Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “Julia,” Amy said carefully. Leaning to see around Dianne, she looked across the room. “Does she have her own playhouse?”

  “Well, no,” Dianne said slowly. Couldn’t Amy see?

  Amy must have picked up on her surprise, because she blushed. “I just thought, her being your daughter and all …”

  “That Dianne would build her a house,” Alan said, stepping in to help.

  “Julia is …” Dianne searched for the words to explain.

  But Amy couldn’t contain herself anymore. She walked straight over to Julia, bent down to look her in the eyes. Her face was full of warmth and friendliness.

  “Gaaa,” Julia said.

  “Hi, little girl,” Amy said, crouching beside Julia’s chair.

  Dianne stepped forward, wanting to get Amy away from her.

  “Let them …” Alan whispered, grabbing Dianne’s wrist.

  “Pretty little girl. Oh, you pretty little girl,” Amy said.

  “Gaaa,” Julia said again. She had seemed happy to see Alan, but she was utterly entranced with Amy. Julia’s hands drifted in their strange ballet, gently tracing the air in front of Amy’s face.

  “How old are you?” Amy asked.

  Dianne wanted to reply for Julia, but she found that her voice wouldn’t work.

  “She’s eleven,” Alan said.

  “Almost my age,” Amy said, holding Julia’s left hand. She spoke not to the adults but to Julia herself. “I’m twelve.”

  “Deeee,” Julia said. “Deee … Gaaaa …”

  “She’s not surprised,” Dianne said quietly to Alan. “Most people see Julia and think she’s so much younger.”

  “Amy’s young for her age,” Alan said. “I got it into my head she could babysit for Julia. Maybe not by herself, but when you or your mother are around. It would give you a little free time, and I think it would be good for Amy. I mentioned it to your mother….”

  “You don’t have to look after us, Alan—”

  “I know that,” he said.

  “This is my father’s watch,” Amy said, holding out her wrist for Julia to touch. “It weighs a ton, but I don’t care. I’ve had it eleven years now, and it’s still running strong. It was being fixed at the jeweler’s the day he died. He was a hero, he went down with his ship….”

  Dianne had to turn away. She walked to the window and stared out at the garden. The tall, purple irises swayed in the wind. A wild cat hunted along the edge of the rushes. Dianne felt like howling. Emotion flooded her chest, and she had to hug herself hard to keep it in. Alan came up behind her; Dianne felt his presence before he said a word.

  “Do you hear the way she talks to Julia?” Dianne asked, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I do,” Alan said.

  With her back to Alan, Dianne covered her face and wept silently. Her body shook, and she felt his fingers brush her shoulder. His hands were big, and they felt strong and steady. She felt the heat of his fingers through her thin shirt. Across the room, Amy was telling Julia about the puppy at her house, imitating its bark so well, she sounded like a young dog.

  “Julia’s never had a friend before,” Dianne whispered.

  “I don’t think Amy has either,” Alan whispered back.

  Amy began stopping by occasionally after school. By the second week she was coming every other afternoon. Julia liked Amy and seemed soothed by her. So often Julia seemed to be fighting demons in her head. She would wring her hands over and over. When Amy was there, she didn’t struggle as much. She seemed more placid and serene, and she smiled.

  By two-thirty each day, Dianne had started glancing out the screen door of her studio, listening for Amy’s footsteps. Amy would run so fast across the marshy land, she sounded like a young filly in the homestretch, bursting through the screen door with a wild grin. She was a little hellion, awkward and messy. Dianne had taken to making lemonade, and she would set out the pitcher on a tray bearing glasses, oatmeal cookies, and square linen napkins.

  Their second Tuesday together, they had their snack at the small table beside Julia’s chair. Sunlight streamed through the windows, and the marsh smelled warm and salty. They ate a cookie in silence, then, as was becoming their custom, talked for a few minutes before Dianne returned to work.

  “I love these glasses,” Amy said, admiring one. Old juice glasses, they were enameled with tiny baskets overflowing with wildflowers. Each petal was a distinct, nearly microscopic brushstroke of scarlet, cobalt, cadmium yellow, or sap green.

  “They were my grandmother’s,” Dianne said.

  “All your things are … so careful.”

  “How?” Dianne asked, tickled by the word.

  “Everything is just so. You make things seem like they matter. Beautiful glasses, real cloth napkins, the way you tie your hair with a piece of marsh grass …”

  “That’s just because I couldn’t find an elastic,” Dianne said.

  “Hmm,” Amy said, glowing as she took a small bite of cookie. Dianne didn’t think of herself as careful: Sentimental was more like it. She liked things to remind her of other people. She had loved her grandmother, and she had loved Tim’s. Dorothea McIntosh had lived in a meadow, and she had tied her hair with long grass and flower stems. She had married a sea captain who brought jewels and rosewood back from a trip to India, and Dianne had her diamond and sapphire earrings tucked safely away.

  Dianne held the cup close to Julia’s chin, guided the straw to her lips. The first day, Amy had tried to feed Julia a bite of cookie, and Dianne had had to explain that Julia could choke. She loved the way Amy accepted Julia’s reality without question, without trying to change it, make it better, conform to hers. Amy leaned forward with a napkin to dab away the lemonade that spilled down Julia’s chin.

  “Thank you,” Dianne said.

  “Rats, don’t thank me,” Amy said, blushing.

  “Your mother doesn’t mind you coming over here?”

  Amy shook her head.

  “Does she work?” Dianne asked, trying to get a feel for what made Amy want to spend the afternoons away from home. Maybe her mother didn’t get home till five or six; probably Amy didn’t like staying in an empty house.

  “No,” Amy said, looking down. “She’s home.”

  They didn’t say anything for a while after that. There was a rhythm developing to their time together. They didn’t have to do anything to rush it along; it was growing at its own pace. Dianne tried not to ask herself why this meant so much to her, that a twelve-year-old girl from the neighborhood would want to hang around with her and Julia.

  Amy was helping her see something. This was how life would be if Julia were normal: a mother and daughter going through their days together. Dianne was a mother with so much to give. Alan had put them together; Dianne was grateful, but sometimes she felt she was already beholden to him for too many things. And he was always there, even when she least expected him.

  Last Wednesday she had driven over to the library to drop off her mother’s lunch. From behind the glass partition in the librarians’ office, Dianne spotted Alan jogging up the library’s wide front steps.

  “It’s Wednesday,” Lucinda said, following her gaze. “He visits on his day off.”

  “I forgot,” Dianne said, holding Julia.

  “Just a minute,” Lucinda said. “Be right back.”

  Her mother took the towel she had folded on her desk and walked out to the front desk to meet Alan. Rocking Julia, Dianne watched them greet each other. Alan’s T-shirt was soaked, and wet hair hung in his eyes. She half rose, thinking she’d walk out and say hi. This was her chance to thank him for sending Amy over.

  Lucinda gestured, beckoning him around the desk. She directed Alan behind a corkboard partition. From behind the glass Dianne watched him glance around to make sure no one was looking. Then he pulled his wet shirt over his head. His body was strong and glistening with sweat. He dried himself off with the towel, and she watched him rubbing the mat of curly dark hair on h
is chest.

  Dianne was frozen in place. She couldn’t move or look away. She felt like a spy, the library voyeur. The blood was pumping to her brain, leaving her mouth open and dry. Alan’s skin was ridiculously smooth, glossy and taut across his muscles. The two young librarians had walked in to have their lunch. They giggled, and Dianne realized they were checking Alan out too. She mumbled a few words.

  The pediatrician’s body. She stared at it: his flat stomach, the narrow line of dark hair trailing into his waistband. His thighs looked massive, the rest of his legs long and lean. When he had finished drying himself, he pulled his wet shirt back on. As his head popped through the opening, his eyes met Dianne’s.

  She blinked and looked down. The door opened and Lucinda walked in. The younger librarians were teasing her about keeping Alan to herself. Lucinda bantered back. Julia waved her arms, trying to call her grandmother. When Dianne glanced up, remembering that she still hadn’t thanked Alan for sending Amy to them, he had disappeared.

  Having finished the little Victorian yesterday, Dianne was beginning a Greek Revival for the seventh birthday of a little girl in Old Lyme. This required building a portico and positioning ionic columns. While Julia dozed, Amy sat on a high stool watching Dianne work. Stella, still unsure about the newcomer, perched in a wicker basket on a shelf, spying from on high.

  “Why doesn’t Stella like me?” Amy asked. “Cats usually do.”

  “Stella is a squirrel,” Dianne said.

  “No, really. Why doesn’t she like me?”

  “She does. She’s just very shy,” Dianne said, measuring the distance between columns. “Her mother was killed by foxes the day she was born, and she was raised by a mother squirrel in the stone wall out back.”

  “Poor little thing!” Amy said, staring at the cat, gray-striped with a brown undercoat. “She looks a little like a squirrel…. How do you know?”

  “I found her mother’s body. I’d see the tiny kitten going in and out of the wall. After a couple of weeks, when she got too big, the mother squirrel stopped nursing her and kicked her out. She probably thought her babies were in danger—”

  “Cats hunt squirrels,” Amy said. “They were her prey.”

  “Eventually, but she was still too young. I had to feed her warm milk with a doll bottle. She was tiny, the size of a teacup. I’d hold her in one hand.”

  “She must have been so cute,” Amy said in a small voice.

  “And wild. At night she’d tear through the house. Once a bat got in, and she chased it till dawn. When people dropped by, she’d hide so completely, I sometimes couldn’t find her all day.”

  “Hide where?”

  “In my sweater drawer, under my quilt-she’d flatten herself out so much, you couldn’t even see a bump in the bed. Up the chimney, on the smoke shelf.”

  “And now she’s up there, hiding in the basket,” Amy said, tilting her head back to see. Stella was there watching them, her eyes an unusual shade of turquoise.

  “See, it’s not you,” Dianne said.

  “I thought she’d know me by now,” Amy said. “I’ve been coming almost a month.”

  “She doesn’t even meow-she chatters like a squirrel. In the morning she peeps. Sometimes I call her Peeper. She’s just a very unusual cat.” Dianne hated the idea of anyone thinking they were rejected, left out, unloved. Including Amy. She came over every day now, sat with Julia, talked to Dianne for hours on end. Gazing up at Stella, Amy seemed thin and unkempt, a lost ragamuffin.

  “You raised a wild cat with a bottle …” Amy said, turning to Dianne. Her eyes were full of pain. “People don’t usually do that.”

  “You would,” Dianne said.

  “How do you know?” Amy asked.

  “I can tell how much you care by the way you are with Julia.”

  Clearing her throat, Dianne began to make Stella’s sound, the chirping of a squirrel. “Eh-eh. Eh-eh.”

  The cat perked up her ears. Julia awoke, her eyes rolling up to Stella’s hiding place. Dianne kept on making the noise. Amy sat very still, and Julia’s hands began to drift, conducting her imaginary orchestra. Tentatively, Stella slid out of her basket. With great stealth, she came down from the shelf.

  This was a game Dianne often played with her cat. Stella could play; Julia could not. Amy watched openmouthed.

  Afternoon sun bathed the room, and Dianne tilted her watch crystal to catch the light. Directing it against the white wall, she sent the bright disk of reflected light careening along the baseboard. Stella began to chase it, making the “eh-eh” noises as she stalked her prey.

  “She thinks it’s alive,” Amy exclaimed. “She wants to catch it!”

  “You try it,” Dianne said. “With your father’s Timex.”

  “Okay,” Amy said, and Julia sighed.

  Dianne watched Amy get the hang of it, sending the tiny moon along the floor, Stella chattering in hot pursuit.

  “Watch, Julia,” Amy laughed. “You have one crazy cat!”

  Julia strained to focus. Her hands moved rapidly. Her eyes seemed to follow the action, and when Amy sent the tiny moon onto Julia’s tray and Stella jumped into Julia’s lap, Amy squealed with surprise and delight.

  “Stella means ‘star,’” Dianne said. “I named her because when I first brought her home, I found her sitting in the window one night, staring at the sky. She always looks toward the same constellation.”

  “Which one?” Amy asked.

  “Orion.”

  “I love the story of Stella,” Amy said.

  Dianne nodded. As she watched Julia and Amy pet the cat, she tried not to let Amy’s comment make her feel too sad. She thought of loving the strange, the unlovable. She knew the value of play, of imagination and symbolism. It was every mother’s dream to see her child grow and develop, and to help the child along that path. Dianne had been able to do that more for a cat than for her own daughter.

  Leaving the girls alone, she went silently over to her workbench, back to the columns. She loved the ionic capitals; their scrollwork reminded her of moon shells. The girls’ voices drifted over. They were soft and harmonious; at their feet, the cat chirped and peeped.

  Listening, Dianne thought: This wasn’t the life she would have chosen. Dianne loved to talk, tell stories, exchange tales about the mysteries of life. Her child, her darling, her beacon of light, was incapable of reflection. Gazing into her eyes, she saw blankness, as if Julia’s eyes saw only inward, deep into her own soul-or nothing at all. Dianne pretended that Julia spoke in words and gestures, and sometimes she was more able than others to admit her own maternal lies.

  Somewhere along the line Dianne had turned into an eccentric who talked to cats. Then, since she couldn’t communicate with her daughter, she captivated another woman’s child. To escape the hurt of her life, she imagined that her daughter was aware. That Julia was more, somehow, than a broken human body.

  Much more, Julia. Much more, my love.

  Dianne glanced over: The girls were talking. Amy was imitating the cat, and Julia was expressing her pleasure with the elaborate hulalike motion of her arms. Dianne bent over her work, positioning columns.

  “Does your mother want you home?” she called to Amy.

  “Nope,” Amy called back.

  Amy rarely spoke of her family, but Alan had given Dianne to understand that all was not well in the Brooks household. Dianne had respect for all mothers, no matter how troubled or imperfect, and she took a long breath to make herself mindful of that fact.

  “What do you think we should do for my mother when she retires?” Dianne asked, changing the subject, knowing that she had touched a raw nerve. Amy was clearly not ready to open up to Dianne about the goings-on at home.

  “A surprise party,” Amy said.

  “She says she’ll kill us if we do that.”

  “My friend Amber’s mom took her parents on a cruise for their golden anniversary.”

  “A cruise …” Dianne said, mulling it over.

&n
bsp; “Dianne,” Amy said. “Julia’s wet.”

  “Okay, be right there,” Dianne said.

  The game was over, and Stella crept back to her basket. Dianne went to the bathroom and returned with a clean diaper. During Amy’s first visits, Dianne had taken Julia behind the rice-paper screen to change her. They were beyond that now. Julia was eleven. If she went to camp, to gym class, to sleep over at a friend’s house, other girls would see her naked. Amy was Julia’s friend, her good friend.

  “Here’s powder,” Amy said, handing Dianne the bottle.

  “Thank you,” Dianne said, sprinkling it on.

  “I love baby powder,” Amy said to Julia. “It’s better than perfume. I wear it to school.”

  “Laaa,” Julia said.

  “I always think she means flower,” Dianne said, “when she says la.”

  “She does,” Amy said solemnly. As if she knew more about Julia’s language, could hear more, translate better, than even Dianne herself. Dianne was silent, wishing Julia would say something else. But she didn’t.

  “La, Julia,” Amy said. “Marigold, lily, daisy, and rose.”

  Julia blinked her eyes, rolling her head.

  Dianne listened, watching Julia play with her friend, glad she had told Amy the story of Stella. Maybe someday she’d tell Amy the other story, the story of Julia.

  The story started with the McIntosh brothers.

  Dianne had dreamed of love her whole life. Her parents were wonderful people, devoted to each other and to her. She had always wanted that for herself, to find that kind of true love. Dianne’s mother had been an orphan, and she claimed Emmett had saved her. Dianne was shy, and she lived at home long after other kids her age had left. It was as if she knew that the real world was harsh, that she had to be ready before she stepped out into it.

  Taking after her father, she went into carpentry. He had built her a playhouse when she was a little girl, and Dianne made one for the third birthday of a daughter of a childhood friend. She had modeled it after that white house on the harbor, the place where she fantasized someday living with a family of her own, and every mother who saw it wanted one for her own child.

  Alan was then a new pediatrician in town and he commissioned Dianne’s father to build shelves in his office. Alan was young, just getting his practice off the ground, and Emmett had liked him a lot. He had suggested he buy one of Dianne’s playhouses for his waiting room. Dianne had gone to the medical arts building to get a feel for the space, and Alan had come out to meet her.