John Brandon - A Million Heavens

“Don’t use your son as an excuse.”

Gee left the line quiet a few moments. Then she said she had a hell of a drive in front of her.

She had never thought of herself as possessing nerve. She’d thought of herself as a person with endurance, a person who, if she entertained fantasies, did so in the service of her everyday stamina, but here she was pulling past the clinic, past the vigil, already in progress, and hitting the gas rather than the brake. There were only two of them left now in the parking lot, two women, two vigilers. The piano teacher didn’t feel she’d made a decision. She felt as though something had been sprung on her. She hadn’t packed a stitch of clothing or even a toothbrush, but here she was cruising right past the final shadowy pair. Here she was rolling by the Mexican market with the happy vegetables painted on the walls. Here she was getting on the empty interstate and bringing her car up to a speed it hadn’t achieved in ages.

She would leave her car in the garage and her daughter would have to pick it up. The piano teacher imagined the phone call and could already savor her daughter’s outrage. She’d tell her daughter she was staying a week and wouldn’t tell her daughter where, and then after a week she’d tell her she was staying another week. She’d have to return eventually. It wasn’t a permanent escape. She would run out of money, for one thing, and that’s what her daughter would be most worried about. Maybe the piano teacher would spend every penny she had and force her daughter to pay to fly her home.

She exited the interstate. The road that led into the airport was lined with towering terra cotta pots and the pots were imprinted with symbols and drawings that could have meant anything. Wherever the piano teacher ended up, she was going to buy a crappy piano that was all hers and play it just for herself, and she was going to keep it until the day she died. Her daughter would have to ship the thing home and the shipping would cost more than the instrument. The worst piano she could find. Maybe with a family of mice in it. The piano teacher felt a physical craving for her fingers against keys, felt a need to put organized noise into a cranny of the world. The piano teacher would soon be near an ocean, in a place with vines and moss and high-hung fronds, a place that appeared on the verge of swallowing itself. The piano teacher was going to listen to the noise of honest blue waves spending themselves until she couldn’t remember the noise of this broken desert wind that, for once, seemed to be at her back.

During the vigils, she never heard songs. She heard only what was meant to be heard, the noise of the sand and pebbles and gravel and whatever else was slight enough to be brushed about by the wind. The gusts came from one direction and then another, as if the wind meant to sweep the world’s scattered ingredients into a pile.

Only one other still attended, the elegant woman whose boyfriend had quit. The woman was different than usual. She was focused. She was looking up at Soren’s window but Cecelia could tell she wasn’t thinking of Soren. Cecelia had stubbornness, but this woman had been surviving ordeals long before Cecelia had, and Cecelia had no idea if she could outlast her. At least Cecelia knew who her most worthy opponent was. Cecelia knew who she had to beat. She had authority over whether she won or lost. Nothing could stop her from showing up here except herself, and she wasn’t going to stop. This chick with her pricey coat and soft makeup was in for a struggle.

Cecelia hadn’t received a song for many days now, the longest she’d gone without receiving one. She wondered if she’d had control the whole time, without knowing it. She’d made a definite wish not to receive any more, and now she wasn’t. She was glad she’d received them, and glad now for a break from them. Maybe Reggie had simply run out. Maybe he was doing something else. He might be in a good place. He might have a view of a distant bay full of burnished boats, none of the boats having a thing to do with him, all owned by strangers and visitors. In this place, every person has a strong heart and a share of important work to do. In this place, the future placidly becomes the past. In this place, each person feels the dignified solitude of one engaged in a lost cause. And there were realms sweeter than this, realms that would suit Reggie precisely, that Cecelia could never envision. A million heavens waited, a million people scuffling around the desert hoping not to see their heaven too soon, failing to believe in the afterlives that awaited them and would have them in time, whether they kicked and screamed or closed their eyes and sighed, whether they tried to do good and could not or tried to do bad and succeeded.

Cecelia thought of Soren. She pictured him as she always did, with fawn-colored hair, slender and wan, but she knew he could look any way. He could be husky, with a black crew cut. He was losing the happiest part of his life on earth, the part before you noticed what was missing, before you thought in terms of fixing anything. Soren himself needed to be fixed. He might have authored a miracle, but now he was awaiting one.

After the vigil Cecelia headed to campus. She was drowsy so she stopped off and bought a huge iced coffee. She took a sip and balked at the taste — cloying and scorched — then drove the rest of the way to campus with the unwieldy beverage sweating onto her jeans.

The university was deserted except for a homeless guy sleeping on a bench and a few nibbling critters. The dorms, where people might be up and about, were on the other end of campus. Cecelia approached the rehearsal spaces. She’d turned her keys in when she’d gotten fired, but Marie had let her copy the music building master. Cecelia had the key and she had a pocketknife her mother had given her as a child, a pink Swiss Army knife, and she was still lugging the iced coffee, which was wetting down her gloved hands.

She went in and eased the door closed, set her drink down on the floor. The place smelled like insulation. Cecelia looked around the room for cameras, scanning the high corners. She knew there weren’t any cameras. She stripped off her jacket but kept on the gloves.

She walked over to Thus Poke Sarah’s Thruster’s guitars, three of them, one a bass, all leaning at the same angle against a step, and one by one she held them by their necks, business end on the ground, and stomped on them until they cracked in half. The guitars made a low crunch when they gave way, like a bone breaking, and then they hung in one piece by their strings. Cecelia dropped them all in a heap. She went over and did what she could to Nate’s drums with the pocketknife, slicing up the taut hides. She got her iced coffee and poured it down into the biggest amp. The liquid drained without hurry down through the machinery and onto the floor. Cecelia had felt her blood humming when she’d come into the room, but now it was stagnant. She didn’t feel triumphant or even tough. When she’d burned the barn she’d told herself she had no fear, but now she really didn’t. Fear was what made anything worthwhile. Without fear, she was going through motions. She had the sensation that she’d been driving for days without stopping and had forgotten her destination. She felt like a madwoman, but it didn’t feel good.

She moved on to the keyboard, her blood tepid. Cecelia stared at the thing. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light. Cecelia saw the kid’s name on the keyboard, in silver marker: T. ANDERTON. She sat down at the instrument. She flipped the power switch and red lights appeared all over the control panel. You could set it to sound like an organ if you wanted or like a synthesizer or like a regular piano. It had a bunch of dials and pedals. Cecelia didn’t touch any of them.