- -
When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all
Rory let her forehead rest
on the car's window, her expression blank as she and her finger followed
remnants of the afternoon's rain shower sliding down the outside of the
glass. Though the drops had stopped pouring, the sun had yet to peek out
from behind its cover of cloud. A coward, she thought the sun to be,
hiding after the tantrum in the sky, unapologetic in its absence.
Dean waved briefly as he
walked by the car, his eyes seeming so hesitant to look away from the
girl in the front seat with raindrops matched up to fingertips. He could
see a small cloud forming on the window from her puffs of breath that
must be warmer than the day around them which should be ashamed to call
itself summer. Raindrops still lingering in the folds of leaves overhead
fell to soak the exposed part of his neck by his jacket collar. He put
his hands in his pockets; tore his eyes away from the girl, the car, the
frowning sky, and started toward Doose's to begin his afternoon shift.
Rory pressed her lips
together as she watched him leave. She opened her mouth again to send a
puff of steam onto the glass that held her fascination. It was as if her
forehead were glued to it; she couldn't ignore the fatigue that gave
resistance to movement.
She could hear Lorelai's
voice changing octaves with different patterns in speech as she smiled
and mocked into the cell phone pressed to her ear. Rory wondered when
her mother would be finished bedeviling Luke and would join her in the
car so they could leave their sad, drooping yard, and be on their way.
Chatterbox in her throat
finally spent, Lorelai closed her phone with a giggle and got into the
car. She eyed Rory as she turned the blasting heat down. "Why so glum,
chum?"
"Tired," Rory told her. She
turned to face her mother, damp strands of hair curling slightly and
clinging to her face. "Can't we turn the heat back on? It's cold."
"It's July. You need a
thicker skin."
"I'm hormonal."
"You act like that's an
excuse for anything."
"If you were me, you'd
agree."
"Looks like I'd also rhyme
all the time," Lorelai put in as she switched the car's gears and
started out of the Gilmore driveway.
Rory watched the scenery
she'd been privy to thousands of times, a lost soul crawling through the
small-town stores that gave way to busier streets on the way to
Hartford. Though the windows were rolled up, she could hear the faint
thundering going on above, serving as a warning of more rain. Why didn't
the whole sky just fall? she wondered. Why didn't it just release itself
and careen to the ground, wrap itself around her and teleport her to a
better time in her life? Any other time would do. Third grade spelling
tests or seventh grade biology: she could take it. She could take
anything else. But not this.
Life was a waiting game
while a fetus grew in her belly. The world held its breath as she
underwent morning sickness that stretched on into evening, making the
toilet bowl her only friend for long hours of the day. There was no one
to save her from the labor pains that were gathering and waiting to
pounce in half a year more. No one could feel this for her, not the
physical part that stung the hardest, screamed the loudest. Pained her
the worst.
Hartford's streets were
slick with water. What a marvel that such tiny drops of moisture could
soak a city entirely, given enough of them fell to their splashing
deaths to spread into puddles of water that would dry and be forgotten.
As if the small pelts had never been. The rain's presence felt so
temporary while everything else around Rory was permanently fixed. Her
future, her hardships, her physical pain. She could only hope the mental
torture and fatigue would leave along with the infant's birth from her
body.
"There's nothing more
beautiful than a baby, you know," Lorelai said to interrupt thoughts of
such misery and bring her daughter back to life. She glanced at Rory
while steering the vehicle, though her attempts to elicit a smile did
nothing to pull Rory's head from its place, crushed against the window
glass.
"Maybe," Rory told her.
"But the process to getting there is the ugliest thing."
"If you want to look at it
that way. You don't have to, you know. You can work at it, change your
own mind. Be the happy girl I used to know before the hormones you point
at and blame."
Being happy and seeing
beauty. Oh, those were things of yesterday. Rory squeezed her eyes shut
and saw again this morning's misery. Tied to the toilet, it seemed ten
thousand breakfasts were heaved from her insides. Over and over she
vomited, until her stomach felt the force of repetitious crunches,
without the benefit. Soreness overtook her every bone, and yet there was
to be no stillness as she heaved just when she was preparing to find her
shaky way off the floor.
And then Dean had entered
the bathroom, concerned as always about her body's explosive reaction to
the little thing nestled inside. He tried to be with her in those
ugliest of times, but sometimes his stomach was weak, too. And on
mornings like this one, he had to nudge her aside just enough so that he
could vomit as a response to her gagging wails. She made him sick, and
she hated it. She caused volatile reactions in her boyfriend's stomach.
She'd sniffled and understood why writers since ancient times had
fumbled with the idea of romance dying, of former lust going dead. Dean
must see her as a Vomit Machine now. A trigger to the gag reflex,
complaining lately the whole way.
She and Dean had slept
together, created a new life together. Now they were sick together, and
she remembered nothing but the disgust that it gave her. She didn't
remember the way he always profusely apologized, or the way his eyes
sought hers to reassure that it wasn't her that made his own
breakfast empty itself that way. She hadn't felt his fingers lightly
caressing the sweaty skin of her neck that morning. All she'd felt was
the loss of his presence as he got up from the floor and walked away.
The way that she couldn't, for another round of upchucking seized her
then, and didn't let go till it had totaled any happiness that might
have chirped from her voice that day.
Rory didn't bother to grab
the small brush in her purse and smooth down her hair that was still wet
from nature's morning shower, and ruffled from being stuck against the
window with her forehead. She found it so hard to care what passers-by
would think of her as she stared at the rest of the world that was
living life to a fuller extent. Surely they all had better things to
focus on, to retrain their eyes at. She knew that the instant they saw
her, they'd forget her. Strangers would ignore her plight they knew
nothing of.
Was this how new life was
created, by draining the zest out of her? Was this what people called
beautiful about pregnancies: the grossness, the embarrassment, the
constant nausea and dizziness? The way some women could call it the
happiest time in their lives made her consider what their lives must
have been like before pregnancy. As for her life, it had been great. It
had been headed in the brightest of directions.
Where was her life headed
now?
"Come on," Lorelai urged
from the driver's seat. "Smile, laugh a little... Michel does plies and
butt crunches behind the front desk when he thinks no one's watching,
but of course I am." She looked at Rory, then looked back at the road.
"Sometimes Sookie hands me popcorn."
"Please don't make me laugh
right now, I may vomit again."
"Honey, half the reason you
vomit so much is because you let yourself get so stressed out. The
lighter Rory hardly ever had such gag-attack reactions to things."
"'The lighter Rory'? Are
you saying I'm fat now?"
"No, I meant, ugh." Lorelai
rolled her eyes. "I meant the part of you that saw the lighter part of
life. You know? Sunshine? Daisies? Technicolor?"
"Go ahead and joke."
"Go ahead and take
everything so damn seriously. Rory, honey... look at me. Hurry, because
I have to look back at the road before that big bend attacks the car's
wheels. Only one contracted to do that is Sideshow Bob. Or maybe that
was just for Bart Simpson..."
"Seriously, Mom," Rory said
to her, eyes gone dark and stormy as the clouds above. "I am sensing a
serious lack of sympathy coming from everything in your corner of the
planet. You'd think you could care a little more, considering you went
through this exact thing."
"First of all, nothing
about this situation is exactly like mine. And second? I don't think I
need to hear this crap from you."
"Mom, I just meant --"
"Oh, I know. Don't explain
it to me further; don't give yourself another chance to hear out loud
how wrong you are. I care, Rory." She looked into her daughter's eyes
that were finally looking back, after successfully passing the bend in
the road. "If there's anyone in this situation who doesn't care
enough... it sure as hell's not me."
With that, Lorelai turned
on the radio. Contemporary pop filled the car's empty spots until her
hand switched the dials to another radio station. Rory knew what that
meant: silent voices commenced. Argument disconnected. Her body sat
unsteadily in the wake of her mother's anger and the still-falling drops
of that morning's chilly tears, discarded away and falling from the
trees. She held her own tears in, burying them deep down inside her
chest cavity. Her breaths had a hoarse quality she refused to pay mind
to.
--
"At last, you're both
here," Emily said immediately, impatiently snatching Lorelai into the
house, letting Rory and her delicate condition enter on their own.
"Were you that hungry,
Mom?" Lorelai's voice mocked weakly in comparison to other lunches spent
with her mother, the snap seemingly gone lax from the argument she'd
just run to the radio from. Rory eyed her mother, holding her arms criss-crossed
over her stomach as if otherwise the baby would explode out her belly
button. She took this stance often. People seemed to understand her body
language's clear "don't bother me".
"Hungry?" Emily inquired.
"Oh, right. We were going to have lunch."
Lorelai looked at the two
family members before her, both seeming to have gone insane. "Uh...
yeah, thought that was the whole point. You didn't want to do dinner
because it depresses you looking at Dad's empty chair."
"Oh, your father," Emily
said, raising a 19th century show of a delicate hand to her forehead. "I
simply cannot stand the insolence of him, not returning my phone calls
except to reply directly to my messages through our answering machine.
He won't answer my questions as to his whereabouts, any of them. What
could he possibly be doing? His life is here."
"Well, you're here,
that's for sure."
"Lorelai, I could do
without the jokes right now."
"Okay. Everybody seems to
be having a dire, serious kind of day." Lorelai lifted her eyes to the
ceiling briefly, seeming to be conjuring a thought. "Maybe I should
leave so you two can be serious together, without the jokes. That idea
sounds better and better every time it flies through my head. Let's do
that, huh?"
Rory almost smiled, but
Emily's eyes narrowed. "Lorelai, don't be ridiculous. Follow me to the
parlor for drinks. You're going to stay, and we're going to have lunch
the proper way."
"With crossed legs?"
Lorelai put in, but when Emily's eyes narrowed further to slits, she
drew an invisible zipper across her lips and tossed the key toward the
coat closet.
Sighing, Emily led the way
to the room any of the three women could find with closed eyes. As
Lorelai and Rory sat down, she made her way to the drink cart. "Martini,
Lorelai? And Rory, will you have a club soda, dear?"
"Nothing with bubbles,
please," Rory croaked and then stopped, not wanting to keep her mouth
open any longer than was required. She still wasn't sure she could
stomach this lunch, both literally and figuratively. But her grandmother
had been insistent they continue to see her on Fridays, and having the
meal earlier was the sensible option since Rory's current bedtime (or
"moment she passed out in the crapshack") migrated up to late afternoon
at times. Unpredictability: another thing to add to the list of why
pregnancies suck and Rory might force herself to become a nun.
"Lorelai, one olive or
two?"
"Three," Lorelai said
brazenly.
Emily rolled her eyes, but
complied. Usually Rory would have a comeback, but she was currently
working to only let her lips slide open partially for breath needed from
time to time. The wider her mouth opened, the easier it was to spook her
stomach and wind up hugging the bathroom floor for warmth. It took all
of her concentration sometimes to keep things settled inside of her.
Emily handed Lorelai her
drink, adding a dry look as she served. Then two ice cubes were plunked
into a glass of water, which she gave to Rory.
"Where is the maid?" The
thought suddenly occurred to Rory and the way it felt bothersome
couldn't be avoided.
"Did you finally fire all
maids in the Connecticut area?" Lorelai asked, swirling the olive-clad
toothpick in her drink. "Are we going to have to start immigrating
potential employees from third world countries?"
"I'm sure those would be
the most competent of people for my household," Emily said with bite,
taking a seat of her own with her gin mix in hand. "I've let the
servants off for the day on account of the rain. I thought it would last
much longer than it did, in the end. But after all, what do weather
forecasters know these days?"
"You let people off because
of rain? After making a seven year-old attend a luncheon with the
chicken pox? Geeze, Mom, my spots scared the hostess' little dogs away."
"Lorelai, what does your
childhood have to do with this? The servants are clumsy and they're
always getting in my way. I thought a day off might cool all our
tempers."
The sip of water Rory
tentatively took amplified the morning breath taste already ensnared in
her mouth. She lowered the glass and put a hand to her lips, forcing
down any waves with willpower alone. Her mother and grandmother argued
on and on as the room began to spin.
"Um..." she squeaked out,
swaying in her seat and seeking a clear center of gravity. She'd never
been worried of falling while already sitting down before. Her head was
getting so heavy, she thought it might lead her crashing down to the
floor at the couch's feet. "Mom? Grandma?"
Lorelai stopped what she
was so deliciously mocking, and she and Emily turned to the girl gone
faint and pale faced.
"My goodness, Rory, are you
all right?" Emily asked while Lorelai slid closer to Rory on the couch
to put an arm around her shoulders and steady the impending fall.
"I'm... I don't know."
Rory's eyes were on the ground, but the images in her head were not of
the carpet; rather its color, spinning madly before her with no clear
shape or form. "I'm dizzy," she finally managed.
"How dizzy?" Lorelai asked,
her voice full of concern. And that was when Rory's body bent forward,
as if she were being folded in half. Her body started to slide off of
the cushion, and it was only Lorelai's arms that were quick enough to
save her from smashing her nose to the ground. "Whoa, whoa, babe... You
definitely need to lie down."
All Rory could eek out was,
"Okay."
--
The distant rumbles of
thunder from earlier had done as promised, and brought forth more rain.
It was pounding outside the window as Lorelai guided Rory's stumbling
body to the one bedroom in this giant house they'd both had to call
their own. Rory climbed on the bed quickly and awkwardly. Lorelai's arms
remained close until her daughter's head was secure on the pillow, her
body centered on the mattress.
"Is that any better?" Emily
asked, having followed the two into the room.
"Yeah," Rory lied, just to
get the talking to stop. It made her head pound, those questions of
reasonable volume amplifying to bang around inside her skull. "I just...
just need rest. Quietness..."
Lorelai grabbed a blanket
from the closet and covered Rory's body with it, while Rory closed her
eyes and let the material be molded close to her body by caring hands.
Lorelai's voice came in a whisper: "What can we do for you, honey?"
Whispered back, just as
quietly, was Rory's, "Let me get some sleep. Then I'll be better."
I'll be better... Better
after this, she thought. And then her mind wanted to stray around
what was meant by this. When her pain would be completely over.
But the answers were like loud colors and voices, and only made her long
more for secluded noiseless sleep.
"Rory, we'll leave you just
there, and wait downstairs for when you're feeling up to lunch. An
intercom's been installed in this room, as in most others. Just let us
know if you need us." Emily nodded at Lorelai, who looked woefully at
her daughter, and then followed her mother out of the room, turning off
the light before pulling the door closed. Rory saw none of this, as her
eyes were closed, against the pain and against the world. Lying alone,
in the darkness, her mind closed off to everything but the one sound
that soothed her: the pitter-patter pounding of the raindrops outside.
--
What happened next had to
wait through the intensity of Rory's dream. The nightmares were
attacking with less brutal force the past couple of days. She'd felt
more sanctioned in the fruits of her own mind, the break from the terror
helping her continue on. But she'd grown immune to nothing, and the
nightmares found her again.
As soon as sleep gripped
her body and made it visibly less still, she found a baby in her arms
again. A child, wrapped up in a receiving blanket, its face covered so
she couldn't see. Not what it looked like, not if it was okay. It made
no sound, and so she jiggled her arms gently in hopes of coaxing out
some life.
In the process, the baby
slipped from the blanket, and out of Rory's arms. Upon reaching the
floor it shattered like glass, staining everything below with its shards
that were quick to cut Rory's hands as they reached frantically into the
pieces, seeking wholeness again. Her baby was broken, and the tears
echoing around her begged for it to be in her arms again, inside of the
blanket, safe from the world. She watched as the elements dissipated,
falling through her spread fingers like sand, draining away and gone
forever.
Her dream voice sobbed till
her throat ached. The larger pieces of glass that still had form cut
painful slits in her hands and lower arms as she frantically sought them
all, gathering them in her arms. Her feet stumbled forward and her arms
became heavier as she was determined the pick up every slither of glass
and keep it, save it, soothe it. Without warning there was a cry from
behind her, a cry so loud Rory screamed and dropped all that she'd
gathered in her arms.
The pieces fell in a
millisecond, shattering for the second time. Twice as suddenly, twice as
loud.
And she awoke. Her eyes
flew open, wild with fright, her body jolted from the suddenness. She
found the window in her barely conscious state, blown open no doubt by a
gust of rain-splattered wind. She could see the rain falling in sheets
outside, soaking both sides of the windowpane. There was a broken
figurine on the floor, its porcelain remains scattered on the carpet.
Rory took loud and shallow breaths, able to see nothing but the broken
mess on the floor, until a clap of thunder sounded that rumbled the very
hinges that held the house together. She could feel its vibrations, and
then suddenly she felt something else. Eyeing the glass on the carpet
and understanding its relation to her life, she was plagued by the pain
that suddenly seized her and didn't let go.
The loudest rumble of
thunder yet roared then, like giant clapping hands. Lightning bright as
heaven's eyes zigzagged across the entire sky... The house shook as much
as Rory herself when half a second later, the small nightlight in the
corner went out. She was left in darkness and silence, but for the
storm.
More thunder sounded, the
intensity of its volume eclipsing any previous rages from the sky. Rory
cried out as a great stabbing pain sliced into her stomach, and then she
was kept from crying again when the next stab took the breath from her
body and left her gasping just to fill up her lungs again. A churning
sound emitted from just beneath her belly button, and the third stab had
Rory's voice finding a way to scream. She screamed and the sky thundered
in synchronized moments, keeping her voice buried, and leaving her
completely alone.
"Mom..." she whispered,
voice gone hoarse from the unheard tears.
She couldn't see her mother
downstairs in the kitchen, trying to calm down Emily as her ranting
about Richard's absence escalated. Lorelai was drying spotless glasses
left in a rack hidden under the sink, as if desperate to escape the
insanity of the woman pacing before her. When the lights went out, both
women gasped. Then Lorelai got a question back together. "Why don't you
try not calling him for a day, Mom?"
Rory was searching for
pockets in her clothing, sitting up in bed and letting out a fresh
scream with every new stab in her stomach. Her hands came back empty of
the cell phone she'd left in her purse downstairs. Hands filled with
dark, sticky blood. Shaking violently now, it took Rory a full minute to
grasp a hold of the blanket still covering her bottom half. She threw it
off to confront the pool of blood leaking from her, staining this bed so
it would never be the same. No cell phone, and the electricity had gone
out. Rory looked longingly at the intercom on the wall. It seemed
unlikely it was working, and it was so far away.
"God, Dean, where are you?"
In her miserable state, she couldn't think clearly, couldn't remember
where he was at. Only that he should be there that second to find her,
to save her, to help her save herself. And to save them both from what
all that blood pooled on the sheets meant. All she could comprehend was
her solitude and the pain making her curl up now, sapping strength from
her voice. All she could witness was the illumination of her terror
every time huge bolts of lightning lit up everything around her that she
didn't want to see.
She couldn't see Dean, held
up at Doose's Market. She didn't know that Taylor had asked him to take
over the store for the night while he prepared for an emergency town
meeting on account of something flippant and even more ridiculous. She
wasn't there to watch Dean's eyes wandering to the store's exit, held
mesmerized by the storm outside. She couldn't know the sudden fear that
gripped him in its clutches when the grocery store's lights flickered at
one point and almost went out. He'd suddenly felt a need to get to her,
knowing intuitively, somehow from that flicker, that something was
wrong.
Rory reached the intercom
by bearing the excruciating pain that held her captive and inching her
way along the wall with most of her weight leaning on it. She was slower
than an infant taking their first steps, and she felt every second pass
painfully by. The intercom link was dead, though she pressed the button
to communicate more times than was necessary. Sniffling and doing her
best to calm the asthmatic-like breaths that kept coming too quickly for
her to catch any air, Rory's bloody hand closed on the door handle. The
blood made the surface slippery, and for what felt like forever it kept
sliding uselessly all around the knob. It wouldn't open! Her hands, even
once pressed to her dress, remained soaking and wouldn't dry.
She didn't know that Dean
was striving to get to her. There was no answer when he called her,
three times in a row. "The store's closing," Dean kept trying, but the
shoppers paid him no attention. Nobody wanted to have to walk their
groceries home in weather that had suddenly turned so gloomy and wet.
Dangerous, even, with those lightning bolts crackling through the
atmosphere. "Seriously, it's time to close," Dean continued, trying to
rush people out the door. No one would budge except to seek out more to
fill their plastic baskets. Dean was raking a hand through his hair, and
finding sweat on his forehead as he did so. She didn't know, but he was
panicking at the same moments she was, though his brain nagged that he
didn't know why.
"This is not a 24/7 deal."
He breathed out through his nostrils, becoming impatient. The more he
let on that he wanted everyone to leave, the less desire they had to
listen. "Get out!" he finally had to say, when no other words became
noticed. "Everyone, out! Now!" But when they asked why, all he could
explain was that "There might be an emergency." He was trapped, and so
far away.
Rory finally managed to
wrap her skirt's cloth around her hand enough so that the doorknob slid
open. And then there was the long, blacked out hallway that stretched on
for an eternity, for all she could see. Her vision was blurred from the
pain, the tears, and the intensity of the trembles that shook her to her
bones. "Mom," she called through the hallway as strongly as she
could muster. She broke down into a fit of tears and collapsed on the
carpet, one hand touching the door to keep it open. Blood pooling
between her legs, and stomach under attack.
She felt nothing but alone,
alone, alone. Crying and calling out for a hero, for a do-over in life.
It was only seconds longer before she collapsed completely and her head
banged on the carpet. Her eyes closed tightly and she comprehended no
more.
--
When the bedroom door
finally flew open, Rory lay unconscious and breathed raggedly through
her throat. Her name was cried and a figure bent beside her, ordering
her to wake up, sobbing that this couldn't be happening.
But it was.
- -
to be continued...
