “The last act was classic dressage from the Spanish Riding School ending in Airs above the Ground,” I told Barry and Ellen.

  Martin nodded. He remembered that much. “It was amazing. But what about after?”

  “Afterward, the mayor asked everyone to leave quickly but in an orderly fashion because an electric storm threatened.”

  Martin said he didn’t remember Mayor Applebaum’s speech or the storm either.

  “I don’t think it ever materialized, but the police didn’t want to take a chance, not with such a big crowd and so many cars on the narrow roads.”

  Barry seemed to accept the explanation. Then he asked, “What about you and the rodeo rider?”

  I gave Martin a dirty look for gossiping
about me. Then I gave Barry a dirty look for prying. “We’re friends, and it’s none of your—”

  “Oh, look.” Ellen tapped me on the shoulder. “There’s a parking space.”

  CHAPTER 4

  MY COUSIN HAD TO WORK at the restaurant.

  My grandmother said she’d seen enough fireworks to last through the winter.

  I’d rather have more company, but we were on our own. I drove Mom’s Outback because it could hold the most.

  Ellen and I brought a blanket, two low beach chairs, sweaters, and a bag of Oreos.

  Barry brought a bottle of wine and four plastic glasses.

  Martin brought a large cooler, a shovel, one of those little shrink-wrapped bundles of firewood and kindling, a plastic garbage bag and a metal bucket for water to douse the fire and then carry home the hot embers. No absentminded professor, Mr. Armbruster. No muscle man either. By the time we got all his stuff from the car to the beach, he was breathing so hard Ellen made him sit in her chair while she fussed about unpacking the heavy cooler. Barry spread the blanket and made a big show of opening the wine bottle.

  So it had a cork. Big deal. I didn’t drink wine; it gave me a headache whether it cost five dollars or fifty. I started digging the hole for the fire, figuring one of the men would relieve me shortly.

  “Deeper,” Martin ordered.

  Barry was going from group to group nearest us in the sand. He needed to borrow a corkscrew because the cheap one from the liquor store broke.

  I kept digging.

  Ellen cooed over the food she unpacked, enough for all the families Barry was chatting up. You’d think we’d skipped dinner a couple of hours ago the way she was exclaiming over hot dogs and potato salad and cheese and crackers and—

  If there was sushi in that ice chest, I was going home.

  Martin recovered his wind in time to stand over me and direct the placing of each freaking split log. He used a battery-operated lighter to catch the newspapers he wadded up. No super firepower for him, either.

  My chair, naturally, was downwind of our blaze so I couldn’t see anything past the tears in my eyes. If I moved across the pit I’d dug, my back would be to the fireworks, which was what I came to see. Not a cloud of smoke or a shrimp on a skewer.

  I moved to sit sideways on the blanket. Barry took my chair.

  Someone had a boom box going loud with patriotic tunes, so it almost felt like July Fourth, right down to the whiny “When is it going to start?” from a little boy on a nearby blanket.

  “Not until dark,” Martin shouted across the sand. “Eight minutes, by my calculations.”

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” Ellen leaned over to whisper to me, a hot dog in one hand, a plastic wineglass in the other. Her second glass, but who was counting?

  Yeah, if you wanted a Boy Scout leader. I smiled as best I could. She couldn’t see in the near dark anyway.

  My supposed date was checking his watch by the firelight, as impatient as the kid next door. I could have told him the real show never started on time, but people up and down the shoreline had campfires and sparklers and small rockets. Some of the big houses along the shore had impressive, expensive, noisy fireworks we could see, hear, and smell from the beach. So there was plenty to watch if Barry bothered to look around. Kids had those glow stick things around their necks so that their parents could find them, and an armada of boats cruised out past the breakers, their running lights brightening the distance, their flares streaking across the sky. Stars started to show up, and the moon left silver ribbons on the ocean. Scenes like that could steal your breath.

  Barry had another glass of wine and complained he should have brought a six-pack. Martin and Ellen shared a burnt marshmallow, more wine, and a sticky kiss. Oh, boy. I made mental notes of the background for my story and how I’d draw it. I took some experimental pictures with my digital camera for future reference, but the private firecrackers didn’t stay up long enough for me to get what I needed. The official ones would, I knew. I wasn’t sure how I’d work the scene into my new book, but how could I have a fire wizard with no blazing stars in the dusky night? No dueling flamethrowers? No skyrockets?

  “Damn, we could have come an hour later,” Barry bitched. I was expecting him to start kvetching about needing a bathroom like the overtired, sugared-up kid at the next blanket. Instead, he wanted more information about how Paumanok Harbor’s fireworks never got rained out when Montauk’s did, eight miles away.

  “Luck of the draw,” I improvised. “And they’re on the ocean side. We’re on the Sound side, Block Island Sound, which meets up with the Long Island one that everyone knows. Sometimes there’s fog on one shore, bright sun on the other. Martin can explain it better.”

  And at great length. I tuned them all out and walked away to photograph the Coast Guard cruiser and its roving searchlight. They patrolled the water so no boat wandered into the marked-off area near the fireworks barge or where sparks could land, the same way the police drove three-wheeled beach buggies through the crowds. As it got darker, I wondered how they avoided all the children and dogs and entwined couples.

  Boom!

  I turned fast, but forgot to raise the camera. A brilliant red cluster rose high into the night.

  Ooh!

  White squiggles spun around the red with a high-pitched whistle.

  Aah!

  Finally, blue sparks shot through the falling screamers higher still.

  Everyone cheered. It was like the Fourth of July after all.

  After that, the show picked up speed, with one dazzling array of colors and shapes and heights after another. The smoke barely cleared from one cascading giant chrysanthemum than another erupted with a shimmering waterfall of multiple rockets. The burning colors swirled, circled, bled into each other time and again while the crowd clapped and cheered. I didn’t know if we were watching Catherine wheels, Roman candles, gi-randoles, or pinwheels. I’d have to look up technical names later. My favorites were the offshoot sizzlers that whistled as they raced around. My father used to say they were scurrying mice, chasing their tails.

  There was stuff I’d never seen before, and I’d seen some of the best. Give East Hampton credit; they did things up right when they did it.

  Barry thought Macy’s put on a better show. I wanted to tell him to shut up. Instead, I moved away, taking pictures, getting lost in the entirety of the night: the ground-shaking detonations, the acrid smell, the wispy smoke that drifted back across the moon, the happy chorus of oohs and aahs every time another rocket went up. I marveled at the different colors, different patterns, different durations before the embers burned out or fell safely to the ocean.

  I could almost see my hero stepping out of a ball of fire. He could make the stars spin, set the waves aflame, make day out of the darkest night.

  He could . . . make a bright yellow smiley face high overhead? With a glowing garden of iridescent flowers hung beneath it?

  The crowds roared their approval. I had to laugh. I guess he could, if he wanted. If the Gruccis could work this magic, think what a fire wizard could do.

  The next image was a multicolored peace sign. Not a great one because it listed to one side, but it was recognizable, as were the scores of white doves circling around it. The thousands of watchers along the shore were almost hoarse by now, their hands sore from clapping.

  They found the strength to cheer East Hampton’s emblem, a flaming windmill with its vanes spinning in different colors.

  More clusters soared up and opened out, with more squealing mice-rockets, vast flower shapes blooming across the sky, turning the night bright enough to see Barry tipping the wine bottle up to his lips to drain the last of it.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  Ellen was sitting in Martin’s lap, making out. Couldn’t they have waited ten minutes? There were kids nearby, maybe Martin’s students. And they were missing the explosions of vibrant, moving colors. I snapped pictures, of them, of th
e watchers, of the amazing starbursts the technicians had created.

  Then came the finale, a red, white, and blue flag surrounded by a crescendo of shooting stars in every direction, noise that drowned out the crowd’s appreciation. Boomer after boomer roared as the flag winked out, filling the sky with every color of the rainbow from straight overhead to the horizon. New images appearing, a school of leaping, glowing fish, a flock of birds winging across the night, another meadow of living flowers that seemed so close you could reach out and pick one, as a gift, an offering.

  And then silence. The crowd was as awed as I was, with no words to describe what we’d all seen. “Wow” didn’t half express the feeling, but I heard wows from every side as the last glowing flowers drifted away, except one.

  “Holy shit,” Barry yelled. “Those are sparks, and they’re headed here!”

  Sparks? That was impossible. He put his hand out, though, to swat at a flicker with the empty wine bottle. He missed and cursed louder, grabbing at his hand. “Damn, I got burned.”

  More tiny embers were falling near us.

  “Run,” the people closest to us started yelling. “Fire!”

  I stared up. “No, they’re just lightning bugs.”

  “They’re too big for fireflies,” Martin declared. “Furthermore, fireflies do not bite.”

  It didn’t matter. People were running toward the nearest beach paths to get away. Then they ran right over the dunes in a panic, picking up more ticks and chiggers that caused far more damage than fireflies ever did. The frightened hordes left their fires, their garbage, their blankets and chairs, and maybe their children for all I knew.

  The burning flowers had all dissipated, leaving the beach in total darkness and disarray except for Martin’s D-cell lantern, the occasional flashlight, and the beach patrol buggies’ headlights as they tore around, urging caution, an orderly exit.

  “No need to panic, folks. There was one gust of wind that carried a couple of sparks. Clean up, put out all fires.”