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?”
Warren
Sitting in the parking lot, he had yet to turn the key and start his truck’s motor. He did not know what to do or where to go and sat inhaling, exhaling, trying to return to a track from which he felt derailed. He knew he was losing threads in his mind, but had no sense of how to reconnect or regain purpose. He coughed, and the cancer in his lungs felt like a hamper of damp laundry—raised pain in his chest and throat, his lungs tended toward collapsing before managing once more to expand; his eyes watered as he drew in air. He did not want to succumb here, but at least he wasn’t drugged with chemicals, tubes, hallucinations. At least he was thinking—wasn’t that what he was doing?
When she went to Marian’s room to sleep, long ago—had she known then, too, he wondered? Was it his carrying her under his arm, or had the carrying allowed her to know what she had already known? All those years Virgil had to have known, too, and they had never told him he did not stand a chance. They let him waste his life. There had been Helen at the diner and maybe she would have opened her heart to him. His wife and that slippery squid with all those tentacles, the two of them had cheated him out of his life. Wouldn’t he have found something else if they had told him he didn’t stand a chance? Might he be healthy today, if he hadn’t been bound up so long?
Whatever his anger and self-disgust, Warren could not help continuing to love her. That was the joke of it—being stretched like a dog on a leash, straining to touch the one who had hurt him the most.
* * *
Marian had to have known, too, Warren thought. When she graduated from high school, when she married, when she telephoned yesterday with the news of her baby, she had to have known. They had all known, and had let him make a fool of himself.
He might be a topliner today with another wife and family, perhaps a strong stepson or stepdaughter after whom he would have long ago renamed the Lady Bee. And he might not be courting favors from angels this autumn day, but treated and cured, lending a hand to the passing on of his fishing grounds to a revered young man or young woman, working as first mate himself until the new captain had a refurbished boat in hand. That was the way to move through life. Bow out with peace of mind, and a youngster thinking of you now and then.
It was as Warren sat trying to grasp loose threads in his mind that he realized the killer whale was rolling into the parking lot before him. He stared motionlessly, as if seeing one of the large animals breach close to his boat on a calm sea, unaware it was being observed. The creature turned into a space and stopped, and it was then that Warren let into the front of his mind what seemed to have been lurking in its shadows: a desire to take his weapon in hand and resolve the ache in his heart once and for all. On a closing of his eyes he saw that it was imperative, saw through a blur that it was what he had to do. He was terrified at once, while his heart was crazed with logic and purpose. She did not want him in her store; they had known all along; they had let him make a fool of himself. Looking up, he saw Virgil slam the car door, he in his dark suit, tie, dark shoes, saw him walk toward the glass doors through which, moments earlier, he had been told to leave. “Dear God,” Warren uttered, knowing he was beyond turning back, was going to burn in hell if need be.
Hands trembling, he opened the glove box and gripped the weight of the pistol in its oily bag. His heart was pounding and his eyes remained glossy as he let the Colt Python slide into his lap. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel, paused and tried to think rationally, tried to call up his evidence. Was it wrong to possess your wife in marriage? Wasn’t it what marriage was, a merging as one? Hadn’t it been life’s purpose down through all time?
Six cartridges, each a deadly force—assuming they would work after years of lying untouched in the pilothouse lockbox. His eyes glossed over as he worked open the age-browned box and through a blur saw brass casings dotted red where the firing pin would strike. He thumbed rounds into chambers with trembling fingers, returned the cylinder home, pushed back the safety.
Slipping from truck to tarmac, he walked toward the glass doors, right arm hanging at his side, weapon near his thigh. His breathing was labored. His heart remained alive and high with conviction and excitement. She had known; they had known all along that he was wasting his time. Why hadn’t they let him go?
A woman gasped, half-screamed, surprising him. Exiting as he was entering, she jerked a hand to her mouth, her eyes widened and her gasp and scream came as if from a startled child. He moved past her into the store, looking for Beatrice, mainly for Beatrice, only for Beatrice. In this encounter he would have his way with her. Logic and righteousness were on his side; he would have his way with her at last.
Marian
Hearing a segment of a stifled scream, she believed it was outdoors and continued working. She was scratching “Sale Item” with a red marker on tags with strings—a knotlike hair in need of a comb—and her heart was too burdened with threats and danger to be open to more. Maybe the sound had come from the radio of a teenage car, kids sashaying past with a boom box. Later she would look back and see that the sound was swallowed terror muffled by the front door. Still she had a sixth sense of people entering, and looking up saw her father for the second time within half an hour, saw he had something in his hand and knew in an instant that something unspeakable was upon them. Her mother and Virgil were in the office. What should she do? She knew it was a gun in her father’s hand—knew in her store sense, and in her family sense, that something too horrible to believe was taking place.
Yes, a gun, dear God. She tried once more to verify the object at her father’s side. The world as she had known it was seizing up. “Dad, don’t, don’t,” she heard herself cry as she moved around the counter in his direct
ion, aware at the same time of life beneath her hand. “Please, Dad, don’t do anything, my God.”
He continued as if not hearing her. A woman cried out, “That man has a gun! Right there!”
Marian kept walking … then she called, screamed in an attempt—so she would later believe—to warn her mother. She was caught between rushing back to the intercom to buzz the office and running to intercept her father; what she did, suddenly, was dash back, grab the intercom—knowing it was too late, knowing there was no escape—and bawl helplessly, “Mother, it’s Dad … he has a gun!” and wail at Lori, “Get the police, get out of here! Everyone, get out of here! Oh God!”
She thought to hit the alarm, to alert security, and, in a panic, returned yet again around the counter in the direction of helping her mother and father, of trying to stop whatever might be going to happen. She wanted to escape with the confused customers rushing for the door and inform arriving guards that the man had a gun, was her father, was wearing a pale green shirt, was six two, had been, had weighed one hundred ninety pounds, was frail, looked awful, maybe he weighed a hundred and twenty pounds.
But she did not run away. Instinct, heart, fear, something directed her to her parents, as if she alone possessed voice and words that might undo what was happening. Mere seconds had passed since her father had walked by with the gun, and what Marian saw next looked like a freeze-frame wavering on the VCR. Inside the office beyond her father’s shoulder was her mother, staring wide-eyed at the weapon, Virgil behind her, to the side, saying something. “Dad, don’t do it, please!” Marian cried, and she took added steps as if toward something that, even as it might explode, pulled her on.
Her father was talking, her mother was talking, and Virgil all at once came bolting for the door, and her father’s arm jerked and a pistol shot split the air and ripped through shelves, sent glass, metal, wood splintering as Virgil, wide-eyed, ran from the office and would have knocked into her had she not pulled aside. He seemed to have been hit, but kept going—in the wrong direction, Marian’s store sense was telling her—into that addition of the store where doors were unavailable and there was no escape, where customers were squatting near counters and shelves, trying, wide-eyed, to scamper and duck-walk to front or rear and safety.
Marian wailed, nearly fainted into herself, one hand to her belly, hearing her mother crying and saying she knew, yes, she knew what he was saying, certainly she understood, whereupon another shot sounded, striking her mother, slamming her in the chest, making her collapse like a rubber toy losing air, followed by words and another shot, by more sinking and her own wailing. Her father came walking, still appearing to fail to register who she was, passed her by, coughing, calling out, “Virgil! Virgil!”
Marian fell to her mother, whose lovely jacket and blouse were wet with blood, whose life was flowing from her. Marian tried to contain her mother in her arms, tried, sobbing, “Oh Mother, oh God,” to contain her life within her hands. She hugged and rocked her mother as she had been rocked in childhood, bawled as she had bawled when her kitten had died, when a boy had canceled her from his life, bawled as the weight of this one person she had ever loved so unequivocally sank, gasping for air, into her arms, sank beyond any sense of appearing unladylike, mouth open, glasses hanging cockeyed from her hair, beyond any sense of soiling her clothes or staining the polished oak of her precious store. Marian rocked and wailed, tried to keep her mother’s life from seeping away, pulled the rumpled weight of her closer and tighter into her arms, vowed to do anything, to make any sacrifice to have undone this awful event unfolding there in her hands.
Beatrice
She was certain she had heard something of a scream. Danger had been in the air all morning, and her heart had been on edge and on guard. She directed her ears to take in evidence—had no wish to cry wolf, women today did not cry wolf—and remained certain she had heard something in or around her store, all the while Virgil continued talking, laughing, making some point. She detected a cry—was it a cry? Thought of Marian, knew something was wrong, raised a hand to silence Virgil. “Listen!” Her eyes and ears were cocked.
Virgil angled his face in perplexity. Listened. Listened.
Something was in the store, near Marian, the front, near the cash registers; Beatrice knew something had entered the store and was approaching, knew more than she wanted to know. As she stepped over to open the door further, Marian’s voice cried through the intercom, “Mother, it’s Dad; he has a gun!” and Beatrice knew in a heartbeat that all she had ever worked for was falling toward the floor like a vase of flowers.
Her eyes shot to Virgil, while her heart was cascading. They knew in their interwoven hearts that horrible retribution was upon them. Warren with a gun. She had always known it could happen, had known every day, had waited for it in her tortured heart, and here it was but a moment away and closing upon her.
The office door was pushed fully open and there were his eyes, his withered face, his shrunken self—the weapon’s steel barrel. Virgil did not move from the side of the office where he stood. “Warren, good God—let’s be reasonable here,” he uttered, and Beatrice knew from his voice that all was hopeless and lost.
Warren had eyes only for her eyes. He was saying something, but what it was, and what she was saying, hearing, thinking were hardly ordinary within her drumbeat of impending hurt, unfinished business, dreams unfulfilled, her store suffering violation beyond belief. More than once she heard, “Both of you, you always knew!”
She tried to process, calculate. What moves or words might save her? What appeal might get through to him in the face of no time remaining? There were his fierce eyes, the threat of him, his gun and voice, his awful authority. Was there an opening left? she was asking herself as she heard him say he had only wanted to forgive her, had only wanted to shake her hand! “You wouldn’t give me one minute of your time!”
She tried to say she knew he had a complaint, of course she knew that, and there was a crack! and her sudden flinch as Virgil broke for the door, dashed off among candle holders, salad bowls, wind chimes, leaving her where escape was blocked and she remained the object of Warren’s terrible wrath.
Reason … granting him his due … honesty, how might she get through to this person she had controlled so easily? Well, yes, she would have him know, fine, yes, of course he had the power now, it was in his hands … and she was certainly willing to sit down and hear him out, to give him minutes in whatever cafe or diner he’d like to visit. She would speak the truth, too, would love to speak the truth, because she had been its captive, too, in case it was something he had never paused to realize! Did he think it was easy being in love with a married man who was a power broker? Was in demand? Was attractive to other women, who went home to another? Why hadn’t he known? Why had he been so incapable of being a man and doing something for himself? Why had he been so blind he couldn’t see that he had to remain in the picture or the picture would look wrong!
“I only wanted to love you as your husband!” she heard him wail at her, as if from a distance.
Appeals kept racing through her mind: She would have him know how long and hard she had worked, how everything was falling into place at last, how they finally had the Thomaston account, and she was finally going to be a grandmother—Warren, we’re going to be grandparents! To please put the gun down, to please find it in his heart to forgive her because he would ruin Marian’s life, too. Did he think life for her or their grandchild would ever be the same if he did what he was threatening to do? Nor had he been so easy to control himself—you weren’t, Warren, she would have him know, coquettishly, oh so fairly—and he should know, too, that there had been a time on the harbor after dark when Virgil had laughed and said he hoped her husband hadn’t named his boat Cuckold, and she had laughed too, she had, but then had cried and her heart had broken with horrible guilt when she saw how cruel she had been, and she was begging him, dear God, to please not hurt her, please, she was—but it was then that Beatrice
tucked her chin in anticipation and was slammed in the chest, jabbed through with a hot poker, jabbed maybe again, found herself sitting down onto the floor while pins-and-needles raced throughout and dizziness traveled to her face, skull, arms.
She knew Marian was crying, knew that her beloved child was squeezing her and crying to her, knew she was doomed and sought forgiveness, sought harmony while part of her was sailing toward California, while she glimpsed a sunlit haze in the air and a roomful of giddy young women with cups and saucers, while on an autumn day a sixth-grade boy was trying to kiss her within the air of the lyric of a lovely song. She heard Marian crying, and she reached a finger to her tiny granddaughter in her white dress, sought the baby’s tiny fingers and dark eyes through light on the horizon, sought its silken hair, its delicate forehead and blue veins encircling all.
Virgil
After lunch one day in elementary school he glimpsed a fold of green-beige money move from a classmate’s hand into a jacket pocket on a hook, and a moment later paused and slapped his thighs as if forgetting something and turned back to where he could slip his fingers in upon the fold of bills and fold them into his hand. He had seen no one but then heard something, though only as he turned on his way to the classroom did there come from behind the squawky voice of Vera Burton: “I said I saw you, Virgil! I saw what you did!”
Harbor Lights Page 14