ELEGY – Chapter Two
See Chapter One for disclaimers.
Once at home, Alex falls asleep on the couch in the late afternoon sun. When she wakes suddenly, flailing out of a pile of cushions to a sitting position, it's dark outside and she's got tears on her cheeks from a dream that she can't remember. She's pretty sure that Rory was in it, though – no surprise there, I guess, she thinks wearily.
She levers herself off the couch and moves slowly into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Rory, you bastard, if you're going to haunt my dreams, you could at least surface in my conscious memory and keep me company, she mutters to herself. It's a long-neglected habit – she used to carry on conversations with him all the time, especially in the year or two right after he died. She'd tell him stories about work, things she'd heard on the radio, gossip she'd picked up about his friends in the force…but after a while it got harder and harder to see him in her mind's eye, or maybe she just stopped needing him around. She remembers feeling guilty about not missing him so much…and then even the guilt mostly faded, or she buried it. Now, standing at the counter, not even knowing why, she tries to conjure up his face for the first time in years.
The baby kicks suddenly, hard enough to make her gasp. She sits down at the table, clutching her mug with both hands, and all at once she's crying again, tears coursing hot down her face and neck.
Oh Rory, she thinks. What am I doing?
She wonders what he would think of her surrogacy, if he were alive. But no, they would probably have had kids of their own by now, if all had gone according to their plan. She wouldn't be sitting like this at her kitchen table, alone and exhausted from carrying a child that won't be hers when it's born.
And yet that idea – the possibility of this baby not existing – shakes her to her marrow. No is the only coherent thought she can isolate from the groundswell of feeling that surges up from depths that she didn't even know existed. She takes a shuddering breath and spreads her hands, warm from the mug, against her belly. Feeling the baby move at her touch. No. No regrets, I promise, she tells him – realizing in that exact moment that she does think it's a boy, even though Jen and Mike and she all agreed to wait until the birth to find out the sex.
Oh. Hello, little boy. Hello, my nephew. And suddenly she's smiling through her tears, joy welling up all unexpected into the empty spaces of her soul. Wow. I better be careful not to let slip to your mom and dad that we've been introduced.
The thought makes her giggle slightly hysterically, and she covers her face with both hands for a second. God. Where is all this coming from? she wonders. It's grief and aching tenderness and oh, love – she didn't expect so much love – all mixed up together, and it hurts like hell, like a knife cut to an old, scarred-over wound. Andmaybe that's exactly what it is, she thinks in a flash of sudden clarity.
She's always been proud of how she picked up and carried on after Rory was killed; how she made herself strong out of her grief. Part of that, she knows, meant building walls, higher with every year that passed - walls of assertiveness and independence and dry, sarcastic humour to cope with the darker parts of her job, to keep loneliness at bay. There was a price, of course, a part of her heart that closed off and went silent, but she figured it was worth it. She lived with it, made it part of who she was.
And now…now there's this baby. Jen's baby. My nephew. Chipping at the walls. Making her into someone new, and she's only just realized it.
Early on, she read in one of the pregnancy books that her ribcage would soften and expand to accommodate the baby as it grew…she remembers how she flinched at the mental image of her very bones being rearranged. Now, she imagines that maybe her heart is doing the same thing – cracking and growing to encompass this huge and overwhelming feeling. Body and soul, both remade from the inside out.
It's not just the baby, growing towards birth. It's you and me both, kiddo.
The knowledge knocks the breath out of her. She sits there at the table in the dark, wondering, for a long time. Trying to grasp it, trying to imagine how they'll turn out, she and her nephew. Finally, the ringing of the phone interrupts her dazed contemplation. The caller display reads "R. Goren."
"Bobby?" She knows her voice betrays her surprise that he has actually called. She hopes he won't also detect just how glad she is to hear his voice. Familiar ground. Someone who knows her, sometimes better than she's comfortable with...but right now she's just painfully grateful.
"Yeah. I said I'd talk to you later…sorry, is it too late?" He sounds nervous.
"Oh – right. Thanks for calling – and, no, it's not too late," she stumbles.
"Are you okay? You sound…"
She's simultaneously too tired and too worked up to pretend. "Like I've been crying? Well, I have."
Silence on the other end of the line, and she's about to beat a retreat, cover the unaccustomed openness of her admission with a sarcastic remark. Then,
"I'm - sorry," he says tentatively. "Is there anything I can do?"
She takes a deep, shaky breath, willing herself not to burst into tears again over the phone. Why is it that acts of kindness are the hardest to handle?
"It's okay," she says, and it's actually the truth. "I'm all right now."
"Are – are you sure? I mean, do you want some company?"
"Thanks, Bobby," she says, touched. They've never really spent time together as friends, other than going to the bar after work – and, a handful of times, to the gym or the shooting range. She wonders what they'd do if he came over now, just to hang out. Would they watch a movie? Talk? She stops trying to picture it when she realizes she's actually tempted to take him up on the offer.
"I really appreciate it," she says. "But it's late, I should go to bed – and actually, I do have company," she adds on sudden wicked impulse. There's a taken-aback pause.
"Oh – sorry," stutters Bobby. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything, I – sorry, Eames."
"Bobby." She feels a smile stretch across her face, at the fact that he seems to be assuming exactly what she meant him to assume, and at the way he's reacting – even though she has no right or reason to expect him to be jealous. None at all. No siree.
"I meant the baby," she clarifies.
"Oh." She can see his small sheepish grin as clearly as if he was standing in front of her.
"Right. Of course. Well, good. I mean – I'm glad that you're not alone."
"Yeah," she says softly. "Me too. Good night, Bobby."
When she falls asleep the second time, she dreams of Rory, smiling at her. In the dream, she's so glad to see him. There's no anger, no grief, no guilt – just the memory of love, free and clear. "I have so much to tell you," she says, feeling her nephew move inside, making room for new joy.
And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above, my eyes could clearly see
The statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying…
-- Paul Simon, "American Tune"
END