All the Major Constellations (4 page)

ANDREW NEEDED TO CHECK ON BECKY. It was still dark when he entered through the back door. She met him at once, sniffing his hands and looking into his face. He let her out so she could relieve herself, but instead of leaping around and straining for a longer walk, she sat down at his feet. He sat down as well, and saw a faint reflection of himself in her eyes. On the wet grass in the gray light he wrapped his arms around her and cried.

He lay on his back. Becky flopped beside him and rested her head on his stomach. The sky began to reflect an in-between hour, where a few stars still glimmered beyond the orange yellow light. It was a special time of day, the moments before dawn. Everything looked more intense, like the vivid colors of the atmosphere that proceed a storm. He'd spent many mornings enjoying this time of day with Sara and Marcia.

The summer they'd been thirteen, they'd snuck out of their
homes at night to meet one another on the playground of their old middle school. Marcia had been especially excited by these clandestine gatherings. It had been fun to watch her as she ran around the jungle gym and recited Allen Ginsberg poems. They'd been studying sixties literature in school, and Marcia had taken to saying “I dig it!” in response to everything that excited or pleased her. It had been as if the night air had given her a sense of freedom. Andrew had known that sneaking out was the most rebellious thing Marcia had ever done. Part of him had felt that her excitement was pedestrian and typical. Childish. He had resisted the urge to feel giddy with her.

Marcia would be expecting him back at the hospital pretty soon, but Andrew felt so tired that he didn't think it was safe to drive.
Just a ten-minute nap,
he thought as he crept up the stairs and into his room. He swaddled himself in the mess of sheets and blankets and clothes on his bed. Becky leaped up beside him, and he embraced her as he fell into a thick and dreamless sleep.

• • •

“Andrew, wake up.”

He opened his eyes and stared around.

“Phone's for you.” It was his mother's voice calling from the other side of his bedroom door.

“Okay, hold on.” Andrew glanced at the clock and saw that it was twelve thirty. “Shit! Where's Becky?” he asked as he got up and opened the door.

His mother held the phone against her chest. “It's okay. I let the dog out,” she said.

“You did?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with one hand and reaching for the phone with the other.

She handed him the phone. “I'm sorry about your friend,” she said. She lightly touched his arm. He stared at her wildly for a moment. His heart flipped and plummeted at the same time. Was Sara dead? Was that why she was sorry?

“Marcia?” Andrew shouted into the phone. His mom walked away.

“I'm at the hospital. Nothing's changed. I mean, it's still kind of touch-and-go. Why are you yelling?”

“I thought . . . never mind. I closed my eyes for one minute and passed out.”

“Don't worry about it. We're just sitting around. But whatever they gave Janet is wearing off, so she's a little more with it.”

“I'll be there soon.” He started to hang up, then stopped. “Marcia?”

“Yeah?”

“What did you say to my mom?”

“That Sara got into an accident and is a vegetable. You know, maybe.”

He was shocked at the flatness of her voice.

“Oh,” he said.

Andrew brushed his teeth and splashed water onto his face. He inspected himself, something he generally avoided. His light
gray eyes looked back at him, heavily bagged and red-rimmed and bleary. Growing up, Andrew had hated their strange color, which he thought made him look girlish, but Sara had told him they were wonderful. Sexy.
Sara
.

He blinked back tears as he ran down the stairs. Andrew stopped when he saw the broad back of his father at the kitchen counter. Like Brian, his father was a big man—a very big man. His massive shoulders tapered down to an impressive torso and stocky strong legs. Andrew was tall, but he had his mother's lean and lanky frame. His father half turned when he heard Andrew.

“Hey,” Andrew said as he grabbed a granola bar. He scanned the kitchen counter. There were several empty beer cans, crushed, lying about.

“Where you going?” his father said.

“Hospital. Mom tell you?”

“Something about one of your friends?”

“Yeah.”

“The smart one or the pretty one?”

“Jesus, Dad.”

“Excuse me?”

“The pretty one.”

“Too bad.”

Andrew glared at a spot just beyond his father's coffee.

“That didn't sound right. It's too bad either way. Your brother's home in a week or so, maybe sooner.”

Andrew threw the granola bar wrapper in the trash.

“I said your brother's home—”

“I heard you.”

Slowly, his father stood up. Andrew braced himself. His dad hadn't hit him in a while, but his moods were unpredictable. And the Return of Brian usually corresponded with an uptake in his dad's drinking, which was weird, because he adored Brian.

“Doug! I need your help with this window,” Andrew's mother called from upstairs.

“What?” his father said. Andrew took the opportunity to slip out the kitchen door as his parents continued to yell up and down the stairs to each other.

When he got to the hospital, he decided to skip the elevator. As he dashed up the stairs, it occurred to him that he didn't have to rush. Why was he rushing as if Sara's life depended on him being present? There were doctors, nurses, medicines, tubes, pumps, vents—all sorts of things were keeping her alive. None of these things had anything to do with him. And if she was dead, there was nothing he could do anyway. Nothing except comfort Marcia and Janet.

He stopped running and then stopped moving altogether. He closed his eyes and saw white stars of light against the black of his lids. An image of Sara floated before him. Her eyes were open, their expression soft but faraway. Then the image changed, and it was Sara rolling around on her back and laughing at something he had said, some small sarcastic quip that was maybe not that funny at all but that Sara had found hysterical, or at least
pretended to. The image changed again and it was Laura, only it was Sara, too. A Sara-fied Laura, a Laura-fied Sara. Beautiful and horrifying.

When he got to the ICU, he saw Marcia right away. She was listening to one of the doctors as he spoke to Janet. Janet looked stupefied and pale. She swayed from foot to foot as the doctor spoke. Janet was in perfect contrast to Marcia, who stood like a statue with her arms crossed and her gaze fixed. Andrew hung back, unsure what to do. He shuffled around and ran one of his hands over the back of his neck.

In response to one of Marcia's questions, the doctor tipped his head from side to side as if considering something not worth considering. He wore a long white coat and had white hair. His face was small and intent, not unlike Marcia's, and on his wrist a bright gold watch flashed occasionally from beneath his coat sleeve. He reached out and squeezed Janet's shoulder, then turned and smiled at Marcia in a manner that seemed to say,
Okay, then, take care
.

Janet went into Sara's room. Andrew walked toward Marcia, who looked at him dispassionately as he approached. If it were possible, he felt even more uncomfortable.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“How is she?”

“The same, I think. I haven't been in there too much. I wanted to give Janet her space,” Marcia said.

“Are Janet's friends still here?” he asked.

“Most of them are gone. I think they're staying here in shifts.”

Marcia smiled at something behind him. Andrew turned and saw one of the nurses bustling toward them.

“Hi, Meg,” Marcia said.

“Hello, Marcia. Is this your friend?”

“This is Andrew.”

Meg was an older woman, pretty in a faded, farm-girl kind of way. She looked smart and efficient. As she spoke, she flicked her eyes back and forth between him and Marcia.

“Marcia said she wanted to help with Sara's care. I think it's best if you two just sit and talk quietly to Sara and her mother for now. I'll let you know if I need your help.”

“Thank you, Meg,” Marcia said.

“Yes, th-thank you,” Andrew stammered. Meg nodded and walked away.

“I like her. Susan, too,” Marcia said.

“The nurse from last night?”

“The nurse's aide today.”

“Oh,” Andrew said. He jingled his keys in his coat pocket. In a few short hours, while he had slept, Marcia had taken steps to master the situation, or at least play an active part.

“Shall we?” Marcia asked as she gestured toward room seven. Andrew followed her.

Everything looked the same as before, only now the room was brightly lit and Andrew could see things more clearly. The pumps turned and beeped and blinked. Janet sat on Sara's
right side and held one of her hands. She did not look up when Andrew and Marcia entered. Janet looked like she'd aged ten years overnight. Her skin was somehow heavy and thick. Unlike her daughter, Janet had never been a beauty. Her features were plain, her body slender but shapeless. The only thing mother and daughter had in common was their hair. Janet's hair was blonde and messy and, Andrew thought for the first time, kind of sexy. He had a wild urge to push the tendrils out of her eyes. He shook his head. What was wrong with him? He reached out to her, hesitated a moment, then patted her back. She gave him a closed-lipped, dead-eyed smile.

“We were going to sit with you for a while, unless you'd like us to get you something to eat. Or bugger off,” Marcia said. Janet turned her wary smile to Marcia.

“No, sweetheart. Don't bugger off.” She looked back at her comatose daughter. Marcia plopped into a chair on Sara's left and proceeded to stare at Sara. Marcia's expression was strange, unreadable, not unlike the expression she'd had as she gazed at Sara's closet door, so long ago, it seemed. Marcia looked like she, too, had aged rapidly overnight. Was that how he looked?

He glanced around for another chair, but there was none. Feeling annoyed, and then annoyed at himself for being annoyed, he leaned up against the wall and forced himself to look at Sara. Still beautiful, still Sara, only sleeping. One of the nurses, or aides, or perhaps even Marcia, had arranged Sara's blankets and hospital gown so that the places where the tubes entered her
body were more or less covered. For what felt like the millionth time in the last twenty-four hours, Andrew blinked back tears. And it was through this slightly watery vision that he perceived there was something off about Sara's expression. It was not just the tube that was helping her breathe. It was not just the blank inward gaze of sleep. It was something else, something lacking. Her lips were dry and pale. Her skin seemed to hang down, as if clinging to her bones. Her eyes were not closed in sleep as he'd first thought, but rather cast downward in despair. Sara never cast her eyes downward. There was no gaze on earth that she didn't meet with equanimity, or at least with confidence.

He wondered what Sara was thinking and feeling. Was she scared? Was she in pain? Was being in a coma like sleep, or was it deeper than sleep?

I wonder where she is?
Marcia had said last night. Andrew shivered. He wondered the same thing.

PEOPLE AT SCHOOL WERE VORACIOUS.

How's Sara?

How is she?

Are you okay?

Where's Marcia?

How's her mom?

What happened, exactly?

I heard she was with a guy.

I heard you were all in the same car.

I heard at the last minute you switched cars or something.

Is she okay?

Are you okay?

Is Marcia okay?

Are you okay, okay, okay?

Andrew slunk around the building like an alley cat. He avoided gazes, tried to avoid conversations, shrunk from outstretched hands. Some students, maybe even most, seemed truly concerned about Sara, but even their sincerity stank of intrusion. That jock she was sort of dating, Kyle, followed him around the school, clearly dying to talk, but Andrew felt ungenerous and angry.
Leave her alone,
he thought.

Finals were at the end of the week, and even at the best of times, classes at this point in the year bordered on anarchy. Even Marcia knew she wasn't missing anything. He didn't know why he came, but he didn't want to be at the hospital, either. He felt utterly useless—was, in fact, utterly useless to Sara.

Marcia was distant and uncommunicative. She'd been “participating in Sara's care” by helping with her bed bath. Andrew had made some meek noises of protest, saying that Sara might not have wanted Marcia to do that, but Marcia insisted that they might never know what Sara had wanted, and it was her responsibility to keep her comfortable. This was true to a certain extent, Andrew had to admit. The nurses and aides seemed so overburdened that Sara's morning bath was merely perfunctory, whereas Marcia washed and braided Sara's hair and cleansed her face with special products. Sara truly did seem more comfortable after Marcia settled her in bed, but the shivers of disapproval that coursed up and down his spine told him otherwise. But what did he know? Andrew was constantly being reminded of how little he knew. Smart, capable Marcia with her tireless thirst
to improve Sara's condition frightened and overwhelmed him. And poor Janet seemed to want and even need Marcia's take-charge handling of the situation.

Andrew hung back, confused, upset, in the way. Marcia had poor eyesight but could no longer be bothered with contacts, so she wore an enormous old pair of glasses. Her owlish brown eyes, huge and intense behind the thick frames, red-rimmed from lack of sleep, sometimes focused on Andrew with an expression of vague confusion at his presence. It was a relief to get out of there, even if it meant just going back to school.

He lowered his head onto his desk and pressed his cheek against the cool surface. He closed his eyes.

“Andrew?”

He looked up. His AP English teacher, Mr. Gonzalez, was looking at him with concern. His classmates averted their eyes.

“Yeah?” he said. “I mean, sorry. Do you want me to talk . . . or something?”

Mr. Gonzalez could usually rely on him to join in if the class discussion was flagging or not getting off the ground at all. Andrew was a good sport in his English classes. But now he didn't even know what was going on, hadn't even read the assignment.

“No, that's all right. Why don't you take the rest of the day off?” Mr. Gonzalez said.

“It's almost the end of the day anyway,” Andrew said.

“I know. You can stay if you want. Your choice.”

“Okay,” Andrew said. He stood up and gathered his books
into his backpack. Everyone seemed to be watching. He quickly walked out of the room.

He was almost disappointed. English was his favorite class, and Mr. Gonzalez his favorite teacher. It had, in fact, been the last class of his high school career. What a way to end it all. Sara would have laughed. He made fists with his hands and banged them into the lockers.

Far down the hallway, a door swung open. It was Laura.

It was
Laura.

She was wearing a silky beige dress that almost matched the color of her skin. Her golden amber hair was flowing around her face
.
She walked toward him and took his shoulders in both her hands. Her grip was firm, confident.

“Laura,” he said.

Her dark blue eyes seemed to take up the entirety of his vision. He was stunned.

“I'm so sorry about Sara,” she said. She was steadfast and calm.

“I—” he said. He dropped his gaze to the floor. To his horror, he started to cry.

“Let's talk,” she said. The bell rang, a cacophony of doors slammed open, and students began surging around them. Laura's hands slid from his shoulders, and she placed something in his palm. Then she was gone. He opened his hand. It was a piece of paper with her phone number and, next to it, a penciled drawing of a cross.