Follow the Stars Home (28 page)

Kissing him, she saw stars and constellations, but from the ends of her toes she felt the fiery desire of wanting to keep this man in safety: to do for Alan McIntosh what he had done for her and Julia all these years.

For every time when Dianne had raged, when she
had wept over his brother, when she had pushed Alan away. For every hour he had sat by her side, holding her hand while they waited for Julia to come back from tests or surgery or physical therapy. For every minute he had listened to Julia's heart, rubbed her cramped and twisted muscles, never doubted that she needed hugs and affection as much as any other little child. For all those things Alan McIntosh had done, Dianne stopped kissing him and leaned back in his arms.

She stared at him without looking away, feeling so fierce in her heart that she could barely speak or move. When she opened her mouth, she knew exactly what she was going to say; she just couldn't imagine how it had taken her so long to get there.

“I love you, Alan,” she said. She had never said those words to him before, not even as a sister-in-law or a friend.

“I've always loved you, Dianne.”

“I don't know why,” she whispered, holding his hands tightly, pressed between both of their chests.

“Don't even ask, then,” Alan said. “I don't.”

“The way I've acted …”

“You've acted fine,” he said.

“I came over tonight because …” Dianne said, her voice breaking.

Alan seemed to hold his breath, waiting for her to go on.

“I wanted to be with you,” she said.

Alan nodded. He kissed her forehead, her eyebrows, the tip of her nose. His glasses were crooked, and she reached up to straighten them. As she did, she smoothed his brown, wavy hair behind his ears. She could hear the words she had just said hanging in the air, and she couldn't imagine what to do next.

Alan could.

Lifting her into his arms as easily as he had ever
picked up Julia, he carried her down the hallway through his house, through the rooms Dianne remembered from many years ago, and he carried her up the stairs. They went down the dark hallway, into a bedroom at the far end.

His bedroom was spare. A brass bed, an oak writing table, a braided rug, handmade by Dorothea, on the floor. Dianne knew the table had been Malachy's-he had given it to Alan when he'd moved from his house to the tugboat. She already knew Alan's things so well, and she felt moved by their history. When Alan laid her down on the white coverlet, she remembered that it had once covered his grandmother's bed in Nantucket.

Moonlight slanted through the window. It cast lavender shadows around the room. Alan lay beside her, touching her face so tenderly, as if he couldn't believe she was actually there. She could feel his breath on her cheek, and they stared at each other for a long time without smiling or blinking or saying a word.

He brought his mouth to hers, and they kissed. Dianne caught her breath, their lips parting as they held each other tight, grasping as if they could save each other from falling off a cliff. Dianne felt shy at first, feeling him touch the lines of her body. She hadn't been touched in so long.

“It's okay,” he said, sensing her unease. “We'll go as slowly and easily as you like.”

“It's been …” she began. “I've never …” She didn't know what to say. It's so easy to forget your body when you're never touched. She was strong, maybe a little too skinny. Would he think she was ugly, unattractive?

“Just know I love you,” he said, stroking her back, gazing into her eyes. “Let it start from that.”

Dianne nodded. She kissed him gently, her eyes open, willing herself to trust. This was so different from times with Tim-she'd felt crazy, wild, out of control then. Right now she was being guided by love, by her own desires, by the knowledge that Alan would never hurt her.

Alan kissed her neck, the top of her shoulder. Dianne shivered, holding his hand, feeling the sensations all through her body. “Just know I love you …” he had said. She thought of those words, and she
felt
them: They unlocked something inside her, and it all came pouring out.

“Alan,” she said, reaching for his arms. His body was strong and hot. She wanted him so badly now, and she didn't even know where to start. Her hands trembled as she felt his muscles, running her fingers down his chest. Twelve years of passion had been stored inside her, and she kissed him hungrily.

They unbuttoned each other's shirts, reaching inside to hold each other close, skin to skin, feeling their hearts beating hard. As Alan slid his hand between the velvet of her trousers and the silk of her panties, Dianne felt so frantic, she couldn't breathe. She trembled, reaching for his zipper.

He helped her out, guiding her hand, slowing her down. She wanted him inside her that second, with no time to wait or explore or take their time, but he trailed her body with kisses, very slowly, making her be patient. Dianne writhed, feeling his hot lips against her skin.

Alan's body was strong and firm, and with his pants off she felt the muscles of his thighs straining against the fabric of his shorts. She felt so conscious of their differences: Her legs were so smooth and his were so hairy, her breasts were so full and his chest was so hard. He kissed her everywhere with tenderness
and love, making her arch her back and moan out loud.

“I can't wait,” she said.

“Then you don't have to,” he whispered.

He cradled her with his arms, rising above her. She reached up to hug him, feeling the heat of his back with her hands, hungrily opening her mouth as he leaned down to kiss her. She guided him inside her, her legs already shaking. Trembling, she tried to lie still, but she couldn't.

“Dianne,” he said.

“I can't believe …” she said, stars flashing behind her eyes. She grasped his body, feeling their heat as he moved inside her. They belonged together. She had never felt so right in her entire life. She had lived a lifetime for this moment, holding this man, hearing him say her name over and over. She couldn't believe it was finally happening, and neither could Alan.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, please …”

“Always, Dianne,” he said, his mouth hot and wet against the crook of her neck. “We'll always be together.”

“Alan,” she said, clutching him for all she was worth.

They came together, Dianne sobbing with an emotion she had never known existed. It was joy, sorrow, love, and wonder, nameless and incredible, simple and complicated, all at the same time. Tears were flowing down her neck, into the pillow under her head. Alan was rocking her, telling her he loved her, that he'd never leave her, that this was how it was meant to be.

“I know,” Dianne cried.

“At last,” Alan said, rocking her, rocking her.

“I'm sorry-” Dianne gulped, “-that I'm crying.”

“Oh, don't be, sweetheart,” Alan said, cradling
her, kissing the tears from her eyes and her cheeks and the base of her neck. It was only then, when she reached up to touch his face, to thank him for his tenderness, that she realized that his face was wet too. That he'd been crying along with her, feeling the same new nameless, extraordinary emotion that had rocked her from the inside out.

An emotion all their own, that they had invented themselves.

“Oh, Alan, I love you,” Dianne said. “Love. Love …” Because she didn't know what else to call it.

October was a beautiful month. It felt like an extension of summer. The days were warm, sometimes hot. The nights were chilly, never quite cold. On his Wednesdays off, Alan would drive over to Dianne's. They would bundle Julia into a sweater and jeans, and he would row them across the marsh.

Fall was the best time to go to the beach. They had the whole place to themselves. The water was green and clear, and the waves broke gently, as if they were saving all their force for the winter storms that would come later. Alan would run, and then he and Dianne would swim, keeping their eyes on Julia as they dove through the waves.

They touched each other constantly. Once they had started, they could not stop. Alan loved the softness of Dianne's skin, the intensity of her love. She had told him about her new emotion, and he knew what she meant. It was the buildup of all their years together, of wanting each other and not being able to act on it. It was deep, and it filled him with joy, but it wasn't all happy. Because of all the lost time.

Sometimes Alan couldn't believe his life. He would
be lying in the sun, Dianne's head on his chest, and he would shudder, realizing that they could die at any moment. He'd have to feel her heart beating against his just to know that they were together, that all this was happening. Why now, why this year? The waves rolled in, the questions kept coming. Alan trained himself not to answer, not to even try.

All he had to do was love her.

“I didn't know you liked the beach so much,” Dianne said one day.

“I never did,” he said.

“You used to spend your Wednesdays running to the library,” she teased.

“Now I run on the beach instead,” he said, hugging her. “Wherever you are, love. Wherever you and Julia are.”

“Gleee,” Julia said. Her head lolled against her chest. It had become harder for her to hold her neck erect. The seizure had taken a great toll, and Alan and all her doctors were mystified as to the reasons. Alan was a scientist, a doctor, but he knew that explanations could not be found for everything. Instead, he pulled Julia onto his lap and rocked her in the sun.

Dianne had been lying on her stomach, gazing up at the lighthouse. The first time he'd felt uncomfortable, coming to the lighthouse beach, remembering that this was where he had come with Rachel. But that was in the past. The wasted past, the years without Dianne, the time he'd spent waiting for her to come to him. He wasn't going to squander any more of it with regrets.

“What do you think it is,” Dianne asked, shielding her eyes from the sun, “that lets a sand castle last and last?”

“What sand castle?” Alan asked, holding Julia.

“That one up there,” Dianne said, pointing up toward the lighthouse.

Half turning, Alan looked. He saw a square pile of sand, looking more like cinder blocks than the castles Dianne, Amy, Julia, and Lucinda had made on their trip. Dianne had shown him pictures, and those sand castles had been amazing and imaginative.

“It's been there for weeks,” Dianne said. “I've been watching it.”

“Are you sure it's the same one?”

“Yes,” she said. “It's crumbling around the edges, but it's definitely the same. Someone must have made it with mortar. I guess being so close to the lighthouse, it's protected.”

“The waves don't get up that high,” Alan said.

“Daaa,” Julia said, brushing his chest.

“It hasn't rained much,” Dianne said. “One good storm, and I think it will go.”

“We can always build another one,” Alan said.

“I like that one,” Dianne said. “I don't know why, but I like that sand castle up there.”

“Maaa,” Julia said, as if she liked it too.

“Oh, God,” Alan said, grasping them both. “Don't ever let this end.”

Buddy Slain didn't like the word no. No was his least favorite word in the English language. It filled him with bile, as a matter of fact. It seemed unfair, a great injustice, an impediment to his happiness. When a woman said it to him, the bile became poison.

Driving around town, the word
no
rang in his ears. Buddy's ears rang from amplified rock, the music blasting out of his speakers and the music he played in his band every night. They had a gig down by the waterfront, in one of the bars Buddy had been drinking at his whole life. Looking into the audience, it pissed him off, it
hurt
him, to not see Tess in the crowd.

Tess wasn't a beauty. She wasn't rich, she wasn't brilliant, she wasn't anything overly special, but she was his. Buddy had picked her out of a Saturday night crowd four years before, bought her a drink, taken her out of her misery. Everyone knew Tess Brooks was a widow. She was a homebody with a fatherless girl, a depressed woman with nothing much to live for. Until Buddy.

How quickly she forgot!

Just because the state and some fancy neighbors decided to meddle in their lives, Tess had kicked him out. He had to leave so she could see her kid again. Amy was going to cause her problems, and she'd wish she had Buddy there to help straighten them out. Amy could get herself fat; he could tell from the way her face was plumping up. Tess was too easygoing to ride her about it. You had to watch a kid, especially a girl, to keep her from gaining weight. For the girl's own good.

Getting kicked out of your own house was the ultimate no. It didn't matter to Buddy that Tess owned the property, that she had paid off her mortgage with the settlement she'd received after her husband's death. What seemed important was that she had looked Buddy in the face and said “Leave.”

For the time being, he was bunking at Randy Benson's condo. Nice place down by Jetty Beach. If Buddy had the bucks for a place like Randy's, he wouldn't be wasting his time on Tess. On the other hand, she needed him. She was a sad sack with a handful for a daughter. Little bitch had run off with his dog-another serious injustice.

Driving around Hawthorne, Buddy drank a beer and nursed his grudges. First he drove downtown, looking up at the medical building, the place where Saint Alan had his office. Saint Fucking Alan McIntosh, the man who could do no wrong. He didn't know where the jerk lived; high-end doctors like him kept their home numbers unlisted and their addresses private. They loved pulling the strings, doctors: getting people dependent on them, then disappearing into the comfort of total privacy so the little people couldn't find them. Buddy cruised up and
down the fancy streets of Hawthorne, hoping to find the good doctor.

Giving up for now, next he headed for Gull Point. Slowly driving down the dead end, he peered at the house, the homestead of the witches who'd stirred this hornet's nest up in the first place. The Robbins ladies. Mother and daughter and freak of nature. Three holier-than-thou bitches who liked to mess up other families because they were unsexed and unsatisfied. Women like that couldn't be happy unless everyone else around was dry and alone, hating men like they did.

Peeling out, Buddy laid rubber all the way up the road, away from Gull Point.

Last but not least, he drove down his street. His
old
street, he thought, remembering the most bitter no of all:
“Leave.”
There was the house. A dump compared to the condo he was staying at now. A royal dump. But Buddy was ready to sacrifice. He'd give up his bachelor luxuries-a fridge full of Mol-son, premium cable,
Penthouse
in the bathroom-to return to his rightful place, if only she'd ask him nice.

Nice
, he thought, driving slowly by.
It would have to be nice.
The curtains were open. He could see in the front windows, and he narrowed his eyes, hoping for a glimpse of Tess. She loved him, whether she wanted to admit it or not. They had had plenty of tender moments, their sex was wild, he knew how to treat her like a queen. Sure, his temper got the better of him sometimes, but that was just his passion coming out.

You couldn't make it in rock and roll being Milquetoast. Tell that to Dr. Saint Alan. Buddy was all about fire and passion. U2, that Irish band, had nothing on Buddy. Buddy was metal, screaming with anguish and
heartbreak and dying of love.
Dying
of love. Tell that to Dr. Nine-to-Five. Dr. Suburb, Dr. Perfect.

Driving back the opposite way, Buddy slowed down even more. Okay, there she was. Tess was walking outside into the backyard. It was a sunny day, and she had a basket of laundry to hang on the line. Clothespins in her mouth, she hung the clothes. Amy's shirts, her jeans, her underpants. Tess's nightgown, her bra, her panties. Buddy's laundry should be in there. Buddy's laundry needed washing too.

Parking across the street, he felt angry watching Tess hang up wash that wasn't his. It seemed like another no, another way he was being left out. Beyond the anger, though, was love. That's the thing not many people understood: Buddy was all about love. Buddy would die for this woman, no questions asked. He gunned his engine, just slightly. She didn't hear.

“Love you,” he said out loud.

Tess pulled the line, hung another shirt. The sunlight turned her hair auburn.

“Love you,” Buddy said again. He kept his voice low. He didn't have to shout. That much he knew. If their connection was half of what he thought it was, he barely had to whisper.

“Hey,” he whispered, staring at Tess, his eyes boring into her skull.

Some cars passed by. Buddy slouched down a little. He wouldn't want that CWS bitch catching him there. He checked his watch: two-thirty. Amy would be heading home from school. Her bus wasn't due for twenty minutes, but Buddy didn't want to take unnecessary risks.

“Hey,” he said again. “Love you. See you, baby.”

Tess brushed her hand across her ear as if chasing away a bee. Probably picking up Buddy's vibe, but didn't know what it was. She was okay. She was
A-okay. Not beautiful, not brilliant, not the hottest woman he'd ever had. But to Buddy, Tess was all right. She was his.

October stayed mild, and then one day snow flurries fell. One day the temperature plummeted twenty-five degrees. Amy had gone to school in overalls and a T-shirt, but when she got off the bus at Gull Point, she was freezing, running through the falling flakes to the studio. Throwing open the door, she yelled hello. Orion jumped all over her, licking her face.

“Hey, boy,” she said, petting him. “Good dog.”

No one but Stella and Orion were there. Amy frowned. Had she made a mistake? Usually she visited Dianne and Julia every Thursday afternoon. She missed coming more often, but she didn't want to act like the old days, give her mother the idea that she preferred this family to her own.

Looking up, she saw Lucinda coming across the yard. She was carrying a big bowl. White flurries danced in the wind, brushing the marsh grass and blowing along the ground.

“Where are Dianne and Julia?” Amy asked. “Is something wrong?”

“They're in the house,” Lucinda said. “Julia has a cold.”

“Just in time for winter,” Amy said, looking out the window.

“I made popcorn,” Lucinda said, offering Amy some. “It's a tradition Dianne and I thought of when she was a little girl-we'd make popcorn the first snow of every year.”

“Because it's white and fluffy?” Amy asked, munching.

“I guess so,” Lucinda said. “Because it's festive.”

“Can I see Julia?” Amy asked, looking across the yard.

“Um,” Lucinda said. Amy knew the answer was no, and that sent a knife into her heart. She felt awful, and she wasn't sure why: Was Julia really sick? Or did Amy feel bad because she was being banished from Robbins family life?

“How come?” she asked quietly. “Is Dianne mad at me?”

“No,” Lucinda said. “Not at all. It's just that Julia's lying down upstairs, and Dianne wants her to rest. She gets so excited when she sees you.”

“I'm her best friend,” Amy said.

“Yes, you are,” Lucinda said. They settled down on the window seat, the bowl of popcorn between them, and Amy relaxed a little. She liked being with Lucinda. Their drive back from Canada had made them close, and Amy imagined this was what it would be like to have a grandmother.

“Tell me about school,” Lucinda said. “What did you learn today?”

“I wrote a poem for English class.”

“You did? Tell me about it.”

“It rhymes,” Amy said. She felt a little embarrassed. All the other kids were writing in free verse. Flowing diary-type things about getting shot down in love, hanging out at the beach, sad thoughts of suicide.

“Shakespeare rhymed,” Lucinda said. “Keats rhymed. Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bishop.”

“Amber made fun of me.”

“Well, Amber …” Lucinda said as if that said it all.

“It's about the apple gardens,” Amy said. “Up on Prince Edward Island.”

“Really?” Lucinda asked, sounding excited.

“Yeah.” Amy felt in her pocket. The poem was
there, folded up. She felt like bringing it out, showing it to Lucinda. But she stopped herself.

“I'd love to see it,” Lucinda said.

“It's dumb,” Amy said.

“Sometimes writing a poem or a story is easier than letting people see it,” Lucinda said. “It takes a huge amount of courage to let someone read your work. It's like letting them look into your heart.”

Nodding, Amy felt the paper. It was closed in her fingers. She didn't want to hurt Lucinda's feelings by not showing her the poem, but she was too scared to move her hand. Lucinda was exactly right in what she had said, and Amy wasn't that brave.

“There's something I've been meaning to mention to you,” Lucinda said. “It's a contest.”

“Huh,” Amy said, squirming. She wasn't the winning type. Amber had won the Halloween costume contest when they were in third grade, and David Bagwell had won a prize for hitting the bull's-eye at Ocean Beach. Amy had never won anything.

“It's a writing contest,” Lucinda said. “Down at the library. Short stories by anyone who feels like entering. Entries have to be in by Thanksgiving; they can be about anything you want, any subject at all, no more than fifteen pages long-typewritten, double spaced.”

“I don't have a typewriter,” Amy said. “Or a computer.”

“We do,” Lucinda said, gesturing toward Dianne's desk.

“I'm not really a writer,” Amy said, thinking of writers as rich, brainy people at the heads of their class. “I just wrote this poem….”

“That's what writers do,” Lucinda said. “That's all they have to do to become writers: write.”

“Huh,” Amy said, feeling her poem again.

“Apple gardens,” Lucinda said gently.

“Like the ones we went to,” Amy said. Looking around Dianne's studio, she gazed up at Stella's shelf. The cat was up there, in her basket. Just below, Amy saw a shelf where Dianne kept wonderful things: a bird's nest with eggs in it, some pebbles from the black sand beach, and the four withered apples.

Amy remembered picking up the apples from the ground. They looked smaller now, dry husks. Their trip to Canada seemed a million years before. Life at home had started off so promising, but lately Amy had come home from school and found her mother napping. She had come here wanting to see Dianne and Julia, and she wasn't going to be allowed.

“See, I haven't seen your poem,” Lucinda said. “But I'll bet it's wonderful.”

“Maybe you're just saying that,” Amy said, tears coming to her eyes. “Because you don't want to hurt my feelings.”

“I wouldn't lie about a poem,” Lucinda said. “I'm a librarian, telling the truth about poetry is a rule I'll always keep.”

“Then why would you think—”

“That your poem is wonderful?” Lucinda asked. “I'll tell you why. It's because you have your eyes wide open, Amy Brooks. You see the world real and true, and you watch its people with kindness. If you wrote a poem about an apple garden, it would be filled with your heart. I know that.”

Amy's eyes spilled over.

“And any story you wrote would come from the same place.”

“Stories are supposed to be exciting,” Amy said. “About orphans and islands and, I don't know, families on the prairie.”

“Or about lonely girls and beaten puppies and walks through an apple garden,” Lucinda said.

“That sounds like me,” Amy said.

“You are certainly worth writing about,” Lucinda said.

Lucinda passed Amy the bowl, and the girl took another handful of popcorn. Outside, the snow flurries had stopped. The marsh looked brown and still. Amy wondered when the winter storms would come. She thought of Julia upstairs in the house, and she wondered whether her sand castle was still there.

“Lucinda …” Amy said.

“What, dear?”

Amy hesitated. She didn't know how to say she wished she could go see Julia, that she wanted to be part of their family again, as she had been during those days last summer. Why did everything have to change? Her throat ached. The four apples looked so tiny, way up there on the shelf. She had to close her eyes to catch their cidery smell, to bring back that day in the garden.

Reaching into her pocket, her hand closed around her poem again. She handed it to Lucinda, and without trusting herself to say good-bye, Amy ran out the door toward home.