Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “You’re like your friend Dr. McIntosh,” Dianne said.

  “Yeah,” Amy said. With Dianne in her life, she had stopped going to his office so much lately. Besides, his office was downtown, near her school. But the mention of his name still filled her with a warm glow.

  “How’s he doing anyway?” Dianne asked, gently splashing the oars.

  “Dleeee,” Julia said.

  “Oh, he’s fine. I called him yesterday.”

  “Hmm,” Dianne said.

  You and he should get married, Amy nearly blurted out, but she stopped herself. She’d been thinking it for a while. They seemed so comfortable together. They had known each other forever. And they both loved Julia. But life at home had made Amy very sensitive to people’s feelings, and she had the idea Dianne wouldn’t want her to say that about her and the doctor.

  Dianne was in a tie for third, in the most-important-alive people in Amy’s life. Her mother was first, Dr. McIntosh second, and Dianne and Julia tied for third. Amy’s father reigned over them all, but he was dead in heaven. This was an earthly competition.

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?” Amy asked.

  “No,” Dianne said.

  “Oh, another only child,” Amy said.

  “I always wished for sisters,” Dianne said.

  How often had Amy wished for sisters? Girls to share the secrets of home life with, concern for their mother, hatred of Buddy. Older sisters would know what to do. They would care gently for Amy, leading her out of the maze. “Who’s your best friend?” Amy asked.

  “I don’t know. My mother, I guess.”

  Amy was silent. She wished so much that she could say the same thing, but she knew it was impossible. Her mother and Lucinda were about as far apart as two people could be.

  “How about you?” Dianne asked. “Are you close to your mother?”

  Amy coughed, pretending not to hear the question.

  “How are the plans coming?” she asked. “For the retirement surprise?”

  “I don’t know,” Dianne said. “I’m stymied.”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  “It’s funny,” Dianne said. “Last night I had a dream of Julia graduating from school. In it I wanted to take her someplace, and when I woke up, I was thinking we should all take a trip.”

  “To Disney World!” Amy blurted out.

  Dianne laughed. As if Julia could understand, she began to croon. Amy felt so excited. Did Dianne mean Amy too? She had said “We should all take a trip….” Did that include Amy?

  “Or somewhere,” Dianne said. “The Grand Canyon, or the Rocky Mountains … the Mississippi River, Prince Edward Island. My mother loves Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables. We could go visit the story settings. That’s what I thought when I woke up from my dream.”

  “How would you get there?” Amy asked, praying Dianne would correct her and say we again. But she didn’t.

  “I don’t know,” Dianne said. “My dream didn’t get that far.”

  Julia’s hands moved as if parting the air in front of her face.

  “There’s always tonight,” Amy said, feeling solemn inside. “Maybe you’ll dream again tonight.”

  Dianne rowed them through the marsh. Julia dozed at their feet. Whenever she slept, she curled up into a ball, just like the puppy at home. Amy saw Dianne watching her. Dianne reached down to brush Julia’s damp hair off her brow, leaving her hand there for a minute. The expression on Dianne’s face was serene. It wasn’t always that way. A warm breeze blew through the reeds, and the sun beat down. Amy was glad they had their hats on and Julia’s umbrella up, and she wished they could just keep rowing forever.

  The sky was white and the air was hot. Waves of heat rose from the road. Dianne and the girls had stopped for ice cream, and they were eating in the shade of a picnic area.

  Dianne hadn’t slept well the night before. Julia had tossed and turned. She’d torn off her diaper twice. The second time, she had been out of breath, and Dianne had held her until her pulse returned to normal, until the rise and fall of her chest matched the gentle rhythm of distant waves breaking over the Landsdowne Shoal. When she fell asleep, she curled back into the fetal position.

  “Mmmm,” Amy said, licking her ice cream cone. “I love orange pineapple.”

  “I love black raspberry,” Dianne said. She and Julia were sharing a dish, and she spooned a cold bite into Julia’s mouth.

  “Why did you name her Julia?” Amy asked, letting the orange ice cream melt down the backs of her hands.

  “Because it sounds dignified.”

  “Dignified?” Amy asked, frowning the way she did when she wasn’t positive exactly what something meant.

  By the way she talked, Dianne knew she hadn’t been read to as a child, and that filled her with great sadness. “Yes,” Dianne said. “I wanted everyone to know she’s important.”

  “But she is important,” Amy said as if that was the most obvious fact in the world.

  “I know,” Dianne said, thinking of Tim sailing away.

  “What’s her biggest wish?”

  “I don’t know,” Dianne said.

  They were sitting in a grove of trees, and the wind blew overhead, making the leaves slap like cards in bicycle spokes. Dianne took a spoonful of ice cream.

  “Where’s the farthest place Julia’s ever been?” Amy asked.

  “Just here,” Dianne said. “Places around Hawthorne.”

  “I wish we could take her somewhere,” Amy said. “On a trip.” A huge motor home had rumbled into the picnic area. An old man was driving. Parking in the shade, he and his wife got out to stretch their legs. They had a collie on a leash, and the woman walked it in the grass.

  “In one of those,” Dianne said. She laughed, and so did Amy, staring at the Winnebago.

  “Julia,” Amy said, taking her hands. “Pretty girl!”

  Julia wrung her hands, gazing at the sky.

  “How about you?” Dianne asked, turning to Amy. “What’s your greatest wish? Where’s the most incredible place you’ve ever been?”

  “Oh,” Amy said. “I don’t know.” She sounded offhand, almost as if she didn’t matter. “I don’t know nothing but Hawthorne.”

  Dianne hesitated but only for a moment. She was the librarian’s daughter, after all. “Anything but Hawthorne,” she said gently. “Not nothing. You’re too smart to use bad grammar.”

  “Thank you,” Amy said. And Dianne suddenly felt sorry she’d said anything.

  “Tell us something about yourself,” Dianne said. “We spend so much time together, and you never talk about yourself.”

  “I have a dog at home. He sleeps on my bed and guards my room,” Amy said, looking down. “He loves me.”

  “I’ll bet he does,” Dianne said. “What’s his name?”

  Amy didn’t reply. She bit at her fingernail, then looked at her wrist.

  “He doesn’t-” she said. “He sleeps in a cage.”

  “Amy …” Dianne began, confused by the lie.

  “My father left me his watch.”

  “I know,” Dianne said.

  “That big motor home-” Amy said, trying to laugh. “Would you really take a trip in one?”

  “I was just kidding,” Dianne said.

  “It’s like that story, where a whole family lived in one big shoe. I feel like you and Julia are going to climb in and walk away.”

  “Shoes that walk away can come back,” Dianne said.

  Amy shrugged. She clicked the toe of her shoe against the wheel of Julia’s wheelchair. Julia had been wringing her hands, but she stopped. Her hands began their ballet, tracing the air between her and Amy’s faces.

  “They can, Amy,” Dianne said.

  Amy nodded, but she didn’t speak.

  Dianne’s heart was bursting. She wanted so many things. To help Amy, to be a good mother, to be a good daughter, to give Julia the life of a real girl-take her different places, let her feel new air, let her know she matter
ed. Take her to New York to see The Nutcracker at Christmas, something every mother and daughter should do together at least once. Her mother was the person retiring, but Dianne felt like the one growing old.

  “I know how it feels to be left,” Dianne said out loud.

  Amy turned to look at her.

  “It hurts so much. I can’t even pretend it doesn’t.”

  Amy was crying, but she didn’t want Dianne to see. She just kept playing with Julia. Dianne had the lonely feeling of being the only parent around, the only adult. She wished her mother were there. Even more, surprising herself, she wished Alan were.

  But why should that be surprising? He cared about them all: Amy, Julia, and even Dianne. Dianne felt the tension building up in her chest, and was about to cry. At times like this, she felt such an overwhelming need for him. He was the only one who knew, really knew, what she went through. She wanted to be held by someone gentle, by Alan, but she couldn’t. She had married Tim instead. Dianne knew her tragic flaw, had recognized it after all this time: She didn’t know how to choose a man who would really love her.

  She sat very still and watched her daughter and her friend write silent poetry in the warm air, in the sacred little grove of birch and pine trees, old picnic tables, and melted ice cream, and she imagined how it would feel to share times like these with a friend of her own. With Alan.

  The next night, Julia cried out; when Dianne went to her, she found her child panting as if she had run a race. Dianne did what she always did: checked for obstructions in her throat, the wetness of her diaper, things sticking into her skin. Julia seemed bigger; was it possible she’d grown an inch in the night? Dianne’s own heart was beating out of her chest. Grabbing the phone, she called Alan’s answering service, told them it was an emergency.

  “Hi, Dianne,” he said, calling back five minutes later. Although it was three in the morning, he sounded wide awake. “What’s the matter?”

  As it often happened, the minute Dianne called him, Julia seemed better. Her breath was returning to normal, her heart slowing down. Perhaps she had had a nightmare. Sweaty and distressed, she was crying softly.

  “Julia was breathing too hard. She’s better now….”

  “I’ll come over.”

  “No, Alan,” Dianne said, feeling Julia’s pulse. “I’m sorry I called. Honestly, she’s—”

  “Look. I’ll meet you at the emergency room or I’ll make a house call. It’s your choice.”

  Holding Julia, feeling her sobs starting to subside, Dianne hated the idea of taking her out into the night. They were in their nightgowns, sleeveless white cotton that let the cool air blow across their warm skin. Crickets were chirping, and a setting half moon flooded the marsh in thin butterscotch light.

  “A house call, I guess,” Dianne said. She thought back to that flood of great need for him in the picnic area, and she realized her hands were shaking. She tried to keep her feelings out of this; Julia was in distress, and she needed her doctor. “Thank you, Alan.”

  She got dressed.

  Parking his old Volvo outside the Robbinses’ house, Alan grabbed his medical case and walked to the door. He had done this a hundred times, stopped by when Julia was having a problem. But tonight his heart was pounding. He was there to help his niece, and he was in love with her mother. They had been going through this for years. Lights were on in the kitchen, and he could see Dianne sitting at the table. Her head was down, her face in shadow.

  Walking up the pathway, Alan thought about false alarms. His service woke him three or four times a week, and by the time he called the parents, the emergency would have subsided. The coughing had stopped, the fall out of bed hadn’t been serious, the yell had been worse than the injury. From Dianne’s voice, Alan had been able to determine Julia’s crisis had passed.

  Yet there he was. Nothing could have kept him away. She could be bitter and angry till the day they both died, and he’d keep showing up. Nightbirds called, and animals having sex or killing each other screeched in the marsh. Taking a deep breath, Alan tapped on the kitchen door.

  “I feel really stupid,” Dianne said.

  “She’s breathing fine?”

  “Not only that,” Dianne said. “She’s fast asleep.”

  They stood in the doorway, toe to toe. Moths flew around the porch light, bumping against the glass. Dianne wore jeans and a big white shirt. Alan wondered whether she slept in the shirt. He saw her beautiful body, her soft curves, and he wanted to hold her against his own beating heart.

  “Let me take a look at her anyway,” he said after a while.

  Nodding, Dianne let him in. She led him upstairs, down the short hallway. Alan could have found his way blindfolded. Over the past eleven years he had walked the route so many times, the rhythm of his footfalls had become silent meditation; a prayer of protection for Dianne’s daughter.

  They entered Julia’s room. Dianne always kept a night-light burning in there. It cast a dim orange glow, like the half moon outside, on the sleeping child. Her hair fanned out on the pillow. The only time he ever saw Julia peaceful was in slumber. Dianne stood so close, he could feel the heat coming off her body.

  “See?” Dianne whispered. “She’s okay.”

  Taking out his stethoscope, Alan gently rolled Julia flat on her back. Her normal sleep breathing had a slight whistle, like air slowly leaking from an inner tube. Dianne slid down the straps of Julia’s nightgown, and Alan listened to her heart and lungs.

  “See?” Dianne said.

  Closing his eyes to hear better, Alan listened harder.

  “She’s fine,” Dianne said again.

  Every seven beats, Julia’s heart made a little click. Alan had been listening to it for a long time. The click had first materialized when she was three. Back then, it had come once every ten beats of her heart. The summer before it began coming once every eight. And now it was every seven; Alan had noticed the change last Christmas.

  “See?” Dianne whispered, although her eyes looked worried.

  Moving the stethoscope down, he listened to the fluid gurgling through her bowels. Palpating her belly, he felt for swelling. Gently unhooking her diaper, he glanced inside.

  “Well, she’s fine,” Alan said suddenly, putting his stethoscope away.

  They went downstairs.

  “I’m sorry for panicking,” Dianne said.

  “You were right to call me.”

  “I was?” she asked. The worry had disappeared from her forehead when he had put away his stethoscope, but it came straight back at his pronouncement, so Alan put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

  “I just meant it’s better to be extra careful. We’ve been watching her….”

  Dianne waited for him to finish his sentence, hanging on every word. But Alan couldn’t finish it. He didn’t know what to say next. Dianne understood Julia’s situation better than anyone. Standing in the kitchen, they stared at each other.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “With Julia?”

  “Tell me,” she said, her eyes wild.

  Alan wanted to take her hands. He wanted to hold her, tell her he had loved her all these years. He was so filled with love for her: Couldn’t she see? Life was short, and people threw the time they had away. Doctors were supposed to know that better than anyone.

  “What?” Dianne asked.

  “When you change her diaper,” he began. “Do you look?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I look!”

  “She’s in puberty,” he said.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Dianne seemed to be in shock. She wrinkled her nose, shaking her head.

  “Um, is that coffee?” he asked, gesturing at the pot on the stove.

  “Yes, I just made it,” she said. “Please, sit down.”

  Alan took a seat at the old pine table. He had been there plenty of times before. He had had his very own spot, back when Dianne and Tim were first married. Now, Dianne sat beside him, pretty and flushed.
Her skin was lightly tanned, glistening in the warm night. Her lips were moist and full. He played with a spoon to keep from holding her hand.

  “Puberty, really?” Dianne asked.

  “What?”

  “Julia …”

  “She’s young, I know,” he said. “Some girls start maturing earlier than others.”

  “But how can you tell?” Dianne asked, sounding at once eager and embarrassed. Alan had been through this moment with plenty of mothers. Usually they were so attuned to their daughters’ bodies; they remembered their own experiences, and they were on the lookout for signs. Had Dianne thought there wouldn’t be any for Julia?

  “She has three pubic hairs,” Alan said as clinically as he could. “The areola of her right breast is somewhat enlarged.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Dianne said. “My little Julia.”

  Alan sipped his coffee. He watched Dianne cover her mouth. Behind her hand was a smile, and it spread to her eyes. For one shimmering moment she let herself have this. Her bright eyes stared up, maybe imagining a vision of the teenage Julia. Her freckled face was radiant, and again Alan wanted to take her hand. He felt something powerful too: He’d been watching Julia grow up as long as Dianne herself.

  Dianne looked at him across the table. Her smile deepened, and she stared at him so long, he felt himself smiling back. She reached out one finger, halfway across the pine table, and Alan touched it with one of his.

  “I didn’t think she would … develop that way,” Dianne said.

  “She’s surprised us every step,” Alan said.

  “She has, she has,” Dianne said.

  “When she breathes hard, like she’s doing tonight, I think it’s due to hormonal surges. She’s in flux, you know? That brings on emotional changes.”

  “Oh, I remember those,” Dianne said.

  Reaching into his medical case, Alan took out a paper bag. As he watched Dianne’s face, he saw her eyes register something like embarrassment.

  “Thanks for the soup,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I thought it was you. I was half awake, and I saw you. But then I told myself I had to be delirious. I had some fever.”

  “Jungle madness,” Dianne said.

  “Exactly. I figured it had to be someone else. But no one came forward.”