A Million Heavens

by John Brandon

  A bell dinged as the elevator passed by the fifth floor. There was a poster for a children’s gymnasium on one wall and a poster for a seafood restaurant on the other, a big lurid lobster on a mattress of parsley. Cecelia wanted more time, but she wasn’t going to get it. She heard the bell again. The opening of the song in her head, which was straightforward and elegant, was intact already. The song was ready to shift into gear, or at least turn a soft corner. Cecelia stepped off the elevator into an empty foyer area. The fourth floor hadn’t had a foyer. Cecelia could see down the main hallway. There was no one but a janitorial worker, all the way at the other end, dropping bags down a garbage chute. There was a window in the foyer and Cecelia looked toward it. The lights from the ceiling were glaring off the glass and Cecelia couldn’t see anything outside, just her own reflection. It looked right. It looked like her. It looked like a girl who could go through with things.

  Cecelia advanced up the hall, stepping stiffly to keep her sneakers quiet. The floor was polished and the walls were bare. The first doors she passed were closed, and Cecelia could somehow sense that the rooms were empty. She walked by a room in which an old couple and some small children were cleaning up from a party, then three rooms that all had TVs going, all tuned to the same program. She knew approximately where Soren’s room should’ve been, from staring up at it. It was nearly all the way at the other end. Cecelia would have to pass the nurse’s station.

  She tried to appear confident, or at least absorbed in her own business, which she certainly was, and she strode past a few more almost-shut doors, the people behind them negotiating final burdens Cecelia couldn’t plumb and her with her own troubles no one anywhere knew, and then straight through the nurses’ area, which was occupied only by a young female doctor who paid no attention to Cecelia. Once the nurses’ station was behind her, she came up to the staff worker she’d seen before, who passed her by, nodding curtly, and then there was nothing but wide vacant hallway. Cecelia had Soren cornered and she was cornered too. There was nothing she could say to Soren’s father that wouldn’t sound crazy.

  The very last door was a utility closet, so the one next to that had to be Soren’s room. The door was open but not enough to see anything inside. Cecelia had to knock. She had to knock and present herself. The door was going to open and she was going to see into this room that for so long had been the border of an eternity of night sky. She wanted to flee, but she held herself in place. She didn’t want Soren’s father to hear her breathing, to hear a noise from her sneaker and pull the door open and see her standing like a scared ghost. She was hearing the song now as an echo, as if someone in another wing of the clinic were playing it and it was reaching her through the heating ducts. The music had no cousins. It was sad music that didn’t know it was sad. Cecelia raised her hand and rapped it against what felt like painted steel, not quite knocking hard enough to push the door open any farther.

  The light changed in the room, a lamp clicking on. Cecelia heard the creaking of a chair and then footfalls, manly and even. The door receded and Soren’s father was standing in front of Cecelia. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. His face was hardly even questioning, as if Cecelia were a small girl who’d shown up at this home with a fundraiser catalog. He had good teeth and a nondescript haircut and he looked manly in a way that matched the reliable sound of his steps on the linoleum. Cecelia was frightened, but less so than she’d been a moment before.

  “I’m Cecelia,” she told him.

  His face didn’t harden. Cecelia glanced up the hall and it was thankfully still empty. She didn’t want an audience. Soren’s father let go of the door and stood taller. “I know who you are,” he said. “I didn’t know your name was Cecelia, but I know who you are.”

  Cecelia couldn’t read him, and she couldn’t bring herself to state her desire of laying eyes on his son. She’d gotten this close and she might get no closer. That was the new fear.

  “I wanted to wish you the best,” Cecelia said. “And I think I wanted to apologize too.”

  Soren’s father looked at the palm of his hand and then put it to the back of his neck. “I appreciate that,” he said. “I don’t accept your apology, but I appreciate it.”

  “I wasn’t helping anything out there,” Cecelia said. “I wanted something I could love that had nothing to do with me.” Cecelia knew she needed to be truthful. She said, “There are a handful of people I care about. I care about you and your son. I care about you guys, not that I expect it to mean anything.”

  Soren’s father blinked slowly. He looked back at the window, toward the parking lot, then reached his hand out and rested it on Cecelia’s wrist, a gesture more tender than a handshake. “I never knew what to think, but you were there instead of not there. You were there, and not asking for anything. It does mean something.”

  Cecelia looked into his face and could see that his soul had been whipping in the desert winds for a long time. He had little left but kindness. Cecelia didn’t know what to say next. She didn’t want to upset or disappoint him.

  “I need to stretch my legs,” he said.

  Cecelia waited. Soren’s father was wearing a stiff button-up shirt and it occurred to Cecelia that she was underdressed for a visit like this. She’d dressed for a vigil, in a sweatshirt and far-from-new shoes.

  “Would you keep an eye on him for a minute?” Soren’s father gently tugged his collar. “Could you do that? Could you watch over my boy while I step out for a quick stroll? I’d appreciate it.”

  He’d taken his hand off Cecelia’s wrist. Her gratitude was like a liquid rising inside her. She was being trusted.

  “Of course,” Cecelia said.

  Soren’s father leaned toward the hallway, showing he wanted to get by, and Cecelia made way for him. She didn’t thank him and he didn’t thank her. He slipped past her and with that same even stride made his way down the hall. Cecelia watched the back of him. She didn’t feel ready to be without him, like she’d been poorly trained for an important duty. Soren’s father didn’t glance back at Cecelia. She watched him until he reached the nurses’ station and turned a corner.

  With the door to Soren’s room wide open Cecelia could see a dresser and a chair and a big window. She stepped across the threshold and the end of the bed peeked into view. The air in the room carried the mixed scent of a boy’s rest and a man’s restlessness, of stale coffee and clean linens. She took another step and could see where Soren’s feet were tenting the sheets. Then she saw a closed cabinet that probably contained a TV and she saw a machine that was monitoring Soren and only after she’d found the machine with her eyes was she aware of its whirring, which maybe she’d been hearing since Soren’s father had pulled open the door. She was all the way inside the room. She looked at everything else—looked inside the open closet at the neat shirts and pants in there and looked at the little shoes half-tucked under the bed and at some fake flowers that had been stashed down in a corner. Then she let her eyes drift to Soren’s face, which was a faultless oval, with small ears and a dimple in the chin. Cecelia went around the side of the bed, the side without the machine, still stepping cautiously as if afraid to awake Soren. His eyes were closed but not all the way. His hair looked healthy and was parted. It looked like someone’s project, his hair, one of the nurses’. He wore a pressed gown and the sheets were pulled up past his waist. His hands rested on his stomach, one on top of the other, the fingernails trimmed neatly. It was impossible not to think he was merely sleeping. His skin was not gray, but it wasn’t normal either. Cecelia surveyed the length of him, his frail shoulders, the rise and fall of his flat stomach, the shape of his legs under the bedding. He was a little boy. A sick child. He was none of Cecelia’s business.

  She reached and took one of Soren’s hands in her own. It felt like an expensive glove. This was a time for prayer, a time to admit that one could be of no help and possessed insufficient wisdom and had wasted much time, but Cecelia couldn’t put words together. She had never pra
yed in her life and now she had a song playing in her mind that was the prayer of prayers. It was a bad prayer, a prayer for nonbelievers. The song wasn’t straining, but Cecelia was straining to hear it. She wasn’t keeping it in a back room, it was hiding by choice. She placed Soren’s hand back on his stomach and stepped over near the door. She heard nothing in the hallway. She wanted Soren’s father to return. She wanted him to reappear and know exactly what to say. Cecelia sat down in his chair. There were two chairs, both orange and stiff-looking, but one had an indentation in the seat. Cecelia couldn’t stay sitting. She arose again. The room was so clean. It looked like Soren and his father had moved into it the day before.

  Cecelia went to the window. The blinds were drawn. The parking lot was a sprawl of concrete now and not a thing more, like the vigils had never happened. Cecelia had sat out there part of the fall and the entire winter. She put her knuckle soundlessly against the glass. She could not hear Soren breathing, nor the drumming of her own blood. She could hear the song. The music had slowed and gathered power, and Cecelia began humming it. She got through the opening, and with the first frank declaration of the melody her humming grew louder and more inflected. She tipped her head to look up at the night sky. A lot of the stars were missing, but there were still too many to count. She hummed the song even louder as she got about halfway through. The second half she would discover as she went. The bridge was coming to Cecelia. She stopped humming, her throat coming to rest, and the quiet, when it returned, had something wrong with it. Cecelia heard something that didn’t belong in her ears and didn’t belong in the room, an auditory presence both scratchy and high-pitched. It was coming from behind Cecelia and she could see by the reflection in the window that Soren’s father had not returned. No one else had entered the room. The bits of song were spaced and were trying to find their key and Cecelia recognized them as some distortion of what she’d just been humming, of the song arriving from the beyond. Time was not passing, which made it difficult to move. Cecelia turned herself away from the window and looked at Soren. His chest no longer rose and fell smoothly. His eyes were still closed, tightly now, as if in pain. His hands did not move, nor his feet. Cecelia moved away from the window. She saw Soren nestle the back of his head into his flat, thin pillow, tipping his chin and clearing his throat. He gathered a breath and resumed humming. Something was happening with his monitor, a light flashing on the panel. Soren had the rest of the song, the part Cecelia hadn’t received yet. She watched Soren’s eyes gape open, saw his unsearching cornflower eyes. It was like Soren was looking out at an ocean. Cecelia couldn’t tell if Soren’s song, Reggie’s song, was settling or building, whether it would cease unexpectedly or crescendo. She looked at the door. She wanted to shut it so no one would hear Soren, so she could think, but she made no move toward it. There was a call button somewhere, but she didn’t want to involve a nurse. Maybe the monitor had already alerted the station, if anyone was paying attention. She ought to go find Soren’s father, ought to track him down in the halls. Soren’s hands were animated now, his fingers flexing like someone who’d been lugging a heavy suitcase. Cecelia needed to take action but she needed to hear the rest of the song, needed to hear it from outside of her for once, needed to hear it to the last note.

  SOREN’S FATHER

  They were on the dock. Soren was throwing nickels into the water, something he relished, as anyone would. He had a roll of them clutched in his fist and was tossing them one by one at the same spot in the darkening sea. There wasn’t a sunset in St. Augustine. The water went dark and then the sky went dark. They’d been in Florida over two years and the nights still snuck up on Soren’s father. The winter had snuck up on him too, because it wasn’t a winter at all. Winters in Albuquerque had been mild enough, but the winters here were beautiful. You stood out on a dock in winter. You enjoyed yourself.

  “Are fish right down there?” Soren asked.

  “Of course,” Soren’s father said. “About a million of them.”

  “Big ones?”

  “Big enough. I think the really huge ones stay where it’s cold, though.”

  “Are they going to go to sleep soon?”

  “They can sleep whenever they want. They can wait till morning to go to sleep if they want to.”

  “Do they dream when they’re sleeping?” Soren lofted another nickel. It made no noise at all entering the Atlantic Ocean. “Do the fish dream?”

  “Sometimes they do. If they’re tired enough.”

  “What about?”

  Soren’s father placed both his elbows on the warped railing. The wind moving over him and his son was slow and heavy with salt.

  “They dream about what they already got,” he said. “They dream about swimming as deep as they can, down where the whales go, and they dream about watching the boats skimming by up above. They don’t dream about being on land.”

  “Do they ever have nightmares?” Soren asked.

  “Oh, no. No nightmares. They’re like you and me. They have so much fun, they can’t remember what they’re supposed to be scared of.”

  After a short quiet, the waves lapping, Soren ran out of nickels. Soren’s father watched him crumple the coin wrapper and shove it in his pocket, and then his face changed. There was another roll in there. He’d forgotten about it. He seemed amused at himself, nowhere near his wit’s end. He peeled the wrapper back and held the nickels out toward his father.

  “You want to try one?” he said. “You have to throw it right where I always do.”

  “You know, if we throw enough of them in there we’ll fill up the whole ocean.” Soren’s father took a coin from the roll. “That’s the new goal. We’re going to fill this sucker up.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author thanks Paul Winner, Bess Reed Currence,

  Brett Martin, and Heather Brandon.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Brandon was raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida. His two previous novels are Arkansas and Citrus County. He has recently spent time as the Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi and as the Tickner Fellow at the Gilman School in Baltimore.