Follow the Stars Home (24 page)

“Oh, I know Amy wants to go,” Dianne said, glancing at her studio. The girls were sitting by Julia's chair, keeping watch over the animals.

“I couldn't stand to see you hurt again,” Alan said. “By someone you love leaving.”

Dianne bowed her head. She had numbed herself to a dull ache, but the tenderness in his voice brought
tears to her eyes. He stepped closer. She could hear him breathing, and she could see his shadow on the grass at her feet.

“Dianne,” he said. “Look at me.”

She shook her head. His arms had been full of boxes of Amy's clothes, but he lowered them to the ground. He placed the palm of his hand against her cheek, and she raised her head. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she couldn't stop them. Alan reached into his pocket for a handkerchief but couldn't find one, so he dried her tears with his bare hand. But they just kept coming.

Alan left his hand there, as if he couldn't stop touching her face. Dianne stared up at him. She swallowed, wanting to tell him she was okay, but she couldn't speak. Her heart was beating too hard. She felt the breeze blowing through her hair, and she felt something give out in her knees, as if someone had reached down and yanked a little pin. When Alan pulled her close to hug her, she held him as if they were both about to die there.

Alan mumbled something into her hair.

“What?” she asked.

She could swear she had heard him speak, she was positive she'd heard him say “This is it.”

But he just shook his head. She felt his lips on her part, on the back of her ear. He eased out of the hug, both of his hands on her upper arms, steadying her as if he thought she might fall.

“Did you say something?” she asked again.

She waited for him to answer, but instead he just raised his palms to the sky. The gesture was simple. It seemed to be a question and a prayer all at once. The summer sky was bright blue, with only a few clouds passing by. An osprey flew overhead, a large silver
fish struggling in its talons. A pair of swans swam in the marsh.

Dianne watched Alan looking at the sky, and she turned toward the two young girls inside her studio. She thought of love, daughters, mothers, and fathers. She thought of people meant to be together. Her face felt wet, and her knees were still weak. People prayed in different ways, but Dianne believed the prayers might be pretty much the same thing.

Lucinda's retirement day arrived. Friday, July fifteenth, her alarm rang at six A.M., as it had for forty years. Padding downstairs, she half expected to see Dianne sitting at the kitchen table, ready to commemorate the moment. But the room was empty. Julia had been sick to her stomach the previous night, and Dianne had been up late.

Taking her coffee out to the porch, Lucinda read her devotions looking east over the marsh. The old blue heron stood in the reeds. Staring at the big bird, Lucinda had a strange lump in her throat. She could hardly focus on the psalms. She felt as if she were standing on a dock, about to wave good-bye to a great steamship loaded with people she loved. She wanted them to go, she hoped they'd have a thrilling voyage, but she'd miss them terribly.

Getting dressed, the feeling didn't go away. She put on her best blue suit, pinned her mother's cameo to the throat of her white blouse, and put on lipstick. Most days she dressed a bit more casually, but she thought maybe her coworkers would throw her a luncheon for her last day. She practiced her surprise face in the mirror.

Dianne was still asleep, and Lucinda slipped out
quietly. With Amy there, Dianne was doing even more than usual. So Lucinda pushed down her feelings, not wanting to admit she felt a little disappointed not to be seen off on her last day of work.

The library was cool, as it always was in the early mornings. Lucinda loved this time of day. She would walk through the shelves, straightening books, putting back the volumes on the cart. Yellow sunlight came through the tall windows, silver dust sparkling in the air. Lucinda knew she would miss every book, every window, every particle of dust.

“Good luck, Mrs. Robbins!”

“We'll miss you, Lucinda!”

“The library won't be the same without you….”

All through the day her coworkers and library users said the same thing. Lucinda thanked them all. She must have made her thoughts about surprise parties very clear, because there was no special lunch. Two of the younger women ran out to their usual lunchtime aerobics class, and the reference librarian met her husband at the boatyard café.

Lucinda went about her tasks with an ache in her throat. She knew that she could never have had a better career. She had majored in English at Wheaton College, gotten her MLS from the University of Connecticut, started working at the library forty years before. She had overseen many changes, grieved when they took out the old oak card catalogues and brought in computers.

She had issued her own daughter her first library card. Standing right there, at the front desk, she had watched Dianne, five years old, sign her name on the card. Lucinda had watched her try to get all the letters on the line; she remembered how the
N
in Robbins had dangled off, but Lucinda had never felt prouder.

Emmett had built the oak shelves in the new addition. He had constructed the window seats in the children's library, installed a bay window in the reading room. Lucinda would grab the new Robert Ludlum novels the minute they'd come in, sign them out for her husband. And she would smile when he beeped his truck horn driving past, even though Lucinda repeatedly told him it was a quiet zone.

“Have you really read every book in the library?”

When she looked up, Alan was standing there. He held a bouquet of red roses and a wrapped package.

“You've heard that, have you?” she asked.

“It's legend here in Hawthorne.”

“Just like the ghost in the lighthouse,” she joked. “And pirate gold buried somewhere on Jetty Beach. I'm an institution!”

“That you are,” he said.

Lucinda nodded. To her surprise, tears came to her eyes. She had been looking forward to this day for months. She had movies to see, languages to learn, places to visit. She had served the readers of Hawthorne for four decades, worked very hard. She told herself it shouldn't matter that the town hadn't hired a brass band to send her off, but she had a lump in her throat anyway.

“I'll have a ball,” she said, forcing herself to sound jolly. “I have a list a mile long of things I want to do.”

“Good,” he said.

“I'll miss our Wednesdays though. Not many librarians have a handsome young doctor jogging by to sweat up their periodicals room.”

Alan nodded, handing her the roses and package. Lucinda had been trying her best to be upbeat, stay laughing, but Alan's eyes were serious behind his steel-rimmed glasses. He looked as if he knew how
she really felt-how very sad she was to be leaving the library she loved so much. Alan carried his own suffering with noble silence, and Lucinda knew she could learn from him.

“Good luck,” he said.

“Well, it's not like I won't be seeing you at our house. Now that we have two of your patients living under our roof …”

“It won't be the same,” Alan said. Lucinda had been thinking his motives for coming had to do with the way he'd looked at Dianne at dinner the night before, but she could hear the honest compassion in his voice.

“Thank you,” Lucinda said. Her throat caught as he kissed her cheek and backed away. The boy was trying to hide it, but he had tears in his eyes.

The rest of her day went by fast. She did her usual jobs. Everyone was so kind. The rooms grew hot as the sun took its westward journey, and the fans whirred. Air-conditioning was on the budget for the following year. When five o'clock came, the bells on White Chapel Square rang.

It was time for her to go.

The three younger librarians lined up to kiss her good-bye. They all told her how much she had influenced them, how much they would miss her. Lucinda had known them all for years. She had listened to their stories, counseled them on their love lives, held their newborn babies. Cheryl, Ramona, and Gwen.

As Lucinda walked down the wide steps, she heard the soles of her oxfords clicking on the stone. Bowing her head so no one could see her tears, she smelled the roses Alan had given her. The scent was heady and sweet. In her car, with her hands trembling, she opened the package. He had given her a brand new towel. She held it to her face, sobbing.

Driving home, Lucinda had her jacket off. The breeze blew her short hair, cooling her skin. She turned on the radio. Someone on NPR was talking about a trip to Tuscany, renting a farmhouse in an olive grove. Maybe Lucinda would learn Italian. By the time she reached Gull Point, her tears were gone.

The girls were in the yard. They were so busy playing, huddled over something, they didn't even look up. Parking her car, Lucinda tooted her horn. So what if Dianne had forgotten it was retirement day? With everything that girl had on her mind, she could be forgiven a momentary lapse. Lucinda gathered herself together, taking a breath.

But as she got out of the car she began to grin.

It was a parade. Amy marched first. Her smile had returned, and she carried a sign saying
CONGRATULATIONS EXCELLENT LIBRARIAN!
Dianne pushed Julia's wheelchair, decorated with red, white, and blue crepe paper and a sign reading
MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE LIE AHEAD
.

Laughing, holding her roses and towel, Lucinda couldn't speak.

Dianne and Amy switched places. While Amy continued pushing Julia's wheelchair, Dianne ducked behind the hedge. She returned with her lumber cart, lined with blue silk and pillows, covered with two simple wire arches decorated with day lilies, Queen Anne's lace, and beach roses.

“Your float, madame,” Dianne said.

“My what?”

“You're the star of the parade, Mom,” Dianne said, kissing her cheek.

“Did you do this?” Lucinda asked, touching the flower-laden arches.

“I did,” Dianne said, smiling as she helped Lucinda into the pillow-lined cart.

Settling down, still holding her roses, Lucinda allowed herself to be pushed through the yard. Amy was singing, and Julia was making her dolphin sounds. Lucinda held on tight as her daughter pushed the cart down the bumpy path to the marsh.

Swifts and swallows flew low, catching bugs. Two sea otters slid off the banks, gliding through the water. Tall golden grasses whispered in the wind, and a kingfisher dove for minnows. Still singing, Amy stopped pushing Julia. She stared straight at Dianne.

“Now?” Amy asked, grinning.

“Now,” Dianne said, kneeling by Lucinda's feet.

“You're not planning to dunk me,” Lucinda said.

“No,” Dianne said, gently easing one of Lucinda's shoes off her foot. Amy untied and slightly more roughly pulled off the other. The two girls held Lucinda's shoes, her sturdy old oxfords that had hurt her feet all these years. They were heavy and stiff, and she had had them resoled more times than she could remember.

“Are we doing what I think we are?” Lucinda asked.

“You've said you wanted to do this many, many times,” Dianne said.

“The minute I retired …”

“It's the ceremonial sinking of the shoes,” Dianne said solemnly. “No retirement parade would be complete without it.”

“Gleeee,” Julia said, swaying in her wheelchair.

“Freedom!” Lucinda cried, wiggling her toes. The fresh breeze blew through her panty hose, cooling her sore feet. Dianne and Amy each held one oxford.

“Bombs away!” Amy said, throwing one shoe with such force, it scattered swans, otters, minnows, and blue crabs.

“Mom?” Dianne asked, grinning as she stepped
forward, bearing Lucinda's other shoe as if it were a tiara on a satin cushion.

“But of course,” Lucinda said, letting Amy pull her out of the wheelbarrow. Taking her shoe, holding Dianne's hand, Lucinda tiptoed toward the water. The earth was soft and damp, and her stocking feet sank into the warm mud. Stretching closer to the edge, holding on to her daughter, Lucinda eased her shoe onto the water.

The oxford floated for an instant, and Lucinda thought it was going to sail away. Reflecting the late-day sun, the cordovan shoe was burnished and glowing. It wobbled on the surface of the water. Amy knelt by Julia, laughing so hard, she couldn't stop. Dianne squeezed her mother's hand, and Lucinda squeezed back.

As the four of them watched that old shoe sink into the marsh, Lucinda really and truly knew she was retired.