William Kennedy - The Flaming Corsage

Loretta appeared at Katrina’s elbow to say dessert was ready, and Katrina announced it would be served on the back piazza, with fireworks to follow.

Edward had put his son in charge of the fireworks, and now here he came: Martin Daugherty, twenty, home from his day’s wandering. He stepped onto the piazza carrying his dish of Mrs. Squires’s ice cream, looking, Edward thought, like himself at that age: tall, with abundant brown hair all in place, still not quite grown into his teeth, wearing a fresh white shirt with cuffs turned. Edward saw Martin’s eyes go directly to Melissa.

“This is our son, Martin,” Edward said. Martin stopped at Melissa’s chair and took her hand in greeting. “Melissa Spencer.” And they smiled. Both of an age.

“You look like your father,” Melissa said. “A handsome family indeed.”

A beginning? Two beginnings?

“Melissa will play the lead in my new play, all things being equal,” Edward said.

“That’s exciting,” Martin said. “A pleasure, Miss Spencer.”

“All things are never equal, Edward,” Maginn said. “You should avoid inaccurate clichés.”

“Are you in school?” Melissa asked Martin.

“Going into my third year at Fordham.”

“He may be a writer like his father,” Katrina said. “He writes well.”

“No, not like my father. I’m not serious about it.”

“It takes time to be serious,” Katrina said. “He’s a fine student.”

“I might write for the newspapers,” Martin said.

“That’s such an exciting world,” Melissa said.

“It’s about as exciting,” said Maginn, “as being attacked by fleas.”

“Are you really so bored by your work, Maginn?” Edward asked.

“I would infinitely prefer setting off fireworks as a way of life,” Maginn said.

“I just came from the fireworks at Beaver Park,” Martin said. “A huge crowd. A horse ran wild when somebody threw a cannon cracker at him. He was pulling an Italian peddler’s vegetable wagon and he ran into a moving trolley. He was on his side and bleeding badly, two legs obviously broken.”

“Oh that’s awful,” said Melissa, and she hid her face in her hands.

“The peddler kept asking the policeman to shoot the horse, but the cop said he couldn’t kill an animal like that.”

“You have to, if they’re in that condition,” Giles said. “You have to shoot them.”

“A man came out of a house with a rifle and said he’d shoot the horse. The Italian got down on his knees and begged him to do it, and the man shot the horse in the head.”

“Horrible,” said Melissa, and she wept for the horse.

“I also saw Jack Apple do his annual jump into the river,” Martin said, breaking a silence. “He jumped off the top of the Maiden Lane bridge.”

“He only jumped off it ?” Giles said. “Anybody can do that. The trick is to jump over it.”

“Oh Giles,” Felicity said.

“Giles is warming up his jokes,” Maginn said. “Edward, have you considered casting Giles as Pyramus in your play? You’d have them tumbling out of their seats. Or rolling in the aisles, as you might put it.”

“The fireworks are in those bags at the foot of the steps,” Edward said.

Martin inspected the skyrockets, Roman candles, flowerpots, cherry bombs, strings of Chinese crackers; and Edward watched the women as they watched each other, a study in optics: Katrina aware of Giles’s and Felicity’s fascination with Melissa’s unblushing attitude toward her body; Melissa aware of Edward’s eyes on her, her own eyes on Katrina, evaluating. Edward monitored the shifting glance, the recurrent stare that extended an instant too long to be insignificant. He observed Maginn giving equal attention to all three women: failed with Felicity, failed with Katrina — didn’t he? Will he fail with Melissa, or does she collect men as he collects women? Her smiling eye lingered on Edward an instant too long not to be significant. Edward saw that Maginn saw.

The fireworks sizzled, glowed, exploded with great bangs and a thousand small, oriental poppings, and the Roman candles thup-thupped toward where the lawn sloped down toward the brickyard on Van Woert Street, all this under Martin’s expert hand. Edward had taken him to see fireworks the first year of his life and ever after taught him caution in their handling.

“I suppose all over Albany right now,” Edward said, “boys are having their fingers blown off and their eyes blown out.”

“Giles, how come you’re not with the firemen tonight?” Maginn asked. “Don’t you usually help them out on the Fourth?”

“I took the night off to have dinner with you, you lout,” Giles said. “I’m tired of stupid people blowing themselves to pieces. But if you decide to blow yourself up, Maginn, I have the tetanus antitoxin in my bag to treat you.”

“If I decide to blow myself up,” said Maginn, “there won’t be anything left to treat. I will very thoroughly atomize myself into the circumambient air.”

“What a grisly thing to say,” Katrina said.

“Grisly? I thought it was quite poetic. You’re very severe with me tonight, Katrina.”

Grisly the whole thing. And unacceptable. Edward rose from his rocker and walked down onto the lawn to get away. Something magnetic in him attracts her lashing tongue. Of course she knows he lives for these lashings. What is the recourse?

“Time for the skyrockets,” Martin said.

“Oooh, can I light one?” Melissa asked, and she left the piazza and came to the bottom of the garden, where Edward and Martin stood beside a dozen skyrockets stuck into the ground on their launching sticks. Martin handed her the lighted punk and showed her where to touch it to a skyrocket’s fuse. She bent over the skyrocket, very probably giving Martin an unobstructed view of the chest-scape; and, as they all watched the rocket ignite, soar into the moonlit sky, and explode, Melissa touched another rocket, then another, sending them all to heaven. From the piazza came applause for the spectacle.

As Edward and Melissa walked back toward the house she touched his arm. He turned to see her leaning toward him, offering him her beautiful moonlit breasts.

“I just wanted to say I’m incredibly grateful for your belief in me,” she said. “You’re a very special man.”

“I recognize talent when I see it,” Edward said. He offered her his hand and they went up the steps together.

Maginn rose from his chair and came over to Edward.

“Are you taking her away from me?” he whispered. “Is that what you’re doing?”

Before Edward could answer, Felicity said, “Look, a shooting star!” and he turned to see in the northern sky the dying arc of the meteor, or was it a comet, or a falling angel?

“Oh dear,” Melissa said, blessing herself. “That’s bad luck. That means one of us here will be dead next year.”

“More fatalism, Edward,” Maginn said. “This superstitious child is perfect for your play.”

“I don’t believe such things,” Katrina said.

“On the other hand, the Trojans didn’t believe Cassandra’s prophecies,” Maginn said, “and look what happened to them.”

“We’re all too healthy to die,” Felicity said.

“I agree,” Edward said. “I refuse to play dead just because the sky is falling.”

“I second that motion,” said Giles.

At the stroke of midnight Martin lit the last fireworks of the evening: half a dozen red lights that burned brightly together for a long minute at the bottom of the garden, then weakened until their lambency was spent, and the light on the Daugherty lawn came only from the vigilant moon.

Edward: From the Inquest Report