THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

April's birthday party brings an unexpected twist that changes Luke's and Lorelai's lives forever. Late sixth season.

Disclaimer: Nothing's changed since the last chapter. I still don't own it.

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Friday Night Fights

Emily and Richard stared unbelievingly at their daughter, their mouths hanging open. "Oh, you don't mean that," Richard dismissed.

Lorelai's mouth tightened. "I do mean it."

"What?" Emily shrieked. "You'd give up your family to go off with that—that flannel-wearing cretin?"

Rory gasped and even Richard looked surprised. Lorelai swallowed down the blaze of fury that momentarily choked her. As she struggled to find a response, she recalled what she had said to Luke that morning and managed a carefully controlled answer. "Luke is my family now, Mother. Luke and Rory and April. And Sookie and Jackson and their kids, Patty, Babette and Morey, Lane and Zach—all the people who really care about me. Me, just as I am." She paused and watched her mother carefully. "Of course I'd like to have a good relationship with my parents. I think I've tried as hard as I can to do that. But, Mom, you just don't make it possible. Dad, you don't always help, either. And I'm not running the risk of someone I care about getting hurt because you insist on butting in where you don't belong. That already happened to Luke once and it's not happening to April or anybody else."

Her parents continued to stare at her. Before they could respond, Rory took the opportunity of their silence to move closer to her mother on the couch. "Grandma, Grandpa. That goes for me, too. If Mom and Luke walk, I walk, too. And don't expect me to ever come back, either."

"RORY!" her grandmother screamed. Richard began to look worried.

"I'm sorry, Grandma, but it's true. I hate what you tried to do to April. I think it's—well, despicable. I'm ashamed of you."

"Oh, my God," Emily murmured, staring in shock at her granddaughter.

"You haven't seen her. She's so lost and hurt—she's just a little kid and she's in so much pain. Mom and Luke are doing everything they can for her, but it really requires delicate handling right now. She doesn't need to be—to be treated like a piece on your personal chess board!"

"Rory!" Richard said angrily. Emily just stared at her granddaughter, bewildered, until suddenly her face blazed with fury and she pointed at Lorelai. "You did this! You! You deliberately turned her against me! You just can't stand for me to have my granddaughter's love, can you?"

Before Lorelai could respond, Rory sailed in again. "Oh, just stop it, Grandma," she said with disgust in her tone. "That's another thing I'm sick of, the way you blame Mom for everything I do that you don't like. I'm a junior at Yale, I'm twenty-one years old—do you really believe that I can't form my own opinions about things? Do you think I've been blind to all the stunts you've pulled?"

Emily's attention was now completely on her granddaughter. "What have I ever done to you, young lady?" she demanded. She was sure that Rory would have no answer.

However, she was destined to be surprised. "Well, let's see, where shall we start," Rory pretended to think it over. "How about that sixteenth birthday party you insisted on throwing for me?"

Emily looked apoplectic. "That was a beautiful party! I did that all for you! To make you happy!"

"Really?" Rory regarded her grandmother calmly, remembering to keep her voice even. "Then tell me something. If it was all for me, why wasn't my best friend invited?"

"Paris was there!" Emily insisted.

Rory and Lorelai passed amused glances between them. "I'm talking about Lane, Grandma. Lane—you remember her, my best friend since kindergarten? I believe you refer to her as my 'Asian friend'—which also ticks me off, by the way. Paris was not my best friend—at that point, she wasn't even my friend. Neither were any of the other kids you invited."

"More like enemies, as I recall," Lorelai remembered.

"Enemies? Those lovely children? They were from some of the best families in Hartford. They were your classmates, I assumed they were your friends!"

"Key word there being 'assumed.' You assumed instead of asking," Rory replied.

"And those 'lovely children' started torturing Rory from the minute she set foot in that school," Lorelai added darkly.

Emily turned her fury back to her daughter. "Oh, there you go again! Making up horrible lies about wonderful people just because you don't like them for being wealthy!"

Again Rory came in before Lorelai could say a word. "She's not lying! I wasn't at Chilton for an hour before Paris—yes, Paris—had me backed up against a locker telling me in vivid detail how I was 'going down' and how I was going to fail because she'd see to it that I did. All the girls in the class followed along with her because they were scared not to. One of the boys started calling me by the wrong name the first day and kept it up for months, even though I corrected him repeatedly."

Emily just stared at her.

"They stole my homework to try to get me into trouble. They bumped into me in the hallway to make me drop my books. I'd be sitting at lunch and they'd walk behind me, making insulting comments loud enough for me to hear. They were the last people in the world I'd invite to a birthday party. But then one day I'm walking down the hall and somebody came up and told me that he was invited to my party—the party you didn't bother to tell me I was having. I had to spend the next two days listening to people point to me all over the school. 'Yeah, that's her—the one having the party. I don't want to go, but my parents are making me.'" She shook her head. "Not the best way to make friends."

Now Emily was incensed for a different reason. "Why didn't you tell us this was happening!"

"It's outrageous!" Richard roared.

Rory opened her mouth to respond but Lorelai interrupted her. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why should Rory have told you?"

"So we could do something about it!"

"Like what?"

"Like go to the Headmaster and have him put a stop to it!" Emily cried.

"That would have made things worse," Rory shook her head. "We were afraid you'd do that, and that's why we didn't tell you."

"How could it have made things worse?" Richard shouted. "It sounds like they were bad enough as it was!"

"Oh, come on, Dad. Do you really think a bunch of teenagers would ever warm up to a kid who told on them and got them into trouble? Rory would have had no chance at all if you had done that," Lorelai explained.

The elder Gilmores looked at each other. "But. . .they. . ." Richard sputtered, unable to form a coherent sentence.

"Rory handled it just fine," Lorelai said firmly. "Remember how she ended up? Vice-President of Student Government, on the newspaper, a champion debater, accepted to three Ivy League schools, and valedictorian of her class? I'd say she did all right, despite the snotty little jerks she went to Chilton with."

"I did fine," Rory echoed. "With Mom's help."

All four stared at each other for a moment, catching their collective breath.

"Well, if that was such a bad situation for you, I'm—I'm sorry," Emily finally said reluctantly. "Perhaps you're right and I should have consulted with you on the guest list."

"I think we can all agree on that," Lorelai said calmly.

Emily shot an angry look at her daughter. "But that was only one event. We've done many other nice things for you!" she insisted, looking back at Rory.

"Yes, you have," Rory nodded. "Although maybe not as many as you think you did."

"What does that mean?" asked her grandfather in an annoyed tone.

Rory focused her attention on him. "I'm referring to the time you asked me to come over to a 'small get-together'—that's what you called it—to meet some of your Yale alumni friends." At their blank looks, she went on. "That was the party you tricked me into coming to by pretending it was something that it wasn't. The party where I found myself with a tiara on my head being paraded in front of every Yale-related eligible bachelor under the age of twenty-five!"

Richard pounced on that one. "That was to give you an opportunity to meet some young men of a better class!"

"Better than the ones I was already meeting at Yale?" Rory questioned. She shook her head. "I felt like the prize side of beef at a meat market," she said quietly. "It was the most humiliating night of my life."

"No, you had a good time at that party, once you relaxed a little!" Emily responded sharply. "I remember that when you said goodnight, you were all flushed and happy and laughing!'"

Rory looked at her, shaking her head and smiling a little. "That wasn't happiness, Grandma. That was alcohol," she said distinctly.

"What?"

"Logan, Colin and Finn were at that party. I already knew them from Yale. When they saw how embarrassed I was, they dragged me out to the pool house and started pouring champagne down my throat. Plus any other kind of alcohol they could find." She looked back at her grandmother with disgust. "I wasn't happy, Grandma. I was drunk."

"She could barely stagger to the house from Logan's limousine when they brought her home," Lorelai recalled. "She was completely toasted. I spent the next day holding her head over the toilet. A real pleasant sight for a mother to see, let me tell you. You were what, nineteen then, hon?"

Emily gave her a murderous look. Richard looked upset. "I'm sorry, Rory—I didn't realize that night was so difficult for you. We. . ." he looked uncertain. "We really were just trying to do something nice for you. Help you meet some nice young men."

"And I would have been happy to do that, Grandpa, if you had just asked," Rory told him patiently. "But with some forewarning and in a different setting. Maybe dinner with a family or two at a time." She watched him and shook her head. "Did you really believe that an atmosphere like that party was the best way for me to get acquainted with anyone?" Her mouth tightened. "Or was I just supposed to pick out the guy with the biggest trust fund?"

Neither of the elder Gilmores responded to that one.

"I think the thing that hurt me the most was that you didn't ask me. You just manipulated me into that party. It was just so—so disrespectful to treat me like that. I felt so used and betrayed." She stared moodily at the floor for a moment. "And then," she burst out, "when I did get together with a guy from the 'better class' as you put it, you did everything you could to keep me away from him when I was living here!"

"You were having sex with him!" Emily shouted. "Of course we tried to stop that!"

"Yes, I was twenty-one and having sex with my steady boyfriend," Rory agreed. "What's so terrible about that?"

"You could have gotten pregnant!" her grandmother returned. "Just like your mother! And then where would you be?"

Rory stared at her with loathing in her face. "Oh, I don't know," she said casually. "Maybe I'd start my own successful business, like my mother? Buy a home by myself? Be engaged to a wonderful man who adored me? Live in a town full of friends who would do anything for me? Have a daughter who loved and looked up to me?" She stared at Emily. "I'd consider myself lucky to be just like my mother," she spat.

Lorelai bestowed a grateful and loving look on her daughter. There was dead silence in the room until she spoke up. "Besides, it would never happen. Rory's on birth control," she said calmly. "I wasn't."

"Oh, that makes it so much better," Emily sneered.

Her daughter looked at her calmly. "Yeah, I think it does. At least Rory won't be faced with some of the choices I had to make, at a much younger age."

Before Emily could retort, Richard spoke up. "Rory, I know you're a young woman and. . .well, sexuality is different these days. I know that. What bothered me was that you were doing it under my own roof, so to speak. I spent forty thousand dollars redecorating that pool house for you to have sex in. I felt like a fool."

Rory's measured tone matched his. "Grandpa, first of all, I didn't ask for the pool house to be redecorated. . ."

"You didn't turn it down. You didn't say no," her grandmother interrupted.

Rory gave her a brief glare. "You didn't give me any choice," she retorted. "I walked in there the second day and all the furniture was gone. Besides, I didn't think it was my decision whether to decorate or not and you said you had wanted to do it for years. If it was my choice, you should have asked me, and you didn't. So don't try to blame that on me now."

Emily simply glared back but subsided.

Rory turned her attention back to her grandfather. "Grandpa, I wish you had just told me straight out that you felt that way. I would have respected your wishes and I wouldn't have had Logan over any more."

Richard stared at her as Emily began to scoff. "Oh, of course you would have."

"I wouldn't have, Grandma," Rory returned. She looked at her grandmother as if something had just become clear. "I guess you have trouble believing that people do things for one another out of simple respect," she said softly. "I guess maybe that's why all you ever try to do is trick and control people instead of just asking them."

Both her grandparents gaped at her as Lorelai thought to herself, Go, Rory.

Emily rallied first. "I don't believe you." she said tartly.

"I do," Richard disagreed. He looked at his granddaughter sadly. "I'm sorry, Rory. I'm sorry we were so disrespectful to you and made you feel betrayed."

She gave him a little smile. "Thank you, Grandpa."

"I think we proved that you wouldn't respect our wishes," Emily pushed on, ruining the moment. "When we got you in the house, where we could watch you, you didn't spend nights with Logan any more."

Rory turned back to her in annoyance. "Oh, I didn't? If you remember, it was about that time that I started spending a lot of nights staying over with Paris. Where do you think I really was?"

"See? You lied to us! You couldn't be trusted!"

Rory looked at her with disgust. "I never made any promise that I wouldn't sleep with Logan while I was staying with you, Grandma. There wasn't any trust for me to betray. And you wouldn't even talk to me about it—you just started trying to control me and I simply found a way out of it without getting into a fight with you. And it wasn't your decision to make anyway."

"I never tried to control you," Emily insisted.

Rory stared at her, her mouth open. "You decided every morning what time I was going to get up, by banging on my door, yelling at me through the intercom or coming straight into the room and having the maid pull the sheets out from under me while I was still in the bed!"

"Well, seven o'clock is the time people should get up," Emily sniffed.

"Says who?" Rory asked. "If I didn't have to be somewhere early, why shouldn't I sleep a little later if I wanted to? What harm would that have done?"

Emily had no answer.

Rory went on. "You decided what clothes I was going to wear by laying them out on my bed. If I didn't wear them, you made pointed comments about it all day. When you decided it was time to put away my summer clothes, you had the maid just come in and take them, without even asking me if I was finished with them. I had to track them down and sneak them back out of your house."

"It was September. It was time to put away summer clothes," Emily insisted.

"It was still in the seventies out. And I have a lot of things I wear year-round. The point is, you didn't ask—you just decided that what you thought was right would be right for me, too."

Emily didn't respond and her granddaughter continued.

"You decided that I was going to work at the DAR office, instead of letting me find a job myself. And then you decided that I had to join the DAR, even though I had no interested in doing so."

"You had to be a member to work there," Emily insisted. "And you liked it in the end."

"Yes, I did, but again—you gave me no choice at the time," Rory said sternly. "You told me what I could eat, when I could eat and where I could eat it. You even tried to tell me how to behave on my first day of community service, even though you knew nothing about it! You just generally treated me like I was ten years old. But the worst was moving me out of the pool house without even asking me."

'I needed to store things there for you birthday party," Emily made excuse.

"So when the party was over, and it wasn't needed for storage any more, why wasn't I moved back?"

Emily hesitated and Richard answered. "You already know why. We were trying to keep you from sleeping with Logan."

"So, Grandma, you're still lying to me about why you moved me out."

"Well. . .not necessarily. . ." Emily was trying desperately to talk herself out of that one. "Maybe you could have moved back in a few days, but you left our house instead. Without even telling us!" as she tried to turn the blame back on her granddaughter.

"That's not true," Lorelai said softly.

Emily swung to face her, furious. "You keep out of this, Lorelai! You know nothing about it!"

"Oh, yes, I do," her daughter retorted. "Don't you remember, Mom? The night of the birthday party, you and I and Dad were in Dad's study? He said the same thing, that the pool house wouldn't be needed for storage once the party was over. And you stood there making a list as long as your arm of ways you were going to keep Rory from moving back there. You were going to get it fumigated. You were going to discover mold. You were going to 'rip it down with your bare hands,' I believe was the phrase you used. In other words, more behind-the-back tricks and more controlling." She smiled wryly. "The highlight of that conversation for me, however, was your statement that you wouldn't 'lose' Rory until she came home pregnant. I'm still not clear on all the implications of that one."

"Oh, I think the implications are clear enough," Emily said bitterly. "I lost you because you got pregnant. All my dreams for you went up in smoke because you had sex!"

"All your dreams?" Lorelai echoed. "Like what? Being voted Most Popular Debutante of 1984?"

"Lorelai," Richard chided.

"Yes, that was one! And what was wrong with that?" Emily demanded. "But it was more than that that I dreamed for you. Going to an Ivy League college, like you deserved to with your brains. . .having a wonderful career. . .most of all, making a good marriage to someone from a good family and having a house full of children. That's what I dreamed for you!"

"Hmmmm. . .one question, here," her daughter replied with a hint of humor. "How exactly would I have managed the house full of children while being successful at the wonderful career?"

"You know how. People in our class have nannies," her mother said.

"Mom—I would never have allowed a child of mine to be raised by a nanny. As well you know," Lorelai said, staring at her mother meaningfully.

Emily suddenly blushed while Richard cleared his throat uncomfortably and Rory wondered what that was about.

Whatever it was, Lorelai passed over it. "How do you know that any of that would have happened even if I hadn't gotten pregnant?"

"Well, it might have."

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and I might have gone out on tour as a roadie with the Bangles, too." She looked directly at Emily. "The Ivy League college, maybe—although I'm not sure I could have gotten in. But I did go to college. I have a wonderful career and my own business. And I'm marrying a wonderful man who makes me happy. The houseful of kids may be yet to come, but I've got the best kid in the world," she said, smiling at Rory. Her voice gentled. "Mom, I hated the world you wanted me to live in. You know I did. I never would have stayed in it voluntarily—never. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that getting pregnant did, aside from giving me the greatest gift of my life, was that it got me to leave your house a little earlier than I otherwise would have. Because I was going to get out, no matter what you did or didn't do."

"You don't know that. If you had married Christopher, you don't know how your life would have turned out," her mother insisted.

"I have a pretty good idea," Lorelai replied. "If I had married Christopher when we were both sixteen, before either of us was ready for it, it might have satisfied the society rules that you live by. But we would have both been miserable and would have gone through a very bitter and ugly divorce a few years later. It would have hurt both of us and hurt Rory and I would have been back where I started. Only in worse shape, because I wouldn't have learned all that I did when I went out on my own—about hard work and saving for things you want and appreciating what you do have." She looked between her parents and her voice was soft but firm. "If I hadn't left when I did, I wouldn't be the person I am now. And I'm pretty happy with who I am and what I've done, thank you very much. Mom, your world may be right for you, but it was never right for me."

The two Gilmore women stared at each other, Emily perplexed and very angry, Lorelai calm and contained. Just then the maid took advantage of the silence to quickly enter and room and say, "Dinner is served," and to quickly exit again.

"Bet we've scared her half to death," Lorelai quipped to her daughter in a whisper.

"She may be the first Gilmore maid to quit before she's fired," giggled Rory.

Emily, who did not seem to hear them, stood up and swept her way towards the dining room with Richard slowly following. As she reached the archway dividing the rooms she turned to her daughter and granddaughter who were watching her uncertainly. "Well?" she asked imperiously. "What are you waiting for? Come on."

The two glanced at each other. "I guess that means we're sticking around for Round Two," Lorelai groaned.

"Tune in later," Rory replied in kind. "Same time, same station."

They followed Emily into the dining room.