Fireworks

1 FIREWORKS When my grandfather died, I told everyone he'd been killed by aborigines while he was berry-picking in Africa. I told them that I had been there, too. I told this to my friends, and to their parents. I told this to the lifeguard at our neighborhood pool. I told this to the gas station attendants and motel clerks my father and I met on our drive down to Florida for the funeral. I wrote about it in a letter to my mother, who had left us that spring to live in a commune upstate. I was picturing dry, open fields, the occasional crooked tree under which a lion might have lounged or beside which a giraffe might have stood with his neck stretched to reach the topmost leaves. I was picturing jeepfuls of tribal rivals speeding around with shotguns, like what I'd seen in The Gods Must Be Crazy, my poor grandfather in the line of fire, myself lying flat in hiding behind a log. This was during my safari phase. My wife found a picture of me from around this time up in the attic just the other day. She brought it downstairs to show it to me. I was sitting on the porch with a Jack Daniel's, enjoying the sunset. "You were adorable," she said. In the picture, I'm wearing khaki trousers that unzip into shorts around the thigh. I've got a khaki vest on, and a safari hat. There's a stuffed monkey pinned to the back of my pants, and a plastic snake hung around my neck. I'm carrying a small pair of binoculars, and there's chocolate on my face. I got a little chill when my wife showed me the picture, even though it was June. "Mmm," I said. "I'm not so cute." My name is Hollis. I'm a writer, and I live with my wife in a midsize, coastal New England town. My wife is a teacher. We have no children. We did, but our son, Simon, was killed nearly two years ago by a bunch of kids in a speeding car. I've been cheating on my wife. My girlfriend, Marissa, is twenty-four, almost fifteen years younger than I am. I met her ten months ago at a bus stop when I was on my way to a meeting with my editor. It was raining, neither of us had an umbrella, and the buses were running late, so instead of waiting we shared a cab, which we quickly redirected from our respective destinations to her apartment. We've spent hours there together every afternoon since then. Some might consider me lucky. But oftentimes, as I'm drifting in and out of sleep in the late afternoon light, I feel lonely. I feel like I'm being rolled around in a huge wave of loneliness. When Marissa asks me what's wrong, I don't say anything about it, because who am I to be lonely? I have Marissa, I have my wife, and I know they both love me. I am never alone. I went through phases as a kid. I was a fireman for a while. My uncle really was a fireman, so I had the real stuff from him: helmet, gloves, charred bricks from burned-down buildings. I was Robin Hood. I wore the tights only on Halloween, but I carried a bow and arrows around for months. For a while I was a break-dancer. I wore a bandanna and a single black leather glove with the fingers cut off. "A safari phase," my wife said when she showed me the picture. "I don't think I knew about that one." "It was brief." I shifted in my chair so I could better see the sunset. I sipped my Jack Daniel's. My wife stood behind me and ran her fingers through my hair. Marissa is standing in my wife's kitchen. That's how I think of it when I see Marissa bending to open the cabinets that my wife bends to open, or leaning against the countertops my wife leans against. I watch her in my wife's apron, usingWinthrop, Elizabeth Hartley is the author of 'Fireworks ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307262950 and ISBN 0307262952.