Follow the Stars Home. Luanne Rice
had done her best after Alan’s parents had absconded into their misery. But she had lived on Nantucket, a sea voyage away, and Alan had hardly ever seen her.
“And call me in the morning!” Mrs. Robbins said.
His grandmother might have joked the same way.
The minute Lucinda Robbins got home, she took two cans of chicken broth out of the cupboard. When Emmett used to get sick, she would boil a chicken and make the stock from scratch. But for now, she made do with canned, throwing in some shallots, carrot, celery, peppercorns, bay leaf, and thyme from the garden. She set the pot to simmering.
The girls were in Dianne’s studio. They were listening to Carly Simon today: The love songs floated on the air, straight into Lucinda’s open window. Dianne loved Carly. She always had. She’d listen to that voice – full of passion, singing about lost love and a broken heart and the joys of her children and hope about tomorrow – as if only Carly could express the things Dianne felt so deeply inside.
Dianne was a wizard with wood. She had her father’s carpenter hands, his common sense, and his patience. Patience, above all, was the key to good carpentry. The ability to take a careful measurement, down to the last fraction of an inch, to fit pieces of wood together in a tight squeeze with no gaps of buckles. And faith: that she was making the right cuts, that she wasn’t going to ruin a piece of expensive wood with carelessness.
Dianne had all that patience and faith when it came to wood.
But Dianne had no faith at all about love. Why should she? Sometimes Lucinda looked at Dianne’s life and wondered how she had survived the despair. To be madly in love, the way Dianne had been with Tim, to marry him in the wedding of her dreams, to have his baby, and to lose him when the baby didn’t turn out to be the right kind.
Dianne had nearly died. Literally. Lucinda had spent those early days after Tim’s departure caring for Julia while Dianne was too sad to get out of bed. For so many days, once she realized the extent of Julia’s problems, she was flattened by postpartum depression, and the only thing Dianne could do was cry. Julia had pulled her through though. Eleven years ago, that tenacious little baby with her terrible troubles and fierce needs had saved her mother from dying of love.
But Alan McIntosh helped too. He had stopped by every day. There weren’t many doctors who made house calls, but he had never considered not making them. He was a forgiving man to look past Dianne’s leaving him for his brother. He’d come over straight from the office, minister to Julia’s peculiarities. Her third week alive, she’d had surgery to repair a twisted intestine, and they had attached a temporary colostomy bag to catch her little baby bowel movements.
Dianne, wild with grief, had fumbled with the bag. She had pulled the adhesive away from Julia’s stoma, the open place in her tiny belly, and Julia was screaming in pain.
Lucinda still remembered the pandemonium. Julia wailing, Dianne sobbing. Alan had walked into the kitchen, put his black case on the table, and taken Julia from Dianne. He held the infant against his chest, calming her down. A little trail of yellow baby poop stained his blue shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“I hurt her,” Dianne said, trembling as she wept.
“No, she’s fine,” Alan said.
“When I went to change the bag, I pulled too hard, and the connection ripped right off! Her skin’s so raw already, she’s been through so much …”
“You didn’t hurt her,” Alan said more firmly. “It was like taking off a Band-Aid, that’s all. It’ll sting only for a minute. We’ll get a new one, get her all set up.”
Gently handing Dianne her daughter, he rummaged through his case. He tore open the packages. Within two minutes he had cleaned Julia’s stoma, attached a new bag, wrapped her in her baby blanket.
Lucinda had stood back, paralyzed. She had raised a healthy daughter, hadn’t had a clue about how to fix a colostomy bag, how to help Dianne from losing her mind. In awe of her own daughter, she had felt afraid to move.
Alan had brought the courage to carry them all. Although he never pretended Julia was normal, he never acted as if she were different. Dianne had given birth three weeks earlier, the same week Tim left. She was pale and nearly insane, a quivering wreck with her dirty hair and blue robe. Afraid to hold her own baby, she had stood in the corner, tearing at her hair.
Lucinda would never forget what happened next. It was summer, and the marsh was alive with crickets. Starlight burned the black sky. A wild cat howled, and it had reminded Lucinda of her own daughter. Alan had walked across the kitchen, tried to put Julia in Dianne’s arms. But she wouldn’t take her.
“She’s your baby,” Alan said.
“I don’t want her,” Dianne wept.
You don’t mean that, Lucinda wanted to say. But maybe she did. Dianne lost her husband and so much more: her sense that love could overcome everything, that the world was a safe place, that good people had healthy children.
“She needs you,” Alan said.
“I want Tim,” Dianne begged. “Make him come back to me!”
“He’s gone, Dianne!” Alan nearly shouted, shaking her arm to wake her up. “The baby needs you!”
“I’m not a good enough mother for her,” Dianne said. “She needs someone much stronger. I can’t, I’m not …”
“You’re the only one she has,” Alan said steadily.
“Take her,” Dianne begged.
“Your daughter is hungry,” Alan said. He led Dianne almost roughly to the rocking chair by the window and pushed her down. Then, in the tenderest gesture Lucinda had ever seen, he opened the front of Dianne’s robe. She had been fighting, but now she stopped. She just sat there, unable to move.
Alan placed Julia at Dianne’s breast. Tears rolling down Dianne’s cheeks, she sat there in the dim light, refusing to look at her child. Outside, galaxies blazed in the night. She stared up, as if she wanted to leave this torment and become the blue star in Orion’s belt. Stubborn, she wouldn’t embrace her daughter. Kneeling before her, Alan supported Julia while she nursed at Dianne’s breast.
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