- -
She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing
down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned
blue.
Blue as the dental floss wedged between Rory's two front teeth as
Lorelai handed her the phone. "Tell them I'll call them back," she
mumbled, fidgeting with the minty string.
Lorelai exhaled slowly as she closed her eyes for effect. "It's your
dad."
Rory set the silly piece of string down. She took the phone and
covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "Did you tell him?" she whispered,
her voice wavering.
Lorelai shook her head.
Rory offered her the phone back. "Do it?"
Lorelai shook her head.
"Mommy?..." Rory pleaded, suddenly reduced to a four year-old child.
"I had to tell my father, baby," Lorelai reminded her daughter,
creating a soothing caress along the back of her neck. "If I can tell
Richard and Emily Gilmore that I have just ruined their social status
for life, I think you can tell your dad about an accident. He'll deal,
just like we'll deal."
Rory's eyes had never been wider as she accepted the phone and
brought it up to the side of her face, her motions mechanical, practiced
over years of answering and replying to questions that meant nothing in
the scheme of things. What she was about to say would mean everything.
It already did, without even being said. Her chin wobbled, and she
cleared her throat.
"Dad?"
"Hey, kiddo," said Christopher, somewhere on the other end. "Your mom
isn't very talkative today. But she said you had something to tell me?
Something good, I hope," he kidded. Of course, he had to kid right now.
And of course, she could tell by his tone, that he had absolutely no
idea.
"Um..." Rory had always detested the use of the spoken pause, the
dead space of it with noise, the way it polluted the ear. But here she
was, her pause making noise when her words could not. "See, here's the
thing..."
Christopher waited patiently on the line.
"You know Dean? That... boy? Dean?"
"He plays baseball," Christopher guessed, thinking of a past day
spent in Stars Hollow.
"Yeah... Yeah. That's him."
"Mmhmm."
"He's... living with us." Rory blanched, wanting to smack herself in
the forehead for stalling and, in the process, giving out details that
were not helpful.
Christopher's voice took on an edge. "You have a boy... friend living
with you? And your mom?"
Rory looked around for help. Her mother had left to give her
conversation some privacy. "Mom!" she hollered, rushing out of the
bathroom. She handed Lorelai the phone. "Help me? I know I hate
admitting defeat, but I am terrible at this. I can't, I can't do it."
Lorelai's eyes were soft as she took the phone from Rory and stood up
from her place at the kitchen table. "Chris?" she spoke into it calmly.
She listened, no doubt to some protective ranting. But her calmness
remained. "Yes, Dean is living with us. But you actually didn't get the
whole story."
This time, when she paused, she looked at Rory, looked deep into her
daughter's eyes. Together they wished for a world other than this.
"Chris, she's pregnant. Rory is pregnant."
That was when Rory walked away.
--
Long, long minutes later, Lorelai snuck in through the doorway of
Rory's bedroom, re-closing the door behind her. The shades were drawn,
and so day was like night, except in a dream, with fringes of light like
reality flitting about. Rory hugged her stuffed rooster to her chest in
the darkness she had created for herself, facing away from the door as
she lay curled up on her bed. She didn't dare roll over as Lorelai's
footsteps crept closer to her.
Lorelai paused, looking down upon Rory, and then placed a gentle kiss
on her temple. "Your father says he loves you," she whispered. Then she
left Rory to be alone.
Big, fat tears slid down Rory's cheeks to wet the sheets she had just
recently slept in. She rarely knew why she cried anymore.
--
The sun sat high in the sky that afternoon when Rory ventured out in
search of her beau. She'd scrubbed her face clean of the grimy tears and
slapped on enough chapstick to call it lube. After a thin coat of
mascara, she was out the door.
Dean was nowhere in town, or if he was, he hid well. He'd left the
house that morning without a word, and Rory had missed the soft whisper
of his pajama pants as he made his way to her bed to wake her. Something
about the intimacy of that gesture gave her a reason to shut off the
thoughts in her mind and go to sleep at night, for she had someone to
wake up to. But this morning, he was gone. And everywhere she looked,
she could tell he hadn't been there.
She began to miss his floppy hair, his rich blue-green eyes, as if
she hadn't just seen these things yesterday. Feeling particularly needy,
she wanted the feel of his strong arms with their muscle wrapped around
her skinny ribcage, sealing her in as a part of him, fusing them
together as one.
Sighing with frustration, Rory settled into a spot at the counter at
Luke's. "Coffee?" she tried, giving Luke a million watt smile despite
her current predicament, simply because she knew what was coming.
Luke's nostrils flared, and that was that. "It's not good for the
baby."
"Oh, that's not true. My mom says I loved coffee when I was a baby."
"Your mother's a lunatic."
Rory smiled again, but said nothing to allude to what she knew of
this so-called lunatic and the man standing right before her. Why
they just wouldn't come out and say something was beyond her, but she
would play their game, by their rules, and win in the end when she could
finally go, "Ha! I knew it."
"D'you think lunacy is genetic?" Rory asked, unconsciously rubbing
small circles over her tummy. "And let's please not use me as an example
here," she added as an afterthought.
Luke refilled Kirk's cup a few stools down the counter, and then set
the coffee pot down, eyeing Rory with such open honesty, it made her
want to squirm. "Rory, I... you know that I..." He looked down. Took his
baseball cap off, scratched his hair, and put the cap back on again.
"I'm really not good at the sentimental thing..."
She had to save him. "It's okay, Luke. You don't actually need to say
it. I know what you mean."
"I'll always be here. Unless a truck runs into me and drags my body
several miles down the road. Still... I'll find a way back."
Rory nodded with surprising ease. "Thanks for that image, Luke, and
wow, I didn't know you'd go that far for me. I have to say, I'm
honored." She did the uncomfortable staring thing back into his eyes for
a good ten seconds to let him know that she was as genuine as he meant
for his words to be. And to let him know that verbal communication was
something they didn't necessarily need between them to understand one
another.
"Luke..." Rory began, feeling her way along the counter with her
fingertips as she stood and prepared to leave. "This is just a shot in
the dark, but, if your life changed dramatically, and then you didn't
want to be found, where do you think you would go?"
Luke took one more moment for Rory before having to get back to work.
"Probably back to the place where it all went wrong."
--
She found Dean standing across the street from Lindsay's house. His
old house. Hands in his pants pockets, staring, dreaming. She choked
back a sob and stayed clear of his vision. Realizing it was clever of
her to wear her soft-soled sneakers, Rory was able to sneak up to a few
feet behind him, without him knowing she was there, and she could see
what he saw.
Through one of the front windows of that darling little house,
Lindsay sat at the dining room table, perusing some sort of reading
material, with no clue about her two new enemies staring straight at her
from outside. Rory swallowed a gasp, and what she believed could very
well have been her heart coming all the way up into her throat.
Throughout the moments that passed by in which Lindsay moved only to
turn a page or two, Rory found herself wallowing in the uncertainty,
dying every second Dean looked at Lindsay, waiting to know which one of
them he'd choose. Rory hugged herself, wrapping her arms protectively
around her tummy that wasn't yet substantial enough. She couldn't feel
any movement of the child. She supposed the fetus wouldn't move at all
yet. She had to wonder what it would feel like when it kicked -- if it
would be like the discomfort of an empty, growling stomach, or something
only a mother can experience and describe.
The hormones chose "impatience" out of the grab bag at this time.
"Dean," Rory mumbled, not able to meet his eyes when he whipped around
to face her.
"What are you doing here...?"
"That was my question. You're going to have to think of a new one."
It was then that Rory could look up, with only one wet mascara streak
down her face. The intense emotions of this pregnancy were one thing she
was certain not a single person would miss.
Dean sighed; ran a hand that trembled through his hair in a way that
he'd never done before. Rory thought she must be making him develop new
nervous habits, but she wasn't sure how that made her feel. "I just
needed to look at her. At my house. I needed to look back on my old
life, really look at it, and see it for what it was, before I could move
on."
Rory's voice quivered like a plucked string gone soft. "Your old
life? You just had to look at it? As if you didn't look at it your
entire life for 18 years? And now... what? You're having second thoughts
about us, and thinking of going back to her?"
"Rory, it's not like that. I did this for you."
"Oh!" She wiped away the gathering tears. "Why, thank you," she
blurted out, the sarcasm dripping like diluted honey. "How about if I go
stare at my past for a while for you? I'll go call Jess up,
compare our relationship to the one I had with him -- make lists, keep
score."
"Rory! Stop. I came here to say goodbye to my old life so that I
didn't have to wonder about it again."
"D... do you think you'll always wonder if it should have been her
instead of me? Because, Dean... I can't live like that."
"Neither can I." Dean stepped up closer to Rory so that his chest
touched her chin. "I want you, only you." He encircled his arms around
her body and looked deeply into her eyes. "Even when you're bopping me
on the head."
"Hey! That was only like once! Okay, like, five tim -- "
She couldn't finish her sentence as Dean swooped in and captured her
lips in a kiss that dared to dream of forever, and of a baby, too. Words
swam through her head, thoughts and worries imprinted on her brain that
she wanted to share and yet sometimes keep to herself. But the words
became lost in the feel of Dean's lips that tugged and needed, and in
the touch of his fingers wiping the sloppy tear from her face.
Rory's legs, gone weak, began trembling in a way that she couldn't
control. She fought to keep herself steady, refusing to tear her lips
from Dean's, wanting to stay melted together like those double popsicles
Lorelai would never share. As her legs gave in, she fell in to Dean's
body, burying her head in his chest as his arms grabbed her just in
time.
"Are you okay?" he asked her, and she didn't know.
"Don't leave me. Not today," Rory said plainly, looking up into
Dean's eyes as he cradled her now in the strength and security of his
arms. She couldn't recall being so needy since the age of five, when she
first started school, and had to spend a whole half day without her
mother. She could remember the torture of it clearly because she was
feeling it now, any time Dean was gone and she needed him, for no reason
at all other than she did.
Dean opened his mouth to answer, but at that point the front door of
his old house swung open. Rory buried her face in Dean's chest, unable
to join in the stare-down that went on between man and wife. Without a
word being said, Dean adjusted his grip on the body in his arms, and
started carrying her home.
--
"Explain to me why you want to willingly put Dean in front of my
Emily Gilmore's scrutiny? On purpose?" Lorelai was stunned at the idea
and, in fact, ready to worry for Dean's welfare.
"I don't want to be apart from him," Rory explained.
"Not even for a couple of hours?"
"Not today."
"You'll miss him much more once he's buried alive in my parents'
backyard."
Rory considered this. "Grandma, along with everyone in Stars Hollow,
seems to be ignoring my condition, as if it's just temporary, and it's
going to go away. I may not know why, but what I do know is that Dean
isn't likely to be slaughtered until after there's constant-crying,
diaper-sporting evidence that they can't ignore. I think he's safe for
now."
Lorelai pursed her lips. "Honey..."
Rory raised her eyebrows.
Lorelai shook her head. "Never mind. I guess you're right. Go find
Dean. We've got to get going."
--
Feet in lipstick-red high heels stopped along with Lorelai's upper
half as she sagged her shoulders, stunned. "Hm. I don't remember
requesting a chauffeur."
"What can I say? Rory paid me," Dean said flippantly from the
driver's seat of the little Gilmore jeep, drumming his fingers lightly
on the steering wheel.
"That's funny, 'cause the last time she paid me to be the driver was
so long ago, I think I'll call it never."
"Look." Dean shifted uneasily, fidgeting with the lock on the car
door. "I can't just show up at Rory's grandmother's house after
impregnating her granddaughter without the slightest plan about where to
go from here."
"The only people who formulate plans by driving a car are
international men of mystery with gadgets installed that tell them what
to do. And believe me, not even those gadgets could manage to please the
likes of Emily 'it is only acceptable to do things when I do them
myself, and yet that still does not make you worthy of such actions'
Gilmore."
"Dean, is Mom being a pill?" Rory asked good-naturedly as she exited
the house and entered the passenger side of the jeep.
He smiled. "She's being her usual rainbow of adjectives."
"I'll admit it: I was being a rainbow pill. One that makes you
hallucinate and dream of governing unicorns."
Rory flipped open her cell phone. "And the number to the psych ward
is..."
"You'd think one of you would have it on speed dial -- now what I was
thinking is," Dean spoke all of one breath without pause for the
bickering that would come, "that we would take an outside route to
Hartford. There are some dirt paths that have some pretty nice, calming
scenery that might inspire us to agree, between the three of us, on a
name for this baby. And then we could have at least one of Ms. Gilmore's
questions answered, for the sake of my conservative hide."
He raised his eyebrows at the silence that met him. "What do you
think?"
Lorelai raised her hand, loving that in one simple gesture, any
situation could be made into a classroom. "If I'm going to have to sit
in the back seat, I want to be a backseat driver. I'm gonna need an
actual steering wheel and a waiver signed taking all responsibility of a
possible car crash off of me and my very practiced cabbie imitations."
"Talking about my unborn baby being in a car crash -- do you mind?"
Rory tsked gently, then stepped out of the jeep in order for her mother
to climb into the back seat.
"Loving the lack of space. It's like a wanna-be trunk back here. Oh,
look. I can almost straighten out my neck. Oops, wait -- false alarm."
Parenting mode intensifying by the comment, Rory got back into her
own seat and slammed the door behind her. "No more complaining, you, or
no cocktail at Grandma's! Now, be a good girl and attempt to honk us to
death with your playskool steering wheel."
"A prop! I can't believe there was room for me, and a prop!
Too bad for the neck thing, but ooh!" Lorelai set about checking out the
limited gadgets on the toy made for children three and under. "This was
yours, wasn't it, babe?"
"Mhmm."
"I always did enjoy playing with your toys more than you did."
Rory smiled at the memory as Dean smiled at the thought. "I know."
---
"I spy with my big gorgeous eyes something... dirty." Lorelai honked
the horn of her special steering wheel to punctuate her contribution to
the game she had just instigated.
"Couldn't be the road, could it?" Rory asked dryly.
"It is made of dirt," Dean reasoned, having noticed the clouds
of it sent swirling into the air with every glide of the jeep's tires.
Other than leaving a trail of cough inducer in their wake, he loved
everything about driving these old country-esque roads. There were a
very rare few, and these were the ones he chose to covet in the first
days of his marriage. He'd drive up and down the dirt-paved pathways at
night, after Lindsay had fallen asleep, her lips sporting smiles from
her dreams. She dreamed of their happiness together while he tormented
himself with thoughts of the one he left behind, and did anything to get
away.
Lorelai crossed her arms over her chest. "Stupid dirt. Stupid road.
Stupid all-there-is-out-here."
"Could this r--road be an--y more b--um--mpy?" asked Rory irritably.
"Oh, yeah!" With that, Dean floored the gas pedal, and headed
straight for a shallow pothole, taking care in his speed so as not to
cause harm to the fetus passenger. The Gilmore girls screamed, first in
dread, then in delight at the moderate bounce the car was able to
generate.
Dean enjoyed their impressed giggles while they lasted, and then
tried to avoid the cringe thing when Lorelai said, "Way to tear up my
car, buddy. See if I tip you after that one."
Rory shared a secret smile with him at that, something she so seldom
did anymore. His heart flip-flopped like a fish out of water, beating
its fins into his ribcage, as if demanding his heart be let out so that
he could give it to her.
The moment was so short-lived he died a tiny death inside. When
Rory's eyes darkened and she turned away to focus on the scenery that
had nothing to be seen, Dean cleared his throat. This, to rid it of sap
and pain manifesting in a higher pitch that wanted to take place in his
voice.
"Driver, Sir," put in Lorelai, "are we anywhere near Hartford, 'cause
I didn't bring any distractions for a long car ride, and the car
stereo's broken. Just a pre-warning that you're about five minutes away
from the 'Are we there yet?' chanting that I take credit for inventing."
"You so did not invent that," Rory scoffed.
"But I pimped it like crazy! Give a girl credit here. And by the way,
you didn't invent the 'I'm pregnant so leave me alone about my
moodiness' excuse."
"You're going to claim that one, too?"
"I'm afraid that honor goes to the very first Gilmore, and spirals
all the way down to me."
"Hartford's around here somewhere, I promise..." Dean squinted at the
slowly setting sun, focusing on it as though it would reveal answers to
the many questions plaguing him. "We'll find it eventually. I just
haven't been on this back road for a while.
"So, about the baby. Ultimately, I think you and I should make the
name decision together," he said, nodding at Rory. She nodded back. "But
since you didn't like my ideas, what do you think we should name the
baby?"
Rory thought briefly about it. "Clark."
"Gable or Kent?" questioned Lorelai.
The tires sighed over tightly-packed dirt and gravel.
"Diana," Rory blurted.
"As in Royalty or Ross?"
"This is getting us nowhere," Dean complained.
Lorelai quirked an eyebrow. "Kind of like your sense of direction."
--
Dean's hurried whispers were shushed first by one Gilmore girl and
then the next, both mother and daughter ignoring his pleas to not be a
part of this. "It's okay, baby," Rory soothed with a very unconvincing
Cheshire cat grin on her face. "And if things turn violent, well, that's
what lawyers are for."
Dean's helpless eyes and mouth gone slack weren't even given the
chance to receive their desired effect as the front door to the Gilmore
home was opened just then. Emily, fire in her eyes gone dead from lack
of spark, attempted a smile and failed. "Do come in," she invited,
stepping aside.
"Where's the maid, Grandma?"
"Really, I don't know. She doesn't answer me unless I call her by her
given name, and it's always Richard who can remember their names that
have little significance to me. Oh, Richard..." She looked around
woefully, then seemed to regain what composure she had on this day, and
faced her guests once more. "You'll have to hang your own coats in the
closet. Oh, what a mess I must be today. I've never felt so sloppy."
Lorelai handed her coat to Dean, who hung it up for her, as well as
Rory's. "Yeah, Mom, you've really gone downhill. What, did you only
manage to brush your hair 99 strokes this morning? And your skirt --
wow, you didn't iron it the third time, did you?"
"I know," Emily agreed, distracted and yet listening all the same.
"It's terrible..."
As she migrated into the sitting room for drinks, the bewildered
crowd of three followed behind.
Rory hated to ask but, "Have you heard from Grandpa at all?"
Emily was at the drinks cart, mixing vodka, gin, whiskey, and God
knows what else into one concoction. "No, not a word at all," she said
bitterly, dropping two ice cubes into her glass with a clink. "I
call this new mix venom. Would anyone else like a drink?"
The words "martini", "Coke", and "club soda" went in one ear and out
the other with nothing registering on Emily's frazzled brain. With a sip
of her venom, and an uncharacteristic wince at its taste, she sat
on the couch next to Lorelai, ignoring the drink requests made.
Lorelai and Rory stared at Emily with puzzlement in their faces,
understanding nothing -- not even if this was a breakdown or merely a
mood swing. Dean just watched Rory, unsure if Emily had even recognized
his presence, and awaited his cue to leave so he could finally let a
breath out.
There was so much silence. Typically this was Lorelai's cue to drop a
bomb, or sing a song, or describe her desire to recreate selected scenes
from 'Jackass'. Realizing this, the monotony was finally broken. "Oh!"
she said, so abruptly that it caused Emily to jump in her seat and spill
what remained of her drink.
"Lorelai, what in God's name was that -- "
"Funny you should mention names, Mom! Because we have got the names
to end all names for you."
"They're possible names for the baby," Rory clarified.
"Oh." Emily sat back in her seat. "The baby. Of course."
"Um." Dean scooted noticeably closer to Rory to whisper in her ear.
"Do I have to be here for this? It seems like a bad time for you two to
pull your... antics."
"Nonsense, it'll cheer her up." Rory patted Dean on the hand and
turned her attention to Lorelai, who was now standing front and center,
happy to have gathered everyone's attention. Of all the names stamped
with "whore" on the end of them, "attention whore" was Lorelai's
favorite. At least until another name caught her attention.
Lorelai sighed, closing and re-opening her eyes for deep effect.
"Naming a baby is a very important task if you take it to heart," she
recited, her voice somber. As if removing a mask, her face lifted, as
did the energy in her voice. "Or it can be a deliriously funny
opportunity to try to make it into the tabloids!"
Emily brought a hand to her forehead, mumbling, "Oh, God..."
"And so, we bring you 'celebrity rip-offs'. First on the list, an ode
to 'Friends', let's call the baby Lorelai, Jr. Jr."
Dean was rubbing his eyes, perhaps trying to temporarily render his
senses useless. "I believe the junior is a guy thing."
"Sexist," Rory interjected. "And now, for all of the mothers naming
their children after countries and cities -- America... Paris... I bring
you: Iceland!"
"Of course, we'd move south, to make it ironic. People would ask the
kid where they were born, and they'd have to say it was 'Right on the
equator'." Lorelai giggled. It didn't seem to bother her in the least
that the only one joining her, and in fact, still listening, was her
co-conspirator and daughter.
"To add to the fruit and vegetable section of the baby book, as that
can't be left alone these days," Lorelai continued with a roll of her
eyes, "we bring you the future Prune. You don't really like her, but
when you need her, oh boy, are you ever thankful she's there! Oh,
and also Steak. Had to consider that name if it turned out to be a burly
one."
"Moving right along," Rory flowed, realizing their audience wasn't
held so captivated, "there's the almighty combining of names. Our
favorite? Emily plus Richard equals Emard. Kind of makes you think of an
awkward llama-type animal in the desert. Now can I ask, how much more
unique do you get than that?"
"Oh, daughter of mine, you have much yet to learn. The uniqueness
will come not only from the name, but from the nickname. Inspired by one
of the great comic artists of all time, Mr. Carrot Top, I've concocted
catchy 'call me!' endearments that include food as well as body parts.
Just imagine it: 'Hey, where's Broccoli Bottom? Can't start the party
without him!' And, 'We can't have a proper taste test without Tomato
Tongue. It just doesn't work, man!' Bam! Instant popularity."
"Girls..." Emily sighed, and downed the last of her drink.
"I wish I had a Tomato Tongue," Lorelai put in.
--
The slam of the door sounded so final, somehow much more so than
Emily's prior, "I now have something to blame tomorrow's headache on.
Get out."
"Wow," Lorelai said at last, after staring at the door became boring.
"We didn't even have to stay for dinner."
"Luke's?" Rory suggested.
"Actually, I'm feeling kind of curious about what else is out there.
Let's experiment! What do you guys feel like eating?"
Dean grabbed his stomach that was gnawing at itself. "Anything but
broccoli and tomatoes."
- -
to be continued…
