Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  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?

  “I love to clean,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “It’s not exactly a hobby, but I’m very good at it. Mr. Clean smells like perfume to me-why do you think I like your office so much? Can you think of many other people who like the smell of doctors’ offices?”

  “It’s a rare quality,” he said. “And I appreciate it.”

  Turning inland, he drove onto the so-called expressway. In Hawthorne they had three kinds of roads: the beautiful ones down by the harbor, this one-mile highway leading away from downtown, and the ugly streets near the marshlands, where Amy lived.

  “I could do it part-time,” she said.

  “What about schoolwork?”

  “I’d fit it in.”

  Dr. McIntosh was pulling onto her street. The houses here were small and crooked. Hardly anyone had nice yards. Broken refrigerators leaned against ramshackle garages. Stray cats-half of which Amy had tried to save-roamed in packs. It was a neighborhood where kids didn’t do their homework and parents didn’t make them. The air was sour and stale.

  “You know I want to help you,” he said, looking at her house. “Is it really bad, Amy? Do you want me to call Ms. Arden?”

  “No,” Amy said with force.

  “I know you worry about your mother. Maybe it would be good for you to stay somewhere for a little while, see if we can get her some help.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Amy said. The whole idea filled her with panic. Her mother might die if she weren’t there. She would fall asleep and never wake up. Or her mother’s boyfriend, Buddy, might hurt her. Or-and this was the worst fear-her mother might just run away with Buddy and never come back.

  “Do you have friends? Girls you hang out with?”

 
Amy shrugged. He didn’t get it. Her best friend was Amber DeGray, but Amber smoked and wrote on her legs with razor blades. Amy was scared of her. Other kids didn’t like Amy. She believed she wore her life on her person, that good kids would look at her and see her mother depressed in bed, Buddy’s angry fingers plucking out “Midnight Rambler” on his expensive electric guitar, Buddy’s new dog cowering in the back of its cage.

  “I’m asking,” Dr. McIntosh said, “because I know someone you might like. She’s a young mother with a daughter. Do you ever babysit?”

  “No,” Amy said. Who would ask her? Besides, Amy wanted only Dr. McIntosh for her friend. He already knew her and didn’t think she was gross. He was kind and funny, and she trusted him.

  “It’s my sister-in-law and niece,” Dr. McIntosh said.

  Amy gasped. She hadn’t known he had a family! Suddenly she felt curious, excited, and horribly jealous all at once.

  “Julia’s disabled. She needs a lot of attention, and sometimes Dianne gets pretty worn out. They live nearby-I know they’d like you.”

  “You do?” Amy said, feeling so happy he thought she was worth liking, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Sure I do,” he said.

  Amy swallowed her feelings. Disabled, he had said. Was Julia one of those children with braces and crutches, hearing aids and glasses? Amy sometimes saw kids like that and felt just like them: different, set apart, very badly hurt.

  “I used to be special …” Amy began, wanting to say something about her father and mother when they were young, when Amy had been their beloved newborn babe in a dark blue pram, when they had lived in the fishermen’s park, where the air was always fresh and the smells were of saltwater, spring blossoms, and fish.

  “You’re wonderful just the way you are,” Dr. McIntosh said.

  My mother’s depressed … she cries and sleeps all day … no one wants to come to my house … I’m so lonely!

  Those were the thoughts running through Amy Brooks’s mind, but since she couldn’t begin to put them into words, she just jumped out of the doctor’s car and ran straight up the cement sidewalk into her house without a look back.

  Dianne built playhouses for other people’s children. Tim had run a lobster boat, and Dianne had set up shop in the oyster shack, where they lived, on the wharf. During their thirteen months together, her playhouses had smelled a lot like shellfish. By then she had orders pouring in from everywhere. She advertised in magazines appealing to parents, romantics, and lovers of New England. Word of mouth did the rest. Her houses were big enough to play in. They had gingerbread, dovecotes, eaves, peaked rooftops, and cross-and-Bible doors; her company was called Home Sweet Home.

  Dianne’s HMO paid for several hours each week of physical therapy and nurse’s aides. If Julia were left alone, she would spend all day in the fetal position. She would curl up, drawing herself inward like the slow-motion nature films of a flower at dusk. Therapy helped, but Dianne didn’t like strangers in her home. She preferred to work with Julia herself. No one loved Julia like Dianne did.

  Many people had suggested Dianne institutionalize Julia. She could go to St. Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital or to Fresh Pond Manor. They had told Dianne that Julia would be too much for anyone, even a saint. Sometimes Dianne felt guilty, imagining those people thought she wanted credit for her sacrifice and devotion. She asked herself: Wouldn’t Julia get expert care in a place like that? Wouldn’t she be exercised and changed and fed and monitored? Wouldn’t Dianne be set free to live a less burdened life, be lighter of heart during the time she spent with Julia?

  But Julia needed massage. Her muscles would knot up. Her stomach would tighten, and she’d get constipated. And only Dianne knew exactly how she liked to be rubbed. With baby oil on her rough hands, Dianne would soothe her baby’s woes. Julia liked circular motions on her angel wings. She liked light pressure around her rib cage, in the area of her kidneys, and she hated being touched on her scars.

  Who at the institution would know that? Even if one nurse’s aide got used to Julia’s preferences, what if that person got transferred or moved away? Julia would have to go through the whole thing again, getting used to someone new. Also, there was the matter of her constipation. Most newcomers didn’t realize it was part of the territory for Rett syndrome kids. Medical people were always so quick with laxatives, when all Dianne needed to do was gently rub her belly-using a flat palm, no fingers-to help things along.

  Julia would sigh. She would gurgle like a baby, and Dianne would talk back in words: “There, honey. Is that better? Let me tell you about the owl and the pussycat…. Ever hear about how monarch butterflies migrate to Belize? … About the otters that live in the marsh and the hawks that hunt along the banks …”

  Dianne was no saint. Her anger and frustrations knew no bounds. She banged nails with a vengeance. She’d yell while she sawed, swearing at God, the universe, and the McIntosh boys. Money was tight. She charged huge sums for her playhouses, targeting the richest people possible. But production was limited; she lived rent free with her mother and paid nearly everything she made to insurance and deductibles. When the aides were there, she’d take off on breakneck runs along the beach, rows through the marsh in her father’s old dinghy. Crying and exercise were free.

  Her studio was now in the small cottage behind her mother’s house, where she and Julia had come to live after Tim left. The windows overlooked the estuary, the green reeds golden in this twilight hour. Sawdust was everywhere. Like pollen carried on the spring air, it filmed the cottage floor, workbenches, table saw, miter box, and the inside of the window-panes. Stella, her shy tiger cat, hid in her basket on a high shelf. Julia sat in her chair.

  They listened to music. Dianne loved out-of-date love songs that expressed mad longing and forever love; she sang them to Julia while she worked. “The Look of Love,” “Scarborough Fair,” “Going Out of My Head.”

  Dianne had been without a man for Julia’s entire life. Sometimes she saw women with husbands and imagined what it would be like. Did they have all the love they needed, was it worth the fighting and disagreements to be part of a secure family? In the dark, Dianne sometimes felt lonely. She’d hug her pillow and imagine someone whispering to her that everything would be okay. She tried not to picture a face or hear any certain voice, but the night before she had imagined how Alan’s back might look under his shirt, how his muscles would strain if he held her really tight.

  Measuring carefully, she used a pencil to mark lightly the places she wanted to cut. The table saw let out a high-pitched whine as she guided the wood through. Her father had been a carpenter. He had taught her his craft, and Dianne never cut anything without hearing his gentle voice telling her to mind her priceless hands.

  “Home from the wars,” Lucinda Robbins said, walking in.

  “Hi, Mom,” Dianne said. “Tough day?”

  “No, darling,” said her mother. “It’s just that I can feel my retirement coming in July, and my body is counting the days.”

  “How many?” Dianne asked, smiling.

  “Eighty-seven,” Lucinda said, going over to kiss Julia. “Hello, sweetheart. Granny’s home.”

  Lucinda crouched by Julia’s side. Julia’s great liquid eyes took everything in, roaming from the raw wood to the finished playhouses to the open window before settling on her grandmother’s face.

  Dianne stood back, watching. Lucinda was small and thin, with short gray hair and bright clothes: a sharp blue tunic over brick-red pants. Her long necklace of polished agate came from a street market in Mexico, bought on the only cruise she’d ever taken with Dianne’s father, eleven years earlier-the year Julia had been born and he had died.

  “Maaa,” Julia said. “Gaaa.”

  “She’s saying our names,” Lucinda said. “Ma and Granny.”

  “She is?” Dianne asked, dumbstruck by her own need to believe.

  “Yes,” Lucinda said soothingly. “Of course she is.”

  Julia had hyper
sensitive skin, and Dianne smoothed her blond hair as gently as she could. Her hair felt silky and fine. It waved just behind the girl’s ears, a white-gold river of softness.

  “At Julia’s age, you had the same cornsilk hair,” Lucinda said. “Just as soft and pretty. Now, tell me. What did Alan say?”

  “Oh, Mom.” Dianne swallowed hard.

  Lucinda touched her heart. “Honey?”

  Dianne shook her head. “No, no bad news,” she said. “No news at all, really. Nothing definite one way or the other.”

  “Has she grown?”

  “An eighth of an inch.”

  “Isn’t that a lot?” Lucinda asked, frowning. “In so short a time?”

  “No!” Dianne said more sharply than she intended. “It isn’t a lot. It’s completely normal, Mom.”

  “Good, honey,” Lucinda said, striking what Dianne had come to consider her Buddha pose: straight back, serene eyes, hands folded in prayer position under her chin. She might have the same turmoil inside as Dianne, but she hid it better. “Were you nice to him?” she asked.

  “Nice?” Dianne asked.

  “To Alan,” her mother said. “When you saw him today …”

  “Well …” Dianne said, remembering the look on his face as they’d left his office.

  “Dianne?”

  “Why does he have to remind me so much of Tim?” she asked.

  “Oh, honey,” Lucinda said.

  “They move in identical ways,” Dianne said. “Their voices sound the same. Alan’s hair is darker, but it gets light in the summer. He wears glasses, but when he takes them off …”

  “Superficial similarities,” Lucinda said.

  “I tell myself that,” Dianne said. “I feel so bad, holding this miserable grudge against him. But my stomach hurts every time I think of what Tim did. I lie awake hating him for hurting Julia, but I also hate him for leaving me too. It’s horrible, like I swallowed a rock.”

  “Ouch,” Lucinda said kindly.

  “I know. And every time I look at Alan, I think of Tim. He makes me think of all the hurt and betrayal, of how much I hate his brother—”