The Sunday List of Dreams (27 page)

Connie says, “Yes,” and when she looks up they are parked right outside of Diva’s and it’s almost the next day.

The rest of the week at Diva’s is about as close to chaos as Jessica can bear to be a part of, witness, stand next to, and administer. The stunning success of the women’s festival, the Diva Designs new product line party that is scheduled for Saturday, the sudden and very welcome return of Sara—whom Jessica hires full-time on the spot—Meredith and Connie, makes Jessica want to thank everyone within a five-thousand-mile radius. Beyond the necessary flurry of activity that needs to happen there is also this one new idea—sex-toy parties for the masses—that seems to have swallowed them all whole.

“You should have seen them,” Meredith reports. “The women are hungry in more ways than one for something like this, and your mother was perfect.”

“It was something I had hoped we could start maybe next year but now…” Jessica is thinking out loud. “Now? I am so overloaded I want to lie down and wake up back on that couch in Cyprus myself.”

Connie stands speechless while Jessica, Geneva, Sara, and Meredith talk about her as if she is absent, a breathing mannequin, a fly who has come in on the backside of a dark pair of suit pants.

“It wouldn’t be hard,” Sara adds. “Even though the store here is comfortable and easy, there are still lots of women who just don’t want to walk into a sex-toy store. They might talk about it, but doing it is something entirely different.”

And they go on and on and Connie listens and then she slips into the stockroom and feels, once again, as if she wants a cigarette.

Then, later, there is also the massive bouquet of daisies that Connie notices—as if she could miss it—sitting on the end table in the corner of the living room of Jessica’s apartment.

“Flowers?” she cries. “Can I read the card?”

Jessica wants to say no. She has her head buried in a stack of paperwork. She has managed to keep Screen Man a secret from her mother for one entire day. She’s also managed to say yes to dinner with him at the same small bar which features a lovely assortment of bar food that at the time seemed delicious and non-threatening. Dinner, she told Screen Man, is about all she thinks she will have time for during the next week, month, or indeed the next 12 years of her life.

“Go ahead,” Jessica says, surrendering to the inevitable as her mother glances down at the bouquet.

Hillary and I had the time of our lives. No more screening in my life. More drinks? Dinner? Do you want to move in?

Connie reads the card and smiles when she slips it back inside its little envelope. She doesn’t say anything. She waits. She stands right there and she waits.

“His name is Martin. I sort of had a date. He was standing under my window and a screen almost fell on his head. He’s smart, sexy, and he loves Hillary Clinton.”

Jessica details what happened, stays away from the simple idea of fate, and tells her mother without hesitation that she’s attracted to him, his Hillary Clinton book, and his lovely ponytail.

“This is grand news, baby,” Connie tells her. “I suggest you get him to a swamp as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, Mother,”
Jessica says in a tone of voice that is much louder than a kind response. “I’m not as fast as you are. I let him touch my hand. We may kiss in a month or two.”

“Very funny.”

“Speaking of funny, mother dearest, your personal stylist has been by and you apparently have a date for the party on Saturday night.”

“Are you nuts? What are you talking about?”

“Mattie asked for an invitation for some guy who is a customer who she thinks you have to hook up with, someone she already mentioned to you, and I said, ‘Why not?’ and he’s coming with her, but he’s really coming with you.”

“I don’t have time for a date, for crissakes,” Connie says, wondering how this could have happened. “I’m working, aren’t I? And what a fine place to meet a man—while I’m handing out free Diva condoms.”

“There will be plenty of time for flirting, Mother, don’t worry.”

“Worry?” Connie yells about a decibel higher than her daughter. “Worry? What? Me, worry? Jessica, have you stopped to think about everything that has happened during the past few weeks? Have you?”

Connie feels the soft wings of the same birds that flew into her chest on the drive home trying to work their way back inside of her but she fights them off with a surge of anger and honesty.

Without giving Jessica a chance to answer, Connie asks the big question.

“How long do you think I can keep doing this for you?”

Jessica has not bothered to have a prepared answer for this question. She has been juggling her mother from one day to the next, tossing her from her left hand to her right hand, off the back of her foot, down her back and right into whatever needs to be done or is happening at the moment and maybe, just maybe, even further than that. But to where? For how long? In what capacity?

Jessica looks at her mother, her blazing eyes firing questions, even after her mother has become silent. She balances for just a moment with one foot standing firmly in place as an employer, a maker of good decisions, a business leader, and the other foot planted just as solidly in the heart of a woman she calls Mother, new friend, a mentor of action and example. She chooses to stay in the middle, to hedge all of her bets, to pull wisely from both sides.

“How long do you
want
to keep doing this?” she fires back.

Connie freezes for a moment, and then she smiles.

“I should ground you for the rest of your life, young woman,” she says, pushing the birds way back where they belong, clearing her mind, rushing forward while holding onto a major pause.

And there are still two questions hanging like an unanswered wedding invitation, an extended hand, a map with endless roads.

Jessica reaches out across the desk and puts her hand on top of her mother’s. She longs to go to confession, she wants to ease the lines from her mother’s face, and maybe from her own.

“Mom, listen,” Jessica says slowly, not at all certain about what she is about to say, “just so you know, part of the time I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. None at all. When we went to New Orleans? Not a clue. The new employees? Sort of knew. The party? That’s under control because it’s easy. Expansion and sex-toy parties? I’m halfway there but not really and add to that this Screen Man Martin and you may as well start laughing.”

“So, you are human?”

“Very, Mother. I don’t have the answers to either of these questions right now but I can tell you that you came here at a time when I needed you more than ever and didn’t even know it, and that spending these weeks with you, getting to know you, having you help me look at myself and who I am, and what I might be missing is, and continues to be, absolutely wonderful. And—”

And.

And Jessica tells her that she has been inspired to begin her own list of dreams. She holds out the beginnings of her own small list, tells her mother that her presence and her presents have moved into her life like an unexpected gift, and that is how she met the Screen Man, and why she now knows that risk is a pleasure that needs to be addressed every day.

Connie can feel her heart leap and begin a tango with itself. She puts her hands on Jessica’s face, kisses her on the lips and whispers, “Thank you, sweetheart.” And then she adds, “Does this mean I get a raise?”

“Actually, Mother, I think I should start paying you. You are working your ass off, for crying out loud. You deserve it.”

“I’m torn,” Connie admits. “This is an adventure. It’s fun. I never in my wildest dreams imagined doing something like this, staying here, coming back from the festival…any of it, but here it is and what do I do?”

“What
do
you do?” Jessica asks her right back.

“My mother would say, ‘Wait and see,’” Connie replies. “But I look back, towards Cyprus, and I miss it. A part of me really misses it.”

“Is that so bad?”

“At some point it may affect your plans, where you are going. You rely on me now, and that’s okay, but I was just getting used to looking out the window and seeing this expanse of free time, all the things I’ve been thinking about doing for such a very long time.”

“Mom, you are a big girl now. You are in charge. You can come or go at any time. You can stay and work. Or go home. You run the show. You know that. You’ve always known that. Now you just have a few choices.”

“In charge” is always a good thing to say to Connie Franklin Nixon. And she knows her wise daughter is right, and she knows she could come or go or leave in the middle, and she’s thinking that if she leaves now she might miss something on this side of her life just as much as she might miss something on the other side of her life.

The Franklin Nixon women talk for a very long time. Jessica pushes back her books, her computer, her endless lists of tasks, and they go through an entire pot of coffee and they both get feisty. Connie stampedes Jessica with questions, with her own business-minded concerns, with the harsh realities of living with a relative for an extended period of time. Jessica throws her mother a bone. She talks about business chances, creating a new world of friends, exploring a side of herself and her life that might have been on her damn list anyway.

“Have you thought about that, Mother? Did it ever occur to you that this is part of your list of dreams? That sticking to a plan, one that you think is written in stone, might not be the best way to live?”

“I haven’t had the time to line it all up like that but the thought has recently crossed my mind.”

“Go get it,” Jessica orders. “I know you have it with you.”

Connie pulls her list of dreams, her imagined second half of life, her world of thoughts and wonderment and an occasional burst of passion and angst out of her bulging make-believe dresser—her suitcase—and carries it back to the table as if she is holding a carton of eggs.

“Tell me,” Jessica urges, inching her chair forward so that she can put her arm around her mother.

“No one has ever read it and I don’t want anyone to ever read it,” Connie shares. “It’s intimate stuff. Private, like a journal. And sometimes when I look at it, it makes me sad to remember who I was, what I was doing, where I was in my life when I wrote it. There are many, many versions and this new idea that the list already needs to be revamped.”

“You were a good mom. I would have hated you along the way no matter what had happened, divorce or not, lifestyle or not. It’s programmed into the genes of teenagers. You know that.”

Connie knows and she sees herself pages beyond that. She sees herself wrapped up in a part of life that is as tantalizing as it is terrifying. She imagines out loud what it would be like to change everything. Everything. The house. The new condo. The job. Where she lives. Everything.

“It’s not in the pages, huh?” Jessica asks gently, touching the side of Connie’s list book.

“Not like that.”

“Look again. Maybe you missed something,” Jessica says, smiling.

Connie looks. Jessica politely gets up, makes yet another pot of coffee, slips into the bathroom to call and let Kinsey know she is going to be a bit late, and studies her own face in the mirror to give her mother a little time alone. When she looks in the mirror, Jessica sees the soft skin of her mother, matching eyes, three teeth that could have been moved back into place with braces, but three teeth that seem perfect to her anyway. When she lifts up her hair, pulling it behind her ears and then onto the top of her head, she sees that she does indeed look like her mother. She leans forward, hands on her head, belly against the cold sink, and she suddenly knows what she will look like when she is 58 years old, Connie’s age.

Jessica stands there a very long time. She runs a parade of questions through her own mind, asking herself if she can really stand to work with her mother for an extended period of time, and answering with a soft, “Yes.” She asks herself if her business, if Diva’s could be more because of her mother, and she gets the same answer. She asks if she could use her mother in ways that she has not bothered to sit down and examine. Yes, again.

But live with her? Again? Now that she is a daughter, a friend, a boss but no longer a little girl? Not so much.

And then she knows what her mother will say. She knows exactly what her mother will say when she goes back to the living room/kitchen/dining room/office/bedroom. She knows what Connie will say and she wonders when other daughters get the mother-daughter connection. When do other daughters peer into their own eyes and see their mother’s eyes? A shell that was designed by the womb of a woman, outlined with parts of her own self and then left empty, almost empty, for the girl-daughter to fill as she wishes? When does that girl, who becomes a woman, gaze into her own eyes and forgive and open her own heart and wander down a new trail that crosses beyond the hedges of just mother-and-daughter? When do other daughters not just lean in but stand straight so that the mother can lean too? When do they lift up their hair and see the cheekbones, the long ears, the sloping necklines, the rounded chin that graces the face of their own mother?

Jessica knows what her mother will say as she steps from the room, drops her hair back down to her shoulders, and rubs her eyes so that she can see, she can truly see.

“Maybe that page fell out,” Connie says.

“Maybe it did,” Jessica says, sitting back down and turning her chair so that she can plant her feet on either side of her mother.

“What did you find?”

“Piles of dreams, baby. All kinds of them and, as you already know, some of them are bursting into reality as we sit in this spacious apartment.”

Jessica, the CEO, swings into action. She whips a quick plan out of an idea that has been floating between her and her mother since the moment her mother walked into her store. Jessica throws it out there, knowing already that her mother will catch it and accept it and that the plan, just like any plan or any list, might, could, or should change at any moment.

Connie will stay and help with the party.