Merry Christmas, yo! This is my Secret Santa gift for FosterGirl147. I hope she enjoys! The title is from a Rilo Kiley song. Love, love, love Rilo Kiley.
What gets her is not the empty crib or the bottles lined up by the kitchen sink. It's not the discarded toys or the blanket that her mother crocheted for them folded so neatly on top of the changing table.
What ends up breaking her is the silence. The way that it seems to fill up the house, so heavy and dense that she feels it weighing on her, and the way that she can hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Alec turns on the television and finds a basketball game, or is it football? It doesn't matter. He turns it on and turns it up so loudly that she finds herself almost chastising him for having the television on too loud. "You're going to wake up the baby," is halfway out of her mouth before she bites the words back, swallows them and gags. He doesn't hear her; he's too caught up in his own grief and he doesn't seem to notice, or care, that his wife is grieving too.
She thinks about going to grief counseling. "I lost a child," she would say, but Sophie, no not Sophie, not anymore, Bailey is still alive. She's alive and okay and somewhere in Maryland with her birth mother, only she's not her birth mother anymore, she's just her mother and once again Gillian is no one's mother. She can't imagine what those women, those mothers, who have lost their children to accidents and diseases and tragedy would think of her. Would they pity her? Resent her? She always recommended therapy because it was a way to know that you weren't alone. What you were facing was not unique to you, and you could find support in numbers.
What she was facing was unique to her, so what would be the point of standing up in front of a group of women who share nothing with her other than the fact that there was once a baby, and now there was nothing but silence? She would never be like those mothers, and yet, she would never again be just a childless woman. She had crossed some sort of line, and she couldn't go back and she couldn't go forward. She was stuck. Stuck with her grief and the overwhelming silence and her husband who hadn't said a single word to her in the fifteen hours since they had taken Sophie, no not Sophie, not anymore.
Alec hadn't even come down, the coward, when the social worker had taken the baby from Gillian's arms. He had stayed up in their bedroom, the door firmly shut, as Gillian gathered the essentials and kissed their daughter goodbye. She hadn't been able to shut the door behind them, and she had stood frozen in the doorway as the social worker loaded the baby into the car seat and backed out of their driveway and drove away. The door was still wide open when Alec finally came down, Gillian still standing in the middle of the front hall, her arms, once full and warm and hopeful, now hanging uselessly at her sides. He hadn't said anything to her, but he had closed the door and had walked into the kitchen and he had grabbed a beer, God, she hoped it was only a beer, and retreated back upstairs to their bedroom. She heard the sound of the door clicking shut and then the sound of the television, a basketball game or maybe a football game.
Cal called that first night, worried about Gillian, and she had let the phone go to voicemail. She still hadn't cried. Oh, sure, she had cried when the phone call first arrived. When that awful, terrible, awful phone call had come to tell them that the birth mother had changed her mind.
"About what?" Gillian had asked, stupidly, naively. There had been an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the phone and suddenly she understood.
But she didn't cry on that day, the day that Sophie Foster ceased to exist. Alec did. She heard him cradling the baby early in the morning, sobbing softly. But Gillian hadn't. She had folded Sophie's tiny clothes and placed them into a bag for the social worker to take with her. She had folded the blanket and thought about placing that into the bag as well, but decided that Sophie's, no not Sophie, not anymore, Bailey's mother would probably throw it away, and with all the terrible, unfair things that were happening, Gillian couldn't let her mother's handmade blanket get tossed too. She had packed up diapers and a stuffed giraffe that Cal had gotten Sophie that appeared to be her favorite and left them by the front door so that when they arrived to take Sophie, no not Sophie, not anymore, when they came to take Bailey, her things were ready.
That first night, after she was gone, while Alec hid away, Gillian had packed up the rest of Sophie's things, and arranged for a truck to come pick up the nursery furniture. She found a place to donate it, and she spent hours organizing all the baby things they no longer needed.
And she didn't cry.
On hour eighteen, she finally picked up the phone when Cal called for what had to been the thirtieth or fortieth time.
"Are you okay?" He asked, which was a stupid question, because of course she wasn't okay. "I mean, are you and Alec okay?"
"I wouldn't know if Alec is okay," she answered honestly. "We haven't spoken in nearly a day now." And she heard Cal telling Zoe that he was going to go over to Gillian's and she wanted to tell him not to bother, that she was okay, but she knew it was pointless.
Cal arrived twenty minutes later, and found Gillian directing men who were carrying out a crib, and Alec up in their bedroom, the television still blaring.
"Gill? Love?" Cal touched her arm and Gillian stopped from where she was carrying out a box labeled books and gave him a sad, half smile.
"You didn't need to rush over here," she said.
"I know," he answered. "What can I help you with?" And she put him charge of helping carry boxes out to the truck and she heard one of the movers ask him if Gillian's baby had died.
"She lost her, yes," Cal answered, which, Gillian supposed, was the truth, and the man shook his head.
"That's…" the man shook his head again, at a loss for words. And it was the combination of Cal's soft, honest voice, and the man's obvious pain for Gillian that finally broke her. She brought her hand to her cheek and was surprised to find it wet.
When Cal came back into the house, when the last of Sophie's, no not Sophie, not anymore, when the last of Bailey'sthings were gone, he found her standing, her features and body twisted with grief and he took her into his arms
"I lost her," Gillian repeated, her hands grabbing fistfuls of Cal's shirt. Alec stayed locked in their bedroom, as Gillian fell apart in Cal's arms. She couldn't get any of the other words she wanted to say out, her breaths coming in heaving sobs, her wails painful and raw.
They stood like that for what felt like forever, until Gillian announced that she couldn't stay in that house for another minute. The walls felt like they were closing in, and the silence, ohGod, the silence was suffocating. They left without telling Alec, Gillian didn't really see a point. He wasn't going to care where she had gone, and she didn't need that confirmed.
When Cal asked her where she wanted to go, she told him that she didn't care.
"Just drive," she said, and he had complied. They drove until it was dark, looping around the monuments and heading out of the city towards Virginia. Somewhere just past Alexandria, Cal reached for her hand, twining his fingers with hers and holding on tightly. He called Zoe to let her know not to worry about him coming home tonight, and though Gillian could only hear one side of the conversation, it didn't seem that Zoe was too angry. How could she be? Gillian thought. She got to be in her warm, cozy house with her loud, rambunctious daughter, and what did Gillian have? A cold, quiet, lonely house with a husband who seemed to blame Gillian for all of it.
"Cal?" She spoke up somewhere near Richmond, still driving, hands still tangled together in the center of the car.
"Yeah, love?"
"You can turn around now." And they turned back towards DC, the road racing underneath them, their palms sweaty.
"There's counseling," Cal suggested, breaking the silence, and Gillian shook her head.
"I'll be fine," she told him.
They arrived back at Gillian's house hours later, and she found the door still firmly shut, but the television in their bedroom was turned off. It took several times of her promising to call Cal if she needed him before he finally left, a look on his face that told her that he was not entirely convinced that she would call, before he finally relented, exhausted after driving for hours.
And when the door shut behind Cal, when it clicked into the place, the sound of it echoed through her house. And she walked back up to her bedroom and opened the door, and ignoring Alec's sprawled body on their bed, turned back on the television, to some basketball game, or was it football? After she had turned it up as loudly as it could go, she placed a blanket over Alec and pressed the heel of her palms into her eyes, took three deep breaths, and left the room.