Part Four
*There is no mystery to be revealed
and so we tell the truth and then run.
I love you because I love you
and I did think that you were the one
And now I see who you’ve become.*
Joyce stood in the doorway of her daughters room, watching the curtains billow in the soft evening breeze. Assuring herself, she supposed, of her only child’s continued absence.
How many times in the last months had she done this? Ran up the stairs and into the open door of the small bedroom after having heard, or, more likely, imagined, some sound. A whisper of movement that reached her no matter where she was in the house; the echo of a voice filling her with hope that Buffy was once again safe in her room, talking on the phone... calling out to her Mom... .
Sometimes she forgot, for just a moment... and sometimes she could hear her so clearly it made her want to weep all over again when she remembered. When she had run to this empty room, only to be greeted with this deafening silence. Too many times for her sanity to count. It was nearly a daily ritual. A sad, pathetic daily ritual.
She stepped further into the room, slowly making her way over to the bed. With one hand she reached out and smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from the comforter, righting a pillow to its proper place against the headboard. She turned in a slow circle, searching for any sign that anyone had been there, knowing no one had, hoping she knew wrong and hating the hope for its mere presence.
Nothing. Not one thing touched. Not one single thing moved one single inch from when she had done this very same thing yesterday. Hated hope quickly turned to even more hated disappointment and loss.
With a sudden burst of energy and fighting tears, she went over to the bookcase, shifting knickknacks and stuffed toys around on the shelves, checking for dust, busying her mind and hands with the mundane task. She had done that alot lately. She had slowly, over the course of Buffy’s absence, turned into a cleaning hermit.
She was afraid to leave the house. Thoughts of a missed phone call I’m homesick... can’t I come home... or, God forbid, Buffy coming home to an empty house kept her trapped inside its walls more effectively than if she were living in a prison. Work had become something of a torture to be endured.
She could transfer the phone, but it still left the house unattended for the better part of five days out of the week. What if Buffy came home and she missed it? Would her wayward child stay, or leave again if Joyce wasn’t present to hold her there? She ended up running home to check every few hours... calling her silent house in the vain hope that Buffy would, just once, miraculously be there to answer. Hello...
Going out where she couldn’t forward calls was simply not an option. And so, with nothing else to do but sit and replay the last moments she had seen her daughter, she had cleaned. And cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned. Every surface was spotless, every dish scrubbed, every cabinet, closet and drawer in perfect, organized order. No house she had ever lived in had ever been cleaner.
But cleaning in Buffy’s room never had the calming effect cleaning the rest of the house did. She could lose herself in the mindless task in any other room, the smell of cleaning fluids overpowering all else, the repeated scrubbing of already-clean surfaces holding her attention for hours until she exhausted herself. But here in Buffy’s room she found herself doing more just touching and holding than cleaning. Besides, a part of her rebelled against doing anything to take what little of her daughter was left away.
The bedsheets hadn’t been washed since Buffy had left, though Joyce couldn’t, didn’t want to, count how many times she had cried herself to sleep in her child’s bed, clutching Mr. Gordo or Snowy Bear tight to her chest. A few stray blonde hairs still clung to the old brush laying on the vanity, alongside a nearly empty jar of face cream and a half-used bottle of hairspray. Little things Buffy had left behind as useless and easily replaceable. Little things Joyce was reluctant to throw away.
Sadder, energy drained, still clutching one of Buffy’s childhood toys, she wandered over to the open window. She looked out across the lawn, her eyes drawn to the shadows dancing in the moonlight. Knowing what she knew now, she couldn’t help but watch the shadows... and wonder if the shadows were watching back. Even if she hadn’t been tied to the house out of fear of missing her daughter, she might have been tied to the house out of just plain fear after leaning what she had managed to pry out of that stuffy librarian Watcher, mom, he’s my Watcher... .
She looked down at the doll in her hands. Mr. Gordo. Buffy’s favorite. The one she could remember tucking in with her daughter for years. The one that had gone on every trip and every sleep-over until Buffy was too old to not get teased by the other girls. Come on Mom, I’m a big girl, remember? I don’t need a doll to sleep anymore...
Yet another thing Buffy had left behind.
But, she realized, looking back out the window at the dancing, watching shadows, Buffy had left Mr. Gordo behind long before she had left Sunnydale. There was little room to hold onto childhood toys for someone who was no longer allowed to be a child. Mr. Gordo had gone the way of baby blankets and bedtime stories, goodnight kisses, lullabies and tucking in rituals. Set aside when they no longer fit and eventually lost and forgotten in the very adult world of demons, vampires and saving the world.
After that thought, predictably, came the anger that always accompanied such thoughts. Anger at Buffy for keeping this a secret, anger at fate for doing this to her daughter, anger at that Mr. Giles Just Giles, Mom, no “Mr.” He’s just Giles... for being a part of it in any way... and anger at herself for not seeing it until she was forced to.
She reached up and pulled the window down, putting the fragile frame of glass between herself and the night, cutting off the soft breeze. The curtains slowly fell to rest against the wall, their restless movement ceasing with the quiet thud of wood against wood.
Turning away from her own reflection in the glass she placed Mr. Gordo on Buffy’s pillow, sparing one more moment to feel his soft pink fur against her palm. Baby mine, don’t you cry... Her hand ran once more over the comforter, more as a means to soothe her own raw nerves than to erase wrinkles in the fabric. Baby mine, dry your eyes...
She stood for a moment looking down at the empty bed, her throat painfully tight, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. Rest your head close to my heart, never to part... She made it all the way to the door before turning back one last time, having lost the fight with herself to, just one of these nights, not cry. ...baby of mine.
A flick of a switch plunged the room into darkness, Goodnight, Mom... but she still couldn’t bring herself to close the door.
To Be Continued...
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