Snow Angels
Author GwenStacy (in another life—rainingyesterday)
Disclaimer Nothing on Gilmore Girls and nothing on The Lovely Bones.
Rating PG-13 (language, sexual situations)
Summary Time is the medicine an aching heart must take. Loosely based on 'The Lovely Bones'. Rory. Lorelai. Luke. Everyone.
Playlist You Are the Moon – the Hush Sound
Notes Thank you reviewers.
Chapter 2
Blue is my favorite color. I think it'd be obvious why. My mom's eyes, like mine, are a crystalline blue that you can't help but love. We'd always put our baby blues to the test against Luke. He'd melt into a puddle. Blue is one of my earliest memories. Eyes gazing adoringly at me as a baby swathed in a blanket Mom had knitted herself during doctor's appointments. She'd talk and talk and sometimes attempt to sing, but all I understood were the glinting sapphires that told me I was loved. I was entranced as my father and Luke and other men had been.
Blue was the color of the sky the next day, a cloudy, listless blue that is the paint of the fall to winter sky. It was the expanse of space that Mom couldn't stop staring at, her 'glinting' eyes flat and dull, and her body in a robe lay on the bed. She shifted only when a bird squawked, scaring her. Then she'd cry. She didn't exactly know what else to do. She wasn't ready to go down to New York to take care of—well—me.
Downstairs, Luke was just as clueless. He had gone down to the dinner and put up the 'Gone Fishing' sign up even if he had no intention to cast a line in the water and kill a living animal during this time. It hurt him to know I was not alive no longer, but it just hadn't hit him in the right spot. (The tears shed the night before were for me, but he was afraid that was the last of them.) He was ashamed that what wounded him worse was seeing my mother so miserable.
I couldn't blame him. I know he loved me and I loved him as a child loves a father. I just wish I could have told him that when I was there.
"We all have regrets," said Steve one time, drinking a beer with me under the gazebo's top.
I looked over to my lists, meticulous and full of false pretences. "I want to erase mine."
"We all want to do that too."
Late afternoon, was when my mom finally released herself from the sadness weaved binds of her bed. She ate little, an apple that was thrust at her by Luke who wouldn't let her starve. She ate it, but slowly, only eating the juicy flesh, and picking off the red skin with her fingers. She flicked the crimson pieces on a napkin and played with them as if they were pencil shavings. It was so quiet.
They drove in the truck. Music flowed softly through the speakers, just loud enough to encase the two in their own worlds. My mother in death and Luke in the brink of hope. He always was optimistic. Okay, negatively optimistic. Can those even coincide? Just another thing you wonder in heaven.
They reached New York deep into the night, got a hotel room, single bed, and immediately fell onto it hoping that sleep become them. My mom faced the window opposite Luke. He watched her nervously. It had been a whole day, and she still hadn't uttered a word.
It had never happened before.
He climbed into the covers and encased her frame in his larger one. Pressing his heart to her back, he pumped whatever internal strength he had into her body. It was futile. He wasn't some magic guru type thing that could lift someone's spirits with a few 'Ohm's.
Luke sighed, and just near her ear whispered, "I love you."
He didn't get an answer back.
It was a dare, that day way back when I was twelve, for my mother to go the whole day without talking. She laughed and gloated at Luke that she could last a whole week. He said wouldn't even bet on two hours. I agreed.
She looked at us both in incredulity. "What!?"
"I bet on all your Def Leppard t-shirts that you won't make it," I smirked.
My mother gasped, "My own child! Betrayed! Oh, how I am betrayed! Luke, what did you put in her coffee?"
"Common sense," he chuckled.
"Poison!" she cried out.
My face lit up, "Oh, all those t-shirts too!"
My mother crumpled. She agreed and we went about our way. It was her day off, so we headed over to Hartford to the mall. She had stuck to her bet in the time we were in the car, even if I did put on Mozart right when CCR started 'Fortunate Son'. She loved singing the chorus out as loud as she could. She wasn't no rich, prick, Senator's kid.
In the mall we had to pass all those people standing out side their venues with free samples of this or that. My mom always got a kick out of harassing them. But, no; we passed on without so much as small prank.
I could tell she was down. Her mouth was sagging and she looked half asleep. Frankly, not talking was boring her. I tried to make up the lost conversation for the both of us, but I ended talking about DNA and RNA instead. I just babbled on and on about how wondrous the human body was if those small pieces of matter could help decided everything about us. I think my mom was ready poke an eye out with a hanger.
Ok, so she made the movement with the hanger of what she was thinking of doing, but I was too much on roll. I didn't know that in my coming teenage years I was supposed to talk about boys and hair. I was still in love with Holden Caulfield for goodness sakes! I was convinced he was real, and I would find him wandering New York and we'd run away or something like that. I thought he was one cool kid, while every other girl was still ripping her hair out over…that guy…what was his name?
We grew weary of the shops and smelly people and the total silence after my bust of tête-à-tête, and left the mall into the enclosure that was our car. The hush was stifling.
In Stars Hollow, my mom parked outside of Luke's. She paused before turning to me and whispering, "You win."
"What?" I asked pretending I hadn't heard her.
"You and Luke win," she yelled. "Happy? You get my favorite t-shirts, and I am stuck having to walk shamefully into that place--but not silent! Oh no! I am through with this whole not talking nonsense. Really? How do, like, monks do it?" We entered the establishment as she kept going, "Don't they feel the need to praise Buddha or God or whatever once and while. Maybe a 'yippee! We're monks!' every third Sunday of the month? Come on! What if they needed to go to the bathroom, but they forgot where it was and had to ask, but he couldn't because he's a monk. He'd have to pee in his robe! Do they have underwear? Ha, ha. If they do I bet it's wooly underwear. Ugh! That'd be so scratchy, and if he peed in those it would soak up everything! That's disgusting. He probably doesn't even have a second pair of--"
"I see we didn't last," Luke interrupted.
I grinned up at him. "Nope."
"As I was saying," she huffed, "No other pair! Because they are monks, and they probably make their wooly underwear themselves, and it takes a long while, and they don't ever stop to think that maybe one day I'll forget where the bathroom is and I can't ask anyone, because I'm a monk! Only these are European monks. Asian monks must have a totally different type of undergarment. Do you think they would have trained silk worms to make their…"
It was over with, the questions, the double-checking, the…identification of the deceased. Luke had done it. He walked into the chrome and white room and looked into a cold metal drawer saying yes that is Lorelai Gilmore when he saw my pale face, and the slightly bloated features of my body. He came out back and whispered that he thought he was going to be sick. A worker pointed him to the restroom.
His body held the toilet seat, his grip white, and he sputtered. Gagging again, he threw up. Luke flushed it, and lumbered out of the stall. He rinsed his mouth, and then his face. He looked at himself in the mirror, and saw that it was a deathly colored version of himself. Oh, great choice of words.
He found my mother waiting in the front of police station with a pack of cigarettes. His eyes flittered between the white box and my mother's pensive face.
"I haven't smoked since I was fifteen. I didn't even like it then."
"It's bad for you."
"It kills you, right? After a while. Takes time and effort."
Luke didn't say anything else. He didn't know this woman.
My mother brought a cigarette to lips; her fingertips still a virginal bright pink, yet to be tainted yellow by nicotine. She pulled a lighter out of her back pocket, and after a few attempts, lit it. Inhaling too much smoke, she coughed, and I coughed in my gazebo. I could see the wispy traces climbing up my walls. She breathed in again, this time holding it in the back of her throat, and tasting it. Like Audrey Hepburn, she let it curl out of her mouth, pretending to Holly. "Let's go."
"Throw it away," he told her pointing at her mouth.
"No," she said harshly, "I want this."
"We don't have a smoking room."
"I guess I just won't smoke in the room."
Luke looked so defeated; I wanted to kiss his cheek and give him some tea. I didn't like this mother either. "Why are you doing this?"
"I saw pictures in the station. Of someone's black lungs. They died."
Don't die, I whispered. Don't want to die.
Sookie, my mother's best friend and friend of mine, woke up that morning of September 25 happy and carefree as she usually did in the mornings. She was a very joyful person. She strolled into her kitchen ready to create an artful breakfast for Davie, Martha, and Jackson. It was what she did. Sookie, the chef, created art out of food. She sighed inwardly. Sookie, the mom, made something edible for two picky children to eat.
The red blinking light of her phone's answering machine was glaring at her to play the messages. She hadn't checked them since…well, a long while. Sookie shrugged and pressed play hoping the automated voice wasn't too loud.
"Sookie, yea, hey, it's Luke. We're getting back in from New York tomorrow. I'm not sure if Lorelai…if Lorelai will be well enough to go back to work tomorrow. You see, uh, God…Sookie, Rory is…Rory passed away. She was shot twice in the back. One of her lungs was pierced, and she bled…"
Sookie gasped. Her eyes fluttered. She went over to a stool, and sat down, her legs unable to support her anymore.
"…York, but it's all over with now. Most of it anyhow. We still need to do…funeral arrangements. Just thought you should know. You loved Rory too. Yea, ok, well—bye."
Jackson came in with his wrestling pajamas, pulling the sleep out of his eyes. When his hands stopped blocking his view he saw his wife crying quietly at the kitchen table.
"Sookie, honey, what's the matter?"
Sookie looked up blubbering, "Rory passed away." She broke his gaze, crying again.
"Oh, Sookie. Oh." He came up to her and held her head stroking her hair. She put her face to his belly, and tried to hide from reality. Jackson, forgetting to be the strong man, wept also.
My eyes in Heaven watered. Why do they miss me so?
Jackson had run over to the market on an errand. They had run out of sugar; Sookie was baking for my mother and herself. He was flustered and out of breath as he searched through the isles looking for the product. He had forgotten where it was, even if he had been inside the very store too many times to count.
"Jackson!"
Jackson yelped. "Jesus!" He turned around to face plaid and pastel. "Oh, it's only you Taylor."
Taylor frowned, "I have a question to ask you, sir, about the last carton of strawberries you delivered."
"I don't have time, sir, to talk," Jackson muttered, mirroring Taylor's frown.
"Of course you have time! What would a man like you be doing on a Friday morning?" he asked rather rudely.
"Caring for my grief stricken wife goddamnit! Would it hurt you to show a little respect!" shouted Jackson. His blood boiled with mysterious rage.
Taylor was miffed. "And why is Sookie in this condition?" He looked up and down Jackson as if spotting an ugly stain. "Why is Sookie always in a 'condition'?"
"You, Taylor, are the most despicable man I have ever met. Poor Rory is dead and you call my Sookie being hurt a 'condition'? What are you going to call Lorelai? A disease?" blurted out Jackson.
"Rory's dead?" asked Taylor his eyes wide. Jackson groaned and covered his eyes with his hand.
"Can I just have some sugar?"
"Our Rory is…dead?"
"Yes, Taylor," sigh, "she passed away. That's why Luke and Lorelai are in New York. Can you please, for once, keep this to yourself?"
Taylor had found the lint on his shirt strangely interesting. His eyes held a preoccupied look in them, and they were a bit lost. "Why of course. This is one family matter that I…I think I shall stay out of. Excuse me Jackson, I think I forgot…something." He turned and headed to the back.
I followed him and saw him lock himself in his office. He bustled about, looking in drawers and filing cabinets, till finally he came up with a picture. It was me in my fairy costume when I was ten. I was hugging Taylor, because as I remember it, I had broken my wand, but he had come to the rescue with a second, identical wand from his store. I had been so happy I'd given him a hug. He had been so surprised.
"She was a lovely girl," he whispered to no one.
When I went back out to the store, I saw that Jackson had already fled the perimeter. I walked along the aisles, not really there, not really anywhere. I spotted Miss Patty was reading the same soup can label over and over again and knew she had overheard.
Babette came behind her, "Hey Patty, baby, Dancing With the Stars is on the nickelodeon tonight. Ya up to it? Morey promised me he won't say nuthin' if we rate the men's asses. He knows I love him."
"Of course, darling, who doesn't love diamonds?"
"Patty?"
Miss Patty was swooning, "Remember Babette, darling, her caterpillar. She was so adorable. A real picture."
Babette looked closer at her face, "Are you ok? Ya want me to get Taylor out here?"
"No sweetheart. I don't think he really wants to come out right now."
"Why not?"
"He'll never say it, but he really cherished her. He really did."
"Who?"
"Why, Rory, darling!"
"He cherished her?"
Miss Patty started to walk past a confused Babette. "The poor, poor girl. We all loved her so much."
"Why are you…" Babette's eyes misted with understanding. "Oh! How?"
"I better be going now." Miss Patty left without another word.
Babette followed her out, and walked back to her own house, before she bawled. Morey told her it was uncool to be so emotional, but when she told him the news he went over to his piano and banged the keys so hard I thought his fingers would break.
Miss Patty ran into Sy, whom she murmured the events to in the same manner she had with Babette.
Sy met up with Bootsy at Gypsy's, and he somberly related all he had heard to him. Gypsy listened in. When they had left she climbed into the car she working on and placed her head on the steering wheel, wishing her brain was like a car that could so easily be fixed. Gypsy was a strong woman. She knew how to handle sadness.
She went back to her Catholic roots and prayed. She asked God to take care of me, and I swear, He smiled.
Close to the afternoon, everyone in town knew what had happened. Instead of the usual energetic, traditional town Stars Hollow was known as being, it became a ghost town. That's the way it was when Luke and my mom drove in.
She finished her last disgusting cigarette long ago in the lost highway miles. Lost also were the words from the same smoky mouth. Blue, blue, blue. Dearest bluebird was my prayer. They stepped out in front of the diner, and looked around wondering to themselves where everyone was. It was okay though. Who actually wants to chat when your insides were splintering and your heart was punctured.
"Take me home, Luke," she whispered. "Take me home before they begin to stare. They know by now. We both can bet on that."
"Ok," Luke said. He took her home.
Tomorrow, after all, was another day. Tomorrow, they would face the town. Tomorrow, he would apologize. Tomorrow, Lorelai would love him again. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow—he was making promises again.
More soon. Reactions from everyone outside of Stars Hollow and another look into Susie's/Rory's heaven.
