Follow the Stars Home (5 page)

“For so long,” Dianne said, her eyes brimming, “all I wanted was for her to grow.”

“I know … How's her eating?”

“Good. Great. Milk shakes, chicken soup, she eats all the time. Right, sweetheart?”

Julia looked up from the table. Her enormous eyes roved from Dianne to Alan and back again. She looked upon her mother with waves of seeming joy and adoration. Her right hand rose, making its way to Dianne's cheek. As always, Dianne was never sure whether Julia meant to touch her or whether the movement was just a reflex, but she bowed her forehead and let her daughter's small fingers trail down the side of her face.

“Gaaa,” Julia said. “Gaaa.”

“I know,” Dianne said. “I know, sweetheart.”

Dianne believed her daughter had a sensitive soul, that in spite of her limitations, Julia was capable of deep emotion. Out in the waiting room, with those mothers staring at her, Dianne had started singing along with her, to help Julia feel less alone and embarrassed.

Eleven years earlier she had given her deformed baby the most elegant, dignified name she could think of: Julia. Not Megan, Ellie, Darcy, or even Lucinda, after Dianne's mother, but Julia. A name with weight for a person of importance. Dianne still remembered a little boy looking through the nursery window, who started to cry because he thought Julia was a monster.

Julia sighed, long and low.

Dianne touched her hand. When she had dreamed of motherhood, she had imagined reading and drawing and playing with her child. They would create family myths as rich as any story in the library. Dianne's child would inspire her playhouses. Together they would change and grow. Her baby's progress, her creative and intellectual development, would bring Dianne unimaginable joy.

“That's my girl,” Alan said, bending down to kiss Julia. As he did, his blue shirt strained across his broad back. And now that the exam was over, other feelings kicked in, the other part of why it was hard to be around Alan. Dianne folded her arms across her chest.

She could see his muscles, his lean waist. The back of his neck was exposed. Staring at it, she had a trapdoor feeling in her stomach. She thought back to when they'd first met. To her amazement, he had asked her out. Dianne had been a shy girl, flattered
and intimidated by the young doctor. But then she had gone for his brother instead-dating a lobster-man made much more sense, didn't it? Life had thrown Dianne and Alan together for the long haul though, and she couldn't help staring at his body.
Oh, my God
, she thought, feeling such an overwhelming need to be held.

“I can't believe Lucinda's retiring,” Alan said. “Lucky for you and Julia-you'll have a lot more time with her.”

“I know.” Her mother was the town librarian, and even though she wasn't leaving until July, people were already beginning to miss her.

When he looked over his shoulder, Dianne bit her lip. This was the crazy thing: She had just been staring at Alan's body, wishing he would hold her, and now she had the barbed wire up, on guard against his familiar tone, against his even thinking he was part of the family. She couldn't handle this; the balance was too hard.

“The library won't be the same without her.”

Dianne glanced at Alan's wall of pictures, catching her breath. He and her mother shared the same clientele: Alan's patients learned their library skills from Mrs. Robbins. Julia couldn't use the library, had never even held a book, but many nights she had been lulled to sleep by her grandmother, the beloved and venerated storyteller of the Hawthorne Public Library.

“We're lucky,” Dianne said to Alan, half turning away from Julia.

Alan didn't know what she meant; he hesitated before responding.

“In what way?” Alan asked.

“To have that time you mentioned.”

Wringing her hands, Julia bowed her head. She
moaned, but the sound changed to something near glee.

“My mother, me, and Julia,” Dianne continued. “To be together after she retires. Time to do something important before Julia …”

Alan didn't answer. Was he thinking that she had left him off the list? Dianne started to speak, to correct herself, but instead she stopped. Holding herself tight, she stared at Julia.
My girl
, she thought. The terrible reality seemed sharper in Alan's office than it did anywhere else: The day would come when she would leave them.

“Dianne, talk to me,” he said.

He had taken off his glasses, and he rubbed his eyes. He looked so much like Tim just then, Dianne focused down at her shoes. Coming closer, he touched her shoulder.

“I can't,” she said carefully, stepping away. “Talking about it won't change things.”

“This is nuts,” he said. “I'm your friend.”

“Don't, Alan. Please. You're Julia's doctor.”

He stared at her, lines of anger and stress in his face.

“I'm a lot more than that,” Alan said, and Dianne's eyes filled with tears. Without his glasses he looked just like his brother, and at that moment he sounded as dark as Tim had ever been.

Stupid young woman
, Dianne thought, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks. She had been full of love. She had chosen the McIntosh she had thought would need her most, take every bit of care she had to offer, heal from the sorrows of his own past. Tim had been brash and mysterious, afraid to open his heart to anyone. Dianne had thought she could change him. She had wanted to save him. Instead, he had left her alone with their baby.

“A lot more than that,” Alan said again.

Still, Dianne wouldn't look at him. She bent down to kiss Julia, nuzzling her wet face against her daughter's neck.

“Maaa,” Julia said.

Dianne gulped, trying to pull herself together. Kissing Julia, Dianne got her dressed as quickly as possible.

“It's cool out,” Alan said, making peace.

“I know,” Dianne said, her voice thick.

“Better put her sweatshirt on,” Alan said, rummaging in the diaper bag.

“Thanks,” Dianne said, barely able to look him in the face. Her heart was pounding hard, and her palms were damp with sweat. He kissed Julia and held her hand for a long time. She gurgled happily. The adults were silent because they didn't know what else to say. Dianne stared at their hands, Alan's still holding Julia's. Then she picked up Julia, placed her in the wheelchair, and they left.

By the time Alan finished seeing all his patients, it was nearly six-thirty. Martha said good-bye, rushing off to pick up her son at baseball practice. Alan nodded without looking up. His back ached, and he rolled his shoulders, the place he stored the pent-up tension of seeing Dianne. He knew he needed a run.

He had Julia's chart out on his desk, studying her progress since the last visit. Maybe he should have done an EKG today. But he had run one two weeks before and found the results to be within normal limits.

Hawthorne Cottage Hospital was a great place to have healthy babies, to schedule routine procedures. Few pediatricians did electrocardiograms; most didn't
even own the equipment. Alan had bought his as soon as it became obvious that Julia was going to need frequent monitoring. She had specialists in New Haven, but Alan didn't see any reason for Dianne to drive all that way when he could do the test himself.

Alan had a picture in his mind. Dianne was standing in the doorway, waiting for him to come home. She wore her blond hair in one long braid, and she was smiling as if she knew all his secrets. Her blue eyes did not look worried, the way they did in real life. She had finally decided to let Alan love her and help her; she had finally figured out that the two things were really the same.

“Ah-hem!”

Looking up, he saw Amy Brooks standing in his doorway. Her brown hair was its usual tangle, she was wearing one of her mother's pink sweaters over lint-balled red leggings. Her wide belt and turquoise beads completed the ensemble.

“Oh, it's the young lady who lives in the playhouse,” he said. With his mind on Dianne and Julia, he felt lousy for forgetting about Amy.

“You saw me?” she asked, breaking into smiles.

“With those beautiful green eyes looking out the window-how could I miss?”

“I was hiding,” she said. “Sick brats were pounding at my door, but I put spells on them and sent them back to their mamas. What do they all have?”

“Never mind that,” Alan said. “What brings you to my office today?”

“I like that little house,” she said, turning her back to stare at the black-cat clock, its tail ticking back and forth each second. “I like it a lot.”

“I'll have to tell the lady who made it,” he said.

Amy nodded. She moved from the clock to the Wall. Scanning the gallery, she found her pictures in
the pack. Last year's school photo, one from the year before, Amy at Jetty Beach, Amy sitting on her front steps. She had given him all of them.

“Are there any other kids with four pictures here?”

“Only you.”

“No one else has more?”

“No,” Alan said.

Wheeling around, she bent down to read the papers on his desk. Alan heard her breathing hard, and she smelled dusty, as if she hadn't taken a shower or washed her hair in a while. Her forearms and hands were already summer-tan, and she had crescent moons of black dirt under her fingernails.

“Julia Robbins …” Amy read upside down. Gently Alan slid the pages of Julia's chart under a pile of medical journals. He knew that Amy was jealous of his other patients. She was one of his neediest cases. Alan had the compulsion to help children who were hurting, but he knew some things couldn't be cured.

Amy came from a lost home. Her mother was sinking in depression, just as Alan's mother had drowned in drink thirty years earlier. She didn't hit Amy or give him any clear cause to contact Marla Arden, Amy's caseworker. But the state had gotten calls from neighbors. There were reports of Amy missing school, the mother fighting with her boyfriend, doors slamming, and people shouting. They had an open file on Amy. But Alan knew the terrible tightrope a child walked, loving a mother in trouble. They were always one step from falling.

Amy had latched on to Alan. From her first time in his office, she had loved him all out. She would clutch him like a tree monkey. His nurse would have to pry her off. She would cry leaving his office instead of coming in. Her mother slept all day to kill
the pain of losing her husband, just as Alan's mother had drunk to survive the death of his older brother, Neil.

“Come on,” he said to Amy. “I'll drive you home.”

She shrugged.

Alan knew the cycles of grief. They spun all around him, taking people far away from the ones they were meant to love. His mother, Amy's mother, Dianne, and Julia, even his brother Tim. Alan wanted to save them all. He wanted to heal everyone, fix entire families. He wished for Julia to live through her teens. He wanted Dianne to meet Amy because he believed they could help each other. People needed connection just to survive.

“I'll drive you,” he said again.

“You don't have to,” Amy said, starting to smile.

“I know,” he said. “But I want to.” Doctors were like parents; they weren't supposed to have favorites, but they did. It was just the way life was.

Amy worried that someday Dr. McIntosh would stop her from coming to his office. She didn't need to be there: She was as healthy as a horse, her fourth favorite animal following dolphins, cats, and green turtles.

“I only got two spelling words wrong today,” she said.

“Only two?” he asked. “Which ones?” Amy frowned. She had wanted him to congratulate her: She had never gotten so many right before.
“Judge
and
delightful,”
she said.

“How'd you spell
judge?”

“J-u-j-e,” she said. “Like it sounds.”

“Did you read those books I gave you?” Amy fiddled with a loose thread. Dr. McIntosh
had bought her two mystery books he thought she'd like. Amy had never read much. She kept feeling as if she were missing the key all other readers received at birth. Plus, it was hard to concentrate at home, where there were real mysteries to be solved.

“Do you have a maid?” she asked, changing the subject.

“A maid?”

Did he think she was dumb for asking?
Amy slid down in her seat, feeling like an idiot. They were in his station wagon, driving past the fishing docks. This part of town smelled like clams, flounder, and powdered oyster shells. Amy breathed deeply, loving it. Her father had been a long-liner, and fishing was in her blood.

“You know, someone to clean your house,” she said.

“Not exactly,” he laughed, as if she had said something outlandish.

Amy tried not to feel hurt. He was rich, a doctor-he could afford it! He didn't wear a wedding ring, and once she had asked him whether he was married and he'd said no. So he was alone, he needed someone to take care of him. Why shouldn't it be Amy?