Follow the Stars Home (16 page)

“Let's not get into this,” Dianne said.

“Dear …”

“Mom, please. I'm not mad. I swear I'm not. But I like things the way they are. Alan takes care of Julia. I need him for that, you know? I don't want to mess it up with chicken soup and dropping by and thinking maybe, someday …”

Lucinda watched her pour the hot chocolate into blue mugs. Dianne's hands were shaking a little; the spoon clattered against the rim. Stella jumped up on the counter to lick a spot of milk, and Dianne leaned down to let the cat rub her cheek.

“Someday what?” Lucinda asked.

“Someday we could be friends like we used to be.”

Lucinda didn't answer. She remembered way back, to the early days of Dianne's involvement with the McIntosh boys.

One day, just before Dianne's twenty-seventh
birthday, she bloomed. She turned gorgeous and radiant: their carpenter swan. Dianne had wreaked havoc between two brothers without even realizing it. She had had no sense, at least at first, she'd really wounded Alan: She had not understood his attraction to her in the first place. She must have seen the hurt in Alan, though. After a while it was unmistakable.

So Dianne came home with a boyfriend and his brother-Tim and Alan-and the three of them had become nearly inseparable.

“Emmett loved those boys,” Lucinda said. Although she had wished things had worked out between Dianne and Alan, Emmett had felt more comfortable with Tim. Never mind that Emmett was the smartest man Lucinda knew, he had that old blue-collar inferiority complex about being around men with degrees. “Both of them.”

“I know.”

“He liked seeing you so happy.” Lucinda thought back on the years they'd all had together. Emmett had gone out lobstering with Tim many afternoons. He had built cupboards for Alan's exam room. He'd been overjoyed by the news of Dianne's pregnancy, but he'd died of a heart attack a month later. And then Tim left. Eleven long years ago.

“Dad never even knew Julia,” Dianne said, staring into her cocoa.

“No, but he was thrilled the day you told him you were pregnant,” Lucinda said, taking her daughter's hand.

“So was Tim.”

“Tim couldn't help himself,” Lucinda said. “Poor weak thing.”

“He never even saw her,” Dianne said. “He just ran.”

“A cowardly man,” Lucinda said. “Does not deserve you.”

“He always told me I made his life so perfect.”

Lucinda hesitated, but she reached across the pine table to take her daughter's hand. “That was the problem,” she said quietly. “He thought perfect could be only one way.”

Lucinda watched Dianne. Dianne traced the knots and grain in the old table with her free hand. Her father had made it decades earlier, the first year of his marriage to Lucinda.

“I miss Dad,” Dianne said.

“He rejoiced, Dianne. That's the only word for it. He went out into the backyard, shouted to the stars. He
bellowed
that he was going to be a grandfather.”

“But he died before that happened,” Dianne said.

Lucinda cleared her throat, gathering herself together. Talking about Emmett, almost twelve years after his passing, brought him as close as ever.

“Oh, I don't see it that way,” Lucinda said. “I don't believe he did either.”

“But, Mom,” Dianne said. “He died in my fourth month….”

“Yes, but don't say he wasn't a
grandfather
,” Lucinda said. “That would upset him just terribly! He was very attached to your baby, honey. Just because they never officially
met
doesn't mean much at all.”

“She'd have upset him,” Dianne said.

“He would have loved her,” Lucinda said steadily.

“Her own father left her!”

Well, there was nothing Lucinda could say to that. It was true, men were more squeamish about sickness and such things. Emmett had never been able to sit up through Dianne's croup, chicken pox, strep throats. He hadn't changed many of her diapers, and
he had gagged the one time Lucinda had asked him to clean her ears.

“She has us, darling,” Lucinda said.

“I know.”

Lucinda saw her staring at the table, tracing the grain with her fingernail. These late-night kitchen talks were worth the moon to Lucinda, and it broke her heart that Dianne would never be able to have them with Julia. Love came in such odd shapes, with such indecipherable rules, it was a wonder families got by at all.

“Emmett would have loved her. He was that baby's grandfather,” Lucinda repeated, gazing up toward Julia's room.

Dianne nodded. She looked so frail and lovely, but she had a constitution of steel. Her hands were delicately boned, the skin as rough as Emmett's had been. Strangers stopped her on the street and congratulated her for not putting her baby into an institution. Lucinda knew Dianne wanted to find Tim's ship and sink it.

As Lucinda often did in times of stress, she pictured her husband. There he was, sitting at the head of the table. His leonine head, full of white hair, was nodding, his deep blue eyes steady as ever. He was chewing on one of the yellow pencils he had always carried to mark measurements on wood.

He had been difficult in many ways. Moody and intense, he had kept to himself. If Lucinda had had her way, they would have gone out more often. They would have given dinner parties. Lucinda had imagined literary evenings, with people reading their favorite poems, acting scenes from plays, drinking wine. Emmett would have laughed her out of town before letting that happen.

Early on, he had left the raising of Dianne to her.
He was a little nervous around his baby girl, afraid he might harm such a fragile creature just by touching her. Emmett had yet to realize the strength and resilience of babies. So Lucinda, a full-time librarian, had stuck Dianne's playpen behind the front counter. But as Dianne grew, her father had started taking her in his truck. She would ride through town, standing on the seat, her arm slung around his neck. Love can take time to grow-even between a father and a daughter.

She thought of Alan, of the way he was with Julia. Wishing she could find something to say that would make Dianne see him in a different light, Lucinda smiled. “Well, I hope my chicken soup does some good. Alan is Julia's uncle, after all.”

“He did look pretty sick,” Dianne said.

“He was positively green around the gills when he came into the library.”

Dianne laughed. Staring off into space, she seemed to be seeing something that amused her.

“You find it funny,” Lucinda began, “to see Alan McIntosh laid up with the flu?”

“No,” Dianne said. “I was just thinking of his arms. He's got that myopic-professor look down pat, but under his frayed blue shirt, he's actually pretty muscular.”

“Surprised you never noticed before,” Lucinda said.
She
certainly had, and so had the other librarians.

“Amy has a crush on him,” Dianne said.

“Do you like having Amy around?”

“Yes,” Dianne said. Her eyes scrunched up as if she didn't like the thoughts in her head. “She reminds me so much of how Julia would be if she could talk. And she seems to like Julia so much-she treats her like a real person.”

“Oh, honey,” Lucinda said.

“I wonder about her mother …”

“Maybe she can't talk to her. Maybe she needs to talk to you.”

“That's how it feels,” Dianne said.

Lucinda didn't think this was the time to point out that Alan had sent Amy to them. Her matchmaking instincts were buzzing, and she knew she'd better slow down. She didn't know what Dianne, in her present mood, was liable to read into any comment Lucinda might make about their helpful pediatrician. So she just smiled across the table and waited for her daughter to smile back.

One afternoon in the beginning of June, waiting for a second coat of paint to dry, Dianne discovered something else they all had in common. She and Julia had always loved driving: Something about the rhythm of the road, the warm breeze in their hair, the sense of moving ahead, of being together in a small space, brought them comfort. And now it was revealed that Amy loved riding too.

Dianne's Ford pickup was dark green and shiny. She had stickers from Mystic Seaport, the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium, and the Connecticut River Museum on her back window. Julia's wheelchair lay in the flatbed, folded under a blue plastic tarp in case of rain. With Julia buckled into her special car seat, set in the middle, Dianne drove with her elbow out the open window.

“We're up so high!” Amy said.

“Ever been in a truck before?” Dianne asked.

“When I was a baby-my father used to have one. My mom told me. He needed it for his fishing gear. I wish we still had it. I'd get my mom to park it
somewhere till I was sixteen, then I could drive and drive….”

“My dad had one too,” Dianne said. “Trucks are great for hauling things. Wood, fishing gear, wheelchairs … right, Julia?”

Julia gazed straight ahead. In the truck she didn't have to move her head from side to side. The world was spinning fast enough, whizzing by her window at forty miles an hour. She clasped and unclasped her hands.

“Can I ask you something?” Amy asked.

“Sure,” Dianne said.

“Do you hate it when people call girls chicks?”

“By people, you mean guys?”

“Yeah, at school. They call us chicks. One guy called me something bad because I wouldn't let him copy from my test.”

“Good for you for not letting him copy.” Dianne glanced across Julia, saw Amy frowning at her knees. “What'd he call you?”

“Two things.
Bitch and
the C-word.”

“Poor fellow,” Dianne said, shaking her head as if she were filled with true compassion and sorrow for the nameless sixth-grader. Admitting only to herself how murderous she'd feel if anyone ever said that to Julia.

“Why do you call him that?” Amy asked, looking confused.

“’Cause he's so limited. Imagine revealing your ignorance that way, in the middle of school for everyone to hear. Pathetic, really. I feel sorry for him.”

“Yeah …” Amy said.

“So, the boys call you chicks?”

“Mmm. Is that okay?”

“What do you think?”

“I kind of like chicks. My friend Amber and I
talked about it. We like the word, and we like chicks themselves. Cute, peepy little things. All busy and happy and feathery.”

Julia sighed and hummed.

“I love feeling feathery,” Dianne said, turning on the radio. “But I'm picky about what I want boys calling me. Like, you and Julia can call me a chick, but I don't want men doing it.”

“Because it means something different when they do, right?” Amy said, her face screwed up as she worked on getting this ancient and vexing truth.

“I think so,” Dianne said.

“But when it's just us together-you, me, and Julia-we can be chicks?”

“Sure.”

“Huh.”

“To men we're women.”

“Women?” Amy asked doubtfully. “I'm only a sixth-grader.”

“Still,” Dianne said. “It's in the attitude.”

Julia tilted her head, blinking at the sun.

“Women,” Dianne said, “are strong.”

“My mother says
lady.”

“That's okay,” Dianne said. “Everyone has their own path. They get strong in their own ways. For me, it means I want people to call me a woman.”

“Even us? Me and Julia? We have to call each other women?”

“Nah,” Dianne said. “As long as we know who we are, we can relax when it's just us. If we want, we can be chicks.”

“In one week I'm out of school. Then next year I'm in seventh grade.”

“Wow,” Dianne said, meaning it.