choose redemption :: [ calliope + teddy ]

Been a prisoner of the past
Had a bitterness when I looked back

The mayor’s house is too big for her, no matter how many ghosts she invites in, mementos scattered sparsely throughout the abundance of rooms and halls. Too few; too far between. Despite nearly four years of residency, it’s not her home and she knows it. She never wanted to live here because it meant giving up the apartment she had grown up in. While it was nothing to brag about, it was the last place she had laughed with Aesop, the last place she felt something other than petty hatred for Poe, the last place filled with memories of the time before her father simply left her because life together was too difficult. Calliope doesn't remember the house the Blooms all lived in when her mother was still alive and their family was truly happy and successful, but there had been enough good in that crappy apartment to balance out some of the loss.

There isn’t enough stuff to fill all of this government-issued space that she has no use for, but she tries. Upstairs there is a bedroom with no furniture, but a closet with seven of her father's button-up shirts hung neatly inside — one arm cut away and stitched up on each shirt. There is a spare bathroom down the hall with three sets of shaving razors and combs lined up uselessly on a shelf next to a bottle of foul-smelling cologne that had been Poe's most prized possession. Calliope's old homework papers from high school have been stuck up onto her new refrigerator just the same as her father had put them up on their old one, a prized collection of A+'s, gold stars, and bright, shining promises for her future. Sometimes she thinks about putting them away in a box, but when she closes her eyes to contemplate, memories bubble up of writing essays at the kitchen table with Aesop teasing her over her shoulder — having snatched up those very papers and waving them around like a cheerleader with rustling pompoms grasped in each hand. Rah! Rah! You can do it!

You can do it, Calliope.

It's hard to remember to tell herself that sometimes. She needs all the reminders she can get.

In the end, she moved because the mayor's house is rent free and the old apartment came with a cost that could be better spent on Poe's medical bills, on getting the rehab center up and running, on... anything else. Sentimentality is a luxury that's out of her budget. It feels ridiculous for a two story house in the nicest neighborhood in town to be the practical option, much less the unappealing one, but a new kind of loneliness rented out one of her spare rooms when she moved and sometimes she still has regrets about her choices. There were pieces of trash that Aesop had touched once that she could justify leaving untouched on his bedroom floor for a decade, but that she couldn't justify packing up to bring with her. She threw things away, hugging the garbage can and sobbing while telling herself she was being stupid. She mopped up faint shoe scuffs from the floors, like cleaning up ghosts, and wiped fingerprints from the window panes. She donated old blankets and furniture because she didn't know how to move her own bed, much less three spares.

A handful of peacekeepers ended up helping her move the small amount of boxes and furniture that remained, but mostly she doesn't know why. There is a bed in a room that tries to call itself her own, but she hardly ever sleeps in it. Most nights she curls up on the couch in the mayor's office to nap for an hour or two or simply lays her head down on her desk for ten or twenty minutes. If she's here — if she's "home" — it's because she has run herself down and into the kind of sickness where co-workers insist on helping her back to her house, leaving containers of soup in her empty fridge, their faces flickering with confusion as they try not to openly side eye the way it hardly looks as if anyone lives here. Maybe they have the wrong house. Maybe this one is vacant.

There's an occasional exception, of course, and today is certainly one of them. The kitchen cabinets are usually home to little more than what's needed to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or a few non-perishable cans of this and that, but today —

Gravy simmers on the stove, rich and dark, as she mashes butter and fresh cream into a bowl of potatoes. Humming under her breath, Calliope flicks her eyes to the kitchen timer before tilting her head to glance at the macaroni and cheese baking in the oven. A platter of crispy fried chicken, bright golden corn on the cob, a basket of flaky buttermilk biscuits, and blueberry pie have already been laid out on the table. It's too much food for two people, but the last time she cooked like this was for three men who — when they bothered to eat at all — could shovel down dinner as if each of them had sold off their kidneys for spare stomachs. Old habits.

"Come in! It's open!" She shouts in response to the knock on the door, pouring the pan of brown gravy into a bowl before wiping her hands off on a kitchen towel and turning around to grin at her guest. "Teddy!" The exclamation is friendly, but a little silly, seeing as how Calliope knew exactly who would be walking through her door and it's somewhat questionable as to whether or not she has the right to be calling him by any sort of nickname. "Take off your coat; stay a while. There's a closet over there somewhere," containing exactly one underutilized winter coat, one tattered denim jacket worn well past its prime, and enough empty hangers that anyone else might feel embarrassed about how little there is to fill them, "everything is justttt about ready." The timer dings perfectly on cue and she pulls a face that is half genuine surprise and half hot damn I'm fucking good, before snatching up a potholder and opening the oven to unleash a smell so delicious it makes her heart hurt. A family favorite. The ghosts in the house cheer, gathering to fight over empty seats at the table as the papers on the front of the fridge rustle softly when Calliope walks past, carrying the last of the dishes to the dining room table. "So there's food and more food, with a side of even more food. Then there's dessert. Hope you're hungry."