It had not been necessary to vote for the ghost president. I remembered this at odd times, when they seemed more tangible. For instance when they were giving a speech on television and they were less transparent than usual, when you could see the gleam of their hair or the cut of their suit.
I was sitting on the couch on one of those days, half listening, and my hand was groping in the couch cushions, because sometimes there is money in there which can be put together with other found money and then used to buy a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of wine, but this time there was something sharp. I pulled it out, checking for blood, of which there was none at first, but then it appeared as a thin red line on my thumb. I put it in my mouth and sucked, while examining the object. It was metal, a word spelled out – Cutlass – in curly letters. I couldn’t think what it was or why I had kept it, if I had, or how it ended up in the couch.
On the tv, the ghost president is talking about the nation, the nations will, the will of the people, and how the ghost president knew what it was because they were so solidly of the people that it was as if they lived their lives and breathed through their mouths. Behind him a row of unghostly people sit or stand, their faces impassive.
I held the word Cutlass in my hand. It had a smear of my blood on it, and I remembered, maybe through the medium of the blood, that it was from my father’s last car. He liked cars with flashy or exotic names. The Cutlass was an Oldsmobile. Aqua. It was new as all of his cars were until he retired. How had it become detached from the body of the car? This was a thing I would never know.
The ghost president’s wife is in attendance at his speech. She herself is not ghostly. She is very thin, but solid. Her hair is burnished, as if she is wearing a sheath of metal on her head. Her legs are crossed politely at the ankle. She perches on her chair as if she might at any moment get up and leave, but she doesn’t. It is well known that in her youth she lived in a convent. It’s rumored that she went through the first stages of becoming a nun but that nothing had come of it. Sometimes in newspaper articles she is referred to as Sister. It isn’t always clear if this is meant in a satirical or a friendly way.
I held the word Cutlass in my hand, Cutlass, something that could cut but also drive. It was a question whether my father would have approved of the ghost president or not. Not so much on the basis of the issues, but of who they were as a person. He liked men who didn’t wear ties, or if they did, they would be at some point discarded or at least loosened. He felt, like many men of his generation, that action was preferable to talk. My hand was still bleeding, but not very much.
He would have been interested in the ghost president’s wife because of her past. He felt, and I do also, that there is something exotic about nuns – a group of women who choose a certain lifestyle, who put themselves apart from men and sex. If he met the ghost president’s wife at a party, he would have quizzed her about the habits of the convent. How many times a day they prayed. How strict they were about wearing the habit. He would have wanted to know the details of her leaving: was it on the grounds of faith? Or a desire for a fuller life which might include love?
On the tv, the ghost president opens it up to questions. Someone asks about a matter of policy, a recent decision that affected the livelihoods of thousands. The ghost president appears to be considering this but in the end decides not to answer. Another question touches on foreign policy – who are our friends and allies now? To whom in the world do we look for aid and support? The ghost president refers them to the appropriate cabinet member who is unfortunately not present and who is either out of the country or has been fired.
Questions? the ghost president says. Questions? But for the moment, no one is asking any, and so the ghost president takes the opportunity to muse aloud about the colors of the carpet and the upholstery on the chairs. Who has chosen them. Why do they not match. When it is suggested that they are meant to be complementary, they laugh, which prompts the people sitting and standing behind them to laugh as well. Their wife doesn’t laugh, although the corners of her mouth might be said to turn up. As a possible ex-nun, or at least someone who is convent trained, she has exquisite control over her facial expressions.
Why don’t we all go out and get a drink, the ghost president says. Why don’t we play a round of golf. They state that everyone there is invited to play golf at a place that is not too far away. Cars are available for those who don’t want to walk. The ghost president is becoming less substantial as they list the amenities of the golf course. The sand trap is comparable to the Sahara, they say. The water hazard is stocked with expensive koi fish. Their face is a transparent moon. They gesture with hands that are blunt and translucent. Their suit is still solid. If they fade entirely will it stand up by itself?
In my city far away from the ghost president’s, in my house, on the couch, I found myself wishing that I played golf, or had at some point attempted to learn so I could have the pleasure of refusing to engage in a game with the ghost president. The word Cutlass reproached me and I set it down on the misnamed coffee table. I never use it for its named purpose and in fact don’t drink coffee, although my father did. Until the day he died he drank five or more cups a day. He was a solid man. He played golf in his youth but had given it up. His bag of golf clubs was stowed in the basement, a testament to that time in his life.
~
Mary Grimm has had three books published, Left to Themselves, Transubstantiation, and Stealing Time. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Antioch Review, and the Mississippi Review, as well as in a number of journals that publish flash fiction, including Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a series of climate change novellas set in past and future Cleveland.