Follow the Stars Home

by Luanne Rice

  “My patients think she’s read them all.”

  “She has,” Dianne said.

  “Is that why you’re crying?”

  “No,” she said. Tears were streaming down her face, and she couldn’t stop them. “I’m just thinking about what she said.”

  “About the gift?”

  “About my father,” Dianne said, covering her face.

  “I remember him,” Alan said, standing so close, she could see his shoes when she looked down at her own.

  “Tell me something you remember,” Dianne said.

  “He was such a good guy,” Alan said. “You were married to Tim, but he treated me like part of the family too. He built the cabinets in my office, and we’d take our coffee breaks together and talk. He was funny, and he’d make me laugh. He liked kids, and he loved the fact I had your playhouse in my waiting room. He loved you, Dianne.”

  “I know,” Dianne whispered.

  “Not many fathers inspire their daughters to become carpenters.”

  “It was that or a librarian,” Dianne said. “I had two good role models.”

  The music drifted through the books, and Dianne felt Alan’s hand on her cheek. It felt so gentle. A strand of her hair had fallen, and he brushed it back, tucked it behind her ear. He moved one of her earrings with his fingertip: his grandmother’s earrings. Dianne closed her eyes.

  “When do you leave?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “Here’s Amy’s birth certificate,” Alan said, suddenly remembering. “Tess had it all ready when we stopped by. I just came after you to give it to you.”

  “Thanks for getting it,” Dianne said, taking it. She had requested permission to take Amy on the family vacation, and Marla Arden had discussed it with Tess Brooks. Tess had said yes, it was a wonderful opportunity for Amy, she wouldn’t stand in the way.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  “Dance with me,” she said.

  The music played. There were horns and strings, and the melody filled Dianne with yearning so deep, her heart ached.

  “Dance?” he asked as if he had never heard the word.

  “You can dance,” she said. “I’ve seen you. At the boat club, and down at fisherman’s row—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish. He just swept her into his arms and pulled her hard against his body. With one arm tight around her waist, he danced her through the books. The light was dim and mysterious, and she felt her breasts pressed hard against his chest.

  “Kiss me,” he said in a voice so low she almost couldn’t hear, and didn’t give her the chance to reply anyway.

  Dianne melted into his arms. His kiss was wild and sweet. She felt hesitant and excited, as if she were doing something totally forbidden. All these years they had been so close and ferocious and their passion had taken the shape of anger, and this kiss had been waiting to happen all that time.

  “Alan,” she whispered. The intensity amazed her. The way her skin tingled, the shiver that ran from the top of her head down the backs of her legs. She couldn’t quite catch her breath. They were kissing in the darkened library stacks, amid the dusty books, right in front of Hemingway. Her eyes were closed, and her knees were so weak, she was going to collapse.

  The band was playing Gershwin, and as they stopped kissing, Alan didn’t release her from his arms. Their feet began to move, and Dianne found they were dancing after all. She was gazing through his glasses into his eyes, wondering how this could be happening.

  “Dancing in the library,” she said.

  “Don’t tell the librarian,” he said.

  “She’d be happy,” Dianne said.

  “I know,” Alan said.

  “You do?”

  “She knew,” Alan said. “A long time before you did.”

  “Knew what?” Dianne asked.

  “That you chose the wrong brother,” Alan said, his mouth against Dianne’s ear.

  Dianne nodded, believing that her mother had known all along.

  “It’s getting hot in here,” Alan said after another minute. “Feel like taking a walk?”

  “Oh, yes. I could use some fresh air,” Dianne said, wiping her brow as they walked out of the stacks of fiction.

  Alan waited while Dianne checked on Lucinda and Amy. Standing on the library steps, he said hello to friends, neighbors, parents of patients. He tried to look normal, as if he weren’t in the middle of his dreams coming true. Maybe she wouldn’t come out. Probably she’d realize she’d made the biggest mistake of her life, kissing him in the library.

  But she came walking through the crowd.

  “They’re fine,” she said. “They’re so excited, they want to go home and pack right now. My mother’s teaching Amy the box step.”

  “I’m sure every guy in there wants to dance with your mother,” Alan said. “She’s the belle of the ball.”

  “I don’t think my mother’s danced with any man since my father died,” Dianne said.

  Heading down the wide stone steps, they walked along the harbor. The night had an end-of-summer feel, with a sharp breeze blowing off the water. Streetlights shone brightly, and some of the trees had scarlet vines twisting up their trunks. Alan wanted to take Dianne’s hand, but he held himself back.

  “That was wonderful,” she said. “Back there.”

  “The party? The music? I know, all for Lucinda,” Alan said.

  “You and me,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah?” he asked, his blood pumping. “You think so?”

  “I was swept away,” Dianne said. “By my mother’s sentimental speech. By leaving for Canada tomorrow. That’s what you think, right? That that’s the only reason it happened?”

  “Is it?” Alan asked.

  “Let’s walk,” she said.

  Now he did take her hand.

  Dianne didn’t pull away. Instead, she linked fingers with him. With her other hand she took off her shoes and carried them so she could walk barefoot. They were strolling through the town, along the street where the whaling captains had built their houses.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Which house inspired your father?” he asked. It seemed odd that after all these years, he didn’t know.

  “To build your playhouse? The one that got you started?”

  “Oh,” Dianne said. “We’re not there yet. It’s around the corner.”

  The harbor glittered through the trees and houses. Boat lights played on the black water. The lighthouse beam shot across the sky, east to west, back again. Cars passed on the street. Dianne didn’t seem concerned about being seen walking around Hawthorne holding his hand. He didn’t understand the change, but he also didn’t care.

  “Bettina Gorey couldn’t make it?” she asked quietly.

  “Make it where?” he asked, confused.

  “To the dance tonight.”

  “I didn’t ask her,” he said.

  “I wondered,” Dianne said. “Martha mentioned her the other day …that day I was in your office. Something about meeting her at the theater. Is she your girlfriend?”

  “No,” Alan said as they rounded the corner, as the houses got bigger and the yards wider. The town lights weren’t as bright here, and the streets were darker. “I don’t have a girlfriend. It’s always been you,” he said, his heart slamming. She had told the truth in the library, and now it was his turn.

  Dianne didn’t reply. They were passing a meadow, the easternmost edge of one of the waterfront properties. The grass grew tall here, and it was filled with the wildflowers of late summer: asters, goldenrod, Indian paintbrush. Alan saw them glinting in the single streetlight. A wrought-iron fence surrounded the field, which gave way to a manicured lawn. The stately white house was dark.

  “There,” Dianne said, pointing. “That’s the one.”

  “Your playhouse,” Alan said.

  Dianne gripped the iron fence posts with both hands, looking inside. The house
was white, square, with a mansard roof and ionic columns. It had dark green shutters and window boxes filled with geraniums. The paint looked new, glossy in the light. The house looked well kept but dark and deserted. Alan’s house, just two streets away, was the opposite: very lived in but in need of paint and repairs.

  “I used to dream of this place,” Dianne said.

  “You did?”

  “When I was a little girl …I thought that anyone who lived in a house like this would have the most wonderful life.”

  “And your father built you a playhouse that looked just like it.”

  “He did,” Dianne said. “It was the closest he could get to giving me my dream. I understand that, wanting to wrap up happiness and give it to your child….”

  “Do you still believe,” Alan asked, looking down at her, “that the people who live here have a wonderful life?” He wanted so much for her to say that she did.

  Dianne didn’t reply for a minute. Still holding on to the fence, she stared at the dark house as if trying to see through the walls, past the closed curtains, into the quiet rooms.

  “I’m not sure,” she said in a voice so low, it was almost a whisper.

  Alan wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, hold her close, make her believe.

  “You could hope they do,” he said quietly. “Even if you’re not sure.”

  “Hope their life is wonderful?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Alan said.

  “Do you believe it is?” Dianne asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  Alan closed his hand around hers and held it. “I do,” he said. “And you do too. You wouldn’t be packing up your family for the trip of a lifetime if you didn’t.”

  “The trip of a lifetime in a Winnebago,” Dianne laughed. “Is that even possible?”

  “I’d say so,” Alan said, looking into her eyes. “Listen. You have to pass through Nova Scotia on your way to PEI. I’m going to give you Malachy Condon’s phone number. Just in case—”

  “Malachy,” Dianne said. He had been Alan’s mentor and Tim’s father figure; he had been at her wedding. “He’s Tim’s friend.”

  “He’s mine too,” Alan said, writing on the back of a card. “He’s a good man, and he knows his way around up there. I’ll feel better knowing you have his number.”

  “We’ll be fine …” Dianne said.

  “Are you coming back?”

  “We have to. Amy has to start school in September.”

  “I knew there was a reason I sent her to you,” Alan said.

  “Alan …” Dianne said.

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  A wall had broken between them, but he didn’t want her to move too fast. She didn’t have to feel vulnerable, lay herself on the line. He put his arms around her, held her in silence for a long time.

  “I want to,” she said.

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  Her eyes were shining, and she was smiling up at him. He felt her step closer to him, and as he put his hands on her back, he felt her slim body through her dress.

  “Something’s different tonight,” she said.

  Everything, he thought.

  “I said it out loud,” she whispered. “It took me a long time, but I did. I’ve wished …”

  “What have you wished?”

  “For this,” she whispered. They were holding each other in the warm summer night. Alan felt the breeze in his hair, and he heard it in the trees. Overhead, the stars were as bright as they were going to get this close to town. The sky was wrapped in haze, a sheet of sheer silk, and the stars were orange globes.

  “Dianne …” he whispered into her hair.

  “For this,” she said, standing barefoot on the toes of his shoes, reaching up to kiss his chin, the side of his face. He brought his mouth to hers and rocked her back and forth in the sultry night.

  They kissed for a long time, and then Alan felt Dianne’s arms slide from around his neck so that she was holding his face in her hands. Her cheeks shone in the starlight, and he knew they were wet with tears.

  “For a chance,” she said, smiling as she cried. “That’s what I wished for. For a chance to be with you. To let go of the past.”

  “The past brought us together,” he said, his throat tight.

  “And it’s been tearing us apart,” she said.

  “So you wished …”

  “To be brought together,” she said, swallowing. “If that’s possible.”

  He held her again. Was it possible? If Alan had his way, it was. His pulse was throbbing and words raced through his mind, ways to convince her it would work, as long as they both wanted it. To be together …What more could he want? He’d take her as she was, as she’d always been, without changing a thing.

  “I’ve dreamed of being with you,” he said. “For a long, long time.”

  “All this on the night before I leave for Canada,” she said.

  His heart sank. She was leaving tomorrow. He held her tighter, as if it could stop her from going away.

  “I wish you weren’t going,” he said.

  “In a way, so do I,” she said.

  “How do wishes work?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, laughing, kissing the underside of his chin as they stood leaning against the wrought-iron fence. She thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He was a doctor, a scientist, and he wanted to nail this down. He wanted to pin down a guarantee that they were going to be together.

  “How?” he asked.

  “You look up,” she said. Taking his hand, she raised it overhead. “You point.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, scanning the heavens.

  “And then you wish.”

  Alan nodded. He closed his eyes and wished. When he opened his eyes, she was still there.

  “So far, so good,” he said, kissing the knuckles of her right hand, her left hand, and then kissing her mouth.

  They left before dawn the next day. Dianne drove. Everyone was so excited at first, but after about thirty miles, Amy and Lucinda fell asleep. Stella found a shelf in the galley, and Orion curled up on one of the bunks. Dianne kept reliving the night before, thinking of Alan. They had kissed and held hands and kissed again until her knees gave out, and Dianne knew it was good that she was going away for a little while. She needed time to sort this out. Wishes and reality needed time to merge.

  “Just you and me, Julia,” Dianne said.

  “Gaaa,” Julia said, twisting her hands.

  “You can be my navigator, okay? Amy and Granny don’t know what they’re missing.”

  “Gleee,” Julia said, and it sounded to Dianne as if she understood.

  The motor home was enormous, capacious, and luxurious. Everyone had her own bunk, there was plenty of storage room, and there was a little dinette table that folded down for meals. Dianne had stocked the cabinets with soup, bread, peanut butter and jelly, raisins, and fruit bars.

  When Dianne was young, her father had gotten Bill Putnam down at the lumberyard to let her practice on some of the big trucks. She had driven a forklift, dump truck, and once, an eighteen-wheeler. Driving the motor home, with its power steering and power brakes, its automatic transmission, was easier, the hardest part being getting used to the rearview mirrors.

  They headed north on Route 395. The road was quiet. The last stars twinkled, the dark blue sky like velvet draped over the rolling Connecticut hills. She thought of her wish. It was a strange wish, one without shape or edges: Who would ask for such a thing, the readiness to surrender? And surrender from what? From being so hard, she guessed. So unforgiving, so resistant to love.

  But life could be so tough. Caring for Julia took every ounce of her strength, and it left her short-tempered and quick to blame. Not much room for love in a life of constant tension: Some days Dianne’s spine was a steel rod with no give whatsoever. Now, heading north, Dianne knew she wanted nothing more complicated than the chance to bend. To let another per
son in. The sun rose over Worcester, Massachusetts, turning the old brick factories orange-red in the early light. They ate breakfast as they drove.

  At the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, traffic circle, Dianne pulled into the Howard Johnson’s parking lot to walk Orion. From there they took the coastal route. They had ten hours until nine that night, when they’d catch a ferry from Portland, Maine, to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Amy wanted to send her mother postcards from every pretty town.

  “They really have a lot of lobsters up here,” Amy said, noticing how nearly every restaurant had lobster buoys, traps, or claws nailed to the roof.

  “We’ll eat so much lobster on this trip,” Lucinda said, “we’ll turn into crustaceans.”

  “Could you spell that?” Amy asked, pulling out her notebook. She had started keeping a list of new words, wanting to improve her vocabulary. Lucinda had given her a reading list, and she had moved beyond Anne to Jo: She was in the middle of Little Women.

  “Crustacean,” Lucinda said. “Try sounding it out.”

  “C-r-u-s,” Amy began, “t-a-s-h-u-n.”

  “Progress, not perfection,” Lucinda said patiently.

  They cruised up and down peninsulas, admiring the scenic lanes and pretty houses. Fishing villages sparkled in the sunlight, and white spires graced distant hills. They drove through the Yorks, passed the sandy strands of Ogunquit, meandered through the village of Kennebunkport.

  “I feel like a total tourist,” Dianne said, both hands on the wheel as she tried to squeeze the motor home down a narrow street lined with boutiques and candle shops.

  “Well, you are one,” her mother said.

  “You have to admit,” Dianne said, “we’re doing it up right. Winnebago and all. I feel kind of bad that our windows aren’t filled with stickers of all the places we’ve been, like some of the others.” They were in a line of trailers and motor homes trying to make their way along the water to catch a glimpse of George Bush’s house.

  “We don’t own ours, dear,” Lucinda said.

  “Someday, Mom,” Dianne said. “We can dream, can’t we?”

  Lucinda laughed. They were wearing shorts and polo shirts, and the sea breeze blew through the open windows as they slugged diet Cokes from the can. Amy and Julia sat in back, playing their version of checkers and gazing out the windows. Stella seemed content, and Orion was happy as long as they walked him every couple of hours.