I’m in charge of the Fourth of July,” Dad said rather suddenly on the third of July. We all looked to Mom, who smiled. “I’m packing a picnic and we’re going to town.” We were three weeks into a summer that, though not perfect, wasn’t terrible. Dad went on a grief and loss retreat, and I had been seeing Matt’s counselor.
At first I didn’t want to talk. Where could I begin with someone I hardly knew? Mrs. Sherman wasn’t a bad person. Actually she was rather grandmotherly and wore glasses on a string around her neck, her hair graying slightly around her face. When she said, “I hurt for Abby McAndrews. It must be hard to be her,” something happened and it all broke loose and there was more babbling than anything else. She had an interesting way of repeating what I said but in a new way. It was sort of like paraphrasing but adding some kind of information I hadn’t thought of. And it was that piece that tugged my heart in sad but happy ways. She always made me feel like I was smart and clever and that I had nothing but hope in front of me.
The last time I talked to her she gave me a leather journal. “You have quite a vocabulary. Expressive. Write down your thoughts. When it’s full you can always throw it in the back of your closet and discover it years later for an interesting read.” At first I wrote slowly, but now my journal was almost full.
And so Dad, Mom, Matt, and I all changed. Individually. Personally. Sometimes we did our own things, and sometimes our things came together. I hoped the Fourth of July would be one of those things and that our Fourth wouldn’t be too independent.
To start our Fourth, Mom made blueberry buckle and served sliced strawberries with whipped cream for breakfast. “A little patriotism,” she explained as she arranged our red, white, and blue breakfast. When the three of us came home from church, Dad had the picnic ready. Mom said we needed to dress in red, white, and blue for the town parade and gave us red, white, and blue flip-flops and baseball caps. We wore them to humor her, knowing we looked silly, ludicrous. Mom did not have to give me that word for the day; I knew it fit.
Most of the buildings on the parade route had red, white, and blue buntings hanging from their awnings. We stood at the edge of town and watched children pedal by on decorated bikes with flags hanging off the back end like tails. The Shriners drove by in their little cars, followed by happy- and sad-faced clowns that scared the smaller kids. Next came fire trucks and police cars, their sirens nearly overpowering the BSHS band marching in wool uniforms. The Rotary Club came from behind in a truck loaded with kids throwing candy to us.
After the parade, we went to the Kiwanis barbecue and ate baked beans, corn on the cob, fried chicken, three-bean salad, and watermelon. And for dessert, we enjoyed bowls of red, white, and blue: strawberry shortcake with ice cream topped with blueberries.
The parking lot at the Food Mart had a few rides and concession stands, and so we spent the afternoon with the ten tickets Dad gave each of us. I wouldn’t ride the Leap Frog with its sudden plunging drop, but Matt did. Some of the people coming off looked as green as the mascot. Thankfully, because there weren’t any other wild rides, Matt stayed with me, making this one of the best Fourth of Julys I could remember.
It was so hot and humid, Matt and I rode the Egg Scrambler three times to cool off. Then we headed to the arcade, where we laughed at the crazy mirrors that made us look short and fat, or long and skinny. I looked so thin. Was that really me? The barker challenged Matt to hit the hammer and make the bell ring—but only if he was strong enough. Matt eyed his remaining tickets, but I shook my head.
“Win a horse for your girl!” another man called out. It looked simple enough; Matt just had to pitch a ball at a circle to win me a stuffed pony.
“I could do it, Abby,” he claimed. “For you.”
“Let’s go ride some more rides,” I said, pulling him away. I didn’t need another stuffed animal, or for him to prove himself. I just wanted for him to be with me.
After we ran out of tickets, we searched Pop Keeney Stadium, where Mom and Dad had spread a quilt on the field at the thirty yard line, ready to hear the band from Columbus followed up by an evening of fireworks.
Dad unpacked the dinner of Italian subs, peaches, Bugles, Orange Crush, and Pecan Sandies. Nothing very healthy, only good old-fashioned junk food. And then he gave us another dollar in case we wanted to go buy a corn dog or a sno-cone or even a long red licorice rope.
“What did you use your tickets on, Abby?” Mom asked, as I poked Bugles on my fingertips to look like claws.
“I rode the Bumble Bee, the bumper cars, the Egg Scrambler, the merry-go-round, and the Ferris wheel,” I answered. Dad nodded and I looked away, remembering the last time I had ridden the Ferris wheel—and that he was with me. “Matt rode them with me,” I said, shooting Matt a smile of appreciation. This day would not be sad. Matt would turn sixteen at the end of the month, and that sounded so much older than ten. He was almost a grown-up. I wanted this happy day to last forever.
I finished off all ten of my bugles.
“I wish there had been a roller coaster, though,” Matt said.
“I think I’ve had enough roller coasters,” Mom said softly. “This whole year.” Mom bit into a perfect peach and, without dripping, ate it.
“This band is supposed to play some forties tunes,” Dad said. “You think we can dance?”
“Everybody is pretty close together.” Mom scanned the football field, now a patchwork quilt of blankets.
“Forties?” Matt asked. “I thought it was a band. A real band.”
“It’s a community event, Matt. The Who won’t be here tonight. These are the Good Notes. Ever hear of big band?” Dad asked.
Matt groaned and I laughed. “Dad and I used to go dancing,” Mom explained. “We were pretty good.”
“For Presbyterians,” Dad added as a disclaimer.
When the Good Notes began, they played what I called “happy music.” Dad took Mom’s arm and they held each other’s hands and rocked back and forth in place. Dad swung Mom and she twirled in the space of grass between blankets. Whenever they made a mistake, Mom tossed her head back and laughed until Dad caught her up again in his arms. He wouldn’t let her go. They danced one song after another. Any other day I would have been embarrassed because hardly anybody else was dancing. But people were clapping and pointing, and not making fun of them: Mom and Dad were fun to watch, and something said that their audience, like me, was happy to see them on their feet and in each other’s arms.
Then the color guard marched out onto the field, and the announcer told us to stand for the national anthem. Seventh grader Jackie Monroe from Bethel Springs Junior High began her solo, but then modulated whenever she began a new phrase. After her battle with pitch, I could appreciate the flag was still there.
Then the Good Notes continued with mostly patriotic stuff: “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” “You’re a Grand Ol’ Flag,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and a desperate closing attempt at the 1812 Overture.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Dad suggested, and Mom answered by offering her hand as Dad helped her up. Matt and I watched them walk away, tiptoeing between blankets.
“Where are they going?”
“Don’t know,” he said. I looked across the last thirty yards, trying to find anybody I knew. “Remember how we always used to come here for the fireworks?” Matt continued.
“Sort of,” I answered, the memory a shadowy recollection.
“We always had a picnic and ate all sorts of stuff Mom never bought at home. Kind of like today,” Matt said softly. “And once a piece of a firework landed on our quilt.”
“Seriously?”
“If you look I’ll bet you can find the hole.” Matt stood up and took out our flashlight and ran the beam over the log cabin pattern until he found the blackened hole. “Look right there!” The singed mark made it real, even if I couldn’t recall the wounding.
“Why did we stop coming?”
“Joel didn’t like the noise. Plus it was too late for him.” Matt looked serious, as if remembering something I didn’t want to know about. Was there something else I had to dread?
“Do you ever feel sort of guilty when you think of something that … that might be all right, since he’s gone?” Matt asked me quietly.
I knew the feeling. And whenever I thought of something like that, I did feel guilty. I remembered when Joel was born and how I felt mad that we couldn’t ride bikes and go hiking and roller-skating as a family. Now we were going back to our lives before Joel, and I wasn’t sure if it was okay to be happy. It was hard to explain.
“I was dreading sharing a room with a preschooler,” Matt admitted at last. “That makes me feel bad now.”
“I know what you mean.” I had spent three years with Joel, and sometimes I had looked forward to the day he’d move out with Matt and I’d have my room back. And once I sent away for “Amazing Instant Life,” a sea monkey kit advertised on the back of Matt’s Marvel comic books. I had to wait six to eight weeks (sixty-one days to be exact) before it arrived. But Joel flushed it down the toilet before I could see my crustacean in suspended animation turn into a humanoid creature like the advertising claimed. I was really mad at him.
“Joel never really got into trouble.”
“And he never will,” Matt said. “Not like us, anyway. We’ll never be as good as him because he didn’t live long enough to be bad. Even though you’re near perfect, you can never be as good as the memory of Joel.” Matt spoke so softly and gently. He wasn’t mad at me or anyone else. It was just a truth Matt had figured out. “And even though I know I shouldn’t feel angry about it, I still do.”
What could I say to that? But that’s not what killed him, I thought. But grief and guilt were killing us.
“Now I’ve said it, and nothing awful happened,” Matt confessed as he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess talking about it does feel better than holding it in my head.”
I wanted it out of his head. I wanted Matt to keep talking and talking. I probably needed to hear him say things more than he needed to say them.
“Matt, what did you think was the worst part? I mean, over there in Washington.” In a sentence, I was back on the boardwalk with the car and the ambulance and the long drive home.
“The hospital,” he answered easily. Too easily. The hospital was the sad memory that came back uninvited. The place where hope was extinguished. “We stood around waiting and waiting and then the doctor came and told us he was already dead. They should have a better way of doing that.”
“You mean saying someone’s dead?” I asked. “Is there a good way?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I guess you do have to know.”
“Miss Patti and Rita don’t know. They still have hope, sort of.”
“But they never get to move on, either.”
I shook my head. He was right. We could move on with a different kind of hope, maybe even today.
Dad and Mom returned and sat at the other end of the blanket. Mom handed over a bag of popcorn in a paper sack and a cold bottle of Grape Crush. She leaned back against Dad as he held her in his arms. Something so new and yet so familiar. Reborn.
“You’re a gift from God,” I whispered to Matt.
“Gee, thanks.” Matt laughed.
“No, really. That’s what your name means,” I explained. “That’s why Dad named you Matthew.”
We were silent for a long time, staring up at the sky. I longed for the first blast, wondering where the fireworks could fit in with a sky riddled with stars. Mom and Dad murmured softly.
“Did you like Birch Bay?” I asked him.
Matt sighed. “I don’t know. It’s hard to take the good out of the bad. I remember we were having a fun time before, and it felt like we were a family.”
“Would you go back?”
“Never.”
“Me neither!” And we both laughed at the same time, as the first rocket shot into the sky with a whistling sound. Independence Day. The Fourth. The day after the third. Almost a year ago.
“That’s a twizzler!” Matt shouted, and then I remembered our naming game. We had all sorts of names for the various fireworks. Sort of like how God knows all the stars in the sky by name.
“I like the noisy ones,” I shouted. “The big bangs.”
“I like the fizzy ones,” Matt admitted.
I felt nervous and I couldn’t explain why. The blasts continued, but I was silent. A triple-decker, a rainbow, buzzing bees, and then sparklers.
“What’s wrong, Abby?”
“I don’t want them to be over,” I said. I knew that the bigger and better the fireworks, the closer we were to the grand finale. I tensed for the end, when no more fireworks would light the sky.
“Abby, they just started!” Matt said, too loudly. “Relax! Just watch them!”
A twizzler and multicolored sparklers were followed by a series of booms we called heart attacks. I waited through the thunderous noise and then asked again. “Do you think we’re at the grand finale?” A snap-crackle-pop went off.
“We’re a long way off!” Matt sat up and pointed to the new spectacle. “Awesome triple pop!”
“Tell me when we get to the finale.”
“Abby!” Matt sounded disappointed in me. “Stop it!”
“But I want to know, Matt,” I pleaded. “Just tell me. I need to know.”
“I’ll try.” He turned to look at me. “But I can’t always tell.” I must have looked worried, because he reached out his arm. “Just hold my hand, Abby. Enjoy them, and I’ll give you a triple squeeze when we hit the finale.”
My brother was holding my hand, and he had ridden the rides with me all day, and instead of heading off with his friends, he was staying with me for the fireworks. I wasn’t sure it got any better. He probably even remembered that a triple squeeze meant “I love you.” And maybe this was what heaven felt like: when you wanted a moment to go on forever.
I hurt all over from the absence of Joel, the brother who had made me a middle child, then left me as the baby of the family, but my hurt suddenly seemed so different now. Tonight was good because even though there was hurt, there was hope.