All the Major Constellations

by Pratima Cranse

  The group began shifting around and stretching, as if they were all waking from the same dream. John rose abruptly and walked toward the edge of the mountain. He stood with his arms crossed and his legs apart, looking down. Laura got up and drifted toward Karen. The two girls whispered to each other. Were they talking about him? But then he thought that there was no way on earth that Laura would tell Karen that he’d just kissed her ear. Andrew moved closer to the girls and strained to hear them. Karen pulled from her pocket what looked like his Bible.

  “I found it on the ground. He must have dropped it,” Karen said.

  “So give it back to him,” Laura said.

  And then for some reason they both giggled.

  “Hey.”

  Andrew looked up and saw Matt and Seth. Matt had Andrew’s jacket crumpled up under one of his arms. He handed him the jacket and sat down.

  “Thanks,” Andrew said. “Sorry you had to carry that.”

  “No problem,” Matt said.

  Matt stretched his legs out in front of him and grabbed the toes of his sneakers, like an athlete preparing himself for a race. Seth did not sit. Andrew glanced away, looking for David and Becky. They were running around in a grassy part of the mountaintop, David’s hand still gripping the handle of the leash.

  “We’re sorry about before,” Matt said.

  “It’s fine,” Andrew said.

  “It’s not fine. We’ve talked about this. You didn’t grow up in this—” Matt said as he gestured with his arms as if to encompass all the people around them in an aerial embrace. He cleared his throat and looked at Seth, who seemed like he was pretending to read his Bible. He closed it and spoke to Andrew.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with ghost stories?” Andrew asked him. Seth rolled his eyes. “I’m honestly curious,” Andrew said. Seth didn’t respond.

  “Well, it’s like—” Matt said. “Ghosts aren’t real. Your soul goes to Heaven or, you know, it doesn’t. The soul doesn’t hang out on Earth torturing people, haunting people, possessing people. That’s what we mean by blasphemy. We believe, I believe, that thinking about the soul in that way, like in a horror movie or something, is just harmful.”

  “Harmful to who?” Andrew asked.

  “Everyone,” Matt said. “The living and the dead.”

  “Oh,” Andrew said. “What about—” He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to talk about anything real in front of douche-bag Goatee Seth. But Matt seemed to read his mind.

  “Your friend’s soul is still here. Sara is still here,” Matt said.

  Andrew stood up and immediately felt lightheaded. He swayed slightly.

  “Are you okay? Did you eat this morning? I have some crackers . . . somewhere,” Matt said as he searched the pockets of his pants. Even Seth reached out as if to steady him. But Andrew regained control of himself and stepped away from them both.

  “It’s not a ghost story anyway,” Andrew said.

  “What?” Seth said.

  “David’s story. There’s nothing supernatural about that one. It’s just a stupid scary story.”

  “Oh,” Seth said.

  “We didn’t know that,” Matt added.

  Seth looked long and hard at David, who was at that moment literally frolicking on a sunny mountaintop. “It’s best not to stray into that territory,” he said.

  “Whatever,” Andrew said. He turned toward Seth. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For your thing. You know, the traveling portion of your faith.”

  “Ghana,” Seth said.

  “Oh, right,” Andrew said. “I knew that.” Then he turned away and walked toward David and Becky. He heard Matt say his name, barely audible, but he pretended not to hear.

  Off to Africa to convert the unbelieving. Seth is pure ass hat, he thought, but Andrew was shaken. Shaken to hear Matt refer to Sara’s soul. How dare he? Laura had told all these jerks about Sara and her coma and her fucking ventilator. That was why Laura wanted to hang out with him in the first place. Because he was grieving, vulnerable, possibly convertible. Did she even really care about him? Then with a surge of shame he realized that for the past few days he hadn’t really thought about Sara at all because he was so consumed with trying to connect with Laura.

  With a frown on his face he reached the joyful David and Becky. “Hey,” Andrew said.

  “Oh, hi,” David said, standing up straight and gazing at Andrew with wide eyes. Andrew noted with irritation that David had picked up on his bad mood and responded to it immediately, like a cringing dog. We always hate the ones we hurt the most, Andrew thought. Where had he heard that before? He felt dizzy again and sat down.

  “You okay?” David asked, sitting next to him and leaning against him slightly.

  “Everyone keeps asking me that,” Andrew said more to himself than to David. “Maybe I’m not okay.”

  “Maybe,” David said, shrugging. Then he looked at Andrew with an expression of such nonchalance that it made Andrew laugh. Becky flopped in between them and put her head on Andrew’s knee.

  “We should start heading down,” John said. His voice sounded strangely harsh in the distance. John stood on the edge of a cliff with his back to the sun. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the wind blew his long hair out in front of him. He was lit from behind by golden-orange light. Andrew thought that John looked comically epic. A born-again surfer-dude warrior on the cover of a fantasy book. Andrew laughed some more. A note of hysteria tinged his voice. Becky took her head off his knee, and the ever-sensitive David squirmed around and looked confused.

  “David!” Seth called.

  “Better hop to,” Andrew said, reeling onto his back and laughing even harder.

  David ran off in the direction of his brother. Andrew stared at the sky and took some deep breaths, trying to calm down. He closed his eyes and heard footsteps. An image of Sara floated before him. She was lying in her hospital bed, back to normal, wide-awake, fully dressed, with a suggestive smile on her lips. She sat up and said, Come on, Andrew, let’s go!

  A shadow passed before his closed eyelids.

  “We do a prayer circle before we go down,” John said.

  “You can’t be too careful,” Andrew said, laughing.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Andrew said. He jumped up and grinned.

  John was frowning and looking at Andrew with concern.

  “Let’s go, man,” Andrew said as he swung his arm around John’s shoulders in a drunken fashion. With his other hand, Andrew patted John on the chest and said, “You okay, buddy?”

  “I’m fine,” John said.

  Together they walked toward the group of people forming a loose and uneven circle at the top of the mountain. John seemed startled by Andrew’s sudden physical aggression. The intimacy that John usually initiated seemed now to have been passed on to Andrew.

  “This won’t do,” Andrew said as his arm slid from John’s shoulders and then grasped one of his hands. “C’mon, everybody, close ranks.” John’s hand, at first warm and dry, began to sweat profusely. The group glanced at one another and then formed a circle by holding hands.

  “John?” Laura said.

  John opened his mouth when Andrew said suddenly, “How about I give it a go?” He laughed by himself for a few moments. Andrew felt hysterical and almost out of control but also sort of pleased with himself and unconcerned about anyone else. An uncomfortable silence ensued while he recovered.

  “I think that would be nice,” John said.

  “Yes, it would be,” Matt said firmly.

  “I think . . .” Karen began in a snotty tone of voice.

  “Sweetheart, the men have spoken,” Andrew said. He walked over to Karen and gently cupped her angry face in the palm of h
is hand. She stared back.

  “How dare you . . .” she began.

  “I think you have my book,” Andrew said so softly that only he and Karen, and perhaps Laura who was standing next to them and looking at Andrew with her static unreadable expression, could hear.

  “This is yours?” Karen said as she pulled the Bible from her pocket.

  Andrew leaned in even closer to Karen so that he was whispering in her ear. “My boyfriend gave it to me,” he said.

  Karen jumped and handed him the book.

  “What is wrong with you?” Seth said as he grasped Andrew’s arm and yanked him away from his sister.

  “The spirit’s got ahold of me,” Andrew said. “No hard feelings, right, Karen?”

  “No,” Karen said. “No hard feelings at all. We’d better get started.” She glanced at her watch and Andrew noticed, without a shred of guilt, that her hands were clenched and her face was red.

  “Okay, everyone, let’s just chill,” John said, although he spoke with less certainty in his voice than was usual for him.

  Andrew opened the book and read Psalm 6 out loud, laughing occasionally throughout, while the group lowered their heads.

  “‘I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears,’” Andrew read. Then he chuckled.

  John said, “Amen,” and everyone else said “Amen,” including Andrew, whose giddiness was stoked rather than calmed by the solemn prayer circle.

  “David?” Andrew said.

  “Yeah?” David said, opening his eyes and looking excited.

  “Race you down the mountain?” Andrew said.

  “Okay!”

  Then Andrew, David, and Becky took off down the trail amid unheeded cries urging them to slow down and be careful.

  • • •

  They reached the bottom of the mountain well before any of the others. Becky trotted behind them, panting and wagging her tail madly. There was a craggy old water fountain at the foot of the trail from which they drank. Andrew rummaged around in his trunk for a suitable container for Becky to drink out of. He found an old Styrofoam coffee cup that he rinsed and filled with water. Becky drank while the two boys lay on the ground and panted.

  “That was a pretty good Psalm that you read back there,” David said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. My favorite.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  They heard the footsteps of the others approaching. Karen reached them first. Andrew noted that she was sweaty and breathing hard. Her cut-offs were now sitting very low on her hips and her hair was disheveled.

  “Did you run after us?” Andrew asked innocently.

  Karen did not respond. She drank from the fountain and handed David the keys to Matt’s car.

  “Get in,” she said.

  David leaped up, said a quick good-bye to Andrew and Becky, and then crawled into the backseat of Matt’s van. Andrew thought he could hear David singing to himself.

  Andrew remained stretched out on the ground with his arms under his head. He smiled at Karen, who gazed down at him, her hands on her hips like a superhero.

  “You need a cape,” Andrew said, and then he giggled and turned over on his side, rollicking and chuckling.

  The others came out of the trail in quick succession. He could feel their eyes on him, but he didn’t care. He heard them confer about driving arrangements. Bits of their whispers reached his ears.

  “Someone should go with him. He’s freaking out.”

  “He’s Laura’s friend.”

  “He’s all of our friend.” Definitely Matt’s voice.

  Andrew stood up and put Becky in the backseat of the car. She stretched out her body and closed her eyes. As he walked over to the group, their whispers quieted. Laura smiled at him, but he shifted his eyes away from her and grabbed Karen’s wrist.

  “Karen will go with me,” he said.

  “I don’t think—” Seth began, but Karen interrupted.

  “No, it’s fine. We have to talk anyway,” she said.

  “You do?” John and Seth said together.

  “Andrew—” Matt said.

  “Chill out, bro,” Andrew said.

  Andrew led her back to his car and opened the passenger side door for her. As she got in and buckled up, he winked at her. She frowned. He walked around the front of his car and glanced casually at Laura, who looked both hurt and confused. Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought.

  29

  AFTER FIVE MINUTES OF COMPLETE silence, Karen said, “That’s John’s book.”

  “Mine now.”

  “His name is written on the inside.”

  “It’s not his name. It’s actually a precious old collectible. It belonged to John the Baptist, not John the born-again surfer dude.”

  “We’re not born-again. And that’s a mean way to talk about someone who cares about you.”

  “Oh, he cares about me, all right.”

  Karen crossed her arms and glared at the road. “What are you saying?” she asked.

  Andrew seemed to awake from a dream. Cold sweat ran down his arms. What was he saying? “Nothing, Karen,” he said.

  “Nothing what?”

  “Nothing. As in, I’m not saying anything.” Andrew tried to laugh, but all the mirth in his body was spent. “I’m worn out from laughing,” he said.

  “What?”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and didn’t see any of the others behind him. He felt nervous, jittery. He decided to get off the interstate, take Route 2 back to town. Maybe the pretty drive would calm him down. He heard Karen shift around and open the window.

  “Shortcut,” he murmured.

  “Whatever,” Karen said. “Listen, Matt likes you a lot. So does Laura,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I think you’re up to something.”

  “I think you’re up to something.”

  “Like what?”

  “You first.”

  “Like, messing around with what we’ve got. Like, not taking it seriously.”

  “So what? Convert me. That’s your job, isn’t it? Or would it help if I were half starved and from a third-world country and—”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Tough words, Sister Karen.”

  “And John’s struggling. Leave him alone.”

  “Struggling with what?” Andrew said, feeling reckless again. Karen didn’t answer him. “And speaking of struggling, tell Goatee to lay off David,” Andrew said.

  “David is none of your business,” Karen said.

  “He acts like he’s seven. Does he even have any friends?” Andrew was practically yelling at this girl he barely knew.

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, please! Why are you hanging out with us? Why are you messing around with John’s head? Why did you pull me into this car?”

  “Because you wanted to come!”

  “What? What did you say?” Karen screeched.

  Andrew swerved to the side of the road and stopped the car. He met her angry gaze and said, “Because this is fun.”

  And then Karen was unbuckling her seat belt and in his arms. She pressed her lips on his, and her tongue was like a wild animal in his mouth. She was in his lap and working her hips against him. She groaned and dug her nails into his neck. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before tearing at the buttons on her shirt. Her skin tasted like pine needles and sunshine, sap and blue sky and the flashing brilliance of a thousand stars. She reached her hand down and unzipped his pants and grabbed at him, hard, and her touch was so frenzied that it was almost painful. He seized the lever to lower the back of his seat, and together they jerked down.
Then somehow her shorts were off and then her underwear was off. She was so warm, like a fever. She rocked her body on him and muttered over and over something that sounded like help me or save me or take me. He felt himself climaxing and dissolving and biting her in his ecstasy and her saying ouch and him saying sorry and her struggling against him and gasping and all of it happening all at once.

  They lay still and panted.

  Andrew ran his fingers through Karen’s silky brown hair. She looked up. Their eyes met. She looked as dumbfounded as he felt. From the backseat, Becky snorted.

  Karen flopped back into the passenger seat. They both fumbled with their clothes. Andrew started the car, and they drove without speaking. His heart was thumping so hard, he could feel it in his throat, his mouth, his eyes.

  “Are you . . .” He groped for the right words.

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you okay? I mean, is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  They said nothing more. Andrew glanced at her a few times, but she stared out the window so that he couldn’t see her face.

  When they reached the outskirts of town, he cleared his throat.

  “Did . . . Where am I going?” he asked.

  “What?” Karen seemed to come out of a trance.

  “Church or home or—”

  “Church,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  After a few minutes he pulled up behind a long line of cars waiting to park. Karen got out of the car and walked briskly toward her church’s enormous double doors and the smiling faces of the men who held them open.

  30

  “ANDREW? IS THAT YOU?” Marcia said.

  “Who else could it be?”

  “I don’t know. Are you all right?”

  “I just need to talk.”

  “I’m back at the hospital at ten—”

  “Is everything okay with Sara?”

  “Basically. What’s up with you?” she said.

  Andrew paced around his kitchen. He’d checked the whole house before he called Marcia: there was definitely no one home. Still, he was nervous. He took a deep breath.