Gather Near to Us Once More
They had thought it would a great Christmas gift idea: paying for a package spread of family photos, taken at a studio, featuring both sets of grandparents, themselves, Brittany's sister, and their one and a half year-old daughter.
The last time everyone had been photographed together was at their wedding—five years ago, before their daughter was born.
New photos would be cute, they had said: timely, considering that Brittany's sister had just come home for the holidays following her first semester at college, and something that the grandparents could appreciate and Brittany's sister could show off to the sorority she was pledging.
What they hadn't considered was the difficulty of coordinating schedules with seven adults and one toddler two days before Christmas, plus getting said toddler to hold still and behave herself for an hour during the shoot.
She's been off ever since they flew into Ohio yesterday. Santana swears that she is coming down with something, but Brittany thinks it's just the time difference, confusing her internal baby clock. In any case, she has been, to this point, sullen and broody, unwilling to allow anyone but her moms to hold her, not even her grandparents or her auntie. She doesn't want to play with any of her toys or read her books, and she refuses to laugh or smile.
Tonight, that sullenness develops into full-blown tantrumming: she shrieks all the way from the Lopez house, where Brittany and Santana have been staying, to the portrait studio, thrashing in her car seat and refusing, in turn, her blanket, juice, and kisses from Mama.
Their appointment is set for seven o'clock, and they pull into the parking lot at six fifty-two. Of the four family cars they're expecting, theirs and the Pierces' are the only ones there; Santana's parents and Brittany's sister have yet to show. They step out of the car into bitter Ohio cold.
"God, it hurts my eyeballs," Santana grouses, standing behind Brittany to shield herself from the wind. Brittany opens the back door to the rental and starts to free their daughter from her car seat. Their daughter wails and flexes against her restraints. Her little voice frays, and snot bubbles from her nose.
"No, Mom! No, Mom!" she screeches, kicking as Brittany struggles to unsnap the belts on the car seat.
"Come on, baby girl," Brittany pleads.
The sky overhead is a dismal gray, thick with snow clouds.
"Merry freakin' Christmas," says Santana, shivering and hitching the diaper bag up higher on her shoulder.
By the time they get inside the studio, their daughter's lace collar is soaked with tears, spit, and baby snot, and Santana's mascara is running because her eyes watered in the cold. Brittany's hair is falling out of its up-knot. All three of them have red, chapped faces.
Brittany's parents greet them in the reception area.
"My mom and dad aren't here yet?" Santana despairs.
"Neither is the runt," Brittany says, referencing her sister.
"She had a dinner date with some of the girls from her old traveling team," Mrs. Pierce says. "She texted from the restaurant. Says she's just leaving now."
"Tell her to get here," Brittany says, the baby arch-backed and still screaming in her arms.
"Are we still waiting for members of your party?" the receptionist asks.
Brittany and Santana share a look. The best intentions, right?
Santana's mother arrives two minutes after seven o'clock, in a flurry of apologies about her meeting running over. Cold enters the studio with her, clinging to her person, and melted snowflakes spangle her hair. Apparently, a storm is rolling in, and the roads will be slick soon. She glances at the Pierces as she is shucking off her coat.
"Oh," she says, sounding weirdly dismayed.
Santana barely hears her over the wailing of the baby. "What?"
"I thought you told us to wear red accents," she says, "—not pink."
Santana looks at her in-laws—really looks at them—for the first time and sees that while Mrs. Pierce stuck to the dress code, Mr. Pierce took his own direction and is wearing a salmon-colored tie.
"Isn't this red?" he says. "Reddish?"
"God, Dad," says Brittany.
"I could run home and grab another tie," Mr. Pierce offers weakly.
The baby is practically bellowing now, straining so hard in Brittany's arms that Brittany almost drops her. It's five after seven, and they're still missing Santana's father and Brittany's sister from their party. So far, the staff at the studio has been very patient, but they have mentioned that they have an eight o'clock appointment scheduled for another shoot.
"Can you call Dad?" Santana asks her mother.
At ten after seven, Brittany's sister finally shows—with a duffle bag slung over her shoulder.
"Is there someplace I could change?" she asks.
She's wearing her puffy coat, yoga pants, and boots that look like slippers, and she doesn't even have her makeup on yet. Standard sorority girl uniform.
"Jesus Christ," says Brittany.
"It's his birthday, you know—in two days, anyway," her sister says glibly.
One of the studio employees shows her to a bathroom down the hallway to change, and Santana's father enters the room just as she exits it. He is scowling and snow-dusted.
"What happened to you?" Mrs. Lopez asks. "Are you okay?"
He casts a furtive look at the Pierces and seems to choose his answer carefully for their sakes. "It was, uh—not a good day at the hospital," he says. "I, uh—I lost a patient."
Santana and Mrs. Lopez crowd around him, hands on his arms. "Oh, what happened? Did you—?"
"There's nothing to say about it," he says, starting to unbutton his overcoat.
"Is everyone here once that young lady gets back from changing?" asks the photographer—herself a young lady, seemingly no older than twenty. "Or are we still waiting on this little one's daddy?" she asks, gesturing to the baby, still wailing in Brittany's arms.
Her question isn't necessarily malicious, but it still causes Brittany and Santana to flash each other cautious looks. It's been a while since they've lived in small town Ohio, but they still know how things can be around here: conservative, to say the least.
Brittany tries her usual tack—levity. She laughs. "No daddy, two mommies," she says, passing the baby over to Santana, as if to demonstrate.
Miraculously, the baby does seem to somewhat calm in Santana's arms. Though she still cries, she no longer thrashes or arches her back. Her voice sounds sadder, rather than angry. She burrows her little face in Santana's hair—sliming it, no doubt. Santana offers the photographer a nervous smile. See?
"Oh," says the photographer, seeming vaguely disoriented. "I think I'm—I'm gonna go grab our other photographer. Excuse me."
She exits the room before either Brittany or Santana can respond, and—
Holy shit. Did she just opt out of taking their photos because they're not straight?
They're not the only ones to share the thought. Their parents look to them, shocked and questioning, ready to be up in arms, if they need to be.
It's not as if the Supreme Court ruling cured the whole country of homophobia—but, honestly, it has been a while since they've personally experienced that kind of discrimination, and so blatantly. For the record, it still hurts, like the wrenching of a knife in their guts.
Here they are, with their families, trying to do something nice for Christmas, and some twentysomething college student is passing negative judgment on them, refusing to give them service because of who they are and how they love.
It's the kind of slight they couldn't prove, legally speaking—after all, the girl didn't say outright that she was handing their shoot off to the other photographer because they weren't straight—but they know what it is and what it means, and, after everything else that's been happening, it just plain sucks.
Tears well in Santana's eyes, reactionary, the way they used to when she was in high school. She gasps a little. "Ouch," she says.
Brittany touches her arm. The baby still sobs against Santana's hair. "That was—"
"I'm gonna go talk to their manager," Dr. Lopez fumes, and Mr. Pierce stands to join him.
Brittany's sister reenters the room, changed into her dress, makeup done perfectly. "I'm good to go," she announces cheerily. It takes her a second to notice the dark looks everyone wears. "Shit. Who died?"
Her question would be indelicate, even under better circumstances, but considering Dr. Lopez's patient and the exchange Brittany and Santana just had with the photographer, it is too much. Santana winces, closing her eyes, and two tears leak out, one down each cheek. Brittany practically snarls at her sister and is about to say something savage, but, just then, the door to the studio opens, and in pops a girl even younger than the one before—probably no older than eighteen—short, pierced, tattooed, and undercut, a smile brighter than a lighted Christmas tree illuminating her face.
"Is this the Pierce and Lopez party?" she asks. "Sorry for the delay. I'm Kelby. You folks ready to take some pictures?"
Brittany and Santana know better than most people that you can't make assumptions about someone's sexual orientation based on their looks—and yet it is difficult not to assume with Kelby. Santana quickly wipes her tears away on her hand and glances at Brittany, like Are you seeing this? Brittany mouths back at her Thank you, Jesus.
Kelby asks for everyone's names and makes small talk with the group while she sets up the backdrops and cameras she intends to use for her shots.
Despite her age, she seems very professional. As she bustles around the room, Santana and Brittany make apologies to her for the screaming baby, but she reassures them that everything is okay.
"It's actually good for her to get all that out now," Kelby says. "If she tires herself out, we can take cute sleeping baby photos."
After a few minutes, she has to studio ready for the shoot. She gently persuades Mr. Pierce to lose his tie and makes sure that Santana has time to clean up her eye makeup. The baby is still fussing—though much less vehemently than before—so she decides to start with taking photos of each pair of grandparents.
"If you want to take her over in that corner there," she says to Brittany and Santana, indicating a dark place near the back of the studio where there is a bench and some stacks of old fabric backdrops, "you can. Might be a good place for naptime."
Brittany and Santana do as directed, watching from a distance as Kelby arranges their parents in various poses, first the Lopezes, then the Pierces.
"Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea for a Christmas present," Brittany whispers to Santana as she prepares a bottle for their daughter out of the diaper bag.
Santana sits down on the bench, cradling the baby in her arms. "Yeah," she agrees. But then. "Still, maybe next year we should just stick to gift cards."
Sitting in the dim, quiet corner works wonders on the baby, who drinks from her bottle and lulls finally to sleep, safe in her mama's arms, with her mom sitting beside her, stroking the soles of her tiny feet. It also works wonders on Brittany and Santana's nerves, calming them down, allowing them a few moments alone together, amidst all the chaos. Santana leans her head on Brittany's shoulder.
"You okay, Mouse?" Brittany asks her.
"Mhm-hm," Santana says, pecking a kiss to Brittany's neck.
The baby sighs, contented, in her sleep, and Brittany leans down to give her little hand a kiss.
Soon, Kelby finishes up her individual shots of Brittany's sister and tiptoes over to Brittany and Santana's corner.
"Is it time for our—?" Brittany asks, already starting to stir, but Kelby gestures for her to remain seated.
"What do you think about doing your family shots over here?" Kelby asks, keeping her voice low so as not to wake the baby. "I've got this new filter on my camera I could use against the low light." She smiles. "You guys already look like a Christmas card."
Brittany and Santana have always just kind of made things work in their own way, so they might as well keep doing so now. They shrug and nod. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Kelby hurries to get her camera.
So Kelby takes their individual family photos in the corner, under the shadows. She moves a small lamp to partially illuminate the area but mostly keeps things mostly under brown light—hushed and peaceful and intimate. The in-laws gather around, standing behind her.
"Look at how sweet," Mrs. Lopez coos to Mrs. Pierce, and both Brittany and Santana blush because, even though they've been together and have been out and have been a family for years now, somehow it always feels like a kind of wonderful surprise, being met with such loving acceptance.
Nothing can undo ugliness like what they experienced earlier in the shoot, but it is nice to be reminded that there are goodhearted people in the world—some of them teenage photographers with nose rings, others of them grandparents who love their granddaughter and her two mothers.
Kelby directs Brittany and Santana to push their foreheads together and hold the baby between them. "Do you think you can manage to gaze lovingly into each other's eyes?" she teases. "Yeah, just like that. Perfect."
They take multiple shots, just the three of them that way—two wives and their baby—and then Kelby whispers for the rest of the family to fill in around them, and the grandparents crowd in at Brittany and Santana's shoulders, and Brittany's sister takes a knee by Santana's side, everyone looking at the baby.
As Kelby snaps the last photo, she smiles. "That's a Christmas card," she says approvingly.
They had thought it would be a great Christmas gift idea, taking Christmas photos as a family—and they were completely right. At the end of their session, right on the nose at eight o'clock, Kelby shows them the results from the shoot on her laptop.
"These still need to be edited," she says, "but I think we've got some winners."
Brittany and Santana can't help but agree. They have a beautiful family: parents who love and support them, a kid sister who hasn't changed too much even for having gone away to school, and their beautiful daughter, who looks like a Christmas angel, sleeping in their arms.
As they step out into the studio parking lot, they find that the wind has died down, and the temperature has risen slightly because of the snow. The baby is stirring but doesn't seem entirely as fussy as she was before. They strap her into her car seat in the rental, and, before they get into the car themselves, Brittany takes Santana by the hand and gives her a ballroom spin, pulling her in close for a kiss as snowflakes dust their hair.