isaysimplewords

Author's Foreword from the second printing of Calvin Chandler, Jr's autobiography; published 2042, re-issued 2057

I am going to tell you something new about myself. I'm sure you don't think that's possible. After I've spent my life in the spotlight, after countless exposés on my family and this reprinting of my autobiography, how can there be anything to tell about myself that the American public hasn't already heard countless times?

But there is, and it's this: I believe in ghosts.

With a family history like mine, you're probably expecting some sort of overwrought metaphor. After all, my father's noble suicide, sixty years ago next month as I write this, is the stuff of legends. Even on the rare occasion that the media does manage to talk about me without talking about him, his name is still there, implied in mine. I've long since made my peace with growing up in his shadow.

But, even though there is a connection, that's not what I mean. What I mean to say is what I said: I believe in ghosts.

I had the same woman as a nanny until I was eleven. I think Mom kept her on longer than she really needed the help just to keep things stable for me. God knows I adored Marisa, and kept in contact with her until she died twenty years ago.

When I was eight, Marisa told me a story. She only told it once. I only needed to hear it once.

She told me of a night, a few months after my father's death, when she met him in the hallway outside my nursery. He was worried about me, she said; he'd come all the way back from the afterlife just to make sure that I was okay. And when she had reassured him that I was, and he believed her, he left.

Now, understand that Marisa was not the stereotypical Latina nanny. She was second generation, had been to college, and had never, at least in my presence, uttered so much a syllable of superstition before she told me that story. I didn't know what to make of hearing such a thing from her.

"That's crazy," I said, "there's no such thing as ghosts."

Marisa smiled. "Don't believe me," she said, "just ask your grandmother."

I laughed, more disbelieving than amused. Grandmother was right there. Even if she hadn't been listening to the story, surely she'd have something to say about Marisa getting her involved?

"Grandmother, did you hear that?"

My grandmother, the most practical skeptic I will ever meet, a woman who kept her sharp tongue right to the end and never hesitated to let fly when she heard something she thought was foolish - she just looked at me. In silence.

And so I believe in ghosts.

Calvin Chandler, Jr
April, 2057

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.

Here are some things Cal does, after Milliways, before he dies.

**********

Done with his shower, and no idea what time it is, Cal thinks he might like some breakfast. He puts on crisp, clean pants and a white button-down shirt, checking himself in the mirror. He looks clean, calm, rational, like someone you'd nod to in the streets rather than someone you'd carefully look away from. He doesn't look like he just went through forced detox, and he doesn't feel like it, either. Whatever happened in Milliways, it's sticking. He's still not really a fan of what he sees reflected at him, but he can do something about that. He will do something about that.

He starts by leaving his room illicitly for the second time in twenty-four hours. Last time he was looking for his stash. Now he just wants some food.

There's a guard outside the door, but he just regards Cal sternly, and not without a bit of surprise when he sees how neatly Cal is dressed. Grahame has probably had a word with him.

Grahame. Cal will deal with that later. Now, he just says,

"Kitchen. Want anything?"

The guard blinks and shakes his head. Cal says okay and goes downstairs.

This time, when he hears his mother's high heels clicking up the hall toward him, he doesn't hide. (Not that the urge isn't there. It generally is. It has nothing to do with heroin and everything to do with Violet Chandler.) Her eyes widen when she sees him, but her surprise at his clean appearance buys Cal enough time to speak before she can.

"I'm feeling better," he tells her. "Thought I might even try to eat something."

She looks at him warily, but says, "You certainly look better. Better than you have in months. But if you've got plans to go right back out and ruin it, then you can just forget -"

"I won't," Cal says. He goes to her and kisses her cheek and says softly,

"Thank you."

She looks startled and suspicious - they generally save the mother-son affection for the press, after all - then, after a moment,

"There should still be something left from lunch if you hurry."

Cal nods and goes, but not before he sees something like the trace of a smile softening his mother's eyes.

**********

The next thing he does right after he eats, before he can find a reason to put it off any longer. He's not going to put off doing what he should do. Not anymore.

So he goes to Grahame's study and knocks for the look of the thing before opening the door (and the pang of disappointment when the only thing it does is lead to where it's supposed to go is something he will, in the following months, get used to). He doesn't think Grahame will let him in if he knows it's Cal.

From the way Grahame stiffens when he looks up and sees Cal standing there, he figures he was right.

"It's not going to work this time," Grahame says, voice sharper and harsher than Cal has ever heard it. "I won't change my mind. I'm not continuing the ridiculous charade your career has become any longer, so if your mother has sent you down to - sweet talk me, you can both forget it." His hands are trembling as they grip the arms of his wheelchair; Cal closes the door behind him but stays right where he is, because he thinks Grahame might have a stroke if he gets any closer.

"She hasn't," he says. He doesn't know what Grahame is talking about, though it's safe to assume he's threatened to quit again. He does that a lot. Cal talks him down a lot, using whatever he has to use to keep his uncle under control. But not anymore. "I won't. You do what you need to do. After what I did, I don't blame you."

Grahame actually flinches. "We're not discussing that." His voice is low and cold and absolutely final.

Cal is silent for a long moment. "You do what you need to do," he repeats. "But things are going to be different now, and that includes how I treat you. If you decide to stick around."

Cal turns and opens the door, then pauses. His vision blurs as he stares at the door jamb and whispers, so quietly that he'll never know if Grahame heard him or not,

"I'm sorry."

Then he walks out of the study.

**********

"Marisa," Cal says to his son's nanny that night, "Why don't you take the night off tonight? I'll put Calvin to bed." As always, he feels faintly silly when he says the boy's name and wishes he'd pushed a little harder to name him something else. He can't decide whether naming a child after yourself is egotistical or just unimaginative, and anyway he still thinks naming the boy Reed would have been a better PR move, but his suggesting it pretty much meant that it was never gonna happen. Not that he's still a little annoyed about that.

Marisa is an efficient nanny and can be relied on to keep the Chandlers' secrets, but she has no poker face whatsoever. He'd be more offended by the doubtful look she gives him if she wasn't right. "Thank you, Mr Chandler," is all she says.

"Just, uh, leave me a list of the stuff I need to do," he adds with a self-deprecating smile. Marisa relaxes and smiles back.

Most of the stuff on the list is a pain in the ass, and Cal feels every bit as stupid as he's pretty sure he looks trying to bathe and brush the teeth of a squirming toddler. It's all made up for in a heartbeat, though, when Calvin chooses the story he wants Cal to read to him, then snuggles in warmly against him. Cal opens the book and starts to read, thinking that he finally gets what this parenthood thing is all about.

He reads to Calvin every night after that. At least, every night until he can't anymore.

**********

Deborah returns from vacation a couple weeks later. Cal greets her with a bouquet of yellow roses; he heard somewhere that yellow means friendship, and he knows he and his wife will never be in love, but maybe they can be friends. He explains this, a bit fumblingly, and Deborah smiles and kisses his cheek and says that he's sweet.

Nothing changes between them, not really, but Deborah joins them sometimes when he takes Calvin to the park, and Cal figures that's good enough.

**********

Cal writes the final speech privately, staying up late several nights in a row to be sure it's right. He doesn't want to endanger his family. Just himself. Gliardi will come after him and he knows his odds aren't good, but if he does this just right, maybe his family will be left alone.

**********

Cal had put Tina out of his mind because he never thought he'd see her again. But he does. He runs when she calls, even though he knows. On some level, he knows. And when the bullets start flying and they fall together, his last thought is that she shouldn't have been there at all.