The Quiet Work After the Call

The stage stayed empty.

For a few minutes, nobody minded. People were busy calling relatives, hugging strangers, holding flags over their heads. The screens kept replaying the network banner. Obama had been projected the winner. The park had accepted it before anyone could finish explaining it.

But the blue stage remained bright and empty.

Cody watched it through gaps between shoulders. Camera operators crossed behind the barriers. Security staff spoke into radios. The clear panels beside the lectern caught the light.

— Maybe he’s changing his tie, Cody said.

Lena looked at the stage. “For ten minutes?”

— It could be a complicated tie.

Marcus checked his phone. “My grandchildren want to know if he’s out there.”

— Tell them no, Cody said. Apparently he has a very serious tie.

Marcus typed with one gloved thumb. “They think every delay is a bathroom emergency. I’m not correcting them.”

The screen switched back to the network studio. The anchors were speaking with reporters in Chicago, Phoenix, and Washington. Their words came through in scraps. The crowd made its own noise over the rest.

Cody had expected the projection to lead straight to the stage. A door, a walk, a speech. Instead, he stood in the cold with tens of thousands of people, waiting for the next thing to happen somewhere else.

His phone buzzed.

His mother.

He stepped as far aside as the crowd allowed and answered.

— Ma?

— Cody, I saw it on television. Is it true?

— The networks called it.

— And you are in that crowd?

— Yes.

Her laugh was half delight, half alarm. “So many people.”

— Too many people, according to my feet.

— Did he speak?

— Not yet.

She was quiet for a moment. Cody knew the question before she asked it.

— Will this help you stay there?

He looked toward the empty stage.

His mother did not mean whether the crowd would make room for him. She meant his job, his visa, the forms his employer had filed, the rules neither of them could control from Chicago or India.

— I don’t know, he said.

The answer made the cheers around him sound strange. He wanted to give her something larger. He wanted to say that a new president meant a safer future for everyone who had built a life in the country while waiting for permission to keep it.

Instead he said, “I’ll call you again after the speech.”

— Good. Keep warm.

— I’ll do my best.

He ended the call.

On the screen, a reporter in Chicago spoke over footage of the Hyatt Regency, where Obama had been following the returns with family and senior advisers. Cody could hear her now because people nearby had begun to listen.

— After the race was called, she said, Obama spoke by telephone with Senator John McCain.

Cody looked up.

The reporter said that Obama had thanked McCain for his conduct during the campaign and had expressed a desire to work with him. She did not say who placed the call. She did not say how long it lasted. She could not show what either man looked like while they spoke.

— That was first? Cody asked.

Lena nodded. “That’s the first consequential thing reporters can clearly establish.”

— He wins and calls McCain.

— He was projected to win.

Cody gave her a tired look.

— I know what I said, she replied. And I know what it means tonight.

Marcus put his phone away. “McCain had to speak to his people. Obama had to deal with that, too.”

Cody watched the reporter’s face on the screen. A phone call seemed small beside the park: no music, no flags, no crowd shouting itself hoarse.

— That’s not what I expected, he said.

— What did you expect? Lena asked.

— A speech. Fireworks. A giant button marked History.

Marcus smiled. “Probably safer without the button.”

Cody did not smile back. “It feels like he’s somewhere doing paperwork while everybody here is losing their minds.”

— He isn’t doing paperwork, Lena said. He’s talking to the man he’ll need to govern with, or at least govern alongside.

Cody looked at the stage again. The distance between Grant Park and the Hyatt Regency seemed to widen. They were here to witness history, but the first action after the call had happened in a private room they could not enter.

A new report interrupted the studio talk. Outgoing President George W. Bush had telephoned Obama soon after the McCain conversation. Bush had congratulated him and promised a smooth transition.

— Another call, Cody said.

— An important one, Lena said.

— Two calls and still no tie.

Marcus’s phone rang. He listened for a few seconds, then turned away from the wind and spoke loudly into it.

— Yes, I know. I’m watching.... No, he hasn’t come out yet.... Your mother says you have school tomorrow? Then you should not still be awake.

He listened again and softened.

— Yes. I’ll tell you what it looked like.

When he ended the call, he tucked the phone into his coat pocket.

— My granddaughter asked if the president called him, Marcus said.

— Did you tell her? Cody asked.

— I told her the old president called and said they’d make the handoff smooth.

— What did she say?

— She said, ‘Good.’ Then she asked if I had eaten.

Lena laughed. “That is a sensible child.”

Cody thought of his own mother. He had wanted to tell her that the night had changed something immediate. Now he had a different account: first, Obama had called the opponent he had beaten. Then the outgoing president had called about the transfer ahead.

Neither call solved Cody’s problem. But neither was nothing.

The screens cut to Phoenix.

McCain was walking toward a lectern before a crowd of supporters. The noise in Grant Park changed. It did not vanish, but it lowered. Flags came down. People folded their arms against the cold and watched.

— This is after Bush? Cody asked Lena.

— Yes, she said. The reports put Bush’s call first. McCain’s concession is happening now.

McCain began to speak. The sound carried cleanly through the park speakers.

Cody watched from Grant Park while McCain conceded in Phoenix. Around him, some people stood stiffly. Others nodded when McCain spoke about unity and congratulated Obama. A few cheered at the mention of the historic result, then seemed unsure whether cheering during a concession was rude.

Marcus did not move.

McCain acknowledged that Obama would become the first African American elected president. The crowd answered with a long, uneven sound. It held joy, relief, and something older than either.

Marcus took off his knit cap.

— My grandson has a school book with pictures of presidents, he said quietly. Every face in it looks like it belongs to one old club.

Lena glanced at him.

— I told him those books would need updating.

Cody waited.

Marcus rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “That’s enough for me tonight. I don’t need to make a speech about it.”

Cody nodded. “Fair.”

On the screen, McCain finished. The camera moved back to the network anchors. One reporter said Obama had watched McCain’s concession from the Hyatt Regency suite with his family and senior advisers before he would come to Grant Park.

Cody pictured only the television image of the hotel exterior. He did not imagine the room inside. That belonged to other people.

The Hyatt was the campaign’s private base. Grant Park was where the public waited, pressed together under flags and signs, watching the private sequence arrive as news.

A man behind Cody spoke loudly to nobody in particular.

— It’s done, he said. He’s president. What are they waiting for?

Lena turned. “The speech, probably.”

— The legal stuff is done too. The networks called it.

Cody felt Lena tense beside him. Earlier, he might have agreed just to keep the night simple.

— It’s not done, he said before she could answer.

The man looked at him. “What?”

— The call matters. Obviously it matters. But states still certify the results. Electors vote in December. Congress counts the electoral votes in January.

The man frowned. “That’s technical.”

— Yeah, Cody said. Technical is real.

The man looked at his campaign button, then back at the screen. “You people know how to ruin a celebration.”

— No, Lena said. We know how not to ruin it with bad information.

He muttered something and faced forward.

Cody let out a breath. His hands were cold again. The crowd shifted as security workers directed people away from one crowded section. A wave of bodies moved them several yards sideways. The stage vanished completely behind signs and taller people.

— Wonderful, Cody said. We have upgraded to an invisible rally.

— You still have the screen, Lena said.

— The screen has been more loyal than the stage.

Marcus pointed toward a street beyond the edge of the crowd. “You could leave. Find a warm place. Hear every word.”

Cody looked in that direction.

A bar would have chairs. A television. No flags in his face. He could call his mother without shouting. He could get home sooner and still report to work at eight.

Then he looked back at the screen, where the anchors said Obama would appear soon.

— I came all this way to watch television badly, he said.

— That is not a reason to stay, Lena said.

— No. But I think I want to.

Marcus nodded once.

Cody took out his phone. His supervisor’s earlier message sat above the screen: Back in at eight tomorrow.

He typed, I’ll be there at eight.

For a moment, he held his thumb over the button. The election had not changed his visa. It had not repaired the economy. It had not made him a voter.

He sent the message anyway.

Lena saw his face. “You all right?”

— Ask me after sleep.

— That is an acceptable answer.

The screen showed the blue stage again. Lights brightened over the lectern. People stood taller, though nobody had grown.

Cody put his phone away.

When he called his mother after the speech, he would not tell her that everything was fixed. He would tell her what had happened first: after the networks made their projection, Obama had spoken to McCain. Bush had called about a smooth transition. McCain had conceded, and Obama had watched from the Hyatt before coming out to the people waiting in Grant Park.

It was not a guarantee.

But it was not empty, either.