All the Major Constellations Page 3

  “We’re proud of you. You’re doing this!” Sara shouted from the closet. She emerged in a tight blue dress. “And you’re not letting that douche-bag Jason take your place,” she said with her hands on her hips.

  “Who cares? What’s the point? I don’t give a shit about anyone from school except you two. Everyone else can kiss my ass,” Marcia said. Marcia wasn’t exactly disliked by her classmates, but people thought she was nerdy, weird, and way too into school. But they were wrong about her, thought Andrew. It wasn’t school that she was into; it was knowledge. Marcia actually cared about things like Spanish poetry and physics and the Crimean War. A guy like Jason just pretended to.

  “It’s not about that. It’s about celebrating how hard you’ve worked and how brilliant you are.” As she spoke, Sara walked toward Marcia and put her arms around her shoulders. She shook her lightly and said, “Marcia, don’t be ashamed or embarrassed.” Sara was a close talker, and her face was inches from Marcia’s. Marcia laughed nervously and stepped back.

  “I’m not embarrassed. It’s just stupid,” Marcia said.

  “Bullshit,” Sara said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Marcia’s right,” Andrew said, throwing the paper aside. “Fuck ’em. And the movie starts in twenty minutes, so let’s get going.”

  “What are we seeing again?” Sara asked with dread in her voice.

  “Un Chien Andalou,” Marcia and Andrew said together.

  Sara threw her head back and sighed.

  “It’s a revival. Remastered and everything,” Marcia said, her eyes pleading. Driving to the little art house cinema just outside of town and watching old movies had been part of Marcia’s Let’s watch real films! initiative. It drove Sara nuts.

  “I hate those depressing old European films. Why can’t we just get some pot and pizza and rent an action flick?” Sara said.

  “I’m game for that,” Andrew said.

  “Again?” Marcia said, and she looked to Andrew for support.

  Andrew stood up. “Un Chien Andalou is short, Sara. Besides, maybe you’ll pick up some French.”

  “I’m not even sure that I’ll be in France.”

  “You’re going to backpack around Europe and not go to France?” Marcia asked.

  Andrew snorted, and both girls looked at him. Sara’s year-after-high-school backpacking plans grated on him for reasons he was unable to define. It just all seemed so stereotypical. “Marcia’s right. Go to France, see the Louvre, stay in hostels, write in a journal, get a tan, and contract herpes,” he said.

  “Jealous?” Sara shot back.

  “Please stop arguing,” Marcia said.

  “And for your information,” Sara continued, “I always use condoms. Not that either of you would know anything about that.”

  He scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, wounded at this reminder of his virginity.

  Marcia cleared her throat and said, “Actually, condoms don’t really protect against herpes, because herpes—”

  “Oh, shut up, Marcia!” Sara and Andrew shouted together.

  Lately they’d been bickering. It didn’t help that Marcia had become infatuated with yet another medical book, this one about infectious diseases, and could not seem to stop herself from announcing these transmissible illness tidbits at the most awkward moments. Sprinkles of anxiety to flavor your day, Andrew called them.

  “Well, if we’re not going to the real movie theater,” Sara said as she went behind her closet again, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.”

  “Whose car are we taking?” Andrew asked.

  “Can we take both? That way you can give Marcia a ride home, and I can pick up my mom when her shift is done,” Sara said.

  “Or drive off alone with that sleazy projectionist,” Marcia muttered.

  “What was that?” Sara shouted from the closet.

  “I thought Janet wasn’t working nights,” Andrew said, less out of curiosity and more to prevent a spat from developing between the two girls. Andrew was more or less indifferent to Sara’s occasional promiscuity with older guys, but he knew it annoyed Marcia.

  “Not regularly, but she took a night shift for a friend. They’re the worst. She can’t get the smell of rancid milk out of her hair for days.”

  Sara’s mother, Janet, worked at a cheese factory, and the stories she told of the place were enough to turn Marcia’s vegetarianism into tentative stabs at veganism.

  “You want to hang out after the movie? What time do you have to pick your mom up?” Andrew said.

  “It’s just easier with two cars,” Sara said. Andrew and Marcia exchanged looks. She had not quite answered the question.

  “I’ll leave now and get tickets,” he said.

  “There’s some cash on my dresser,” Sara said.

  Marcia dug around her pockets and produced a pile of lint. She looked up at Andrew, embarrassed.

  “Pay me back later,” he said, waving away her explanation. “You coming with me or you want to ride with Sara?”

  “I think I’ll go with Sara,” she said.

  Andrew stepped outside. It was six o’clock. The sun was just settling back into the green mountains and leaving a soft pink blush in the sky. He thought of Laura, of the color of her skin, how it was like the light of the setting sun reflected in the sky and bouncing off the clouds of a perfect spring day. Pale yet golden, cool yet warm. He sighed. Sometimes, often in fact, he wished he could stop thinking about her. He felt cursed with obsession. He considered confessing his crush to Marcia and Sara; perhaps this would ease the sting and make him feel less like an actor in his own life, pretending everything was cool when really he was half out of his mind.

  He was about to drive away when Marcia came running down the steps. He smiled as she hopped into his car and buckled up.

  “Sara’s still messing with her clothes,” she said.

  Andrew shifted gears and pulled out of the driveway. He wondered if, on the way to the movies, he could get a glimpse of Laura. She would be heading to some sort of church event, even on a Friday night. Andrew thought it must be miserable to be at church all the time, but Laura and her friends always seemed happy.

  The movie theater wasn’t in the direction of the church, but he could take Maple Lane to Autumn Road, then loop around Hunger Street . . . yes, that would work. The circuitous route would eventually bring them to the theater. He turned the car sharply.

  “Where are you going?” Marcia asked.

  “Shortcut,” Andrew said. He was glad that Sara hadn’t come with them. Unlike Marcia, Sara would have known that he wasn’t taking a shortcut and would have teased him about it. Thoughts of confession were now far away.

  They drove in comfortable silence for a few minutes, the special trick of their old friendship. Despite Sara’s beauty and flirty charm, Andrew actually preferred being alone with Marcia. He often felt calm and strong when he was with her. Marcia was a small person, five feet tall and thin; she almost looked like a child. Something about Marcia’s size, her fatherlessness, and even her precocious intelligence made Andrew feel like an older brother to her. He tried to treat her like the loving and protective brother that Brian had never been to him, and her own brothers had never been to her. Other times he idly fantasized about her, or Sara for that matter, and it satisfied him more than porn.

  Andrew and Marcia had become friends when they were in the sixth grade. He had seen Marcia around at school. She was new to town. She had been born in Korea but was white, a paradox that intrigued and repelled some of his classmates. “That’s just weird!” had been the common refrain.

  When she was young, Marcia had had a subtle but strange global accent, having attended an English language school for the children of diplomats, politicians, and other international types. Her accent was gone, but her speech, especially at times of great emotion, wa
s still peppered with the occasional “Bollocks!” or “Shiza!” or “When I go to University—I mean college.”

  Marcia’s father had been a military doctor stationed in Korea. While volunteering at a free clinic, he was brutally murdered by an insane patient. Marcia’s family moved back to the States shortly after the tragedy.

  People were kind to them but left them alone. Marcia’s brothers were older than she was and very close in age to each other, sixteen and seventeen when they moved to town. The brothers had passed imperceptibly through high school, quietly scoring the highest marks in everything and then vanishing into college. They had attended the same state university on modest academic scholarships. Neither studied medicine.

  He slowed down as they drove past Laura’s church. A large placard on the lawn read ALL ANSWERS HERE! About a dozen cars were parked in the lot. He thought he saw a flicker of long amber hair out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, it was gone. He silently cursed.

  “Sometimes I wish I were religious,” Marcia said.

  “Oh?”

  “I kind of envy people who have that.”

  “All the answers?” Andrew said.

  Marcia laughed. “Yes, that. But also . . . peace, calm, certainty in the face of a storm.”

  “But religion has caused a lot of conflict and oppression, even warfare. Maybe religion is the storm.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I don’t know. I’d never really thought about it,” Andrew said.

  “No?”

  “I mean, I figure we’re all going to die someday, and it’ll be just like before we were born.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And while we’re here?”

  “If you need God or Buddha or whatever to help you through life, that’s . . . fine, I guess.”

  “As long as you’re not causing wars.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “It sounds so simple, talking about it in your car,” Marcia said with a nervous laugh. “You know, it’s weird that they’re even here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The ‘All Answers’ church. I think they’re pretty conservative. Here, in liberal Vermont?”

  “Please. That kind of stuff is all over the place. Vermont’s not special. There’s poverty and drugs and all kinds of shit. We’re just like every place else.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Need plus fear plus ignorance equals religion.”

  “That’s pretty harsh, Drew,” she said as she looked out the window.

  Drew. She had invoked the childhood nickname she’d given him years ago. She rarely used it now, and when she did it usually meant, as when she swore in German, that her emotions were running high. He mentally noted all this and bit back a sarcastic retort. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he felt that way about religion; it just sounded cool. Every once in a while he was meaner than he’d intended to be, like an instinct he couldn’t control. It happened with his mom sometimes, and now it had happened with Marcia, who was probably talking about religion in the first place because of her father, the eminent surgeon who loomed large in her imagination but dim in her memory. He tried to think of something comforting to say, but Marcia was prickly about her family’s past. He glanced at the clock and pressed the gas pedal harder. The movie started in five minutes. Sara was a fast driver and would not have taken his ridiculous “shortcut.” She could be there already.

  But she wasn’t. They left Sara’s ticket at the window and entered the already darkened theater. It smelled like nutritional yeast and hot oil. They sat down just as the movie began.

  As the images flickered before him, Andrew realized that there was no dialogue at all. Maybe Sara had found this out and decided not to come. He leaned back. She’d probably be outside when the film ended. He put his arm around the back of Marcia’s chair and glanced at her. She looked anxious.

  “You okay?” he whispered.

  She nodded, not taking her eyes away from the screen. She flinched at what she saw.

  5

  “I WONDER WHERE SHE IS?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—I—I don’t want to be here,” Marcia said. Her voice cracked and gave way to sobs.

  Not for the first time that night, he pressed his fingertips to the corners of his eyes and tried to push the tears back.

  They had sunk to the floor with their backs against the wall of room seven in the intensive care unit. They had not stopped holding hands for two hours. Now their fingers lay loosely intertwined, their palms sweaty with fear and with the constant hopeless pressing of skin on skin. Across from them lay Sara. Motionless, supine, comatose, beautiful Sara.

  “There are so many tubes,” said Andrew, who was now gasping with the effort not to cry.

  “I know.”

  “So many things coming out of her.”

  “I know, I know.”

  They’d had this conversation many times that night. A kind nurse had explained to them what all the tubes were for. This one helps her breathe, this one sucks out the secretions that congeal in her throat, this one drains her urine, this one reads the blood pressure in her heart, this one feeds her, these ones deliver medication to her bloodstream.

  “Oh. Oh. Oh,” they’d said in response.

  They were permitted to stay in the room as long as they promised to be quiet and not touch anything. Sara’s mother was heavily sedated and half-conscious in the waiting room. A few of her friends from work had come to sit with her and help fill out paperwork. Sara had no siblings, no father to speak of, no cousins or aunts or uncles. There was a grandmother, somewhere, but Janet and her mother had not spoken in years.

  Sara only has us, Andrew thought, and it made him feel protective and scared all at once. He heard Janet moaning from the waiting area. He glanced at Marcia, who was frowning and crying and picking at a bleeding hangnail on her thumb.

  “Stop that,” Andrew said. He pried her fingers off her thumb and found himself clutching her wrists as she tried to pull away.

  “Maybe you two should get something to eat.”

  Andrew looked up as one of the nurses entered the room. He noticed that she was carrying a diaper. Didn’t Sara have a tube for that? Then it hit him, and he felt stupid and disgusted and mad at himself. He also didn’t want Marcia, who’d been to hysterics and back again three times that night, to see the diaper. Through some empathetic telepathy the nurse hid the diaper behind her back while Marcia wiped the dribbling tears from her cheeks.

  “You’re right,” Andrew said to the nurse. He stood up. Marcia stayed on the floor, staring at Sara. He gave the nurse an embarrassed shrug and hoisted Marcia to her feet.

  With his arm around her shoulders, Andrew carefully guided Marcia through the ICU. The ICU was a large, white, U-shaped hallway with four rooms on each side and a nurse’s station in the center. There were no doors in the ICU. There was just an open frame through which a person could hurriedly pass in an emergency. There were curtains in the rooms, but the walls facing the nurse’s station consisted of large clear windows so the patients could be continuously observed. Television screens displayed the brainwaves and heart rhythms of those being monitored.

  The first thing Andrew had noticed about the ICU was that it wasn’t as bustling as he imagined it would be. It wasn’t like the TV shows he’d seen where people in hospitals were in constant motion and yelling orders at one another. In fact, many of the nurses and doctors seemed to speak in a deliberately quiet way. The machines that beeped and whirred had an almost muffled quality. Or was that just him? Andrew had a curious sense of drifting, as if the ICU were a spaceship and he were a humble passenger. He was on the wrong deck and belonged somewhere else and was being told to go to his assigned area.

  When they walked past the wait
ing room, Andrew gently moved Marcia to the other side of his body so that he, not Marcia, was facing Janet and her friends. Before Janet had been sedated, she’d kept grabbing Marcia by the shoulders and saying “Marcia! Marcia!” in an insensible, questioning tone of voice. He looked in on the women, who were crying and holding hands. Janet was lying on her back on the couch. Her face looked sluggish, and her mouth curved down into a sickly and unnatural-looking frown.

  Janet was usually such a fun person. “You look like I need a drink,” she’d say to Andrew when she came home from a late shift and found him writing hopeless Laura poems in her living room, Sara and Marcia fast asleep on the couch and curled around each other like puppies. She’d make him a Pop-Tart and pour herself a glass of wine. They’d talk about her job and his college prospects. Janet was interested, unlike his own parents.

  When Andrew and Marcia reached the hallway, he released her and they walked toward the elevator. He pushed the button for the first floor and crossed his arms over his chest. The doors closed. They looked at each other.

  “I could kill that guy,” he said.

  “He’s already dead,” Marcia said.

  “I know that. I’m just saying.”

  They didn’t know much. Sara had been speeding, but the guy who’d hit her had been drunk. He crashed through his windshield and split his head open on the street. Sara’s car tumbled and tumbled. It tumbled down into a granite ravine. Sara was, in the muttered words of one of the doctors who’d been swarming around, “a vegetable.”

  “That’s not certain,” another doctor in a long white coat had said quickly to Janet. But Janet was already screaming.

  The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open with a jarring chunky sound, as if the mechanics of the thing weren’t lined up properly. Andrew followed Marcia out into the hallway. A directory in front of them indicated that they should take a left for the cafeteria. They walked a few steps and were met by the congested and comforting smell of hot grease. They bought doughnuts and coffee.