Soren’s father stood. Housekeeping had left a vase of fake flowers that matched the orange chairs, a gift from the clinic that every patient had received, a gift from the corporation that owned the clinic really, a gift from no one to anyone. Soren’s father plucked it off the little side table and rested it down on the floor where he couldn’t see it. He went and raised the blinds all the way. They hadn’t been all the way open like that since Gee had visited the room. Soren’s father gazed out at the barren territory beyond the parking lot and the neighboring streets, the expanse beyond the precarious civilization, the harsh province that was his homeland, and it looked finished. There was nothing broken, nothing wanting.
CECELIA
She pressed the UP button rather than the DOWN button, held her breath until the doors were closed, and then the elevator jerked subtly and she began to rise. She hadn’t been in a tall building since she could remember. The clinic wasn’t tall compared to the skyscrapers downtown, but it was tall to Cecelia. The elevator was huge inside, a whole room. Cecelia moved to the back corner. She’d paid respects to Soren for five months and had never been up against the prospect of seeing him. There were healthy elements to her nervousness — awe and pride. No music was playing in the elevator, but Cecelia could hear something. There was other noise. She knew what was happening. She was getting another song. Now. She’d been sure they were through, that she’d received them all. She could hear the first notes being unchambered, finding their marks. She felt a pinch in her temples, a churn in her stomach. She was dry-eyed. Another fucking song. She settled her weight evenly down through her feet. She was out of practice but she could feel the skill returning to her, the skill of receiving. She could do it again, could usher this song into an out-of-the-way wing of her mind and go about the business of confronting Soren. She wasn’t going to bail on this mission. Reggie was still not at peace and she wasn’t going to be either, but she was going to face down this kid. Cecelia still had to grapple with Reggie, her ally and her illness, but she would do it later — had to wonder whether he was still writing these songs or whether he was dead and gone and the songs were outliving him, had to wonder if the songs had existed always and Reggie had come along to free them and had screwed everything up by dying too soon. She was losing the threads of her thoughts before they were even unspooled. She was thinking too darkly. Reggie hadn’t screwed anything up. The songs were love songs. The songs were Reggie’s and Reggie loved her.
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.