All the Major Constellations (10 page)

He threw John's shirt into the backseat of his car and slammed the door. He'd had Laura
in his arms
, and all he could do was talk about Mason jars and have a sneezing fit. He banged on the steering wheel and shouted. All he wanted was to crawl into a hole. He needed to reflect on the utter weirdness of the entire afternoon. He also wanted desperately to talk to Marcia and Sara. Thoughts of Sara, of his need of her, brought him back to a depressing shame spiral.

The house looked different when he pulled into his driveway. He couldn't put his finger on it, but when he got out of his car, he felt an inkling of dread. As he neared the back door, he heard his parents fighting.

“Shut the fuck up. I mean it, Sharon.” Andrew rushed through the door. His father rarely used his mother's name, and
if he did, it meant things were seriously bad between them.

“I'm home!” he shouted. For a few seconds he was met with dead silence. His father walked slowly into the kitchen. He looked terrible and terrifying. His mouth was set in a deep frown, his face ruddy.

“Dad,” he said.

“I presume you've heard the news?” From the other room, his mother let out a strangled sob. Andrew tried to maneuver around his father. “Mom, are you okay?”

“She's fine,” his father said. “Brian's been arrested.”

Andrew froze. “For what?” he asked. His mother cried louder, harder.

“I said shut up!” his father barked. This time Andrew did push around him, narrowly avoiding his massive outstretched arm. His mom was on the couch, crying. He sat next to her. She was upset but seemed otherwise unharmed. He put his hand tentatively on her knee.

“Mom?” he said.

“It'll be on the news!” she wailed. His father stomped up the stairs, cursing. Andrew didn't press her. After a few moments her tears subsided and she stood up. She took a deep breath and turned toward him.

“Brian's been arrested for assault. It was him and some other guys. But it's all lies. All of it. Brian wouldn't hurt . . . Brian wouldn't hurt someone like that!”

“Hurt someone like what?”

“You know, it was a girl.”

“What? Rape?” Andrew gripped the edge of the couch. He felt like he was going to be sick.

“Andrew, I said it's all lies! Brian said so.”

“Who is she? Is she okay?”

“What? I—I don't know!” his mother said. She turned and left the room. His father was yelling into the phone and walking down the hallway and turning on the radio. All these sounds were muffled and strange and seemed to be coming from deep within Andrew's head.

“Andrew, come here!” his father said.

As Andrew walked up the stairs he saw Becky poke her head outside of his room. With a slight gesture Andrew indicated that she should stay. Her great black body disappeared behind the door like a seal slipping back into the ocean.

“Fill up the car,” his father said as he handed Andrew twenty dollars.

“Where are you going?” Andrew said.

“Dexter,” his father said. Dexter was a small town up north. Why had Brian been all the way up there? He looked at his father, who now looked purposeful, energetic, and angry in an excited way. Andrew turned away in disgust.
Fucking Brian,
he thought.
Motherfucking Brian
. He shook his head to clear the images that came to him. He did not want to think about it.

• • •

Andrew rarely drove his parents' car. His own car was a beat-up '85 Corolla hatchback with a standard shift. He had paid for it after two summers at Avella. His parents' car was an automatic, and Andrew awkwardly adjusted to driving it, his left foot constantly looking for a clutch that wasn't there.

A morbid satisfaction crept into his heart. Driving this car was a grand but stupid metaphor for himself and his relationship with his family. An ill fit. A pointless groping for something that did not exist.

It cost thirty dollars to fill the tank. His parents must be going to bail Brian out or visit him. He got them a couple of coffees and placed them in the cup holders. He took pleasure in the fact that his thoughtfulness toward them would be unappreciated and unnoticed. He was the sniveling resentful good son. Perhaps they sensed this and disliked him the more for it. His dad did, anyway. He could never quite tell with his mom.

He stopped at a red light and stared at the dashboard. It was clean in here. His mother got carsick easily so she had the car washed, inside and out, almost every month. The car was a year old, but it still smelled like a new car. It was a strangely intoxicating scent. Why was that? Then he remembered: Sara had once said that the smell turned her on, that one day she wanted to have sex in a new car. They had been driving around in Jack's new car. He was home for Christmas and had let Marcia borrow it, a brave as well as generous gesture because Marcia was a terrible driver. Overly cautious, afraid of hurting herself or
others, she crept around the streets like an old lady. She gripped the wheel, staring straight in front of her, refusing both Sara's and Andrew's offers to drive. “One day I'd really like to have sex in a new car,” Sara said. There was an awkward silence. Then Marcia said stiffly, “Today will not be that day, Sara.” They had all burst out laughing.

When Andrew got back home, his parents were dressed, packed, and ready to go. His father was still talking on the phone, and his mother was bustling around the kitchen and running her hands along countertops in a frantic and pointless manner.

“This could ruin him.” Her voice cracked. Like a child, she covered her face with her hands. Andrew was touched.

“It's okay, Mom,” he said.

“It's not okay!”

“Fine. Whatever,” Andrew said. He tossed the keys on the counter and went upstairs.

“Whatever. That's your answer for everything!” his mother shouted to his back.

“It's as good an answer as any,” he said.

He was about to go to his room to get Becky when his father hung up the phone and said, “Hey.”

“Yes?” Andrew said.

“What happened to your face?” His father looked at him and then at the ground. He jiggled his leg restlessly and cleared his throat a few times.

He thinks he might've done this to me,
Andrew realized. The
thought made him feel annoyed and vaguely satisfied and even a little sorry for his father.

“I tripped in the woods. I'm fine,” Andrew said. He tried to sound reassuring, then wondered why.
Oh,
fuck him,
he thought.

“The charges might not stick, in which case we'll raise hell for an early bail,” his father said.

“Okay.”

“Or we might be back Monday if it takes that long.”

“Okay.”

“When are you leaving for college?”

“Month and a half.”

“You're almost eighteen, right?”

“That's right.”

His father reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. “There's not much in the house. Do you need money for groceries?”

“No. I'll increase my hours at Avella. I was planning to anyway.”

“Oh.” His father turned to go and said as he was leaving, “We're going to beat this thing.”

“Okay,” Andrew said.

Andrew didn't watch as his parents pulled out of the driveway and drove down the street. He wondered if his mother shed tears into her coffee, thick with cream and sticky with sugar, just how she liked it.

BECKY CAME OUT OF ANDREW'S room and dropped her leash at his feet. He took her for a long walk, his mind blank. When he got home, he watched television and paced the house. He kept an ear out for news about his brother. His mother was right, of course; whatever Brian and his friends had done would make some sort of headline. Andrew shuddered. What had Brian done? Andrew knew that his older brother had the capacity for violence. It was his trademark on the field.

Andrew had never felt more separate from his family. For a long time he'd felt and been treated like a bizarre sort of visitor. A quiet houseguest with a dog. He sometimes wondered if he even loved his family. His mom tugged at his heartstrings occasionally, but his father? Brian? Andrew thought Brian probably deserved whatever was coming to him. But even this
Andrew did not feel strongly about. He wanted nothing to do with
them
or
their
problems.

He flipped around the different news stations and satisfied himself that there was nothing about Brian. Emotionally, he didn't think he felt terribly invested in whatever was going on with his brother. But in terms of his own self-interest, Andrew was keenly aware that word would get around, and it would eventually affect him and everything he was up to.

And what was he up to, exactly? He wasn't even sure.
Making a play for Laura Lettel.
That was what Marcia had said. But was he making a play or planning an invasion? Sometimes he felt less like he was in love and more like he was a hunter. A predator. Camouflaging himself, blending in with her habitat, negotiating with her guardians. He'd had a setback today, for sure, but now he was determined. Holding Laura in the field had felt so natural, so right. He could have put her down after they'd gotten away from the broken glass, but she had wound her other arm around his neck almost to avoid being put down, to sustain the embrace . . . and maybe even something more?

He remembered those moments at Shaman's Point. When he'd either had a panic attack or . . . Or what? Felt the grace of God? Been touched by Jesus? That weird kid in the church had said that Jesus was waiting for him.
Just like I'm waiting for Laura,
he thought.
Only now I'm not waiting anymore, now I'm trying to get her.
Was Jesus trying to get him? Sending out messengers,
signs, temptations? It couldn't possibly work like that. Maybe he was just losing his mind.

He wanted to talk to Marcia, but at this hour she would be at the hospital. Sara did not have a phone in her room, something to do with her lousy insurance, so he could only reach Marcia at the nurses' station. It made their conversations short and probably accounted for some of the awkwardness as well. He weighed the options and decided to call her anyway.

“I'm sorry about the other day,” she said after he got her on the phone.

“It's okay. I know you're under a lot of stress.”

“Sara's doing fine. Stable.”

“Breathing tube out?”

“They don't want to chance it again.”

“Bummer.”

“Maybe in a few weeks. They're not sure.”

“Good, that's good.”

“I can't talk for too long,” Marcia said. She sounded apologetic, and Andrew could hear the nurses and doctors murmuring in the background.

“Shit, I'm sorry. I had to talk to you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Will you call me from your motel?”

“Sure thing,” she said. “But I might stay here tonight. Grand rounds are tomorrow morning, and if I'm not here at the ass crack of dawn, I'll miss the pulmonologist.”

“Okay.”

“Seriously, it's like Where's Waldo? with that guy.”

Andrew heard one of the nurses giggle. “No problem,” he said. “Whenever you get a chance.”

They said good-bye and hung up. Marcia had more important things to do. It was understandable. He stared at the phone in his hands.

When he had left the church, he'd needed to be alone, to get away from his humiliation and his new weirdo religious friends. Now he found himself very much missing their company.

“DO YOU THINK HE DID IT?” Matt asked.

“I do,” Andrew said. They were walking through the woods of Halgin Park.
These Jesus kids sure love their nature walks,
Andrew thought.

“How can you be sure? I mean, you don't know anything yet.”

“I know enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know Brian. It hasn't always been easy at home.”

“I sensed that.”

“Did you?”

“Sort of,” Matt said. “Is your dad like that too?”

“He is,” Andrew said, surprised. “What are you, clairvoyant or something?”

“Nah, nothing like that.”

Andrew wondered if he seemed like the kind of person who had been bullied. Did he come off as downtrodden or wimpy? The thought embarrassed him. Matt seemed to sense this as well.

“You were a big help at the soup kitchen yesterday. Did you enjoy it?” Matt asked.

“I did. How did it go?”

“It was fine. The usual crowd.”

“You have regulars?”

“Oh yeah. The numbers swell when it gets cold, when the economy is bad, and sometimes for no reason at all. Or no reason that I can tell, anyway,” Matt said.

“Is there—and I don't mean to offend you or anything—”

“You can ask me anything,” Matt said.

“Is there, like, a religious component to the food you serve people?”

Matt laughed. “You mean, do we lure people into the church in order to save them?”

“I don't mean it like that,” Andrew said. He brushed a spider off his arm.

“It's okay. Because that's exactly what we do. Wait, turn around.” Andrew complied and felt Matt hitting more bugs off his back. “You must have walked through some webs or something.”

“Gross.”

“Check me?”

Andrew inspected his back and shoulders for spiders.

“You're clean,” he said.

“Anyway, I know what you're thinking: like, that's bad or something. But when I talk to someone about Jesus, I'm speaking from my heart. I
want
them to feel better. I
want
to help them. The best thing in my life is my faith. Maybe it can be for them, too. And sometimes it's just more subtle than that. My love for them, my desire to help—they're in the food I prepare, the respect that I try and show them, that kind of thing, you know?”

“So you don't just talk about Jesus.”

“Not at all.”

“You don't talk to me about Jesus.”

“Everyone needs to go at their own pace.”

“And mine is glacial, right? Is that what you're saying?”

“Come on, Andrew. You really want to talk about this?”

“No, I guess I don't,” Andrew said, but it wasn't exactly true. He did kind of want to talk about it. Whatever
it
was. The details of Matt and Laura's religion didn't really interest him; rather, it was their faith that he found fascinating—especially Laura's. To Andrew, Laura's faith meant she was capable of an unwavering devotion to an idea, or a set of ideas, whereas he felt devotion only to physical things, real things, things you could touch, like Laura.

“This place reminds me of someone,” Matt said suddenly. He glanced around.

“Oh yeah?” Andrew said. He was barely listening, lost in another Laura fantasy.

“Someone who was really important to me once. Who still is.”

Laura,
he thought. They were circling the topic of Laura, talking and not talking about Laura. He brought his attention fully on Matt.

“I come here a lot,” Matt said.

“To remind yourself of that person?”

“Sort of. Or to remind me of what that person meant to me, of their struggle,” he said. “I've never told anyone about this before.”

Andrew thought for a moment.
Was
Matt talking about Laura? Or maybe he was talking about John. Now Andrew felt nervous too. He almost didn't want to know. But he also sensed that Matt wanted to unburden himself and perhaps needed some encouragement. Andrew was still an outsider, and Matt clearly needed to talk to someone besides his friends in the youth group. He recalled Matt's compassion toward him, toward everyone, and his subtle and not-so-subtle ways of defending Andrew against the more aggressive members at the church. And it was very kind of Matt to hear him out about Brian. Andrew had never had a close male friend. It had always been just him and Marcia, then him and Marcia and Sara.

“It's okay, man,” Andrew said. “Tell me about it.”

“You can't— It's a secret,” Matt said, running his hand through his hair.

“Don't worry about it,” Andrew said.

“Seriously, there would be repercussions for this person if it got out.”

“You can trust me.”

Matt nodded. “Okay. Until we're sixteen, we do this summer camp thing.”

“Vacation Bible School?” Andrew said, suppressing a laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Totally corny. But it's actually a lot of fun. During the day it's almost like regular camp. Hiking, swimming, archery, all that stuff. But every night we light a bonfire, get into a big circle, and we sing and pray. It's really intense. I can't even describe it. It's amazing.”

“Wow,” Andrew said, thinking it sounded kind of cheesy.

“It's like an out-of-body experience.”

Andrew stopped short. “Really?” He thought of that day at Shaman's Point with Laura. He hadn't felt out of his body exactly, but he hadn't felt
in
it either. “Go on.”

“Yeah. But it's not quite out-of-body, either, because it's so physical. Does that make sense?”

Andrew thought it did kind of make sense. But he asked, “What do you mean?”

“Don't laugh, okay?”

“I won't.”

Matt stopped and looked around again. All Andrew could hear was the babble of the brook, a sound that was no longer pleasant to him after the incident with Becky. The wind picked
up and made a whistling sound through the trees. It was eerie, but they were definitely alone.

“Some nights we'd do a hug spiral,” Matt said.

Andrew wasn't sure what he had expected, but this wasn't it. “A what now?”

“You get in a straight line and hold hands. Then the first person starts the spiral by hugging the person next to them. You spiral into each other until you're this huge hugging circle.”

“Okay . . .” Andrew said, raising his eyebrows.

“I said don't laugh.”

“Am I laughing?”

“No. Sorry.”

Matt turned and resumed walking. Andrew followed him. They were silent for a few minutes. Andrew cleared his throat.

“So, the hugging spiral.”

“We're all spiraled in, hugging and praying and singing. And it's, like, really intense. I usually keep my eyes closed—I mean, I always keep my eyes closed when I'm praying. My eyes are closed and I'm praying and really feeling God's love for us all and our love for one another. And then, suddenly, and I don't even know why, I open my eyes. And my counselor, Chip, his eyes are open too. And we're right across from each other, spiraled in, and our faces are like almost pressed together. We're, like, eyeball to eyeball, you know?”

“Um, you do this spiral shit with the counselors?” Andrew said.

“Yes. Dude, that's not the point at all,” Matt said.

“Sorry, go on.”

“Chip's eyes were so sad. I mean, painfully, horribly sad. I thought he was dying or something.”

“Shit.”

“Afterward, when everyone was getting ready for bed, Chip asked me to go for a walk. That part is kind of weird, because we're all supposed to just turn in, you know?”

That part is weird?
Andrew thought. But he said, “What happened on the walk?”

“Nothing happened,” Matt said quickly. “I mean, we walked a long way. And we didn't say much to each other. But every once in a while, he'd stop and point back to the fires and lights of the campsite and say, ‘See that, Matt? That's my faith.' We got farther and farther away, and it got darker and darker. The campsite was fading behind us until we could just barely see it. And he said again, ‘That's my faith.' Then we were completely in the dark and I couldn't see anything at all. Not even my hand in front of my face. And then Chip said, ‘This is my faith.' We just stood there in the dark.”

“Huh,” Andrew said.

“He's the youth pastor now.”

“Well, maybe he had a change of heart. Or found his faith or whatever.”

“Found his faith or whatever,” Matt repeated softly. He appeared lost in his own thoughts. They walked in silence for
quite some time. Andrew wasn't sure what to say.

Matt cleared his throat. “Sorry if it was weird for you to hear about that.”

“Not at all,” Andrew said.

“I mean, if you didn't grow up in this . . .” His voice trailed off. He was a few feet ahead of Andrew on the trail, and Andrew could barely hear him.

“Grow up with what?” Andrew asked.

“With Jesus,” Matt said. He turned around and reached out his hand. Andrew was embarrassed, but Matt seemed so earnest. They shook hands. The mood lightened.

“Hey, we're back,” Andrew said, looking up and seeing his car.

“I took us in a circle,” Matt said.

“How old is this youth pastor guy?” Andrew asked. Matt seemed to consider the question unimportant.

“Oh, I don't know. In his thirties, maybe? Ask Laura. They're really tight.”