Follow the Stars Home (31 page)

“But will I
win?”

“You would,” Dianne said, “if I were the judge. You wrote a wonderful story and an excellent poem. I'd give you first place.”

“Girls, girls,” Lucinda said, pretending to be exasperated. “How often do I have to tell you? It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you see the world!”

“You never say that,” Amy said, frowning.

“She does, all the time,” Dianne said, rocking Julia on her lap. “She just says it in different ways.”
“Like what?” Amy asked.

“Like love each other,” Dianne said. “Like forgive the people you don't like.”

“Buddy?” Amy asked. “Never.”

“Then he'll hold you prisoner forever,” Lucinda said.

“Ewww,” Amy said, shivering. “Buddy holding me prisoner …I'd rather eat bugs. But even so, don't hold your breath on me forgiving him.”

“Does your mother like your story?” Dianne asked.

“She hasn't seen it,” Amy said quietly.

“Dleee,” Julia said.

Dianne reached down to hold her daughter's hand. Lucinda watched her wrap Julia's fingers around her own index finger, try to hold them there. Julia's grip slid away, and Dianne pressed it again. Dianne could be so stubborn, Lucinda thought. Had she realized, talking about forgiveness, that she was still swamped with bad feelings for Tim? That dream …

“I still hope I win,” Amy said. “Even if I'm not supposed to.”

“Gaaa,” Julia said.

“You really liked the story, Dianne?”

“I loved it.”

“Huh,” Amy said. “I'm glad.”

Lucinda swallowed. She wondered whether Dianne had noticed that Amy had given the mother Dianne's looks.

“Gleee,” Julia squeaked.

“See? Julia thinks I'll win.”

“I'll tell you what,” Lucinda said, staring at the two young girls, thinking back to when Dianne had been that age. “Win or lose, I'm getting tickets for
The Nutcracker.”

“The Nutcracker
ballet?” Amy asked. “The one
on TV at Christmas every year? That's the one you mean?”

“Mom took me,” Dianne said. She looked tired, as if the stress of her life, of just trying to hold her daughter's fingers, were a little too much today. “It was one of my favorite things we ever did.”

“And now it's your turn to take Amy,” Lucinda said.

Julia had another seizure. This time it was the middle of a cold November night, and Dianne heard her kicking the walls like a wild horse banging its stall. Flying into the room, she grabbed Julia and tried to hold her hands, to keep her from punching herself in the face. Holding her child, she could hardly stand the choking, garbled sounds coming from Julia's mouth.

“What is it, Dianne?” Lucinda asked.

“Call 911,” Dianne gasped. “Call Alan.”

Her mother disappeared. Dianne was alone with Julia. The girl's airway was blocked. She couldn't breathe. Had she swallowed her tongue? Choked on something left in her bed? Julia was turning blue.

Panicked, Dianne jumped up. Julia was still seizing. Dianne tried slapping her on the back. Something cracked, as if she had broken a bone. Still, Julia was choking. Dianne tried to turn her upside down. She was frantic, listening for sirens. How long since Lucinda had called? Lifting Julia into her arms, Julia's fists pounding her face and her heels kicking her legs, Dianne tried to carry her downstairs.

Dianne's thoughts were flying: Help was downstairs. Her mother was there, the ambulance was coming. Struggling with Julia, Dianne's back ached. She felt the spasm down low, ignored it. Julia needed air. They could do an emergency tracheotomy. Or they could do nothing…. Dianne paused, choking on a sob, leaning against the stairway wall. They could let Julia go, and it would all be over. All her suffering …

“No,” Dianne said, unable to stand the thought. She kept going, she had to get Julia help, she kept moving down the stairs. “Don't leave me, Julia.”

The ambulance was there. Help came all at once. Lucinda had told them Julia was having a seizure, so the EMTs were ready. One shot of diazepam, and the seizure stopped. They cleared her airway: She had bitten her tongue, and she'd been choking on her own blood. Dianne held Julia's hands through it all. She blocked out the furor, concentrated on her daughter's eyes. They were closed, but Dianne knew them by heart. She could see them, enormous and blue, searching her mother's face.

“I love you,” Dianne whispered, leaning over Julia as they carried her outside. “I love you, I love you.”

Alan met them at the hospital. He made sure Dianne was okay, settled her in the waiting room, then went into the examining room to see Julia. Tubes ran into her arm, nose, and throat. An oxygen mask was over her face.

“She was breathing on her own when they brought her in,” the attending physician said. “But she's not now.”

Alan nodded. His throat ached as he stared at his niece. Her color was very bad, her lips cyanotic. That
purplish discoloration came from a lack of oxygen in the blood, and he checked the flow of oxygen coming from the tanks on the wall. The on-call neurologist wrote orders for an MRI, an EEG. The cardiologist wrote orders for an EKG. Kissing Julia's forehead, he walked out to see Dianne.

“Tell me,” Dianne said, jumping to her feet. She grabbed Alan's hands, stared into his eyes.

“She's going for tests,” he said.

“It's worse this time, isn't it?” she asked. “It's much worse. You'd tell me if it was, wouldn't you? Is it? Is it, Alan?”

“I don't know,” Alan said. He tried to capture the professional calm that had gotten him through times like this before. He took a deep breath, looked around the familiar ER, reminded himself that he was a doctor. But this was Dianne, and the patient was Julia, and all his training went out the window. His eyes filled with tears. They spilled over as his arms went around Dianne and he began to sob. “I don't know,” he said again.

“If anything happens, it's my fault,” Dianne cried. “I stopped on the stairs. I wished-it was just a second-but I wished for her to die!”

“Anyone would wish that,” Alan said. “For a second. To watch her go through this …”

“I didn't mean it,” Dianne said.

“I know.”

They waited for hours. Alan sat with Dianne in the corner of the bright waiting room, his arm around her shoulders as they watched other people come and go. They watched people with lacerations, sprains, and chest pains. Alan diagnosed each one in his mind. He assessed the damaged, designed the treatment. But right now, when it came to Julia, he was a parent, not a doctor.

“Alan?” Jim Wedstone called, beckoning him over to the desk. Jim was a neurologist of the old school. He preferred to speak doctor to doctor. Jim was the specialist, and Alan was the primary care physician in this case. Jim would tell Alan, and expected Alan to tell Dianne. But that wasn't how Alan wanted it. Taking Dianne's hand, he led her across the ER.

“Jim, this is Dianne Robbins. She's Julia's mother.”

“Um, how do you do,” Jim said. He seemed displeased or uncomfortable to have to talk to her, but Alan wasn't giving him the choice.

“How's Julia?” Alan asked.

“She's breathing on her own again,” Jim said. “Her cardiologist will talk to you, but we feel there's some difficulty in her getting enough oxygen right now. She's not taking it in fast enough to circulate it to her brain, her organs….”

“She's grown,” Dianne said, her eyes big as she looked at Alan. “That's it, isn't it?”

“Partly,” Alan said. “Maybe.”

“I've been afraid all summer,” Dianne said, shaking. “Her lungs can't handle …is that why she had the seizure?”

“Seizures can happen with these disorders,” Jim said, stating one of the many familiar mysteries of Julia's life. Because Jim was a neurologist, seizures were his specialty. He set about explaining synapses and neurotransmitters to Dianne, and the speech sounded so comforting and reasonable; Alan watched her nodding eagerly, her eyes wide, hanging on every word.

It was easier to listen than to think. Julia had grown. What they had feared was happening.

“Come on,” Alan said, taking hold of Dianne's arm.

“Just a second,” she said, trying to smile, her lips dry. “Dr. Wedstone is just telling me—”

Jim Wedstone could have continued all day, regaling Julia's mother with theories about seizures in adolescent girls suffering various disorders, but Alan pried her away. He thanked Jim, then grabbed Dianne's coat off her chair. Holding it, he helped her slip her arms into the sleeves, completely aware of the fact that she was miffed at him for the rude way in which he'd behaved to Jim.

“He was just being nice,” Dianne said. “Explaining to me, helping me understand about Julia.”

“I know,” Alan said, buttoning her top button. It was cold outside, with a sharp wind blowing off the harbor. “But let's take a walk.”

The harbor was gray and choppy. All Hawthorne's pear trees were bare, their branches tossing in the wind. Dianne tucked her chin inside her coat collar, walking along with Alan. He had been right, encouraging her to come outside. The hospital was stuffy, and she always felt crazy until they let her sit beside Julia again.

Snow flurries swirled down. They hit the pavement, rolling around in white eddies. Dianne could hardly believe winter was coming. Thanksgiving was next week, and then it would be December, then Christmas.

“When can she come home?” she asked.

“We'll have to see,” Alan said. “As soon as she's stable.”

“A day,” Dianne said. “That's how long it takes her. She's fine, isn't she? That part about not enough oxygen …you can fix that, can't you?”

“Let's just walk,” Alan said.

Feeling numb, Dianne let him take her arm. They walked briskly along the waterfront, past the boatyards and fishing docks. Most of the fleet was in, their halyards clanking in the wind. Glancing over her shoulder, she wondered how far they were going to walk from the hospital. Julia would be coming to soon, and she wanted to be there.

Rounding the bend, they headed onto Water Street. The wind blew harder here, with no fish shacks or lobster boats to block it. It stung Dianne's cheeks. Huddling closer to Alan, she felt his arm go around her shoulders. She was just about to say they should turn around, go back and see Julia, when he stopped in front of the house she liked.

“Oh,” she said, looking through the gates. Although she didn't have gloves on, she grabbed two of the iron fence posts, holding on with her bare hands.

Alan took her arm. At first she thought he wanted to keep walking, to stay warm, but she pulled away gently, wanting to stop for a minute. She stared at the big white house, the great lawn and scruffy meadow.

“This place,” she said.

Alan stood there, hands in his pockets, looking down at her. His face was red, his chin tucked into his collar. She knew he was freezing, but he was letting her have her fantasy. She needed it, to take her away from the reality down the road, what was happening to her daughter, to counteract the terrible thoughts that had gone through Dianne's own mind on the stairs.

“When I was little …” she began.

“What did you picture?” he asked. “About this house?”

“Oh, garden parties,” she said. Those thoughts
were so long ago. “Ladies in white dresses. Little children playing on the grass. Being happy.”

“That walk we took last summer,” Alan said. “When we stood here …”

Dianne nodded. She remembered. They had held hands, walking along in the darkness, in the summer breeze. They had just danced, and kissed. The recollection made her smile. Tilting her head back, she looked into Alan's hazel eyes. They looked so searching and earnest, she would have stood on her toes to kiss him if she weren't in such turmoil.

“I asked you if you thought the people who lived here were happy. You said you didn't know,” he said.

“What does it matter?” Dianne asked, feeling despair.

“Come on,” he said. Taking her arm again, he began to lead her through the gates.

“Alan,” she said, pulling back. She felt shocked that he would even think of trespassing. There were no cars in the driveway, but there was a pumpkin on the front steps.

“They won't mind,” he said.

“How do you know?” she asked. “What if there's someone inside? Just because there's no car—”

“I don't think there is,” Alan said.

Holding his hand, Dianne reluctantly followed him up the driveway. It was made of finely ground oyster shells that crunched under their feet. The flower beds had been mulched for winter; the yard had been raked. She had never been this close to the house before though, and she couldn't help looking at every wonderful detail.

It was just like the playhouse her father had made her: It had three chimneys, fine white clapboards, black shutters, stately fluted columns, and wide stone
steps. As she got closer, she forgot how nervous she felt about walking up someone's driveway. Now she felt excited. There were no curtains at the windows. Maybe she could look inside, just take a peek.

Alan seemed to be looking through his pockets. Letting go of his arm, Dianne inched toward the house. Neat shrubs of boxwood and yew grew almost chin height; she had to crane her neck to see through the window, but when she did, she gasped.

The house was empty.

The white walls were empty, the wide floorboards bare. It upset Dianne to see this wonderful house so vacant: of furniture, paintings, and life. She wanted to see pictures on the walls and books on the shelves. Dianne felt so empty inside herself, so afraid of what was happening to her daughter, she wanted the rest of the world to be full.

“Where are they?” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. Alan couldn't hear. He was standing by the door as if he expected someone to open it and invite them in. Dianne thought of her daughter, alone in a hospital room just down the road.

Life could be such an empty house. The night before, Dianne had stood in the stairwell of her mother's house and for one dark moment wished her daughter dead. She had no business being here. Whatever tests Julia was having would be done soon. Dianne had to rush back to her, make up for that awful moment.

She turned her head to take one last look. There wasn't a stick of furniture in the room, except one. Dianne hadn't noticed it before: one small chair facing the fireplace at the far end. It had arms and rockers, hand-painted pale pink with tendrils of ivy and blossoms of blue morning glories and red columbine twisting up the wood.

The chair was little. The color pink made Dianne
think it must belong to a young girl. What had caused her parents to leave? Suddenly, she wanted to turn and run. Real people lived here, with their own lives and problems, just like Dianne and Alan and Julia. “Alan, let's go,” she begged, tugging on his arm.

“Dianne,” he said, holding out his hand.

“We have to leave,” she said. “It's wrong to be here. And I have to get back to Julia.”

“So do I,” he said. “I have to get back to her too. But we have something to do here.”

He kissed her. Standing in the cold, in another family's garden, he put his arms around her and gave her the sweetest kiss she could ever imagine. Dianne tried to pull away. Her heart was pounding. Something about that lonely little chair made her care about the family that lived there, made her want to slip away before they came back and caught them interrupting their privacy. Their pumpkin was on the steps, right at her and Alan's feet.

“People live here,” she begged.