Her mind wasn’t on work but on herself, and on her mother and father and all that had gone wrong in their lives. She was cashiering purchases, handling credit cards, wrapping glass and stoneware items in tissue and placing them in bags all the while she was struggling in her mind to not be in the past with her parents, or in the present with Ron, but in the future with her baby who, in dreams she kept trying to create, was always a girl, always beautiful, always peaceful. Her baby had wispy hair, and they were together in a park near the water, a mother and her baby in a world beyond this sea of cares, and she could see the bond that defined them: their love was pure—and the purity in her dream was giving her insight into her mother’s love for her as a child and as an only daughter. Someone for whom to exist. As for her father and a father’s love, they swirled beyond reach.
A customer—a young woman—remarked on the Exeter Ceramic wind chime being something she had been looking for for months, and something in the woman’s smile had Marian glimpsing an answer, a balance in life after which her mother had striven all these years, one of peacefulness, confidence, fulfillment. Why did there have to be these problems in just existing, just getting along? Was there a pathway she might take for herself and her baby that would let them avoid the grief that seemed always to make life difficult and painful?
The young woman smiled as she accepted the bag with its MA logo, and Marian imagined a communication in their glances, saying they understood the minefield women had to traverse each step of the way if balance were to be achieved. Understanding in a glance.
In the park, in her baby dream, Marian guided the carriage close to the water where she lifted her precious child into her arms and sat with her on a bench, looked into her eyes and saw them as one with her own. They were one in mind, as she knew she had been with her mother, and her father, too, for a time, though it had taken years for the realization to come home to her. She was looking forward to telling her mother of her new attitude about the Thomaston account. Her mother would laugh when she heard that her daughter had seen the light, and it would be laughter they would share, laced with the love Marian was experiencing in anticipation. Look who’s becoming a mom, her mother would say, and they’d joke about certain daughters needing twenty-seven years to see what it was all about, and a certain someone’s baby not taking her out of the store but bringing her in!
Why did her father remain beyond reach? Had she closed him out in such a way, long ago, that it was impossible for either of them to return to the other? Had she tried hard enough over the phone?
She buzzed her mother and spoke under her breath. “Mom, that was awful,” she said.
“I know it was. I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Honey, I don’t know … I wish I did. I just can’t have him coming in here like that. It’s like he’s spilling something. I’m sorry, but that’s what it’s like, and I can’t let him do it. This store means so much to me. It’s my child—it’s like it’s you, you know, and I’m sorry he’s sick, but I can’t let him do that. Do you see how I feel?”