and wet hair hung in his eyes. She half rose, thinking she’d walk out and say hi. This was her chance to thank him for sending Amy over.
Lucinda gestured, beckoning him around the desk. She directed Alan behind a corkboard partition. From behind the glass Dianne watched him glance around to make sure no one was looking. Then he pulled his wet shirt over his head. His body was strong and glistening with sweat. He dried himself off with the towel, and she watched him rubbing the mat of curly dark hair on his chest.
Dianne was frozen in place. She couldn’t move or look away. She felt like a spy, the library voyeur. The blood was pumping to her brain, leaving her mouth open and dry. Alan’s skin was ridiculously smooth, glossy and taut across his muscles. The two young librarians had walked in to have their lunch. They giggled, and Dianne realized they were checking Alan out too. She mumbled a few words.
The pediatrician’s body. She stared at it: his flat stomach, the narrow line of dark hair trailing into his waistband. His thighs looked massive, the rest of his legs long and lean. When he had finished drying himself, he pulled his wet shirt back on. As his head popped through the opening, his eyes met Dianne’s.
She blinked and looked down. The door opened and Lucinda walked in. The younger librarians were teasing her about keeping Alan to herself. Lucinda bantered back. Julia waved her arms, trying to call her grandmother. When Dianne glanced up, remembering that she still hadn’t thanked Alan for sending Amy to them, he had disappeared.
Having finished the little Victorian yesterday, Dianne was beginning a Greek Revival for the seventh birthday of a little girl in Old Lyme. This required building a portico and positioning ionic columns. While Julia dozed, Amy sat on a high stool watching Dianne work. Stella, still unsure about the newcomer, perched in a wicker basket on a shelf, spying from on high.
“Why doesn’t Stella like me?” Amy asked. “Cats usually do.”
“Stella is a squirrel,” Dianne said.
“No, really. Why doesn’t she like me?”
“She does. She’s just very shy,” Dianne said, measuring the distance between columns. “Her mother was killed by foxes the day she was born, and she was raised by a mother squirrel in the stone wall out back.”
“Poor little thing!” Amy said, staring at the cat, gray-striped with a brown undercoat. “She looks a little like a squirrel.…How do you know?”
“I found her mother’s body. I’d see the tiny kitten going in and out of the wall. After a couple of weeks, when she got too big, the mother squirrel stopped nursing her and kicked her out. She probably thought her babies were in danger –”
“Cats hunt squirrels,” Amy said. “They were her prey.”
“Eventually, but she was still too young. I had to feed her warm milk with a doll bottle. She was tiny, the size of a teacup. I’d hold her in one hand.”
“She must have been so cute,” Amy said in a small voice.
“And wild. At night she’d tear through the house. Once a bat got in, and she chased it till dawn. When people dropped by, she’d hide so completely, I sometimes couldn’t find her all day.”
“Hide where?”
“In my sweater drawer, under my quilt – she’d flatten herself out so much, you couldn’t even see a bump in the bed. Up the chimney, on the smoke shelf.”
“And now she’s up there, hiding in the basket,” Amy said, tilting her head back to see. Stella was there watching them, her eyes an unusual shade of turquoise.
“See, it’s not you,” Dianne said.
“I thought she’d know me by now,” Amy said. “I’ve been coming almost a month.”
“She doesn’t even meow – she chatters like a squirrel. In the morning she peeps. Sometimes I call her Peeper. She’s just a very unusual cat.” Dianne hated the idea of anyone thinking they were rejected, left out, unloved. Including Amy. She came over every day now, sat with Julia, talked to Dianne for hours on end. Gazing up at Stella, Amy seemed thin and unkempt, a lost ragamuffin.
“You raised a wild cat with a bottle …” Amy said, turning to Dianne. Her eyes were full of pain. “People don’t usually do that.”
“You would,” Dianne said.
“How do you know?” Amy asked.
“I can tell how much you care by the way you are with Julia.”
Clearing her throat, Dianne began to make Stella’s sound, the chirping of a squirrel. “Eh-eh. Eh-eh.”
The cat perked up her ears. Julia awoke, her eyes rolling up to Stella’s hiding place. Dianne kept on making the noise. Amy sat very still, and Julia’s hands began to drift, conducting her imaginary orchestra. Tentatively, Stella slid out of her basket. With great stealth, she came down from the shelf.
This was a game Dianne often played with her cat. Stella could play; Julia could not. Amy watched openmouthed.
Afternoon sun bathed the room, and Dianne tilted her watch crystal to catch the light. Directing it against the white wall, she sent the bright disk of reflected light careening along the baseboard. Stella began to chase it, making the “eh-eh” noises as she stalked her prey.
“She thinks it’s alive,” Amy exclaimed. “She wants to catch it!”
“You try it,” Dianne said. “With your father’s Timex.”
“Okay,” Amy said, and Julia sighed.
Dianne watched Amy get the hang of it, sending the tiny moon along the floor, Stella chattering in hot pursuit.
“Watch, Julia,” Amy laughed. “You have one crazy cat!”
Julia strained to focus. Her hands moved rapidly. Her eyes seemed to follow the action, and when Amy sent the tiny moon onto Julia’s tray and Stella jumped into Julia’s lap, Amy squealed with surprise and delight.
“Stella means ‘star,’” Dianne said. “I named her because when I first brought her home, I found her sitting in the window one night, staring at the sky. She always looks toward the same constellation.”
“Which one?” Amy asked.
“Orion.”
“I love the story of Stella,” Amy said.
Dianne nodded. As she watched Julia and Amy pet the cat, she tried not to let Amy’s comment make her feel too sad. She thought of loving the strange, the unlovable. She knew the value of play, of imagination and symbolism. It was every mother’s dream to see her child grow and develop, and to help the child along that path. Dianne had been able to do that more for a cat than for her own daughter.
Leaving the girls alone, she went silently over to her workbench, back to the columns. She loved the ionic capitals; their scrollwork reminded her of moon shells. The girls’ voices drifted over. They were soft and harmonious; at their feet, the cat chirped and peeped.
Listening, Dianne thought: This wasn’t the life she would have chosen. Dianne loved to talk, tell stories, exchange tales about the mysteries of life. Her child, her darling, her beacon of light, was incapable of reflection. Gazing into her eyes, she saw blankness, as if Julia’s eyes saw only inward, deep into her own soul – or nothing at all. Dianne pretended that Julia spoke in words and gestures, and sometimes she was more able than others to admit her own maternal lies.
Somewhere along the line Dianne had turned into an eccentric who talked to cats. Then, since she couldn’t communicate with her daughter, she captivated another woman’s child. To escape the hurt of her life, she imagined that her daughter was aware. That Julia was more, somehow, than a broken human body.
Much more, Julia. Much more, my love.
Dianne glanced over: The girls were talking. Amy was imitating the cat,