Stars to Lead Me Home: Love and Marriage (A Novel)

by Peggy Webb

Jean starts to barrel straight to the bed, but I grab her arm and we hold back near the door.

  The doctor pats Lillian’s hand then shakes Carl’s and strides from the room. Lillian is crying, and we make ourselves hold back while Carl leans down to hug her.

  “It’s going to be okay, Lillian.”

  I want to scream, Ok, what? Is this another catastrophic disappointment, another nail hammered into Lillian’s coffin?

  It’s simply awful, this terror for my friend. It’s so big I can’t figure a way to get past it. I can’t even see around it.

  The door opens behind us and two nurses come into the room.

  “Everybody will have to leave now.”

  “Why?” This from Jean, who has finally found a way out of her paralyzing fear.

  “So we can prep her for surgery.”

  Lillian looks at us, her smile so sudden, so dazzling, it stops my breath.

  “The heart is perfect!” She holds out her arms and Jean and I rush over for a quick embrace. I bend closer to hear what Lillian is whispering before the nurse shoos us out.

  Carl leads the way down a hall with a sign that points to the waiting room. On the way, we pass the Intensive Care unit and I see two people weeping in each other’s arms, a slim, sandy-haired woman and a man with an unlined face but gray at his temples. Are they the parents of the donor? Or is it the blond woman with the crumpled face that signals a mother’s broken heart, the one hanging onto her girl friend’s arm as if she’s eighty instead of forty or so?

  I won’t let myself dwell on the tragedy. Instead I think of the noble sacrifice, the idea that a loved one’s heart will continue to beat, the comfort that might bring.

  This waiting room is austere. The chairs are hard plastic, not meant for comfort but for convenience. I sink down beside Jean then link hands and remember Lillian’s last words to me.

  Wish on a star for me, Maggie.

  I gaze toward the bank of windows on the east side of the room, and though the sunlight obscures the stars, I know they are there. Focusing on the spot I know Cygnus the swan is waiting, I make a wish for Lillian, say a prayer. Then I picture great white wings spreading wide to carry her safely until a new heart is beating in her chest.

  I hold this picture in my own heart until Lillian’s surgeon enters the waiting room. His mask is lowered under his chin and he exudes the air of a man who enjoys the respect and confidence of doctors and patients around the world. Still, he’s trained to deliver news of tragedy as well as triumph, and I can’t begin to read his face.

  Carl stands, but Jean and I sit there with our hands linked so tight our fingers are turning white.

  “She came through with flying colors. There’s every reason to think this will be a successful transplant.”

  Carl clasps the doctor’s shoulder. Both of them are smiling. But Jean and I burst into tears as if we’ve had our own hearts ripped out then put back together again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  My youngest daughter is in Cozumel, ecstatic with her job with the cruise line, and Lillian is showing no signs of rejecting her new heart. Her doctor says it’s performing like a champ, and so does the color in her face, the spring in her steps, the even, unlabored tenor of her breathing.

  Every evening I look at the night sky and whisper a prayer of thanksgiving…and then another for a small miracle with Beth.

  Now I am in my home office, writing with wings and a grateful heart. My fingers fly along the keys leaving behind a trail of words that takes me all the way to the end of the book.

  Matt is in the master bathroom, installing antique drawer pulls we found at a flea market, and I want to share this triumph with him, to celebrate the months of work, the thousands of words contained in clean white pages. But for a while I sit alone with my book, a mother stealing a moment with her child newly born, knowing that it’s the last time he will ever be completely hers.

  Finally I gather the pages and walk toward the sound of whistling. The new skylight has opened my bedroom suite up to the sun, and I like to come upon the place slowly, to savor that first glimpse of light against walls as soft and lush as the undersides of my pink Eden rose that blooms against the back fence. Matt and I planted another rose bush on the patio, one called Peace, and I can see it through the French doors. That’s what I feel when I walk into my new bedroom: peace. And a joy that colors everything I do.

  Matt comes out of the bathroom when he hears my footsteps, and I hold the manuscript aloft.

  “All done,” I say.

  “I’m so proud of you.”

  He shows me this is so by opening his arms to me, and when we lie on the carpet underneath the skylight, I don’t worry one bit about looking like a Bassett hound from this angle. Not one bit.

  Much later he says, “You’ll want to share this good news with Jean and Lillian. I’ll grill steaks.”

  That’s how it is with us these days, natural and easy. We are a couple, joined in every way except legally, and if anybody has doubts they keep quiet.

  We sit together in church, and any fool can tell that we’re a pair, but nobody raises an eyebrow, unless it’s in the privacy of their own homes. Once at Table Fifty-one we got some funny looks from other diners when Matt reached for my hand across the table. I ruined two whole days by worrying over it.

  “What does it matter what other people think?” Matt said.

  He’s good and wise and right, and so I don’t think about age anymore.

  o0o

  That evening he stands over the grill with Carl and Bill, while Jean and Lillian and I sit around the wrought iron table on the back deck watching.

  “Three men and grill,” Jean says. “There’s nothing like it.”

  “Next time, we’ll sit in the gazebo.” I glance across the yard where Matt has already started the framework.

  “Won’t it be pretty at Christmas, all strung with lights?”

  It’s wonderful to hear Lillian talking about Christmas with excitement instead of dread. It’s a miracle that our lazy, end-of-summer chatter is finally free from any undertones of fear. Lillian’s anti-rejection drugs are doing their job, and each time she returns to Birmingham for a checkup, her doctors say her borrowed heart is perfect.

  Fireflies puncture the falling darkness, and we kick back and enjoy this display of tiny fairy lights.

  Another light pierces the darkness, a car, and we all turn to see the unexpected guest. She stands in the glare of headlights shielding her eyes.

  I know that stance. I know those long skinny legs and the hair that looks like moonbeams around her pale face. Sometimes it’s possible to forget how to breathe. I jump up and stand there with my hand on my throat, hoping I’ll remember.

  “Maggie?”

  Matt has moved to my side. I feel this in my bones, but all my attention is focused on the young woman who is coming toward me, crossing the back yard with a grace and style I’d know anywhere.

  “Mother?” She stops at the foot of the stairs, looking up at me standing on the deck, waiting, waiting.

  I open my arms and Beth, my prodigal daughter, my child, moves into them as naturally as if she’d never left.

  o0o

  “I’ve left Daniel.”

  Beth is curled on the end of my sofa, feet tucked under her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle as if she’s afraid of flying into a million pieces, as if she has to sit that way to hold herself together. I remember sitting that way, long ago.

  I am in a wing chair, hurting for her, with her, and wondering how I can ease her pain. Words won’t come, and in a way I’m glad of this. The women in my family always had quick solutions, pat replies, and I don’t want this first conversation with my daughter after months of separation to be false.

  “I’ll get us some tea,” I say. Beth nods, okay.

  In the kitchen I call myself a coward for choosing escape, even if it is temporary. I put the water up to steep, then lean my forehead against the cabinets and try to get my be
arings. In the course of one evening I’ve gone from lover to mother, and I take this abrupt transition hard, like a hybrid tea rose ripped out its bed and transplanted in a weed-choked back yard.

  The steaks sit in the middle of the table, grease congealing on the platter. Jean and Lillian, Bill and Carl left soon after Beth arrived in order to give us privacy.

  So did Matt. My carpenter.

  That’s what I told Beth. “This is Matt Graham ... my carpenter.”

  I am not going to think about this, about the way he looked at me, the way I felt, the way I still feel, weak and cowardly, a woman who doesn’t deserve the devotion of a man like him.

  The teapot does my screaming for me, and for a little while I take comfort in the civilized ritual of tea. So does Beth. Words would be spilling out of Lydia, but my oldest daughter hides her feelings the same way she hides her teacup in her hands. I don’t try to pry them loose: I know what it’s like to keep the hurt inside, to be afraid to give the monster a voice.

  “You can stay here with me as long as you like,” I say.

  “Thanks, Mother,” she says, and then the tears start. I go to her then, put my arms around her, and she cries silently while I stroke her hair.

  “There,” I say. “There, now.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, sorry for everything.”

  “It’s okay.” I am too full of gratitude to say more. We will go forward from here.

  Beth blows her nose with a damp crumpled handkerchief that looks as if she has used it all the way across Texas, through Louisiana and up the whole length of Mississippi.

  I go into the bathroom and bring back a box of tissue.

  She uses two at a time. “I’m pregnant.”

  “That’s wonderful, Beth! Amazing!”

  “No, it’s not. Daniel doesn’t want the baby.”

  My thoughts brand me a violent woman. I could race all the way to Texas and back, prodded by a need to slap him until he comes to his senses.

  “Are you sure? Sometimes men get scared and over-react.”

  “He said we didn’t plan it this soon, that the business is just taking off and the timing is rotten. He blames me.”

  She starts sobbing again and I hold her while she cries it out. Then I tuck her into bed the way I did when she was a child, fold the sheet underneath her chin and smooth her hair back so I can place a goodnight kiss on her forehead.

  She grabs my hand, holds on. “Will you stay with me till I fall asleep?”

  “Yes,” I tell her, and then I sit beside her on the bed holding her hand until I see the soft rise and fall of the quilt I’d used to cover her, a quilt Granny made by a pattern called Around the World. I stay a while longer, listening to the even sound of her breathing, and I think about the quilt, about the roundness of the earth and how you get back to the place you started if you travel far enough and long enough.

  Over the last two years Beth and I have traveled a long and difficult road, but we’re finally back where we started, mother and daughter, bonded together by blood ties and love.

  And soon there will be another generation, a grandchild in the family. I put my hand on top of the quilt, over the small mound of her belly, and then let it rest there till I feel the warmth from my palm blending with the warmth of Beth’s womb.

  o0o

  It’s too late to call Matt, too late to pick up the phone and say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  I lie in bed and watch the clock and think about how it was when I saw them together tonight for the first time, my daughter and my lover. The thing that struck me was how close they looked in age, like people who knew each other in high school, three grades apart, no more than four. Like people who went to the prom together and danced until the band packed up their instruments and went home.

  I start doing the awful math again. And then I cover my head with the sheet. But I can’t hide from the facts, the age difference that now looks like the Gulf of Mexico.

  If Beth knew the truth she’d be horrified. I tell myself I saved Beth the mortification, saved Matt the embarrassment.

  And yet, I can’t forget the look on his face.

  Tomorrow. I’ll go to his farm and apologize. Tomorrow everything will be all right.

  o0o

  “What did you tell your daughter about coming here?” Matt is not making this easy for me. We are in his barn where I found him when I drove up, and he has not stopped rubbing down his horse. Not once.

  I wish I could lie to him. I wish I could say that I told her the truth: I’ve hurt the man I love and I’m going to his house and tell him I’m sorry in the hope that he forgives me.

  I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t forgive me.

  “I lied to her,” I say. “Just the way I did last night. I said I was going to pick up some marshmallows so we could make s’mores.”

  I’m holding the bag of marshmallows, and while Matt stares at them squashed in my hand, I think of all the ways you can wound the one you love. Little things, like taking a step away when you see someone you know. Your daughter, for instance. That’s another thing I did last night. When Beth came onto the back deck, I distanced myself from Matt.

  Not much, just enough so we wouldn’t be touching, not even accidentally, just enough that my body language said I’m not with this person.

  But he noticed. That small separation combined with the introduction amounted to a complete denial of him, of what we are to each other, and I don’t know if it’s possible to heal wounds like that.

  I hope so. I do hope so.

  “I’m sorry, Matt, sorry for the way I handled things. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  I wait for him to respond. Instead he pries the marshmallows from my hand.

  “You’ve ruined these. I have a bag in the house you can take home to Beth.”

  “Thank you.”

  We walk side by side down the path that leads to his farm house, and when he reaches for my hand right before we get to his back door, I start to cry.

  In his kitchen Matt cups my face. “You don’t want Beth to know you’ve been crying.”

  He dries my face with a clean dish towel then smoothes on Jergens lotion where I know I’m blotched from tears. His hands are gentle and I think about us twined together on his antique wrought iron bed on the second floor.

  I whisper, “Thank you,” and he says, “You’re welcome,” just four words, but the entire Webster’s dictionary is wrapped up in them.

  I struggle with temptation and I see the same struggle on his face as he plucks off the bits of hay that have settled on my blouse for no reason at all except that I’ve been standing in his barn.

  I remember the first time I came to his farm, how proud he was showing me his horses, his cows, the fences he’d built, the old tractor that had belonged to his granddaddy. Cranks like a top every time, Matt said. And when I told him about my farm, about my daddy saying to me, sing the land, Maggie, he had put his arms around me and held me close.

  “All done,” he tells me now, but he doesn’t let go.

  I know I should step back and end this with dignity. I could even use news that I’m going to be a grandmother to give him reason to breathe a sigh of relief after I’m gone, to say that was a narrow escape. But I am incapable of leaving his embrace, incapable of gazing anywhere except his eyes.

  “Maggie, I love you,” he says. Just that. I love you, and it’s the truest thing I’d ever heard.

  Sometimes a woman can go an entire lifetime and never know the love of a good man. Never. I want to cry again, cry for their loss and my own impossible love, and yet I won’t. Matt has wiped my tears away, all of them.

  There is a heartbeat of silence, and I wait in it, quivering with the need to say I love you, too.

  Finally, Matt says,” Be with your daughter, Maggie. I’ll wait.”

  I take comfort from that, comfort that I can walk away without crying again.

  o0o

  Beth is waiting for me, too, in the kitchen wh
ere she’s standing at the blender making a milkshake.

  “For the baby,” she says, pouring herself a glassful. “Want one?”

  I start to say, No, I’m dieting then change my mind. Now is not the time to be righteous and correct. When somebody is hurting, you get down where they are so you can share the burden. You make little sacrifices.

  Not that drinking a milkshake is much of a sacrifice. She’s added bananas and strawberries, and it’s the best thing I’ve had lately.

  “You brought the marshmallows.” She immediately starts putting together the things we need for s’mores -graham crackers, chocolate, even nuts. I figure when she leaves I can add an extra mile to my morning walks, and then I feel guilty for thinking ahead to the time when my own daughter will be gone.

  “Daniel called while you were at the store,” she says.

  I glance down at my blouse to see if Matt removed all the tell-tale evidence of my latest deception. It’s hard to think of myself as a deceitful woman, but it looks like that’s what I’ve become. I say to myself, It’s all for a good cause, I’m protecting the people I love.

  “Good. What did he have to say?”

  “I don’t know. He tried my cell and the house phone both, but I didn’t answer.”

  I punch the button on my machine and listen to the messages. “Beth, I need to talk to you. When you get this message, call me. I’m at home.” Then, “Beth, call me. Please,” and “I know you’re there, Beth. Pick up, honey. Please. “

  “Maybe you should talk to him,” I say.

  “I have nothing to say to him.” She drains the last of her milkshake, then starts on the s’mores, and I’m glad to see she hasn’t lost her appetite. Her color is back, too,

  “Mother, do you think we can go shopping. I want to look for baby clothes.”

  I take this as a good sign.

  o0o

  Shopping for baby clothes makes it all real, and both of us tear up in front of the display of christening dresses. So perfectly white, so pristine, so hopeful.

  “This one,” I say, picking out the simplest one, tiny tucks running down the front, the hem edged with lace that looks like the kind Granny made using tiny silver needles and thread so delicate she had to sit under a good strong light to see.