Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “In this one he’s drooling,” she said, smiling and proudly handing it over nevertheless. “And in this one he’s squinting. He looks just like an old man!”

  “He is one,” Alan said, cradling Billy in one arm while he wrote out a prescription for ear drops with his other. “Six months on Tuesday.”

  Martha Blake, his nurse, appeared at the door. She raised her eyebrows, as if to ask whether Alan needed help in hurrying Mrs. Beaudoin along. He’d had an emergency at the hospital that morning, so now he was backed up with a packed waiting room. He’d been so busy, he hadn’t had time for lunch, and at that moment his stomach let out such a loud grumble that Billy’s brown eyes flew open with surprise.

  “I like this one where he’s squinting,” Alan said, glancing over for permission to hang the picture on the Wall. “He looks like he’s thinking deep thoughts.”

  Walking Mrs. Beaudoin to the door, he gave her the prescription and told her to keep Billy’s ears dry when she bathed him. His office was in an old brush factory dating back to the early 1800s, and some of the doorways were very low, built for humans two hundred years shorter of bone. Alan, six four since eighth grade, had to duck to walk through.

  When he straightened, he saw the waiting room packed with patients: mothers and children everywhere. Children sniffling, huddled at their mothers’ sides, trying to read picture books, their big eyes looking in his direction as if the big, bad wolf had just stepped off the page. Only two children looked happy to see him, and they filled his heart with the kind of gratitude he had become a doctor to feel. They were both young girls, just a year apart in age, and only one of them had an appointment.

  Amy was sitting in the big playhouse in the corner. She was twelve, slight, with silky, uncombed brown hair and big green eyes, and she was theoretically too old to be playing there. Hidden in shadows, she ducked down so she couldn’t be seen by any of the mothers, but she gave Alan a wide grin. He gave her a secret smile, letting her know he was playing the game and would find time to talk to her later.

  Julia was in her wheelchair. She had huge, eloquent eyes. When she smiled, every tooth in her mouth showed. Seeing Alan, she let out a bellow of joy, causing her mother to lean over from behind and wrap her in a hug. Dianne Robbins laughed out loud, pressing her lips against Julia’s pale cheek. When Dianne looked up, the expression in her blue eyes made her look as happy and carefree as a young girl sailing. Alan started to say he was running late, but something about the moment left him temporarily unable to speak, so he just walked back into his office.

  Amy Brooks was invisible. She was as clear as her name: a clean brook that ran over rocks and stones and pebbles, under fallen trees and arched bridges, through dark woods and sunny meadows. Amy was water. People might look in her direction, but they’d see right through her to things on the other side.

  Amy felt safe there in Dr. McIntosh’s playhouse, and she wasn’t sure which part was best. Knowing that Dr. McIntosh was in the next room or sitting in the little house itself. Some lady in Hawthorne had made it to look just like one of those white mansions down by the water. Outside, it had glistening white clapboards and dark green shutters that closed. The heavy blue door swung on brass hinges, with a bronze sea horse door knocker.

  A little kid knocked on the door, wanting to come in.

  “Grrrr,” Amy growled, like the new puppy in the cage at home. The little kid couldn’t see her because she was invisible, but he could hear her. That was enough.

  “Mine again,” Amy whispered to the house.

  Glancing at her father’s watch, a huge Timex weighing down her wrist, she wondered what time Dr. McIntosh would see her. She had had a good day at school-she was a sixth-grader at Hawthorne Middle, three blocks from his office-and she had purposely missed the bus to tell him about it. Just then she heard a strange noise.

  It was a kid: From across the room, some child with its back to Amy started making funny sounds, like water trying to flow through a broken pipe. Its mother was pretty, like the golden-haired mother in storybooks, with silver-blue eyes and a smile meant only for the child. The two mothers on either side bent double like jackknives trying to get a peek at what was wrong. The kid’s ratchety noise turned pretty, like a dolphin singing, and suddenly the kid’s mother joined in.

  The nurse called them, and they disappeared down the corridor. The mother caught Amy’s eyes as she passed the playhouse. She smiled but just kept going. When the office door shut behind them, Amy missed their odd song.

  “Pretty music,” Alan said.

  “Julia was singing,” Dianne said, holding her daughter’s hand as the young girl rolled her eyes. “I just joined in.”

  “Hi, Julia,” Alan said. He crouched beside Julia’s wheelchair, smoothing the white-blond hair back from her face. She leaned into his hand for an instant, eyes closed with what appeared to be deep trust. Dianne stood back, watching.

  Alan spoke to Julia. His tone was rich and low, the voice of a very big man. But he spoke gently to Julia, tender and unthreatening, and the girl bowed her head and sighed contentedly. He was her uncle; he had been her doctor for the eleven years she had been alive. In spite of their history, the awkwardness between them, Dianne would never take Julia to anyone else.

  Alan encircled Julia with his arms, easily lifting her onto the exam table. She weighed very little: twenty-nine pounds at the last visit. She was a fairy child, with a perfect face and misshapen body. Her head bobbed against her chest, her thin arms flailing slowly about as if she were swimming in the bay. She was wearing jeans, and a navy blue Gap sweatshirt over her T-shirt, and Dr. McIntosh must have just tickled her because she suddenly gasped. At the sound, Dianne turned away.

  She let herself have this fantasy: Julia was healthy, “normal.” She was just like all the other kids in the outer office. She could read books and draw pictures, and when you took her hand, it wasn’t ice cold. She would jump and dance and demand her favorite cereal. Dianne would know that her favorite color was blue because Julia said so, not from hours of watching for slight changes of expression as Dianne pointed at colors on a page: red, yellow, green, blue.

  Blue! Is that the one you like most, Julia? Blue, sweetheart?

  To be a mother and know your own child’s heart: Dianne couldn’t imagine anything more incredible. Could Julia even distinguish colors, or was Dianne just kidding herself? Julia could not answer Dianne’s questions. She made sounds, which experts had told Dianne were not words at all. When she said “la,” it did not mean “flower”; it was only a sound.

  “How are you, Dianne?” Alan asked.

  “Fine, Alan.”

  “Julia and I were just having a talk.”

  “You were?”

  “Yep. She says you’re working too hard. Every kid in Hawthorne wants a playhouse, and you’re backed up till Christmas.”

  Dianne swallowed. Nervous today, she couldn’t manage the small talk. She was at her worst during Julia’s exams. Her nerves were raw, and just then Alan reminded Dianne of his brother, of being left, and the worst of everything that could happen to her child; waiting for him to examine Julia made her want to scream.

  Julia had been born with defects. A blond angel, she had spina bifida and Rett syndrome, a condition similar to autism. No talking, no for-sure affection. There was the maybe affection, where she’d kiss Dianne’s face and Dianne wasn’t really sure whether it was a real kiss or just a lip spasm. Dianne tended toward optimism, and she gave each smooch the benefit of the doubt every time.

  Since birth Julia had had thirteen surgeries. Many trips to the hospitals-here, in Providence, and in Boston-had produced wear and tear on the spirit, sitting in those oddly similar waiting rooms, wondering whether Julia would survive the procedure. Hydrocephalus had developed after one operation, and for a time Dianne had had to get used to a shunt in her baby’s brain to drain off the excess fluid.

  Dianne, so desperate to lash out at Tim, would often talk to herself.

 
; “Hello! Darling! Kindly bring me a sponge-I seem to have spilled this little bowl full of our daughter’s brain water. Oh, you’ve left for good? Never mind, I’ll get it myself.”

  Dianne’s heart never knew which way to twist. She teetered between hope and rage, love and terror. She hated Tim for leaving, Alan for reminding her of his brother, all doctors for being able to keep Julia alive but not being able to cure her. But Dianne loved Julia with a simple heart. Her daughter was innocent and pure.

  Julia could not walk, hold things, or eat solid food. She would not grow much bigger. Her limbs looked jumbled and broken; the bones in her body were askew. Her body was her prison, and it failed her at every turn.

  Her organs were hooked up wrong. Most of those early surgeries had been to correctly connect her stomach, bladder, bowels, and to protect the bulging sac on her smooth little baby back containing her meninges and spinal cord. Julia was the baby every pregnant mother feared having, and Dianne loved her so much, she thought her own heart would crack.

  “You okay?” Alan asked.

  “Just do the exam,” Dianne said, sweating. “Please, Alan.”

  She took off all but Julia’s T-shirt and diaper. They had been in this very room, on this exact table, so many times. Alan was frowning now, his feelings hurt. Dianne wanted to apologize, but her throat was too tight. Her stomach was in a knot: She was extra upset this visit, her fear and intuition in high, high gear, and it wasn’t going to get better till after Alan did the exam.

  Unsnapping Julia’s T-shirt, Alan began to pass the silver disc across Julia’s concave chest. His wavy brown hair was going gray, and his steel-rimmed glasses were sliding down his nose. He often had a quizzical, distant expression in his hazel eyes, as if his mind were occupied with higher math, but right then he was totally focused on Julia’s heart.

  “Can you hear anything?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  Dianne bit her lip so hard it hurt. This was the part of the exam Dianne feared the most. But she watched him, restraining herself and letting him work.

  Julia’s body was tiny, her small lungs and kidneys just able to do the job of keeping her alive. If she stopped growing soon, as the endocrinologist predicted she would, her organs would be sufficient. But if she sprouted even another inch, her lungs would be overtaxed and her other systems would give out.

  “Her heart sounds good today,” Alan said. “Her lungs too.”

  “Really?” Dianne asked, although she had never known him to tell them anything but the truth.

  “Yes,” he said. “Really.”

  “Good or just okay?”

  “Dianne—”

  Alan had never promised to fix Julia. Her prognosis since birth had been season by season. They had spent Julia’s whole life waiting for that moment when she would turn the corner. There were times Dianne couldn’t stand the suspense. She wanted to flip through the book, get to the last page, know how it was going to end.

  “Really good?” she asked. “Or not?”

  “Really good for Julia,” he said. “You know that’s all I can tell you. You know better than anyone, any specialist, what that means.”

  “She’s Julia,” Dianne said. The news was as good as she was going to get this visit. She couldn’t speak right away. Her relief was sudden and great, and she had a swift impulse to run full tilt down to the dock, jump in his dinghy, and row into the wind until she exhausted herself.

  “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 lobsterman 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 shou
lder.

  “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.