Follow the Stars Home (14 page)

A long time passed. Minutes seemed like an hour. After a while, Dianne held her child. Her arms moved up from her sides, seemingly of their own accord. Taking hold of Julia, she touched arms with Alan. Lucinda watched their foreheads nearly brushing, looking down at the baby. Their faces were together, their arms were entwined. Julia sucked hungrily.

Lucinda stood at the stove, remembering. Glancing at the table, she could almost see them now: Dianne, Alan, and Julia.

Lucinda decanted the soup into a big container, leaving the lid off to let it cool a little. She packed some fresh bread and butter into a bag, poured some lemonade into a jar. Then, heading across the side yard, she went to tell her daughter that the doctor was sick and it was her turn to make a house call. There were times, she swore, that Dianne was blind to her own life.

At first Dianne felt impatient. Building a widow's walk to sit atop her newest playhouse, modeled after one she admired in Stonington, was taking all her concentration. But her mother was insistent, telling
her she'd made some chicken soup for Alan, and that Dianne had to drive it over to him.

“Do you know how long it's been since I've been to his house?” she asked.

“Well,” her mother said dryly. “You have his address in your book. Look his street up in the gazetteer if you've forgotten where he lives.”

“Only a librarian would have a gazetteer,” Dianne said.

“Librarians aren't so different from carpenters,” she said. “The right tool for each job.”

“I know where he lives,” Dianne said reluctantly.

“Julia is so lucky,” Amy said.

They both turned to look at her. She had brought over a game of checkers, and she was playing a brand-new version with Julia.

“To have Dr. McIntosh for an uncle,” Amy explained.

“It has its ups and downs,” Dianne said.

“That's terrible, Dianne,” Lucinda said. “He's very good to you both.”

“Mom, I have to finish this order by Sunday,” Dianne said, trying again. “Can't you take it over?”

“I have the girls coming over for reading group tonight, and I have to get things ready.”

“And you found time to make him soup?”

“Like Amy said. He's Julia's uncle,” Lucinda Robbins said.

Dianne had the truck windows open, letting spring air blow through the cab. The birds were in high gear, making the twilight hour zing with feeling. Swallows caught bugs in the fields. Flocks of starlings swooped and swirled in one black cloud. A lone kingfisher sat on the telephone wire above Silver Creek. Dianne
smelled rose gardens, fresh earth, and the salt flats. Her mother's package was in back, nestled among weighty bags of hinges and twopenny nails.

Pearl Street was smack in the middle of Hawthorne. One of the oldest streets in town, many prosperous whaling captains and merchants had built their houses there in the 1800s. Two blocks back from the harbor, it was a little quieter than Front and Water streets.

Driving slowly down Pearl Street, Dianne breathed the salt air. The sun was setting, and the white facades glowed with peachy iridescence. She hadn't visited Alan at home in many years. His street brought back old memories of being happy with Tim, and she drove a little faster.

Alan's house was a Victorian. White clapboards, gray trim, three steps leading up to a wide porch. Gingerbread, dovecote, a grape arbor. But the place was in disrepair. Paint peeling, one shutter on a side window missing, the weather vane cockeyed. The grass needed cutting, and the day-sailor on its rusty trailer had not seen saltwater in a long time. She remembered long sails with her husband and brother-in-law.

Their relationship had been smooth back then. She had sensed that Alan wanted the best for her and Tim. He would invite them sailing, and they would invite him to dinner. Everyone was on his, and her, best behavior. Those sailing days were bright and sparkling, the three of them on Alan's small sloop. He'd be at the tiller, Tim stretched out with a cap over his eyes, Dianne manning the jib as they sailed the Sound.

One brilliant sunny day, the waves splashing over the rail, Dianne had felt incredible joy. They were sailing to windward, Tim trawling for bluefish off the
stern, Dianne crouched in the bow. She had turned, mouth open in sheer delight, to say something about the sun or the wind or the three of them being together, and she caught Alan looking at her. His eyes were narrowed, the expression full of regret and longing. In that one glance she knew that his mood had to do with what had once briefly been between them, and for that instant she felt it too. She turned quickly away.

Dianne and Alan kept things polite and superficial. They were each other's in-laws. She would make fish stew every Friday night, and Alan would come over for dinner between office hours and hospital rounds. He would ask her opinion on what color carpeting he should get for his office. Tim would grin, holding Dianne's hand, glad to include Alan in their happy family life. But the pretense between Dianne and Alan collapsed the day Tim took to the sea for good.

Crossing the unkempt lawn, she spied something in the grass: an old birdhouse. Dianne had made it for Alan many years earlier, before she had had Julia. As a promise to Alan's future kids, that she would build them the greatest playhouse in Hawthorne, Dianne had made him the birdhouse. She remembered Tim holding the ladder while Alan climbed up to hang the house in the tall maple. Now it had fallen down. Propping it against the stone foundation, Dianne walked up the front steps.

Dianne rang the doorbell again and again, but no one came to the door.

“Hello,” she called. “Hello!”

It felt strange to be standing there. She remembered the night she and Tim had come to tell Alan their amazing news: that she was three months pregnant. She had stood in the foyer with Tim's arms around
her as Tim invited Alan to touch her belly. She had felt embarrassed for Alan; she could see the discomfort when he met her eyes, but he'd done what Tim asked to please his brother. His touch had been sure and steady. Closing her eyes, Dianne felt Alan connecting with the baby inside her, and she'd shivered.

“Alan,” she called now. “Are you home?”

She tried the doorknob. It turned. Creaking open, the heavy door led into a small entry hall and living room. The decor could be considered minimal: one mahogany table, one rolltop desk with chair, and one bleached-cotton covered love seat. His decorating skills hadn't improved.

“Alan!” Dianne called. She gave a whistle.

The walls were lined with shelves overflowing with books: Dickens, Shakespeare, Norman MacLean, Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Hemingway, Freud, Dos Passos, Trevanian, Robert B. Parker, Ken Follett, Linnaeus, Jung, Lewis Thomas, Louis Agassiz, Audubon, Darwin, Winnicott, and many more. Tim had never been able to sit still long enough to read books like those.

Turning away, she noticed an upper shelf full of framed photos.

Alan was very tall, so the pictures would be at his eye level. Dianne, standing on tiptoe, could barely see. A portrait of his parents-he looked just like his father, tall and lean. A silver-framed photo of Dorothea, his grandmother. A picture of three young boys in baseball uniforms. The same three boys on a sailboat, at the beach, holding surf-casting rods. Alan, Tim, and their big brother, Neil.

“Tim,” she said, almost shocked by the sight of him.

Dianne and Tim's wedding picture. She took it down, her hand shaking. People often talked to her about
“letting go.” Of the past, anger, her ex-husband. Eleven years had passed. So why was Dianne filled with rage at the sight of him?

They had loved each other once; she could see it in the way her body leaned toward him, the way he couldn't take his eyes off her. His touch made her melt, his voice had made her want to promise him the stars. His shoulders looked ready to burst out of his tuxedo. His tie was crooked. Dianne had tried to make it her life's mission to give Tim the happiness he'd lost when Neil died.

Remembering how hard she had tried, Dianne dug her nails into her palms. Eleven years hadn't diluted her feelings. He hadn't just left her; he had left their daughter.

She remembered one night, several months into the pregnancy, lying on the deck of his lobster boat. The starry sky curved overhead, and Dianne had whispered: “We can name the baby Cornelia if she's a girl, Neil if he's a boy. Either way, we'll call our baby Neil.”

Tim had kissed her; he had seemed overjoyed. They had been relatively young, just twenty-seven years old. Her doctor had suggested the prenatal testing, not because of her age but because he'd found high levels of protein in her blood. He had ordered amniocentesis.

Two words: genetic abnormalities. Dianne remembered the shiver down her neck, the way her insides had turned to ice. Hugging herself, praying for time to go back and for the results to be a mistake, she had cried for days. How could such a thing happen? She and Tim were healthy. They loved each other, they were good people, they worked hard. Their baby was a girl, and it was abnormal.

Was it her diet? The fact they lived too close to a
power plant? Had Dianne drunk too much wine before she'd known she was pregnant? Had Tim smoked too much pot down on the docks? Was it air pollution? Something in the water? Were there chemicals in the milk they drank? The meat they ate? Was she using the wrong detergent, shampoo, skin lotion, fabric softener? Did she lack folic acid? Had she neglected to eat the proper green, leafy vegetables?

Dianne had sat in a rocking chair in her workshop, going back and forth on the creaky floor, for days. She hadn't washed her hair, eaten a meal, spoken to her mother. Tim would go out lobstering, come back, go out, come back. She had wanted him to hold her, tell her everything would be all right, but that wasn't happening. So she had held herself.

Inside her, the baby was still. Maybe it's dead, she had thought. She'd been in love with the little child, called it Neil, but now she'd begun thinking of it as It. As in “It's not moving.” “It's genetically abnormal.” “It's sick.”

“We can't have it,” Tim had said one night. Keeping his distance, he spoke from across the room. “No one would think we're wrong.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“An abortion,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, feeling nauseated.

He came close. His face wet with tears, he pressed his lips against her neck. “When we said we'd have the amnio,” he said, “we knew we might have to face this. That's the reason for the test-to give us a chance to decide. We have to decide, Dianne.”

“I'm glad you're saying ‘we,’” Dianne whispered. She had been feeling so alone. Tim had been fishing all this time, not wanting to talk to her about their baby and the nightmare they found themselves in. She understood-sickness drove him crazy. He was
so afraid, but she wanted them to go through it together.

“We can call the doctor,” he said. “Schedule the abortion. We can get started on a new pregnancy right away….”

“I'll think about it,” Dianne had said.

And she did think about it. She rocked herself through the days, trying to imagine how relieved she would feel when this problem was lifted. She would go to the hospital, the doctor would give her a sedative, and the baby would be gone. It was a sick baby anyway. It would have horrible problems. It might be retarded; other children would make fun of it.

Remembering those days in the rocking chair, Dianne reached up to take Julia's picture down from Alan's shelf. There she was, six months old. It was her official baby picture, a little late because she had spent so much of her early life having surgery. She was wrapped in a pink blanket, her tiny face peeking out. Dianne had been holding her. Alan had taken the picture.

Dianne stared at her daughter's face. It was so pretty and fine. Looking at those blue eyes, one would never guess at the mess inside her body, under the pink blanket. Julia's tiny pink tongue glistened. Dianne felt the same surge of love every time.

“Julia,” she said as if her daughter were right there. “Oh, Julia.”

Dianne thought back to those days in the rocking chair. She didn't hate herself for considering the options; most of the time, she didn't hate Tim. For her, the decision to have Julia had been gradual. Rocking slowly, she had felt the baby move. A slight shift, her bones clinking against Dianne's rib cage. The baby had tiptoed up her spine. Dianne had felt her heart flutter.

Alan stopped by. He walked into the room, stood in the doorway. Dianne hadn't told anyone the test results, not even her mother. Tim's reticence on physical matters was renowned; Dianne would never have expected him to confide in his brother.
Especially
not his brother.

“Tim told me,” Alan had said.

Dianne was shocked. Hugging herself, she knew that nothing either of the McIntosh brothers could say would make her change her mind. She was rocking her baby, just the two of them, and everything would be fine.

“He showed me the test results.”

“They don't matter,” Dianne said.

“I'm supposed to talk to you,” Alan said. “Talk some sense into you. I guess he thinks because I'm a doctor—”