Cal needs a few seconds to gain his bearings when he
steps through the door. The
letter from the Bar gave him a pretty good idea of which door it would be, but it's still strange to find himself outside Milliways, in his home. His home that isn't his anymore.
He's outside the bathroom, across the hall from Grahame's study. Former study. First floor of the building, just down the hall from the parlor, where the liquor cabinet is. Cal takes a breath, the plan Esfir helped him draw up still fresh in his mind. No time to waste. Mother first. The clock on the wall says one o'clock exactly; whether it's one in the morning or one in the afternoon - hard to tell, with the curtains closed and all the lights on - Cal suspects he knows exactly where he can find his mother.
The door to the parlor is open. Cal goes to it and stops, standing in the doorway. He was right. His mother is here, back to him, pouring herself a drink. The question of time of day is answered - she's wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown. A sense of surreality kicks in. He's spent the month since his return to life trying to prepare for this visit, but he knows now that there was no way to ever be ready. Not for this. It wasn't so long ago that he believed he would never see her again, and here he is. Here she is.
There is no time to waste, but he still stands silently where he is, waiting for the half a minute or so it takes for her to sense that she isn't alone. She turns, and sees him. The glass in her hand drops to the floor, a muted thump on the carpet. Cal steps into the room and closes the door, feeling both light-headed and very calm.
"Hello, Mother."
She goes stark white, and wavers. He thinks for a moment that she's going to faint, but she takes a sudden sharp breath and stays on her feet.
"Cal," she says, her voice unexpectedly small. She crosses the door toward him, moving with a caution that startles him. Violet Chandler never allows her uncertainty to be seen. Not ever.
She reaches up carefully with both hands and touches his face, stroking his cheeks, his jaw, the sides of his neck. Her hands are trembling. Cal looks down at her, confused for a moment. He almost doesn't recognize her. Then he sees it:
His mother has become an old woman.
He isn't ready for this.
Everything he's thought of to say, angry speeches and orders and condemnation, all of it flies from his head. Instead, he takes her hands in his and cradles them gently against his chest.
"I can't stay."
"I identified your body myself." It's nothing near a whisper, but the steel he's used to hearing in her voice is gone and it sounds like one.
"It was me."
"I don't understand."
Cal shrugs a little, helplessly. "Neither do I. Big change, right?" He's giving her the opening on purpose. He can't stand to look at or listen to this unfamiliar old woman standing in front of him. He'd rather have her taking potshots at him than see her looking so lost.
Sure enough, her mouth twists ironically, an echo of the mother he remembers. An echo is enough, though, and Cal laughs in sheer relief.
"No, I suppose I shouldn't rely on you for answers," she says. Her voice gains strength with each word as she pulls her hands from his hold and steps back. She looks so much more herself so suddenly that Cal can't help but wonder how she's explaining this to herself. A dream? One drink too many? Would she recover this quickly if she really believed he was here? Does he want to know the answer to that?
"Though if you've got an explanation for why you're here, I'm listening," she continues. Cal blinks at her, trying to catch up with the change and to gather his thoughts, and she rolls her eyes. "Some sort of Dickensian visitation ritual, perhaps?" she suggests. "Should I expect your father tomorrow? Grahame the day after?"
It takes a few seconds for the meaning of those last words to sink in, but when it does, it's Cal's turn to blanch. He can feel the blood drain downward, leaving him dizzy. "What? . . . what about Grahame?"
She looks unbalanced again, but only for a second or two. Then she says, the sarcasm very nearly masking the hollowness in her tone,
"News doesn't travel fast where you've been, does it? Grahame killed himself after your funeral. Really, you should be pleased, it was quite the grand romantic gesture." She looks at him and sighs. "Sit down, Cal."
**********
A few minutes later, he's on the couch, a glass of whiskey in his hand. Mother is seated next to him with her own glass, watching him keenly.
"I imagine you thought I'd be the one getting a shock tonight," she remarks. Cal looks at her.
"You think you're dreaming," he says. It's partly a statement, mostly a guess, which she confirms with a shrug. "Well, I know I'm not," he tells her.
"Drink that, Cal," she says. "Get some color back in your face. Then tell me why you're here."
He obeys out of sheer reflex, still conditioned to do what his mother tells him. There's too much whiskey in his glass - Mother's pouring has gotten more and more generous over the years - and he swallows it too fast. He regrets it immediately, taking a moment to breathe. He doesn't need the buzz on top of the shock.
"How," he says finally.
"What? Oh. Sleeping pills and whiskey. Well, it was the only option. He'd really gone downhill. He couldn't have held a gun still long enough." She pauses, neatly knocking back half her drink. "Either that or he thought it was poetic. The selfish bastard."
Cal nods slowly, feeling it all fall into place and already guilty about the sense of relief that steals over him as he figures it out. "He really screwed up your plans, didn't he? You can't push Calvin into my place without him."
Much to his surprise, she starts to laugh.
"Is that was this is all about? Dying hasn't made you any less foolish, has it? Cal, I am sixty-five years old and I drink like a fish. I'll be lucky if I live to see that boy graduate from junior high. Now, his mother can manage him socially and keep him from disgracing the family name, but she's got all the political savvy of a wood duck. If he does go into politics, he'll have to fend for himself. So you can stop imagining him trapped in your evil mother's clutches. Grahame or no Grahame, I'm out of time."
**********
He leaves Mother in the parlor, still half-convinced that she's passed out and dreaming. He wonders what she'll think when the stain of the whiskey she dropped is still in the carpet in the morning.
The whiskey he drank has done its job, cutting through the shock and allowing him to think. Foremost on his mind, even as he's disgusted with himself for it, is that he has more time now. He won't have to spend half his hour making his way to Grahame's apartment. He can spend the rest of it with Calvin.
He can hear his son crying as he approaches the stairs. It's the middle of the night. He must have had a nightmare. Cal picks up his pace, taking two stairs at a time, but by the time he gets to the top, Calvin's sobs have quieted to a hiccupy murmur. The nursery door is open. Marisa must be with him. She's such a good nanny. It's been a relief to Cal in Milliways, knowing that she was there. When he goes to the doorway and looks inside, though, the woman he sees isn't Marisa. It's his wife.
Deborah is cradling Calvin, murmuring soothingly to him, more maternal than Cal has ever seen her. He stands and watches, frozen in surprised silence, relief and hurt dawning over him together. Calvin is fine.
He isn't needed here.
"Mr Chandler." The whisper off to his left is so quiet it's barely there. Cal turns to see Marisa, gesturing for him to come away from the door.
"He's been having trouble sleeping since you died. It's just starting to get better. He'll never believe you're gone for good if he sees you now."
Just starting to get better . . . It's the only argument that could possibly get Cal to move. He didn't come here to make things worse. He can't be selfish, not now. It hurts almost physically, but he steps away from the door, off to the side where neither Calvin nor Deborah will see him if they look up. Marisa gives him a small, strained smile.
"She's taking her cues from you," she whispers. "In a few months, I'll hardly even have a job to do anymore."
Cal blinks at her. She sounds so . . . "You don't seem very surprised to see me."
"My mother would say it's Dia de los Muertos come early," she answers matter-of-factly. "Something like that, anyway. She sees spirits all the time." Then her expression turns somber. "And - I have something that belongs to you." She turns and moves swiftly down the hall. Cal follows, bewildered.
Marisa goes into her room; Cal waits outside, feeling vaguely that it would be inappropriate to follow her in even if she does seem to think he's a ghost. She emerges after a moment, holding an envelope. She takes a breath, hesitating, then says,
"Your uncle's assistant found this when he died. It has your name on it. It's his suicide note, I think. She forgot to give it to your mother, so I said I would. But I didn't." She holds it out to Cal.
He stares at it, but he doesn't take it. The only thing he can think to say is, "Why did you keep it?"
She shrugs a little, self-conscious. "It didn't seem right to throw a man's last words in the trash. I didn't read it. Sheila did, but I didn't." She continues to hold it out to Cal, pushing it a little closer in that unmistakeable gesture:
Take it.Slowly, he does, and looks at it. His name is on the front, in Grahame's crisp handwriting. He looks at the familiar forms of the letters, writing he's seen countless times, and blinks hard, sliding the envelope into his back pocket.
"Thank you," he says numbly. Marisa looks at him for a moment, then, with great caution, reaches out to touch his hand. Surprise flickers across her face when they make contact. A ghost, Cal thinks. She must have been expecting, on some level, to pass right through him. He smiles wanly.
"I'm a special kind of ghost," he tells her.
Her answering smile is identical. "I see."
Cal takes a breath, glancing back down the hall toward Calvin's nursery. "But not the kind that gets to stay."
Marisa wraps her fingers around his and squeezes. He looks back at her.
"You laid a good foundation," she says. "I used to worry about Calvin, but I don't anymore. First you - well, forgive me, but you got your act together and started paying attention to him. And after you died, his mother decided it was high time she did the same. She's learning as fast as you did, and she loves him. He misses you still, but having his mother helps. He's going to be fine, Mr Chandler."
Cal believes her.
**********
Cal stands in front of the bathroom, looking at the clock. He came back to this door automatically, even though any of them will do, really. The clock reads one-twenty-seven. He worried so much about not having enough time, and now he hasn't even used half of it and he's already done. He hopes Milliways is ready to let him back in early. He can't stand the idea of waiting, and he doesn't know if his willpower can hold out. He'd thought he would at least get the chance to hold his son one more time, but Marisa is right. He was right, when he tried not to think of it before. Calvin is too young to understand what dead really means. It would be selfish, and unfair, to confuse him.
He's going to be all right. The important thing is that he is going to be all right. His life is going to be his own. That's what Cal wanted. It's going to have to be enough.
It
is enough.
Cal opens the door, and Milliways is there.
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