Stars to Lead Me Home: Love and Marriage (A Novel)

by Peggy Webb

  “Get out.” I jerked the door open, shaking with fury and fear.

  “Aw, Maggie. I was just complimenting you.”

  “No, Graden. You insulted me. Leave. Now.” He left, but the last thing he did was beg me not to tell his wife. He needn’t have asked. I had no intention of telling her, for I was certain that she already knew the truth. Most wives do, but as long as nobody tells they can pretend everything is all right.

  After Graden left I went to Walmart and bought a chain lock for my door then hired someone to install it. Now, thanks to Mr. Fixit and my tool kit, I don’t need a man for little household projects.

  Our group leader drones on about grabbing life by the throat and dealing with the S word, and I wonder how you can deal with sex, or the lack thereof, it if you can’t even say it out loud.

  When she finally announces the break, I turn in my notebook. “I won’t need this anymore.”

  I grab my purse and head outside, filled with a vaulting sense of freedom. Here is Maggie Hudson, who plans to recover all by herself except for a little help from dear friends, thank you very much.

  The night is sharp and clear with light from a full moon pooling on the sidewalks and a brisk wind rattling the leaves in the magnolia tree outside the building. I brace myself against the brick wall and lift my face to the heavens, looking for stars. They spangle the sky and I watch them for a long time, wishing I knew all their names instead of just a few.

  Okay, I tell myself. The workshop didn’t work out, but that’s not the end of the world. The constellations are still in place, aren’t they? Life goes on.

  “When the divorce is final, that’s when you’ll start the true healing,” Jean told me once. She was at my apartment making tea and I was lying in bed with a cold cloth on my head feeling guilty because if anybody deserved a cold cloth on the head, it was Lillian. It was last year, early one Sunday morning in the spring. I remember because church bells were ringing, and she’d brought daffodils.

  “Someday this will all be behind you, Maggie, and we’ll sit on the floor and drink cheap wine and laugh about it.”

  I didn’t believe her then because my lawyer had just called to tell me that Dick not only refused to discuss settlement, but had fired his lawyer who advised him to settle.

  But now I believe. I can’t say why, only that spring is here again and the earth smells new and there’s something in the wind that feels like a promise.

  Back in my apartment I kick off my shoes and put on a pink silk kimono that makes me feel like that other Maggie, the famous one in Tennessee Williams’ play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” There’s a stack of papers waiting for me to grade, and a basket of laundry that needs folding.

  Suddenly I think of Lydia driving off with her windows open, her left arm stuck out, waving. The empty spot inside me won’t be filled until I hear her voice. If I call Beth’s house phone, maybe I can make some progress with her, too.

  “Get ready, Beth. I’m finished with games.”

  I march to the phone, the sound of my own voice steeling me for my oldest daughter’s icy reserve. I hear the phone ring and somebody picks up.

  “Oh . . . it’s you,” Beth says.

  She doesn’t even call me Mother, and I think about the baby album in the top of my closet. Inside is an envelop that contains a tiny blond curl tied with pink ribbon. Beth’s curl from her first haircut. I’d cried when I put in the envelope.

  I wouldn’t even let the movers handle the album. It was among the precious possessions I tucked into a shopping bag and personally carried into my apartment.

  “Yes, Beth,” I say. “It’s me. Your mother.”

  “I guess you want to speak with Lydia.”

  “Actually, I would like to talk with you.” There is silence at her end of the line. “Beth, honey ...”

  “I’ll get Lydia.”

  This hurt is a wild river, set to drown me. But I can flow with it. I know I can.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It’s Saturday and I’m sitting on the fire escape at the back of my apartment building watching the sparrow search for crumbs on the roof of the Chamber of Commerce across the alley. Balancing my orange juice on one knee, I tear off a wedge of croissant and toss it toward the sparrows. My aim is off, and the bread bounces off the light pole and lands in the alley.

  “Breakfast alfresco,” I say to the birds that swoop down after the crumbs.

  If I have to stay here much longer I’m going to suggest that the landlord paint the sides of the building blue and plant morning glories in pots close enough to the light pole so they can climb upward. I can put a lawn chair down there in the alley and maybe get one of those small plastic swimming pools so I can soak my feet. Or I might put goldfish in the pool, then enlist the aid of the young people who live in my building to help take care of them.

  When I get back to my apartment, I hear my cell phone ringing. I race through the apartment, trying to remember where I left it. By the time I discover it on the bedside table, it has stopped ringing. The missed call says Lillian.

  I call her back but get nothing except an endless ringing that shreds my nerves. My hands shake as I dial her home number and get the same results.

  I call Jean and yell her name.

  “What?” She’s barely up. I can hear the sleep still in her voice. Jean loves nothing better than sleeping late on Saturday morning.

  “I’m heading to Lillian’s house.” I tell her about the calls and my awful premonitions, still so revved up you could hear me clear to the moon.

  “I’ll meet you there.” There’s a loud crash and then silence.

  “Jean?”

  She says a word that would parch peanuts. “I dropped the phone.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Glad?”

  “I thought you’d had a heart attack.”

  “You worry too much, Maggie. Go check on Lillian. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  o0o

  Lillian lives in a sprawling glass and stone house overlooking the reservoir, which is not surprising considering her love for viewing stars over the water and Carl’s knack for making money. He’s a stockbroker, sought after and successful. Lillian no longer teaches because she has to. She teaches for the love of it.

  I exceed the speed limit going to her house, but even so, it takes me a while to reach the reservoir. By the time I park my car and ring her doorbell, I’ve worried myself into a sweating, frazzled mess. The doorbell echoes in a house that sounds empty. Shouldn’t the girls be listening to loud music? Shouldn’t Carl have already answered the door, the Wall Street Journal in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other?

  “Lillian!” I press my face to the glass panels, but all I see is a wide expanse of polished wooden floors scattered with oriental rugs that cost more than my car. I picture her lying on one of those rugs, her heart suddenly stopped and her body turning cold. “If you’re not at this door by the count of ten, I’m breaking and entering!”

  The silence inside that house screams through me. If somebody walked up behind and said, boo, I’d leap over the roof.

  Still, I make a determined show of counting. By the time I get to five I hear footsteps, see Lillian looking like a rumpled ghost, hair uncombed and pink terry cloth robe untied and dragging the floor. I stand there trying to figure out how to breathe. I stand there wondering what in the world I can say to uplift a dear friend who has obviously fallen apart.

  The door opens and we both stare, speechless, before we fall into each other’s embrace.

  “I shouldn’t have called. Oh, Maggie!” Lillian starts to cry, not hard racking sobs but a quiet outpouring of grief that rips both of us in half.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  “Where’re Carl and the girls?” I glance around for signs of her family.

  “He took them out for the day.” I lean back and my look says it all. He left you like this? “I told him to.”

  “Have you ha
d breakfast?” She shakes her head. “Coffee?”

  “The thought makes me sick.”

  I lead her into a living room that’s so orderly it might have recently been photographed for Architectural Digest, the kind of room that screams Lillian doesn’t live here anymore. Before her diagnosis, there were open books scattered around, a basket full of yarn, a pattern book for a new sweater Lillian wanted to knit, a baseball glove dropped by Nancy, her tomboy teenager. The housekeeper Carl hired attacks lively clutter the way a crocodile would attack a dead chicken. Or maybe a live one, too, for all I know.

  “Sit here.” I ensconce Lillian on the sofa with plenty of pillows at her back. “I’m going to draw you a bath.”

  Already, I’m planning how I’ll counter her argument, but Lillian doesn’t say a word. Relieved and terrified, I walk through a house as familiar to me as my own. There, through the French doors, is the swimming pool where we gather every Fourth of July. There is the kitchen island where Jean and Lillian and I congregate to mix lemonade with laughter. There, through an arched opening, is the sun room where the three of us stretch out on wicker loungers and talk about everything from books and movies to politics and religion.

  Jean and Carl’s bedroom suite used to be upstairs, but he added one downstairs when they found out about her heart. I go straight through to the bathroom, my eyes taking in the total lack of clutter, my feet sinking into the deep pile of the carpet, and my heart cracking at the lifeless feel of the rooms. Her tub is enormous, a garden tub big enough for two.

  My heart squeezes, and I think about Halbert, and then strangely enough, Dick as he was when we married, just scared kids, really, trying to do the right thing and make a go of it.

  I turn on the faucets and select bubble bath, rose-scented because I know that’s Lillian’s favorite. I lay out fluffy white towels, adjust her bath pillow then make sure her rose-scented soap is in exactly the right place so she won’t have to lift herself off the pillow to reach it.

  When I’m satisfied, I fetch Lillian. She’s so docile it scares me. In the way of friends who know each other without talk, I lead her into the bathroom and help her out of her robe. Her pajamas hang on her as if the essential Lillian has melted away and left nothing but bones and skin as white as the Milky Way.

  I think about the way disaster sneaks up on you, and no matter what you do, you are still unprepared.

  “Do you need help getting out of your pajamas and into the tub?’

  “I don’t feel weak. Just depressed.”

  I drag a vanity chair next to the tub.

  “Maggie, what are you doing?”

  “Getting comfortable. I’m going to keep you company.”

  “No, you are not.” Lillian is fierce when she says this, her jaw set and her eyes unnaturally bright. Still, if she has razor blades and sudden death in her mind, I can’t see it.

  “Okay, then. If you need anything, yell. I’ll be in your bedroom. Within earshot.”

  “Okay.”

  “That means I’ll hear everything, Lillian.” Even a tear tracking down her cheek. And she might as well not think I’d let anything keep me out if she needed me. “And I can be in here in a twinkling.”

  “I know, Maggie.

  “All right, then.”

  I head back to a white leather chaise, plagued by the fear that there’s something I’m missing, something I ought to be doing. I wallow in this awful cloud of guilt until the view from Lillian’s garden works its magic. It’s bursting with forsythia, daffodils, and the snow white blossoms of the Bradford pear trees.

  When my divorce is final – if it ever is – I’m going to have a garden like this. I’d like to be near water, too, but I won’t be able to afford a house overlooking the reservoir. Maybe I can find something out of the city limits, closer to the farm. Someplace where street lights don’t obscure the stars. Lillian and Jean can come to visit and we’ll sit on a quilt under the night sky and wish on Sirius and Venus and Cassiopeia.

  “Lillian, are you okay in there?”

  “I’m fine, Maggie.”

  She’s not fine. And I don’t know what to do about it.

  The doorbell rings and I jump half a mile.

  “Don’t let anybody in,” Lillian calls.

  “It’s just Jean.” I hope.

  When I open the door, Jean looks like she’s moving a hundred miles an hour standing still. Even her hair is vibrating with anxiety.

  “How is she? And don’t you dare sugarcoat it, Maggie.”

  “When have I ever?”

  “All the time.”

  I lead her into a far corner of the living room where we’ll be out of Lillian’s earshot.

  “She’s in bad shape but I don’t know why.”

  “Give me five minutes. I’m going to know why.”

  “Jean, I don’t think you ought to push her.”

  “Who said anything about pushing?”

  Jean marches straight to the bathroom and barges through the door. Lillian is up to her neck in bubbles, and she doesn’t even blink.

  “Just make yourself right at home, Jean,” she says, deadpan, and I see the ghost of a smile. Jean does that to people.

  “I thought you’d need some help washing your hair, and I know doggone well you’ll need help getting out of this slick tub.” Jean kneels beside the tub then turns to me. “Maggie, find the shampoo. And I’m going to need a nice pitcher of warm water for the rinse.”

  I find the shampoo under Lillian’s side of the double sinks then head to the kitchen, grateful to have something to do, grateful for a friend like Jean who wades right into any crisis, leading with her generous heart.

  By the time I get back to the bathroom with a summer yellow plastic pitcher filled with warm water, Lillian is leaning against the bath pillow with her eyes closed, and Jean is massaging shampoo into her scalp.

  “That feels so good,” Lillian says.

  “I knew it would. Bill does this for me.” Jean turns to me. “Sit down, Maggie, and quit fidgeting.”

  “I’m not fidgeting.”

  “Yes, you are,” they say at the same time, and for a moment I can almost forget the reason we’re here. This could be the three of us at a teacher’s conference, before we discovered two hearts in need of repair.

  I perch on the toilet seat and watch as Jean pours warm water through Lillian’s hair. Then she leans forward and smoothes it back from her face the way I used to do with Beth and Lydia. Don’t tell me Jean wouldn’t have been a good mother. I’d put a big argument.

  “Better, sweet pea?” Jean says.

  “Better.”

  Jean wraps a small towel around Lillian’s wet hair then motions me and together we brace Lillian as she gets out of the tub. It scares me how fragile she feels. I cover her with a bath towel so big it’s called a bath sheet.

  “I’m fine now,” she says, and I purposely don’t glance at Jean. I don’t want to see my fear mirrored there. “Maggie, if you’ll get me some clothes, I’ll be out of here in a jiffy.”

  I find jeans, a soft sweat shirt with long sleeves because, lately, Lillian is always cold. I find a scarf in festive shades of red and yellow because she’s the kind of woman who understands style and uses small touches for big impact. Jean gets her shoes out of the closet, a pair of Nikes that will hold her steady as she walks.

  After she’s dressed, she comes into her bedroom looking like a different woman from the one who answered her door.

  “I have something to tell you, but I don’t want to do it here.”

  “On the farm, then,” I say.

  Lillian leaves Carl a note, then Jean grabs a quilt and heads to the farm with her while I head out to get picnic supplies, my mind spinning with possibilities - and Jean’s instructions to bring chocolate.

  o0o

  On my drive out to the country I take the back roads, hoping the view will ease my worry. When I spot a pink stucco house tucked among the dogwood, I breathe, simply breathe.

 
; Lillian’s going to make it – she has to – and Dick’s going to sign divorce papers and I’m going to find a house. Not just a house, a home. This pink cottage has lace curtains at the window and a big yard with hawthorn and forsythia in bloom. I could, live in the pink house except for one thing. There’s no porch.

  I want a house with a porch big enough for a swing and two good rocking chairs. At the first hint of spring I’ll sit outside and watch robins hop among the daffodils, pulling worms out the ground. Even when it’s cold and the grass is brown and nothing is in bloom, I’ll wrap myself in one of the quilts my grandmother made and sit in the porch swing watching the earth rest.

  This is pure daydreaming. Yesterday when I called my lawyer for an update, he said Dick has not budged and won’t even consider sitting down with a mediator. At this rate, I’ll be tied to him forever.

  I wallow in pity for a while, a woman dragging a ball and chain she can’t get rid of, and then I see a white clapboard house that snaps me out of it. This house has a porch, and I picture ferns and a bird feeder, pots of geraniums and a dog. Dick hated dogs. When I’m free I’m going to get one so shaggy and big that when he stands on his hind legs to lick my face, he’ll knock me off my feet.

  The farm comes in view, and I push my home-and-dog-filled future aside. This is Lillian’s day, and I have no intention of letting my legal wrangling steal a moment from her.

  Jean and Lillian have already spread a quilt beneath my favorite oak tree and are both sprawled out in the shade.

  “Hurry, Maggie,” Jean says. “I’m starving.”

  “Already?” I set down my picnic basket, relieved at how normal Lillian seems, as if she’d never come to her door looking like death on wheels. “I thought I’d pick daffodils before we eat.”

  “You can pick flowers if you want to,” Jean says, “but you’ll miss the cake.”

  “How can I miss the cake? We haven’t even had lunch.”

  “We’re going to have dessert first,” Lillian says. “We’ve already decided.”

  “Don’t I get a vote?”

  “Two against one, Maggie. You’re already outvoted.” Jean unwraps the chocolate cake I’d picked up at Kroger’s deli.