Gossip

"She used to be such a nice girl!" I said in response to my good friend Babette's last story. The two of us were sitting on her couch in her living room sharing gossip. We got together often and did this, several times a week in fact.

I caught myself staring out Babette's window at the house next door, half lost in thought. "Do you think Lorelai and Luke will ever work it out?" I heard myself ask.

"I hope so. They're perfect for one another, and they're the only ones that don't know it!" Babette replied enthusiastically.

"So do I."

"But what about this thing with Christopher?" she asked, seeking my opinion.

I was still staring out the window, preoccupied. "Can you believe she actually married him?"

"She's always was an impulsive little broad."

"I wish she hadn't done it," I said. "She knew in her heart that she didn't really love him."

"She was on the rebound. Bad time to make decisions."

I shook my head. "Bad time to get married. Poor Lorelai. I hate divorces. I wish she didn't have to go through that." I had been through enough to know. I'd been married and divorced more times than the average person liked even to think about. Eventually I'd managed to make peace with the fact that I wasn't the marrying type, but Lorelai deserved better than that.

"Maybe they'll get an annulment," Babette said hopefully.

"No," I said. "They're harder to get and just as messy to go through."

Babette didn't seem to have much else to say on the topic. "Did you hear about East Side Tillie?"

I smiled and went with it. "What about?"

The rest of the conversation went as my conversations with Babette always did, but even during the particularly dirty strains of gossip, I couldn't seem to get Lorelai off of my mind. Later that night as I walked home after my last yoga class, I was still thinking about her.

I'd known Lorelai for many years. Her daughter Rory had taken ballet lessons from me when she was very young. I considered her a friend. As I thought of everything she'd been through, my heart ached for her. She'd gotten pregnant when she was sixteen and moved out of her parents' house at seventeen. She'd never had a good relationship with her parents, and throughout the course of her life had had quite a few serious relationships, all of which had ended in heartbreak.

Over the past couple of years she'd had a tough time. Rory had run into some trouble involving somebody else's yacht, and had gotten arrested and given an outrageous number of community service hours. Rory had always been a girl that had never been in trouble in her life. I doubt she'd ever turned in a library book late. To top it all off, after that she had dropped out of school at Yale, wanting to take some time off. I couldn't imagine how all of this must have affected Lorelai, but I know there was a period of time where the two of them weren't on speaking terms. Rory's back in school now and she and Lorelai are closer than ever, but that must have been a tough time for Lorelai.

Around the same time, Lorelai and Luke got engaged. It all seemed perfect, but then Luke found out that he had a daughter he'd never known about. He waited a very long time before even telling Lorelai about her, and when he did it caused a little friction between them. One thing eventually led to another, and it came down to Lorelai wanting to go ahead and get married and Luke wanting to move more slowly, and they broke up.

Then Lorelai got back together with her ex and Rory's father, Christopher. They went to Paris together and got married. That worked well at first, but they had a few conflicts. During one hostile conflict, Lorelai's father suffered a severe heart attack. As if it wasn't enough for that poor girl to have to deal with that, apparently Christopher didn't even show up at the hospital until after Lorelai and her family knew that her father was going to be okay. I've had some rotten husbands, but that takes the cake.

I think he either apologized or she forgave him for that, but eventually she came to her senses and realized that she didn't really love him. Now she's on the threshold of divorce and just beginning to get back on speaking terms with Luke. She's been through a lot.

If anyone deserves to find true love and enter into a happy marriage, it's Lorelai. She's been engaged twice to men she'd never married, and married once to a man she never got engaged to. She's always gone out of her way to help the town, and everyone loves her. I'll never know why she still hasn't been able to have a lasting relationship. She's beautiful, smart and sweet. She's everything every woman wishes they were.

She and Luke have always had amazing chemistry. They've always been perfect for each other, as Babette had said earlier, and they've always been the only two that didn't realize it. One of these days they'll work it out. I know they will. I just hope it's before they're both old and gray.