Free He Wants by Alison Moore

the communal living room. The CDs one can choose from are of bird song and dolphin song and the sound of the sea.
    Lawrence, who has had his midday soup and white-bread sandwiches, who is full of preservatives, is sitting in one of the two dozen beige, wipe-clean chairs. He is waiting for someone to come. He is not sure who, or perhaps what – maybe this is the day the dog comes. He knows, though, that someone or something is coming.
    It is not Sunday, when Lewis comes and takes him to the nearby church. Lawrence was baptised long ago but Lewis is still deciding whether or not he is ready. He is afraid, thinks Lawrence, of what will happen. He is not afraid of the baptism itself, of being submerged, although he never was confident in the water. It is the promise of entering into a bright new world that makes him anxious. Lawrence imagines his son worrying about finding himself there without something he needs – his gloves, perhaps. Lewis is afraid of the Eucharist, the taking of the body and the drinking of the blood of Christ. It is not just that he does not like the wine. ‘I’m sure,’ Lawrence has said, ‘you could have juice instead.’ But Lewis seems to be afraid of giving himself completely, of surrendering his heart. Since childhood, he has been afraid of the idea that God can see deep down inside him. He sometimes avoided Sunday school, feigning illness, claiming to have stomach cramps that Lawrence did not believe in for a moment.
    Lawrence has a good singing voice. At home, in the house on Small Street, he liked to sing in the bath, belting out hymns through the steam. Here, the baths they run for the residents are not so deep, and they don’t let the water get hot enough to steam up the room, and besides, they leave the bathroom door wide open. He only sings in church now. Lawrence would very much like to hear the organist striking up the first few notes of ‘He Is Mine’ but it has never happened. He has made a note to have it sung at his funeral. He would like to see a performance of Handel’s Messiah . He has asked Lewis to buy him the CD but it has not yet appeared; Lewis seems to be having some problem getting hold of it.
    Every Sunday, after church, on the way back to the nursing home, Lewis stops at the newsagent’s, the sweetshop. He stands there looking at the jars on the shelves – huge plastic jars full of all sorts of brightly coloured sweets – choosing what he wants. When Lewis was small, Lawrence used to say to him, ‘You’re all want.’ Lewis was always calling for his mother. ‘I want you to come,’ he would shout, when he was three, four years old, sitting on his bottom in the middle of the room, ‘I want you to come here now.’ But then, when she went to him, he would not be able to say what he wanted her for. Lawrence does not see why Lewis has to stand for so long looking, trying to decide, when in the end he always buys the same thing, the same sweets every week.
    â€˜Oh,’ says Lawrence.
    It is not his birthday, he is sure of that. On the wall just inside the kitchen, there is a list of names and dates, days on which there will be birthday cake. Through this one and that one a pencil line has been drawn, indicating the passing not of the birthday but of the birthday girl or boy. Lawrence, who has seen this list, wonders about the use of pencil, which seems rather tentative, non-committal. Hanging from a string, there is a pencil with a rubber on the end, in case of mistakes, he supposes; in case, he likes to say to the nurses, God does not want them and sends them back. His name is still on the list, a little way down, towards the end of the year; he has not yet been crossed out. He likes to go into the kitchen; he likes to see how clean they keep it. There are steel work surfaces. There is a vast fridge with shiny steel doors. Another appliance is full of steam that billows out when a steel door is