The Fourth of July

by Bel Mooney

  “He must be a hard man to please,” I said.

  “Yeah, in some ways. He wants everything just right, and sometimes he’ll be tough if you get things wrong. Especially me.”

  “Oh, I bet you can stand up for yourself, Zandra,” I said jokily.

  She glanced at me briefly. “You kidding? I left home when I was sixteen, and I’m used to being on my own, but I don’t know what I’d do if Anthony got mad one day and called it quits. So I’m real careful.”

  “He wouldn’t ever say that, would he?”

  She shrugged. “You don’t know, honey. With men. And don’t forget that he gets to see the most beautiful chicks in the States.”

  “You’re still very good-looking, Zandra,” I said.

  “Sure, but it don’t last. I guess nothing does. But thanks anyway.”

  She sighed. I had an impulse to take her arm and reassure her, but ignored it. In any case, she turned to me quickly, as if worried that she had given something away. “Don’t get me wrong, Babs, Anthony’s a great man, and I love him. I guess sometimes I wonder if I’m good enough for him. Don’t you think he’s terrific?”

  “Er, yes,” I mumbled, “yes, I like him very much. But I suppose it isn’t easy being married to a great man.”

  “You’re right,” she said solemnly, hearing no irony. “But what about … other relationships?” I added boldly.

  “I don’t know what you mean, honey.”

  “Oh, I just mean that one of the reasons I couldn’t bear to be married is that I couldn’t imagine only having one man, for the rest of my life. It would be fine until you met someone who really …”

  “… turned you on?” she interrupted.

  “Yes. Isn’t that difficult?”

  Sam Luenbach was walking towards us, his white clothes gilded as he crossed the patch of light from the window. I saw Zandra look at him, her face hardening briefly. “Yeah, it can be real difficult,” she said, “I guess that’s why I think about all that space. No people to hem you in. Or hurt you.”

  He stood in front of us, looking first at me and then at Zandra, with an appraisal that would have been insulting, had either of us been independent enough to stare back, even with hostility. Yet she was not, of course; what’s more, it was too late for me as well. I had become sucked into these events, and played my role as well as she did, as if born to it. And why not; who cares? was in my mind, as I met Luenbach’s eyes, and grinned.

  “Two beautiful women on their own,” he said.

  “Not now,” said Zandra, in a curious tone. It was as if she was willing him to go away. He heard it.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Just talking,” she said.

  “Zandra was telling me she’d like to travel more.”

  “Oh really? Well, at least you made it to Paris, Zandra.” He was mocking her; she stiffened.

  “Is that where you have your office?” I asked.

  “Sure. Anthony decided to have the European side of the operation based in Paris, instead of London, and it suits me just fine. Paris – it’s the most romantic city in the world. That’s what you thought, isn’t it, Zandra?”

  “That’s what I thought” she said in a brittle voice, “but looking back on it, it doesn’t seem so romantic now.”

  He smiled, his teeth almost luminous in that blue light, like his clothes. “Well,” he said lightly, “I guess there always has been a dark side to romance.”

  I laughed.

  She said, “Is there any other side for you, Sam?”

  Luenbach glanced at me. “Now, I don’t want to be giving away state secrets, Zandra,” he said archly.

  A few yards away Annelisa was standing on her own. I saw Anthony Carl walk up to her, and say something. She threw back her head and giggled shrilly. Without saying another word, Zandra left us and strolled over to them.

  Luenbach watched her. “Crazy lady,” he said.

  “Why crazy?’”

  “She’ll put up with anything.”

  “You mean from Anthony?”

  “Sure. He doesn’t play around too much, it’s not that, it’s just that he keeps her down, you know? He likes women to know what he wants before he’s decided himself, just like his mother was.”

  “Typical,” I said.

  “Typical what?”

  “Typical male,” I said.

  “Now, Barbara, you know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as a typical male. I bet every man you meet has the capacity to surprise you some.”

  “Not any more,” I said.

  He shook his head, making a little mocking tutting sound. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “What about you and women?” I countered, knowing at the same time that the conversation was heading in a direction that I would regret. “You must find that there are few surprises left.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. There’s usually some little mystery waiting to have the veil torn away from it.”

  “You mean the dark side of romance?” I said.

  “What else?”

  The silence that fell was full of meaning, awkward yet intimate, and tinged with irony too. I blamed myself. So, to shift the blame somehow, I said, “I don’t suppose you would talk about mystery too much if you were thinking of the girls.”

  “You mean Lace and Marylinne?”

  “And Annelisa.”

  His laugh was a short dry bark. “About as much mystery as a tennis ball under a spotlight. They don’t count.”

  It was my fault. I’d set up the scapegoats, and now felt angry at his contempt.

  “They count enough to mount up dollars for you all. If it wasn’t for the likes of them there’d be no magazine, would there?”

  He shrugged. “They do a job. They want to do it because it’s all they can do. Men want to look at them. It’s a simple equation – so don’t expect me to like them or dislike them for it. They’re selling a commodity because they want the money, just like hookers. Just like freelance photographers, Barbara.”

  “So we’re all the same? You don’t make any distinctions?”

  He placed the flat of his hand in the small of my back, and pressed slightly. “Oh, I make distinctions. I can tell the difference between a pedigree and a piece of meat. And so can most men. Why do you think Corelli carries his wife’s picture around?”

  “Because he’s a bloody hypocrite,” I said, stepping away from him, as if to walk towards the others.

  He was unrattled. “Not at all. You’re intelligent enough to know that none of us can make judgements about other people without being judged ourselves. You say Pete’s a hypocrite, because maybe two things can be true at once for him. The dark side and the light side, if you like. But what about you? Isn’t the same true of you? If so, then by your own admission you’re a hypocrite too.”

  “Am I?” I said.

  “Probably,” said Luenbach, “but you’re a very pretty one, and you know that too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  It was completely dark now. The night was thick and hot and resonant with distant sounds of laughter. There were parties along the beach; music came and went faintly. I imagined people dancing, clinging to each other in easy drunkenness as the leaden sea slicked the beach.

  We stood in a group by the pool, holding our glasses, which Tony Carl and Miranda, instructed by their father, filled and refilled. The young man in the “Smile” tee-shirt was barely visible – just a pale shape darting in the darkness on the far side. There was that expectant pause, when the chatter fails, and someone laughs nervously, suspecting a hitch – and then with a spurt, and a splutter, the first Catherine wheel began to revolve, trailing its sparks lazily at first, then picking up momentum, until it spun in a flurry of golden light.

  The white tee-shirt flitted a couple of yards; another spurt – and more sparks, more light whirling before us.

  “Oh, wow!” said Marylinne.

  “Gee, that’s real pretty,” came Emmeline’s vo
ice, dreamily. There were five Catherine wheels in all, and by the time the last one picked up its circling speed the first one was all darkness again, only a dancing green after-image remaining, to remind us of its brief existence.

  “Fireworks always remind me of when I was a kid,” said Anthony.

  “And me,” said Lace.

  “You still are a kid,” laughed Corelli.

  “Who me?” Carl asked, laughing.

  “No, Miss Lace, of course.”

  Emmeline’s light voice chipped in. “Why, I’d say you’re still a kid too, son. You always did love fireworks. Every Fourth we’d have them, no matter how hard it was. You used to ask me what happened to all the pretty stars once they’d gone out, and if they went to Heaven like us.”

  There was a skitter of indulgent laughter.

  “Hey, what’s next, man?” called Tony Carl, in his normal boorish tone, slurping Coca-Cola from the can and shuffling his feet. “There’s a good movie on TV,” he added, half to himself.

  “Dad’s arranged this show, you creep!” whispered Miranda. Her hiss disappeared into the protracted Sssss from the soil where “Smile” was putting the taper.

  He stood back, illuminated suddenly in virulent green and gold, as the large roman candles flared, sending showers of sparks into the air, subsiding for a few seconds, then changing colour – green, gold, orange, red, purple, blue, the colours of the rainbow tricked out as tinsel, to spurt out into the night air, and spurt again.

  “Huh, I know what that reminds me of,” sniggered Corelli, stretching his arm and pulling Marylinne close. He licked her ear, and whispered hoarsely, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, hon?”

  “I don’t do too much thinking, Corelli,” she said.

  “Terrific; keep it that way,” he said.

  I moved away from the group, making for one of the sun-loungers that stood on the edge of the pool. My head felt muzzy, light danced before my eyes. I was drunker than I had been for ages. As I reached the chair, still carrying my glass, I fumbled and spilt its contents on to the paving. I heard Zandra laugh lightly, “Hey, Babs, don’t say you English ladies can’t take the Fourth!”

  “Give her another drink,” called Anthony, amused.

  Luenbach was at my elbow, with a bottle. I looked up and shook my head.

  He squatted next to me, running a hand up my bare arm, so that a shiver spread through my whole body. His hand was warm and dry; I could feel his breath on my skin.

  “Have another glass of wine,” he murmured, still continuing the insistent stroking that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and my stomach slide. Wordlessly, I held out my glass.

  “Baby, I want to talk to you tonight. Will you give me a while, later on?”

  “What about?”

  “Don’t play games any more, honey. Please don’t play games with me.” The voice was oddly wheedling now, which did not suit it. As if he realised, he reverted to his old mocking, challenging tone: “Barbara, are you trying to tell me you haven’t noticed anything tonight?”

  “What?” I whispered. But the others were exclaiming at new fountains of light, and Luenbach’s face flashed pink, then coldly blue before me.

  “The chemistry between us,” he murmured, “I haven’t taken my eyes off you all evening, and sure as hell you know that. Too right you do.” The hand continued its work; I leaned my head back against the chair for a few seconds and closed my eyes. But there was no respite, no darkness; only the scatter of green images in the inner blackness, and the pressure of those fingers, kneading my flesh, pushing me into malleability.

  They were clapping. Across the end of the garden golden showers streamed, pouring, dripping – a Niagara Falls of light, about fifteen feet wide. It was beautiful. The man responsible stood to one side, clearly visible, his arms folded across his chest, and a broad grin on his face. Then he gave a thumbs-up sign to us.

  “It’ll be time for the rockets,” said Luenbach, rising. Now, all around us, others unzipped their own private portions of sky – anonymous shafts sent heavenwards, to fall as showers of brilliance, indiscriminately. There were distant booms that echoed ominously in the hot night, as star shells burst and scattered above us, crackling into nothingness.

  We walked slowly to the front of the house. Luenbach took my hand and tucked it through his arm. I leaned on him slightly.

  When we reached my tripod, still set up, I stopped. “I’ll take some pictures of the rockets,” I said, wanting him to go on.

  “Why bother?” he said, then added, “It won’t work unless there’s a lot in the sky at once. You’ll need all the light you can get.”

  “I know,” I said, irritated that he should tell me.

  “Take a multiple exposure.”

  “Look, do you want to do it?”

  One by one our own rockets were lit, and sent skywards with a flash; one by one they shed their stars, spearing them downwards and briefly lighting the sky with the brightness of noon.

  I left the shutter open for a minute and covered the lens between explosions, narrowing my eyes against the intensity of light which would be transferred, frozen, to my film. Zandra Carl swayed slightly, and seemed to be humming to herself, wrapped in a private reverie that transported her, perhaps, to empty plains where her imagination danced alone. Anthony Carl stood with his arm round his daughter, grinning with pleasure at the display he had arranged for us. From time to time he glanced at his daughter, and echoed her murmurs of “Wow!”, and “Mmmm, that’s real nice.” His free hand was tucked through Emmeline’s arm,

  “Why is it that fireworks are always so exciting – even when you get old?” she asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Because they don’t last, ma’am,” said Luenbach.

  “Try an’ catch them and they’re gone,” said Carl.

  “And the noise,” said Zandra, “up there in the empty sky.”

  Those faces turned upwards were strange to me, like masks, each one bobbing on a stick, wearing identical expressions. Annelisa had moved forwards to the grass, just off the terrace, and had squatted down, drawing her knees up beneath her chin. Marylinne and Lace stood side by side, linking arms, and placing their bodies at just such an angle to the others that there was an invisible barrier, preventing anyone joining them. In the flashes from the air their eyes shone; their lips were loosely parted so that white teeth gleamed phosphorescent in the gloom. From time to time they glanced at each other, like young girls sharing a delicious secret, but saying nothing.

  Corelli’s cigar was acrid, mingling with the smoky perfume from the dead barbecue, and the bitter pungency of gunpowder. It was the last rocket, the final zip-flash of our private show, soaring above us for the rest of the world to see.

  “Formidable!” Luenbach called out, his accent excellent. I knew he was not looking at the sky but at me – still at me. Again we clapped the silent man who had set up the fireworks; strangely, I found myself wondering if anyone had thought to give him supper, even if only in the kitchen.

  “C’mon, everyone, let’s go out on the beach, and wait a while, and we’ll see the big display – just the tip of it, just the real big rockets,” said Carl.

  “This far away?” asked Miranda.

  “Sure – just wait.”

  The sand was cool underfoot as, one by one, we moved to the beach. Conversation faded; each of us seemed affected by a paralysis which locked us within ourselves, all hope now abandoned that someone else might have the key. When I sprawled in the sand and closed my eyes for a moment, the world seemed to tilt, then right itself, and in that moment’s vertigo I realised that I had had far too much to drink. But who cares? I thought again, feeling dizzy with the freedom of it all – that I could do whatever I liked for the rest of my life without having to look over my shoulder, as Annelisa did perpetually, worrying what my parents would think.

  I’m glad they’re dead, I thought, without reason. For only at our parents’ death do we have the freedom
to be truly ourselves, truly terrible.

  And all of us waiting … until at last the sky far to the north of us was illuminated by flashes like distant lightning. The faint kaa-boom was followed by a five-second delay (or was it the other way around? sight and sound were merging for me) and then we could see the star shells bursting there too, twelve hundred feet in the air over the Hudson River, whirligigs of gold falling like showers of rain.

  When, after about fifteen minutes, the sky grew darkish again, though always with the dull orange glow of conurbation, I heard the sound of applause once more, not just from our party but from others who sat out on the beach, unseen. I was reminded of the eclipse, and the Versailles Palace Hotel, and Annelisa – who had sat through it all, then as now, with her head thrown back, her gaze fixed. Why do we remember these things? Why is there no protection for us, from what we have seen?

  After the fireworks were over Anthony sat on the cane sofa, next to his mother, her cigarette butt glowing in the darkness. The others sat around, except Tony and Miranda who went inside. Annelisa was nowhere to be seen, and I guessed that she had gone upstairs to do a line of cocaine. Quietly I tiptoed past her door, carrying the camera and tripod. I did not want her to emerge and talk to me, and even at the time I found my own stealth shameful. I stumbled a little outside my own door, but there was no sound from her room.

  Downstairs again, I stood on the edge of the group, listening like all the others. Emmeline was telling stories about her girlhood, about how they were never allowed to be alone with a boy, and Anthony’s father crept up a fire-escape to see her.

  “Just like West Side Story” said Zandra.

  “Oh, I just love that movie,” breathed Lace.

  “Always make you cry!” said Marylinne, with a hint of scorn in her voice.

  “Now there’s nothing wrong with crying,” Emmeline admonished, “I feel just the same – and as for South Pacific … Shall I tell them, son?”