The Potential Demise of a Fruitless Tree
Rory was not in a bright-eyed mood. If an onlooker were to take interest, they would, in fact, note a nebulous black cloud trailing above her form, amusing itself by bleeding cheerless drops of melancholy atop her bleak head.
However, seeing as it was four in the morning, the only onlooker was an ugly ceramic gnome sitting prosperously amongst Babette's sea of lifeless bedraggled grass. Rory scowled. The glass figurine scouted on with beady contemptuous eyes as the dirty dogface twisted in it's perpetual cheeky grin.
'You fool,' it jeered, the squinty pupils snickered uproariously alongside it's frozen smirk, 'What are you doing, silly girl? Go back to bed!'
Not a bad idea. But it didn't cool her impulse to smash the gnome across it's hideous noggin with a gardening rake any more than sticking horns in her head and a pointy tail on her butt would.
Her mind, droopy with torpor, was shrieking incoherent blasphemies at her guileless tendency towards compliance to late-night assemblages set by her stupid comrade. 'I need sleep' it was screaming, along with a myriad of curse words she never even knew she learned.
"Hey." She was distantly aware of Jess' kneeling form waving a hand in front of her face.
Ah. So the Sandman had arrived. She squinted up at her companion's languish silhouette, no longer capable of deciphering one form from another.
"Why are you squinting?"
She frowned, "It may have something to do with the fact it's four in the morning. Or perhaps I am losing my vision, which is entirely conceivable seeing as I can't tell if this giant blob standing in front of me is you or a wandering hitman who has melted into a gooey indescribable hodgepodge."
There was silence, where Rory was indistinctly aware of his icy fingers sticking wiry goods in her palm. She sent him a questioning stare—or as much of a stare half- sealed palpebra could produce.
"Paper clips," he said candidly, "To fasten your eyelids back."
"Oh, what kindness you deliver. How will you ever break into Doose's with your pickpocketing utensils attached to my face?" she responded dryly, moderately addled to find herself quite the shrew in the pre-morning hours.
"Yes, because paper clips are such scarce implements," he deadpanned.
The instrument in his hand managed to divert her attention from the otherwise pointless communion. Awakened by the sight of a shovel laden in her compadre's hand, Rory straightened, mentally shaking her fist at the immorality soaking society.
"That's my mom's shovel," she said, dropping her tone to a patronizing volume, "You stole our shovel!"
"Indeed I did."
Her voice took on an increasingly uppish edge as she attempted (unsuccessfully) to conceal the annoyance laced in her statement, "You called me up four in the morning to give me back my shovel?"
"Yes."
Rory scowled, the nonexistent black cloud floating above her head darkened to a shade beyond black, if such a thing existed. "Okay goodbye," she dismissed him, brushing off her lap as she prepared to crawl back through to her nice, warm home.
"Don't you want your shovel back?"
Hm, the nerve. "Let me think, do I want my shovel back? No. One, because the only thing we use a shovel for is to help my deranged mother terrorize me with reenactments from Bride of Chuckie, the Raggedy Ann look-a-like with manic-destructive impulses. And two, a shovel is for flowers, and gardening, and burying your dead goldfish in the backyard. My mother can't even keep a weed alive—
"I can see that," Jess supplied, observing their barren front yard.
"—And three, for the past couple weeks, you have been robbing one too many of our housing gimmicks. First it was the laundry basket. You lost yours, you said—which is understandable seeing as Luke wears the same shirt every day. But then it was the soap, and then the telephone, and finally, last week, it was the lawnmower. What, pray tell, do you need a lawnmower for? You have no grass!"
"I could say the same for you."
"Goodnight Jess," she said, succumbing to the urge of walking back to her welcoming bed and recovering lost sleep, "Keep the shovel, hide it from my mother in case they decide to make another Chuckie film. I'm going to bed."
"I have a job for you," he called after her, just as her foot hit the patio.
Her stance lingered on the steps, "Four in the morning? I am not a prostitute, Jess."
Without so much as another word, he flipped the shovel over and boldly forced it into the cracked earth, "Dig." He told her, monosyllabic leanings apparently back in order.
She stared at him. "…Nor did my great-great grandfather steal any pigs."
"I'm planting you a tree," Jess responded plainly. Rory waited, expecting a more elaborate reply—or even quite possibly, a 'sike!' or 'made-you-look!' that would make sense out of all the half-baked scenarios forced together into one gigantically populous box of mobocracy.
"You're very funny," she told him, "Calling up the girl with no lawn four in the morning to discuss trees. Godspeed, Johnny Appleseed." Her third attempt to bid him adieu in line of a mere five minutes.
He did not return her sayonara. Instead, with a quick motion with his hand, gestured towards side of her yard, where a handsome, half-pint tree (suspiciously resembling those Taylor planted in his petunia garden that spring) lay partially concealed by the array of uncomely garbage cans.
Her jaw dropped as swiftly as the hopes of another hour of rest flitted from her grasp.
He stole her a tree. How… quaint. Rory closed her mouth, respectively—and instead, contemplated what she would tell her mother the next morning, when she discovered Jack had paid a visit with a couple magic beans. "Well," she said tediously, reluctantly parting from the steps and lumbering to Jess' side, " It's not really in your patronage if I'm the one that's digging."
"No. I'll be firing shots at the snakes living in your nonexistent lawn when they pop up after years and years of hibernation." He hands her the shovel without a second thought, a mistake, he sees, as she stares down at the plausibly-foreign object in her palms like one would to an alien.
She responds to his bemused gaze, "I am not very acquainted with manual labor."
"Uh huh." He pays no mind to her hint.
She tries again, "My mother and I used to use shovels to whack weeds."
"Which would explain the absence of life forms abroad your yard."
"But then she cut her hands on the side, when we were pounding out a particularly sinister leafy one. It wasn't pretty. Blood, viscous sallow fluid, flaps of skin… Luke had to come over."
"I'm sure he enjoyed that."
"She pulled out a whole handful of his hair when he was trying to bandage her palm."
"Never mind."
"So he ended up limping home with blood all over his face, and pants, and anywhere Lorelai's hands came in contact with during his attempt at playing doctor."
He caught on to the message, despite its superfluous delivery, "You want me to dig?"
"It would be wise." The shovel is shoved back into his hands with impassable eagerness.
She sits by as he works, visibly relieved to be rid of the burden in emptying a giant ditch amongst rock-hard soil. Guilt quickly follows, however, as her countenance strays to that of an abashed child who has gotten paint on the carpet. She keeps offering him something to eat, or when he declines, a bucket of Gatorade to dunk his head in.
"Jess?" she says, rubbing her eyes, "Why are you planting me a tree?"
"Your lawn needs life forms."
"We have ants."
"Your lawn needs life forms capable of coverting carbon dioxide into oxygen. You'll thank me when our world is driven into a giant oxygen-sucking lapse in space."
"You're starting to sound like my grandmother." She's less likely to drop into a paradoxical sleep now, and finds it necessary to delve deeper into the pool of vindication. "I think you're doing this for the sake of sentimentality."
"Funny," He glances over at her with an amused look on his face.
She digs the soles of her feet into the dirt, intending to leave imprints along the rock-hard surface, despite it being adamantine enough to crack your nose on. "Feign it all you want, Mr. Anti-Liberal. Who plants a tree without some effusive intention in mind? Chilton has a tree for every graduating class. Taylor's 'Plant-A-Tree-Save-a-Cow' foundation halted the meat supplication for Luke's an entire weekend."
"Only because he stuck an Andre-the-Giant inspired Sycamore on the doorstep."
"Which took Luke about three days to chop down. I never knew he mail-ordered the hacking implement they used in Hillbilly Chainsaw Massacre."
"Only because they were going to use to a B.B. Gun for the sequel."
"God help them."
"Amen." With the hole in place, Jess wiped his forehead, and gestured pointedly at the lonely tree sitting uprooted beside the garbage can, "Care to do the honors?"
Lorelai was to wake up the next morning with a new green pet impaled into her front yard. But until then, Rory sat admiring their handiwork (or rather, Jess' handiwork) on the new addition to their limited list of 'Things not to kill off accidentally when they went vacationing to Baja, if they were to go off vacationing to Baja, even though Spain sounded better.'
"This was nice of you," she said, looking over at her (more or less) friend's reaction.
He took a seat beside her.
"I don't think anyone has ever planted me a tree before," Rory patted his knee, "We did a good job."
"We?"
"The location is very agreeable. My mom won't be able to run it over if her car were to engage in a freakish reverse-pedal episode."
"Of course. And when it decides to go on a leaf-consuming rampage to supply it's engine with unneeded chlorophyll, it'll be too fat to fit between the fence and the deck to eat it."
She nodded, before voicing the revelation that had been building in her mind, "Did you do this because Dean built me a car?" Little did she know he was about to crash that car in about two weeks.
"What?"
"Tell me, is this some masculine, animalistic effort to drop your weights on the tipping scale?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Are you marking your territory with ribbons?"
"It's a damn tree."
"Carving Native American tribal symbols into giant rocks shaped like bears?"
He got up from his spot on the deck, "I'm going home."
Roughly an hour and a half later, Lorelai awoke to find an extra limb or two resting amongst her front yard.
"Rory," she shook her daughter awake, "I thought I told you never to sell cows to strangers on the street holding magic beans. Now we're going to have to climb this beanstalk implanted in our soil here and walk on clouds to hide in cupboards and narrowly escape being chewed to bits by giants wearing hair on their knuckles."
The doomed 'beanstalk' was to engage in a tumultuous journey before it's demise.
OOOOOOOO
Two weeks down the line, the premature tree managed to lose all it's leaves in a freak fire incident.
Rory reluctantly found herself fanning the flames into Babette's rose-garden.
"Don't worry about it," Lorelai dismissed, futilely attempting to crack the earth and dump gallons of dirt atop the poor tree, "I mean, hello. This, my dear, is nothing. At least it wasn't driven off into a pole by a blind-sighted hoodlum. A fire is repairable; our auto insurance, however, is not."
At the reference to the day-old incident concerning Jess' unsuspecting mercy towards a nosy critter scrambling across the street, Rory halted her fanning as Lorelai took the chance to pour her difficultly gathered dirt atop the scorched tree.
"And now," she continued, bolding displaying a good-sized watering can for the world to see, "For what's left of Babette's flowers."
OOOOOOOO
Two more weeks eloped, Rory took a tub of soapy water outside to dump on the tree. She had spent the entire afternoon scrubbing away at Lorelai's beloved shoes (all sixty of them) in her way of making up for skipping her mother's graduation to visit in New York the reason they had to pay 10 more in car insurance.
The branches looked less dead, she was happy to note, before waterfalling the tree in foam-ridden liquid.
OOOOOOOO
Another two weeks went by. It was difficult to run in heels, especially when your dress kept riding up in the back. Rory skid impatiently to a stop to pat it down, hoping it wasn't misbehaving when she had run off from Jess like a spasmodic chicken, back at Sookie's wedding.
Anyhow…
She took the time to pull off the heels, with unpleasant thoughts of ankle dislocation shrouding her original intention of pushing in as much extra time as she possibly could into packing her bags for Washington. She was fussy when it came to preparation, no doubt. Especially considering her mother's idea for an elaborated suitcase was underwear, toothpaste, and mountains of Snickers bars. "Anything else," Lorelai had said, "Could be attained through prostitution."
A joke, of course. But nevertheless, it set her in a state of panic to double check her luggage for potential disorientation.
In her haste, she failed to notice the tiny bulbs sprouting from the tree's branches.
OOOOOOOOO
"I think I killed your tree."
Lorelai's sheepish statement was faint, considering the cheap service the hotel provided in the case of phone reception. Never mind it was a mere twenty-four kilometers from the capital building; when you were blowing twelve dollars to make a two minute phone call, you expected to be able to receive coherent communication beyond the staticky crap they offered in clearanced walkie-talkies.
Rory frowned, twisting the phone cord in her fingers, "Did you throw matches out the window again?"
"No, I didn't have to. It shriveled up by itself. It looks like one of those bushes that grow in the desert that make you think 'Dear lord, somebody up there must've really hated this tree.' Because this morning, I woke up in a coffee-deprivation induced coma and thought to myself, 'Dear lord, somebody up there must've really hated this tree' before remembering 'Hey! That's Rory's tree!' and it is technically impossible for anybody, celestial body or not, to dislike a possession belonging to you."
Ignoring the angry hotel clerk making cutting gestures with his hand (she was overtime by about four minutes), Rory continued pushing for revelations concerning the well being of her expiring tree. "Did Jess say anything about it?"
"Why would Jess say anything about your tree?"
Rory sent a pleading look to the hotel clerk, whose head appeared about ready to catch fire. "Because he helped plant it." A gray lie. He planted the whole thing.
"Well Jess has been kind of busy.."
The line went dead at that, the hotel clerk having reached the end of his fuse. Rory was forced to fish out an additional 24 dollars.
OOOOOOOO
Summer was swallowed with Fall, and straw hats were exchanged for yarn beanies.
Over six months passed.
Jess kicked the dirt with his shoe. "I can't believe it's not dead yet."
"Yes well, little Miracle Gro can go a long way. It looks good, right?"
"Hm."
She rested her chin on her hands, looking fondly upon the prospering tree. "I've been counting the leaves."
"Somebody's compulsive."
"Sixty four. More than the number of hair plugs some people have."
"I rest my case." He kissed her neck, obviously more interested in whatever was there than fake hair statistics.
OOOOOOOO
There were reasons why Rory found keg- parties more trouble than they were worth. Lane, having spent a good hour or two puking across Rory's shoes (and pretty much anything within a two yard radius of her regurgitating chops), was safely (this term was used very loosely) back in Mrs. Kim's household.
With her best friend in safety's arm (once again, the word safety was used very very loosely), Rory started for her own home, passing off the chance of heading for Luke's and reconciling with her boyfriend, who was clearly prone to maniac episodes.
At the thought of Jess, a tidal wave of nostalgia engulfed her gut. The concept of confronting him was making her dizzy and cold sweat break from her pores. Instead, she gave into her desire to cut across the mildew-eaten alleyway, which, mind the moldy after-smell that had a tendency to stick to your clothes, was an option canceling out any potential confrontation with the bipolar Jess.
She stepped onto the porch, amateurishly maneuvering across the squeaky floor-boards before disappearing into the house.
The fact her tree was down to 57 leaves eluded her attention.
OOOOOOOO
A week passed after Jess skipped town. The tree took a turn for the worst.
"Rory?" Lorelai halted abruptly at the sight of her languished form crouched dejectedly beside the shriveled tree.
She didn't acknowledge her mother at first, wiping her eyes with sleeves soaked in tear-duct residue. "I don't think… I'm very good with plants."
"Sweetie," Lorelai wrapped her daughter in a bear hug, "It can't be helped. This green-thumb repellency is in your genes. How many plants do you think I've managed to keep? There'll be other trees."
She shook her head, sniffling faintly as her chin collapsed into a fit of spasms, like an arm with Parkinson's disease. "I don't want another tree."
Lorelai responded by squeezing her harder.
"I liked this tree. It was Jess' tree. I thought there might be a chance. It could've been different."
Her mother tucked her chin into her hair, "The world is in no short supply of trees. You'll find another. They don't say 'there's plenty of fish in the sea' just because the idea of starving walruses isn't a good thought."
"Poor walruses."
"Well there are plenty of fish in the sea, hon."
Rory sniffled, the evaporating tears forming a dewy gauze on the surface of her cheeks, "The sockeye salmon is an endangered species."
"Yes, but no one wants the sockeye salmon if he's going to be punching out the other little fishes and hogging all the plankton. I say it's for the best."
"What is it's not?"
"Then I guess this little fellow here will be the first to know."
OOOOOOOO
Almost a year passed before Jess took the time to stop by at the Gilmore residence. It was locked, of course. Which he figured was better than having someone home. Lorelai wasn't ever ecstatic to see him before, but considering everything that had happened between him and her daughter since their last encounter, she was probably ready to disembowel him by now.
Right away, he recognized the pathetically shrunken life form sitting in the corner of the yard. Jess scoffed, kicking at the dirt the way he had when he first finished planting it. Typical that the Gilmores couldn't keep anything green alive.
An array of sticks had been bound together in a cross of some sort, and was stuck smugly in a spot beside the poor tree. Jess crouched over to peer at the R.I.P etched carefully across the bark. A weird gesture, even for a dead tree belonging to the girl who cried when she accidently killed a butterfly.
Or maybe it wasn't dead. It was then that Jess noticed the tiny pulps sitting quietly along the nimble branches. Wondering if Rory still counted the leaves, he plucked one from it's torpor and unraveled it to see that yes, he was looking at a leaf.
Confirmation that the tree wasn't ready to die just yet did wonders for his ego. He got into his car with all intentions of paying his ex-girlfriend's dorm a visit.
Ex-girlfriend? Jess smiled to himself. As far as he was concerned, they hadn't even broken up yet.
-Fin soup
(AN: Left it hanging just for the benefit of a doubt, so that literati fans could speculate and mold their own happy ending if the idea appealed to them while non-literati fans could link it straight to their last encounter in Season 4)