Disclaimer: I don't even own the computer I'm typing this on...
Not Meant To Be – Chapter 5
She watches the brown liquid swash around in the bellied glass her right hand is holding.
She's been doing this for quite a while now and doesn't have the intention of stopping it any time soon. It soothes her, prevents her from thinking too much.
Normally it is very unlike her to prop her feet up on any piece of furniture, but tonight she's making an exception. And so she finds herself occupying the entire sofa while her husband, armed with a thought-preventer of his own, is forced to sit in the armchair.
Neither of them has spoken a single word in some time and when she looks up every now and then, stealing glances at his face, she can see that he's worried. Pursed lips, furrowed brows, loosened tie and rolled up sleeves – she remembers only one occasion more than twenty years ago that had him look similarly exhausted and troubled: Lorelai confessing to them she was pregnant.
"Isn't it strange?" his voice all of a sudden cuts through the silence.
"Isn't what strange?" she asks weakly, staring into her glass.
"We were actually looking forward to it this time", comes his bitter remark.
"Yes. We were."
Silence falls once again, she is lost in her thoughts, asking herself whether it'd have lead to a different outcome had they not been full of anticipation this time. After all, everything went well the first time, when they weren't getting along and when they weren't exactly ecstatic at the prospect of becoming grandparents and when they weren't loaded with gifts.
Instead he had been wearing the wrong shoes and she had been infuriated by her daughter banning her from the delivery room.
In the back of her mind she knows that questions like these are ridiculous, that the future grandparents' attitude could not possibly have anything to do with the grandchild's well-being, but still she seems to be unable to refrain from entertaining this kind of mind-game. It's very tempting to try and find someone or something to blame this tragedy on.
"Where did you put them?" she asks in an attempt to push the destructive thoughts out of her mind.
"Excuse me?"
"What did you do with the flowers and the presents when you 'went for a walk' this afternoon?" she clarifies.
"I put them in the trunk", he admits, "I didn't know what else to do with them."
"Why didn't you just throw them away or give them to someone at the hospital? We have no need for them any more!" As much as she tries, she is unable to hide the hint of anger in her voice. He has to make it extra hard on everybody, doesn't he?
"Giving them away would've felt like losing him over again", he states quietly, it almost sounds like a confession of personal failure.
"A boy." He sets down his glass onto the small table on the right side of the armchair.
"A boy." She repeats his statement and swallows.
"Do you think they had already named him?"
"I don't know", suddenly she asks herself how long it's been since she last cried in front of him, "I think they wanted to let themselves be surprised by the gender."
And with that, she feels the first tear run down her cheek. She finds herself clutching the glass in her lap very tightly. Are cut fingers going to hurt more than loss and helplessness? She doubts it.
"Emily", he breaths and with a swift move sits down on the sofa, first taking her feet up in his lap and then reaching over to hug her close to him.
Although she doesn't like to let her guard down in front of anyone – most of the time not even her own husband – she finds herself making another exception aside from the propped up feet as she gives in to his embrace.
"She's strong, Richard, isn't she?" A small sob escapes her lips.
"She is a strong woman and she has Luke and Rory, they're going to make it through", he says, patting her back reassuringly.
"I'm not sure whether I would've been able to deal with something as... as terrible as this", she blurts out. Memories of the month in 1985 that she spent curled up in bed flood her brain.
She lets go of the glass. When she reaches out to hug him back, the brown liquid spills all over her dress and onto the sofa, but much to her own surprise, she doesn't care as her fists grab the material of his shirt.
Upstairs, she can't understand anything they say, all she hears are muffled voices and most of the time it's completely silent, anyway. That's why she excused herself half an hour ago. The combination of endless sadness and silence had begun to feel unbearable.
At first she tries lying down on her bed in the room Emily once set up for her in the Gilmore home. It doesn't work, she isn't tired at all.
Then she tries expressing her feelings on the Hello Kitty writing pad she has found in the top drawer of the heavy wooden desk. The pages remain blank.
Then she gets herself ready for bed, thinking that by doing so she can maybe trick her body and mind into making her feel at least a little bit tired. Her plan doesn't work out.
Still wide awake, she is now wandering around her mom's old room. A strange sense of comfort has taken hold of her. When she passes the dollhouse, she suddenly finds herself wondering whether anyone ever bothered to remove the dolls and furniture from it or whether they are still in there, quietly collecting dust and cobwebs.
Peering into the house from its open back side, she is surprised to see that a glass panel has been mounted to it and that inside the rooms and corridors of the dollhouse everything looks as if its young owner would return any minute to resume playing. Not the slightest trace of dust, the part of herself that also likes to separate laundry into sub-piles of colors can't keep from noticing.
There is an unrealistically large amount of people "living" in the dollhouse. Her painfully unerring gaze, however, soon falls onto one particular scene displayed in one of the first floor rooms. A female and a male doll bend over a small crib. She can't see what's inside the crib, but all of a sudden she thinks she can make out the expression on the dolls' faces. There are tears running down their cheeks, the corners of their artfully modeled mouths are pointing downwards. Then she knows that the crib must be empty.
She blinks her eyes. This can't be real.
And it isn't. But the overwhelming urge to call Luke is.
She almost runs back to her room, flops down onto the bed and yanks her cell phone out of the handbag she discarded there earlier.
When she has almost given up hope that he might pick up the phone and her thumb is already hovering over the button that will end this attempted phone call, she finally hears his voice.
"Yeah." He is slurring.
"Luke, it's me, Rory", she says.
"Rory."
"Yes. I just – I wanted to make sure you're alright."
"Yeah", he snorts bitterly.
"I'm sorry."
"How're you, your grandparents?" he manages to ask.
"We're okay. How was Mom when you went home?"
"Sleeping. She's very exhausted, you know?" his voice sounds thinner now and a little clearer.
"Of course. Luke, I –" she doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence.
"We saw him." The slur is back in his voice.
"What?" What did he just say?
"We named him Julian", it almost sounds as if he's crying now. She has never heard or seen Luke cry.
"That's beautiful, Luke", she replies quietly and then tentatively bites her lip before saying her brother's name for the first time.
"Julian."
"Yeah", he sounds a little bit clearer again, but still quite drunk, "Rory, I'm pretty tired, I-"
"Of course", this time she's the one interrupting, "go to bed, Luke. Good night."
"Night."
"I love you and Mom", Rory says, trying not to say again how sorry she is.
"Thank you, Rory. I just-" he doesn't continue the sentence.
"Night", she gently wishes.
"Yeah. See you tomorrow?"
"See you tomorrow."
"Alright." At least that's what she thinks he says.
And then he hangs up.
Tossing the phone against the piled up pillows at the top end of the bed, Rory makes her way over to the desk, sits down in front of it and picks up the ball-point from earlier.
Not much later, she gets back up and into bed, hoping that either Emily or Richard will wake her up the next morning.
There's a single sentence written on the Hello Kitty-adorned piece of paper that she carefully places on the pillow next to her:
'They named him Julian.'
As she finally slides off into sleep, an infinite sadness once again envelops her, but now that she knows whom they are mourning, it seems a little more bearable.
She prays that her mom and Luke feel the same way.