Chapter Eleven
An anguished silence fell over Linden, as though its tenants feared the sounds of their own voices would make an already tragic loss somehow more real. In the aftermath of Braden's death, Ryan and Gillian grew isolated from each other in mutual grief. She could do nothing but watch while he took it like a man, tough and unflinching. In fact, from Ryan the loss was barely acknowledged at all. Many years ago, he had learned to take a beating stone faced.
"Never let them have the satisfaction of seeing you hurt. Braden taught me that."
Ryan awakes late one morning, roughly seven days after the memorial service. He couldn't recall how long it had really been. Reaching reflexively for his wife, he realizes she's gone, having woken an hour earlier. He sighs and rolls over to bury his face in a pillow. Eventually dragging himself up and pulling a t-shirt on.
Ryan jerks open the door to his and Gillian's closet. Reaching into the far corner, he lifts out a large crate. Once he had settled it in front of him, he sat back to catch his breath and contemplate. The crate was packed tightly with hundreds of volumes of poetry. Braden's favorites…Dickinson, Rimbaud, Rilke, Plath. He had always loved poetry. It was his only release during their years of hellish torment.
When Braden was sentenced, Ryan had cleared out his apartment, and most of what he had saved was right here in this box. There were no personal mementos, and his clothes had been given to charity. Opening the dog-eared, worn copy of Ariel, Ryan notes the many highlighted passages and the occasional scribble of handwriting in the margin. Then, stuck between two pages, he retrieves a small photograph.
It is he and Braden, ages 6 and 8, respectively, sitting on the front steps of their childhood home. Braden sported his usual shiner, and, if memory served, a few broken fingers as well.
Ryan is brought back to the present by a tap on the door as Gillian enters tentatively.
"Good morning, sleepy." She sees the books and wanders over to sit next to him. "What is that in your hand, a picture?"
"It's me and Braden." "Oh, let me see."
He hands her the photograph and she studies it for a moment.
"Look at you, so handsome, even then." Gillian reaches out and strokes his face. "But there's anger and sadness in your eyes, as though you'd seen everything before your time."
He gently brushes her hand away and takes the photo back. "This is the only picture I have of Braden and I together. See his face? Dad did that. I was reaching for something in the refrigerator and accidentally sent a bottle smashing down to the floor-- huge mess. Braden pushed me aside and this," he says, fingering the picture," is what happened. Some brother I was."
"Ryan, don't do this to yourself, please?" Gillian says as she stands and begins to make the bed, a sure sign of distress. She never learned how to make toast, let alone a bed, and wasn't particularly keen on mastering either skill for that matter.
"You see the way he's holding his hands behind his back? Did you notice that?"
"Ryan, I beg you to stop." She was growing wary of his fits of self-hatred and depression, which only made her feel worse. "He only lost his brother a week and a half ago. Have a little more sympathy." But there's more to it than that. He's got a whole lot of bad memories to carry around, and she knows that too.
"He did that because every finger on his left hand is broken. Who's fault do you suppose that was?"
"Goddammit Ryan! What do you want me to do?" she says, suddenly sobbing openly. "I can't change it. I want too so bad, but I just can't do that for you."
"I never asked you to change anything. It's over."
"Yeah, it is, but that doesn't mean we can't do something about it now, before we make ourselves crazy."
"This isn't your fight, Gillian. You barely knew Braden…"
"And I wasn't there when you were growing up, so I don't know anything about you or what you're going through. Well, guess what? I'm your wife, and I'm carrying your child, so I think anything that concerns you should concern me too."
"I don't want to hurt you. I would do anything to protect you and the baby from what we went through," Ryan says softly, as he sits down on the edge of the bed.
Gillian sits down next to him, and brushes her tears away.
"You're forgetting something. You're not just my husband, you're my best friend. When you hurt, I hurt. It's a risk that you have to take when you love somebody."
Ryan pulls her close, and she rests her head on his chest.
"We've taken risks together before."
"Hmm-mm, and they seemed to work out pretty well in the end, didn't they? We're going to have a beautiful baby, and we're not living on those little packets of rice anymore."
"Sometimes I'm just scared."
"Me too, but we'll do whatever we have to, Ryan. We'll go to those group things with Hayley. We've never been hopeless, and we're not going to start now, understand?" She says, smiling up at him, and he laughs.
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