“Why’d I think you’d understand?” He shook his head.
She had to make it better. Before they got within sight of the club. Because now she’d lost her strength, the guts that had made her think she could show her true self in front of Avalon, the version she saw reflected back at her by Brooks.
“My dad’s right,” he shouted over the squeal and bang of the rockets detonating behind him. “Don’t you get it, Maddie? Are you really that stupid?”
She wasn’t sure what he meant but knew it was the worst thing he could call her.
Someone was coming. A tall black shape moved toward them quickly from the direction of the club. It must be Brooks’s dad, she thought. Come to rescue him from her bad influences.
“We’re not the same, you and me,” Brooks yelled over the whirly-whirly and whizz of the fireworks, the crowd’s oohs and ahhs. “No one’s going to beat the crap out of a preppy little white girl.”
She pointed behind him, tried to warn him, but could only reach forward, wrap her arms around him, hope her body could protect him. Hope her dad would beat her instead.
He didn’t slow down, walked right between Maddie and Brooks, wrenching them apart just as a couplet of hot-pink starbursts lit the sky on fire. His face was a contortion. Like a mask in some horror movie.
He was cursing in dialect. “Porca Madonna!”
She’d heard the words before and Vinny and Enzo had translated. The Virgin Mary is a pig. She knew it was the most vile thing he could say.
“Maddalena.” His voice cracked like an instrument out of tune, like he was about to go off, hit Brooks, hit her, drag her across the grass by her hair like he’d always threatened.
“I’m going to make this shit boy suffer for what he did to you.”
Brooks tried to stand tall, his fists balled tight at his thighs, but she saw his knees buckle. He leaned against the tin shack and another rumbling wave sounded.
“Dad,” she began.
“What? What, baby girl?”
She had never seen her dad like this, not in all the years she and Dom and their mother had feared him, waiting for him to go demon-eyed, chase them with his hand raised like the blade of an ax. Never had he looked so much like a murderer. And so much in love with her. Maybe, she thought, he finally loved her, the way she’d prayed he would. Maybe, she thought, he was grateful to her for giving him someone to punish. A BOOM split the night and silver, fern-shaped bursts branded the sky, their fronds shimmering as they dipped down back to earth.
The crowd cheered. Someone whistled through his fingers.
“Tell me,” her dad begged. “Tell me what he’s done!”
The finale began. A recorded orchestra played “The Star Spangled Banner.” Hundreds of drunk voices sang along as the red and gold and blue spheres lit the night sky, as the dotted peonies, and chrysanthemums trailing sparks, and silver weeping willows fell in slow motion, and, her favorite, the spiders, shimmering like bombs of fairy dust, all of it blooming behind Brooks’s head so she saw he was already in mourning. The eyes and lips she loved, the prettiest thing alive she’d ever seen, looked dead.
She tried to speak, to explain to her dad she was fine. Nothing bad was happening. But the report of the works was even louder than the gunshots she’d heard during the Colonel’s target practice—the whizz-hum of tubes shot into the air, the screeching whistles, the boom-boom-boom of one mine mortar after another launching stars and serpents. There was no hope of being heard.
She dared to step toward him. He tensed when she touched his arm, the thick black hair soft under her fingers.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I think that”—she paused—“I think you think that Brooks made me do something I didn’t want to do?”
Her father’s gaze lost focus. He shook his head.
“I want to be with Brooks. More than anything.”
She laughed because it was silly, wasn’t it, her dad thinking she was some helpless nitwit of a princess. Andromeda, kidnapped by a monster. Another damsel in distress in need of saving. She knew, instantly, what a mistake it was to let that giggle out. Knew her dad would punish her. Maybe not then at the party, but soon. Not just for loving a black boy, but for laughing at him in front of the black boy. Her dad split the world into him and his, and the rest who were out to mock him, push his face in the mud. She knew she’d just joined the ones against him. The others.
He stared at the ground. What was he doing? She couldn’t tell if he was about to charge Brooks like a stung bull or fall to the ground weeping.
“Sir?” Brooks’s voice cracked like he’d swallowed glass.
“Don’t,” her dad whispered, “talk to me.”
He was gone. Walking back toward the white tent that glowed like a giant votive candle against the smoke-hung sky.
“Maddie,” Brooks said.
They fell to their knees in the damp grass and held each other. Boys do cry, she thought, as she tasted his wet cheeks, wondering if it would’ve been better if her father had killed them both right there on the golf green for all of East Avalon to witness. She knew there was no hope for them on the island. There never had been.
34.
Veronica
She gave Bob one of the pink pills she’d found in Ginny’s bathroom and he was asleep in no time. She could still feel the buzzing in her body but knew she’d feel even better if she finished the marijuana cigarette. First, she had to find that darn Walkman Ginny had given her a few Christmases past. She sunk to her knees to sort through the cluttered hallway closet, not caring if she dirtied her green silk dress.
Ginny, the sweet thing, had included a few cassettes—composers she knew Veronica loved. Bach’s Cello Suites. Chopin’s Nocturnes. Veronica couldn’t remember if she’d ever thanked her daughter for such a thoughtful gift. Was she really that coldhearted? When she found the Walkman, she released a girlish squeal.
Bach was too depressing. Chopin too erratic. But Tchaikovsky was perfect.
She used a pair of meat shears to cut through the thick casing. Why must they wrap things in plastic like every object was a time capsule meant to survive the next millennium?