Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “Beeee,” Julia said, her voice the barest squeak.

  Taking his niece from Dianne, Alan looked into Julia’s eyes. A change had occurred. Usually wide and observant, today her eyes were narrow and listless, sticky with sleep. Alan’s heart lurched at the difference. The EMTs clambered up, ready with the stretcher, but Alan waved them back. Head down against the rain, cloaking Julia with his jacket, he followed Dianne down the plane stairs to the waiting ambulance.

  Dianne waited while tests were done again. She had sat in Hawthorne Cottage Hospital many times, and she knew many of the nurses. They let her use the nurses’ kitchen to make tea and instant soup; they insisted she help herself to chocolate pudding, Jell-O, and saltines. Dianne thought of her mother and Amy on the road, wishing they would get home soon. Reaching into her jeans pocket for a tissue, she pulled out pebbles from the black sand beach.

  “How are you doing?” Alan asked, sitting beside her. He wore a white lab coat, his stethoscope around his neck.

  “Okay,” Dianne said, clutching his hand. “Have you seen Julia?”

  “She’s having an MRI.”

  “She had one in Halifax,” Dianne said, her voice strained. Julia had been through so many tests: blood tests, urine tests, EEG, EMG, MRI, bone scans, muscle tone tests. MRIs were so confining. She was strapped to a board, expected not to move, and she didn’t understand what the technicians were saying, when it would be all over, when she could see her mother.

  “I know,” Alan said. “But we have to do our own. She’ll be finished soon. How are you holding up?”

  “Oh, me,” Dianne said, shaking her head. It hurt her to even think of complaining, with everything her daughter was going through. How could she mention a headache, sore back, pain in her heart, when Julia was fighting so hard? “I’m fine.”

  Alan put his arm around her. Months before, she might have pulled away. She nestled against his chest, feeling his breath rise and fall and trying to let it calm her, take some of the fear away. She stared down at her lap, where he was holding her hand.

  “What’s wrong with her?” she whispered.

  “We don’t know exactly,” Alan said.

  “We had such a wonderful time,” Dianne said, remembering their golden beach days, the magical boat ride, the Ferris wheel, the apple gardens, the sand castles they had all built. “Julia was so happy.”

  “I got your postcard yesterday,” Alan said. “It sounds like it was an amazing trip.”

  “Was it too much?” Dianne asked, holding his hand tighter. “Did I tire her out? Overstimulate her nervous system? Was the trip too strenuous, all that bumping on long roads?”

  “No,” Alan said. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “The seizure happened so suddenly. There was no warning—”

  “There never is, Dianne. It’s not uncommon with Rett, several of her conditions. We’re narrowing down the problem.”

  “Just like always,” Dianne said, bowing her head. “Just like we’ve been doing all her life.”

  Dianne knew there was no cure for Julia. She had neurological disorders, progressive in nature, getting worse as time went on. Growth was slowed, muscle tone reduced, eye contact diminished. Dianne had come to see Julia’s hand wringing and waving as forms of expression. She knew that as Julia went downhill, the communication could stop entirely. Dianne had always expected that she would be prepared.

  “I’m scared,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “I know you are,” Alan said.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “We don’t know. You’re going to keep loving her,” he said. “I’m going to keep taking care of her. Other than that, we don’t know.”

  Dianne bit her lip. She nodded. Bells sounded in the hall, and the dinner cart rolled by.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said in a voice so quiet she didn’t think Alan could possibly hear her. “That we had you to come home to.”

  “Thank God you came home,” he whispered back, holding her even more tightly. His body felt solid and strong. Dianne thought of all the times he had comforted her. She had taken it for years, taken his kindness for granted, but now all she felt was overflowing gratitude, and she knew she’d never take him for granted again. She didn’t remember ever needing him as much as she did just then.

  “How many does that make?” Lucinda asked.

  “Let’s see,” Amy said, squinting at the list. “Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia-two provinces. Then the actual border between Canada and the United States, that’s three. Then Maine, that’s four.”

  They were counting borders, seeing how many they would cross before arriving back home in Hawthorne. Lucinda wanted to keep them occupied, to avoid dwelling on what might be happening to Julia. She could barely stand it herself, and Amy was so nervous, she kept asking how many more miles.

  “Is Julia okay?” Amy asked.

  “I hope so,” Lucinda replied.

  “What happened when she started shaking like that?”

  “She had a seizure.”

  “Is that like a fit?” Amy asked.

  “Pretty much,” Lucinda said.

  “I was afraid,” Amy said quietly, “when the blood started coming out of her mouth.”

  “She was biting her tongue,” Lucinda said. “She couldn’t help it.”

  “I thought she was dying,” Amy said.

  “Mmm,” Lucinda said, staring at the road.

  “Will she, Lucinda? Will Julia die?”

  “Someday, honey.”

  “Someday we all will,” Amy said. “Like my dad and Emmett, like Dr. McIntosh’s brother Neil. But especially when it’s someone young, like Neil or Julia, it doesn’t seem right. How can it happen?”

  “God decides it’s time,” Lucinda said. “He decides He needs that person in heaven more than we need them on earth.”

  “Why does He need Julia?” Amy asked, watching the pine trees go by. “More than He needs me?”

  “For one thing,” Lucinda said, “it’s a mystery. For another, it hasn’t happened yet. All we know is that Julia had a seizure and Alan wanted her to come home for tests. She’s been through a lot more than this, honey. Julia is amazing.”

  “I miss her,” Amy said, fraying a hole in the knee of her jeans.

  “I know. This big old Winnebago seems empty without her and Dianne. But we have to focus on the positive things. We had a great vacation, all together, with wonderful memories to keep our whole lives.”

  “We have our souvenirs.” Amy grinned, thinking about the withered apples they’d gathered from the old orchard, drying in the galley.

  “Exactly,” Lucinda said. “And we’re heading home to people we love. Dianne and Julia …”

  “My mother,” Amy said.

  “Alan.”

  “I call him Dr. McIntosh.”

  “Mmm,” Lucinda said.

  “I didn’t want vacation to end, but now I can’t wait to get home,” Amy said.

  “Neither can I,” Lucinda said.

  The highway was easy to drive. There wasn’t much traffic for a late summer day. Lucinda had joined an informal caravan of motor homes heading west on the Maine turnpike, driven mainly by old folks like herself. She spied a couple about her age. The man had white hair like Malachy Condon’s, and that reminded her of the tape. She had stuck it somewhere …Feeling the visor overhead, she found it.

  Lucinda plugged the cassette into the tape player. Silence stretched out for a long while, and then the music began.

  “Dolphins,” Amy said.

  Lucinda nodded, driving along.

  The beautiful crooning filled the air. The dolphins’ songs were ancient and pure, achingly sweet, full of loss and love. Listening, Lucinda thought of her family.

  She imagined dolphins swimming together, who had been together since the beginning, who had lost babies and husbands and fathers. Her eyes filled with tears, and as she brushed them away, she glanced over to see Amy doing the same thin
g. They were heading for home, where they belonged.

  Dolphins were magical. Amy listened to their music and knew they were underwater angels. They swam and frolicked, leaping straight out of the sea with joy They wore cloaks of silver water that sparkled like diamonds when they hit the light. Dolphins lived in the ocean, but they breathed the air. Had they been people once upon a time?

  Amy thought of her father. She had lost him so long ago. For many years she had had a hole in her heart, whenever she thought of how her life might have been if he were with her. Her mother would have stayed happy. There would have been no fights, no misery, no Buddy.

  But most of all, Amy would have had her father. She could have grown up as his little girl, being guided and protected through life. He could have helped her to walk, taught her how to ride a bicycle, helped her to do her homework. Russell Brooks had been a good man.

  Amy’s father was with the dolphins now. She listened to them singing, tried to hear his voice. There was love in the sound. Had her father been a man of love? Had he hated to leave the dock every trip, wishing instead to stay home with his wife and baby? Amy had been that baby. She was his only daughter, his flesh and blood!

  Lucinda had spoken of mystery. Amy knew what she meant. Why did life have so many questions and not enough answers? She tried with all her might to block out Amber’s hateful words about her father. Amy wanted to trust her own heart, what it was telling her. Could she love her father so much if he was anything less than wonderful?

  Amy listened to the dolphins. Love …

  What was it about love? She was heading home. It was almost time for school to start. What would it be like to go home? She loved her mother so much, but she felt shy about seeing her. Being with Lucinda and Dianne had spoiled her in some ways, for the kind of love that spoke out loud sought the light. She wanted a family that talked to each other. And deep down she was afraid that Buddy would come back.

  Buddy had been her mother’s boyfriend for a long time. The universe didn’t hold many mysteries more confusing than that one. How could a woman love a man like that? As the road slipped by, Amy closed her eyes and tried to let the dolphins teach her all about it, so it would never happen to her.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Lucinda said.

  “I want to be a dolphin,” Amy said.

  “Or at least sing like one …”

  “No,” Amy said. “Actually be one. Me and Julia. We could swim free, playing the whole time, go looking for our fathers.”

  “Oh, honey,” Lucinda said.

  “They’re both at sea,” Amy said. “Mine is underneath, hers is in a boat. I love mine so much, Lucinda. I want my mother to remember….”

  “Remember what?”

  “Being loved by him,” Amy said. “When we were all together. When things were good.”

  “Sometimes remembering the good,” Lucinda said, “can be the most painful thing there is.”

  Amy scrambled out of her seat, retrieved the shriveled apples from the galley, then buckled herself back into place next to Lucinda.

  “What good are happy memories,” Amy asked, holding the little brown apples, “if they make us so sad we don’t want them anymore?”

  “When Emmett first died,” Lucinda said, “it took me a whole year to be able to look at his picture.”

  “But you look at it now?” Amy asked.

  “All the time,” she said.

  Amy stared at the apples. They didn’t have any pictures of her father up in their house. She had one of her own, tucked into her bureau drawer. The dolphins clicked, their sound friendly and fun. In the background, others cried. She tried to figure out how creatures could be happy and sad at the same time. It seemed to be what Lucinda was telling her, if only she could figure it out.

  Seizures, by themselves, were not serious, although their underlying causes could be. Julia stabilized enough to go home. She gradually became more alert, her hand waving approaching its usual vigor. Dianne felt overcome with relief. She had been through this before: a bad scare for which Julia had had to be hospitalized, from which Dianne hadn’t been sure she would recover.

  Alan drove them back to Gull Point. Coming around the bend, Dianne half hoped to find the Winnebago parked in the driveway.

  “Mom called from Haverhill, Massachusetts, last night,” she said. “She should be here anytime. I can’t believe I stuck her with the whole drive home.”

  “I’m sure Amy’s doing a good job as copilot,” Alan said.

  “I should have known it was just a seizure,” Dianne said, looking over her shoulder at Julia. “I should have kept my cool, known it was going to pass.”

  “You know what I wish?” Alan asked, looking across the seat. “I wish you’d know what a good mother you are. The word should does you no good here. You made a call, and it was the best one.”

  Dianne looked down at their hands, fingers laced together. She glanced up at Alan’s eyes, and she saw them looking back with warmth and curiosity. She settled back in her seat, smiling at him across her shoulder. Those kisses in the library had stayed with her all through Nova Scotia. The breeze blew through the car, making her skin tingle.

  “It’s good to be home,” she said.

  “The marsh is beautiful today,” he said, staring out at the golden blanket of reeds. After yesterday’s storm, the air was cool and clean. The breeze blew briskly, moving the tall grass as if it were one shimmering sheet of gold.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Dianne said.

  “No?”

  “I missed you,” she said.

  Alan smiled as if she had just made him the happiest man in the world. “You have no idea how much I missed you.”

  “Julia and I never went away like that before,” she said. “We had an incredible time. I’ll have to tell you all about it, show you the pictures we took, the souvenirs we brought back. We saw the most beautiful beaches in the world, but you know …” She smiled, and she had to swallow hard in order to go on.

  “What?” he asked gently.

  “It felt so good to see you at the airport.”

  “Didn’t you know I’d be there?”

  Dianne tilted her head. “Yes. I did. That’s the amazing thing. I knew you’d be there-you always are.”

  “That’s what family is for,” he said.

  “What it’s supposed to be,” Dianne said, looking from Alan to Julia. She thought of Tim, and she thought of the bad things that had happened under Amy’s own roof.

  Then it was time to get Julia into the house. They carried her inside, opened the door and windows to air the place out, let the September breeze blow through. Julia was happy to be home. She looked around and patted the air. Dianne sensed her looking for Lucinda, Amy, and the animals.

  “They’ll be home soon,” she said.

  “Gaaa,” Julia squeaked.

  Alan carried Julia upstairs. Dianne walked behind, and she watched how tenderly he cradled the child in his strong arms. He brought her into her room, and he put her down on the changing table. Dianne stepped forward to take over, but Alan was already doing it.

  It was such a little thing, watching him change Julia. She kicked her heels against the pad, her hands moving weakly. Alan talked to her the whole time, and she stared at his face. Dianne watched him bend down to kiss her. Reaching up, Julia grabbed his glasses. Julia’s gnarled fingers were wrapped around Alan’s steel frames; they were momentarily frozen face-to-face.

  “Daaa,” Julia said.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” Alan said. “You can’t believe how much I missed you.”

  Dianne caught her breath. She reached for his hand, and he took her in his arms.

  Later that night Lucinda, Amy, and the animals were safely back home in Connecticut. The air was as chilly as it had been in Canada, so Dianne lit a fire. Lucinda popped the dolphin tape into the player. They all sat around in non-moose pajamas, updating each other on the last week, reliving their trip. Stella lay on a windowsill, a
nd Orion curled in front of the fire.

  “I’m just glad to be in a house without wheels,” Lucinda said.

  “Yes, I like this campground best of all,” Dianne said.

  “Dleee,” Julia said weakly.

  Amy lay beside her on the floor, staring into the fire.

  “You’re quiet, Miss Brooks,” Lucinda said, nudging Amy with her toe.

  “Julia sounds different,” Amy said.

  “She’s just recovering from the seizure,” Dianne said. “It’s normal for her to seem quiet for a week or so.”

  “Oh,” Amy said, still looking worried.

  Lucinda didn’t want to say anything, but she agreed with Amy. Julia seemed listless, as if some of the life had gone out of her. Her eyes weren’t as bright as before, and her voice seemed to be coming from far away. Julia’s regression had always happened in small ways. When she was one, she was able to pick up small toys. But by the time she was two, she had begun to lose her pincer grasp.

  Her interest in toys had gone. The hope that her sounds would become words had begun to fade. She was slipping into her own world, and nothing Dianne tried could pull her back. People would urge Dianne to stimulate her more: read to her more often, make her play with building blocks, wrap her finger around Dianne’s and get her to pull herself up.

  “Don’t they think I know?” Dianne would cry. “Don’t they think I read the parenting books, that I want to be a good mother?”

  “You’re a wonderful mother,” Lucinda would tell her, but Dianne would cry anyway. It was as if she believed she had failed Julia in some terrible way before birth, cursed her with bad genes, driven away her father.

  “Gaaa,” Julia said now.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Lucinda said. “Do you feel better? Did you have a marvelous vacation?”

  “Gaa,” Julia breathed.

  “When she says ‘Ga,’ she’s saying ‘Granny,’” Amy said.

  “That’s what I’ve always thought,” Lucinda said.

  “I wonder how many of our castles are still standing,” Amy said. “We built them pretty high up, away from the tide, didn’t we?”

  “The tide has a way of finding all sand castles,” Lucinda said. “It seems to be the tide’s mission on earth.”