Bouquets of fireworks in Glen Oak Park, Kate Bush and Axl Rose....July 4th 1992

 

 The Amphitheatre in Glen Oak park is washed white with jutted 75 degree angle planks situated like a ruffled visor, a pleated random misplaced Acropolis casting hazy rhomboid shadows the color of ice tea across the oblong overbite of the stage.  There is something medicinally sterile and almost scientology connoting about the piece of architecture seemingly cut and pasted from the pieces of a sail or a horizontal wing of a plane or the cosmic paddle of a visionary UFO oar. Flanking the stage on each side like sentinels are twin bird-house shaped speakers,  loamy terraces of spearmint benches and a sprawling hillock dotted with summer blankets  like an AIDS quilt. 

 To right of the stage is the lagoon where lower income families fish and sometimes clean and broil their gilled-kill on the spot. During the summer movies are shown  on the back of the amphitheater wall and the Peoria municipal band plays during the week.  On the fourth of July the park is seething with  families camping out on blankets with jugs of pink lemonade awaiting the neon chandelier, anticipating the overhead thundering laser orchestration entourage of petals and blinks that is to come.

 
We are performing selections from our play before the fireworks, before the municipal band takes the stage to play patriotic songs kindling everyone's anticipation of the overhead electric carousel that will convene just after dusk. Miss Jana is playing the piano. Pam arrives. Pam still seems to have some singular vendetta against me since, as hard as I try I can’t get my lines right. I again feel like apologizing to her about checking out Sunny’s ass when she cackled out, “Don’t look at her butt!!!” and the entire cast and co of Music Man broke out in glittering pubescent snorts.

 Being the one cast member who is not involved in any singing numbers  I am given the assignment to hold the sign reading CCT MUSIC MAN up in picketing employee manner . It looks like I am protesting my own performance.

I am embarrassed that my family will note that I am not on stage.

Pam is frenzied and agitated and smells like Newport cigarettes. The bulk of our ensemble is clad in their costumes. For some reason myself and my cousin Matthew are the only ones wearing our  maraschino-jubilee colored Music Man t-shirts.


Pam lips form flutter out a smile when she sees me.

"Just hold the up sign Charlie baby and remember, no butts!!! Children's show!!"  

 When Anastasia arrives she looks ravishing in her lavender costume replete with ostrich plume in hat that looks like a Faberge Easter egg  saying goodbye to an antebellum loved one by waving a handkerchief at a departing steam ship..

When I see her I address her as my little mermaid. She replies by stating that that is her favorite Disney movie.

Stacia's eyes sometimes change color. The other night when she was crying they were pine-flavored pebbles of loss. Today she is smiling. her eyes are blue. They look like a set of oceanic globes.


We don't say hello. We don't hug. Instead she says my name simply by smiling. I wonder if we will talk about the kiss. I wonder if somehow it meant something to her.
 
Pam is talking into the microphone and introduces the cast beneath the albino mortarboard of the stage. The music for Iowa Stubborn brazenly aches out through the loud speakers.
 
I hold up the sign as high as I can knowing that the music is about to begin.


                                                                      ***

After the preview there is applause. Pam again thanks the audience for allowing us to perform and then plugs the dates and times of the incumbent shows. The moment I am stage left I see Stacia. She is looking down, as if scrutinizing her reflection in the atomically pond of quarks below.
 
I smile at her. She doesn't volley back the facial response.
 
"David," She says, as if reading the dates on a carton of milk that had recently expired.


Anastasia has not referred to me as David once. Neither at practice nor over the phone. It is always in the Pam vernacular.

 I am always Charlie.

 "Listen, I was just wondering if you would like to all hang out with us after the fireworks tonight."

 “Who?”

 

“Mainly just the Washington crowd. Myself, Brian, Dave and Molly. Oh, and maybe Anthony. We’re all going to go out to see Batman Returns and then probably go idle our life away over bitchy theatre banter at Denny’s or something.

 

I can’t, thinking that there is church tomorrow.  Thinking that it would already be dark and  nine-thirty when the fireworks start.

 

"What time is the movie?"

 

Anastasias says oh, I don’t know. I think it starts at 10:15

 

“You don’t have to worry about transportation or anything like that. Dave Akens has a car and if Anthony comes he lives close to you so he can just drop you off after the movie.

 

I tell her that I am, sorry I won't be able to. I tell her that I really want to go. She grow silent again.

 

 

From behind me I can see Couri and Jenny scoffing.

 

 

 

 

I try to talk to her like every sit com I have ever seen. I try to insinuate the kiss sans reference the actual kiss itself. I want to know if perhaps it meant something or perhaps we are like now going our or something.

  Part of me pictures walking around the shoebox contours of the mall with her clad in my varsity cross-country jacket, which of course, I gave her as an emblem of our rapport.

I want to ask her about the kiss. I want to ask her where we stand.
 

 

I begin my sentence with about last night.

 

“About last night..”

  

"David, also, I just wanted to tell you about the last night." She says, at the same time.

 

She doesn’t refer to it as a kiss.

 “Thank you for comforting me. You’re a good friend.”

 Stacia tells me that she really wishes that I could join her tonight.  I try not to think about being seated next to Stacia in the cool air-conditioned ankle breezes of the theatre.

 

I ask Anastasia where she is watching the fireworks with the Washington crew.

“Yeah, we’re probably going to drive over to grand view drive and catch the fireworks. You  are more than welcome to come.”

Stacia again insinuates that it would be nice if I was with her.  She looks at my ankles instead of looking at me in the eyes. It's like she wants to tell me something. It's like she is scared.

Anthony walks past and says hello.

“Listen, I got to go. Call me tomorrow. I always love watching the sunrise just with you.”

                                                                      ***

After saying goodnight ladies to Stacia and co I go around with an upside down three corner hat collecting monetary donations for future Community Children’s Theater events wading in a chessboard sea of summer blankets and water jugs, human beings facing the direction of the pavilion, the fountain in the middle of the lagoon ejaculating  misty exclamatory marks into the humid June air every three minutes.

On a blanket near the left knoll there is a wave. At first I think someone is flagging me down to contribute a donation then I realize it is my best friend, David Best, seated next to his brother's and their dates. Next to David is a blonde headed girl whom I have never met although I recognize her immediately.

 

It is Renae Holiday.

 

Renae is wearing thick impenetrable sunglasses that looks like something NASA might use to tint the windows of their space shuttles from the vile UV rays in space.Her hair is fashionably cut just above the shoulder and is the color of a Botticelli halo. She looks almost exactly like she does in the home coming picture in Mrs. Best office.

I think about all the afternoons I have spoken with Renae Holiday on the phone via saying something witty and then having my best friend opportunely named David Best but the receiver on hold and switch over to the opposite line and relay to her verbatim and then click back and tell me she is laughing.

They don’t look like they are together. David is seated Indian Style as if he is in pre-school. There is something about meeting Renae Holiday in person that looks like she is the Vinnie's love interest from Doogie Howser MD.


 “So, this is the infamous Renae Holiday,” I say, sprouting my arm in her direction like a branch.  She remains aloof. She gives me a look like she is tanning and I am appropriating her view of the sun.

“It is such a pleasure to meet you.”

  I touch her hand. It feels like I am grabbling the emerald stem on an unknown rose. When I touch her fingers she winces.

She doesn't smile.

Dave and Renae don’t look like they are together.  Both Ben and Andy have their arms draped around the lithe torso’s of their respected girlfriends.

Every time I see Ben Best I make a sign with my thumb and pinkie finger and say, “Depeche mode, man.” 

There are others. There is Kristi whose brother is also is the musical and who I remember David Best christening as being a member of the itty-bitty titty committee. 

David Best tells me that he didn't see me on stage and when I inform him that I was the one at the bottom holding the sign he responds simply by uttering the vowel oh. Next to Dave Laura turns to Kristi commenting that someone I have never heard of before has a girlfriend.

I turn to Renae. She is still taciturn. Due to her implacably dark sunglasses I have a hard time discerning the time-signature and color of her eyes.

"Dave doesn't want me to tell you this story but I will anyway."

Dave rolls his eyes and says here goes.

"Last year  I would always go out of my way to walk by Mrs. Best office just to look at your picture. You're a sweetheart. Dave's lucky man."

My best friend smile and again places his hand over the center of his chest. Renae once again listlessly shrugs.

I wonder what I did to piss her off.

"You'll have to excuse Reane right now. We were going on a hike in the woods and she fell down a path and there is a big dirt-strip on her bottom,"

Dave laughs. I look at Renae. She is wearing bleach-tub colored shorts that correlate perfectly with the Amphitheater.  The shorts stick to the pasty interior of her upper thigh.
 
"It was a pleasure meeting you nonetheless." I say to Renae Holiday. She remains reticent. I grab her hand and squeeze it again. It's hard to say goodbye to someone whom you have never even said hello.
 
 As I leave and  continue to solicit more donation I hear David Best begin to talk like a muppet, making cracks about his girlfriend's bottom once again.


                               
                                                                            ***

I sit on the blankets next to my parents and siblings. Everything smells like charred barbeque and cheap mosquito repellent. My Uncle Larry and aunt Linn and their daughters surround the perimeter of the blankets eating diminutive tufts of previously popped-corn from a thick Thompson’s grocery bag.  Grandma arrives with grilled chicken patties that have been sautéed in Pink Lemonade since when year the sugary jug of pink Lemonade toppled on dinner in the back of station wagon and a culinary tradition was christened. The Peoria municipal band always performs the William Tell overture as a prelude to the overhead gala.  Once the fireworks convene stereos are blasted and tuned into KZ93 which yearly choreographs the overhead performance with music of the day.

There is an unwritten understood mantra amongst the hoi poloi below that the audience has to perform facial calisthenics and verbally emit ewe’s and awe’s with their lips in rotating syncopation with the nocturnal ballet.

 

The fireworks begin to erupt in a canon dueling battleship assault against the backdrop of virgin stars.

 

 

 

Splashes of neon lights sprints and gallops across the post-dusk lids of soft June night, forming spires, psychedelic chandeliers, transient boutonnieres, evanescent umbrella webs of  applauding gossamer massaging the canopy of darkness in arced limbs of riveting cherry and day glow lime, shot over the lagoon in thunderous plonks, the assaying chins of families stationed on islands of picnic baskets following the illuminated sperm in whistling fizzes as it accelerates to and unknown aerial apex, blinks before the launched seed explodes in an incendiary   iridescent bouquet of screeching light.

I look around for the Washington crowd.  I think about how Stacia said they were going to catch some of the fireworks on Grand View Drive before hitting up Willow Knolls to see Batman Returns. Each singular firework is a pedal, each is somehow reminiscent of Stacia’s smile, it is like she is biting her lip and then crescendoing into a smile in my direction.   The speakers are blaring coming to America. From above incense begins to tinkle on our foreheads as if on the first day of Lent.  To my imminent left thee blankets back I can see  Ben and Andy seated with their arms around their dates in a fashion which looks like they are buckling them into a roller coaster at six flags. Dave still sits Indian style four feet from Renae, surrounded by Kristie of the Itty-bitty tittie committee and their friend Laura.

 There are more teetering ewes and tottered awes. With the exception of rote facial contortions everyone is silent. Everyone is facing the same direction with the switch of their nose.  Lights casts shades of rose and kiddie-pool blue against the  ash flecked cheekbones of those below. The stereo pauses to do a rote station identification before breaking into the working class jingoistic riffs of Born in the USA. Some of the smaller fireworks sounds like the rat-a-tat-tat of a drive by shooting. After the kaleidoscopic planks of light blink into chasms of nothingness there is calm before the next launch is knocked into the air and explodes.

 

Drizzled poms of tinsel  bow and dissipate before our eyes.

The speakers are now playing Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen although it appears to be the duet song by Axl Rose and Elton John.

On the pier near the lagoon there is a lady with blonde hair and ripped cut-off short jeans and a black tank top and you can see her bra strap. Precariously she stands up as if on stilts, in the cement bridge with an 12 feet droop of the lagoon below. During the head banging scene she, almost involuntarily, losses all control. Her blonde hair is the color of a hay boll in a late myopic-eyed period Monet and it sprays all direction in tandem with Queen, in tandem with the birth of light screeching and then dissipating into smoky sockets overhead.

At the end applause spreads like a wild fires across the wispy topography of night.


                                                                                ***

 The next morning in church Mr. Peplow an usher in his late sixties comes up to me.

“Saw you holding up that sign at the fireworks last night.”

I nod. Before I can say thank you  he grasps my arm so tight  that it feels like my forearm and biceps are locked in a tourniquet.

“You need to hold the sign up higher so people in the back can read.” He stammers, letting go of my arm, blood begin to wend its way through the circulation of my appendage once again.

As en route to Sunday school I think about Stacia. I picture her sleeping in, the sun echoing through the doily curtains of her bedroom window on a mattress fraught with stuffed animals.  Before I leave the community room I realize that Mr. Peplow gave me my first piece of criticism.

 I wish I could go back to the fireworks and hold up the sign again.

 

                                                         ***

 

In Sunday School I see David Best. As is complimentary he greets me by saying hola.

 

“Hola!”

 

I asked Dave if he enjoyed the fireworks from last night.

 

“She thinks you’re really funny.” Dave says of his girlfriend.

 

David comments that he doesn’t know what happened. That Renae was just unusually shy.

 

“I’ve never seen her that shy before.”

 

I tell him that I sometimes have that effect on women.

 

Dave comments again that the reason she was shy was because she fell down a path while going on a hike in the woods.

 

“She had a big dirt stripe along her bottom.”

 

Dave laughs every time he says the word bottom.


                                                                              ***


 After church I call Anastasia. There is no one home. I leave a message on her voice machine.

I go for a run. I go over my lines. I work on my French class final where we are simply asked to present a paragraph of what we have learned over the summer and what we expect our future goals to be.

I wish I wouldn’t have been as curt to Andrea since, it would be nice just to have someone to call.

 

I try call Anastasia again. Her parents don’t have two-way calling. There is a negative deep  nasal belch connoting that someone inside her house is on the other line.

While waiting to get through to Anastasia I work on my two paragraphs for the final French class tomorrow.  I stand in front of the same full-body mirror in the music room with the grand piano where I stood ironing out the mechanics of my botched Young Columbus speech last January.  I am nowhere in the same French area code as Madame. My sentences don’t sound  sewn together. They sound distorted and choppy. Every time I speak in class Madame tells me I need to lift my nose higher before scowling at me for always hitting up either Andrea or Jenay after class.

 

Once Madame laced her fingers on the side of my face and made me purse my lips.

 

“You need to sing more with your tongue.” Madame asserts

 

I feel like I am French kissing a llama.

 

 Thirty minutes later I call Anastasia again. There is a voice I have never heard before.

 

“Hi, is  Statica home?’

There is a pause. For a nanosecond it feels that I have called the wrong number. I say hello again but am cut off  half way through my query.

 

“I heard you the first-time.” The voice replies. It is feminine and older. In the last ten days I have hones Stacia eleven times. I have learned to call discreetly in my house while my parents are downstairs which has saved me  shit ton in quarters.

 

I inquire but am once again cut off.

 

“Is this Anthony?’ She says, like she is admonishing a pet Schnauzer.

“No, this is David’

The lady on the opposite side of the phone barks my name back to me as if the syllables of my surname where nothing less than an undesirable entrée at an expensive Italian restaurant, a pube in drop of merlot.

“David, who are you?”

 I find it odd that I have been talking with Stacia every night and she never asymptomatically hinted to her mom with whom she was speaking to on the opposite end of the phone.

 “I’m in a play with your daughter Misses Blake."

There is another pause. It is like she has them choreographed and time.

"You weren't out with them last night were you?"

I feel like I am being interrogated before a police lineup. I tell her no.


"Well, I'm sorry. Anastasia cannot talk with you right now. She is being punished. You can talk with her at rehearsal tomorrow night young man."


The phone slams down in the fashion of a verdict. I wonder what I did.

I go to my French book and practice my speech, looking at the translucent bulb of my silhouette in my bedroom window preparing to tell people I will never see again just what I have learned.