Among the Ruins
Rory lie on her stomach, her chin in her hands as she watched Emily packing their suitcases. It was an elaborate process, consisting of lining the bottom of the luggage with rolled up shirts acting as cushion for the layer of gifts that went in next. She kicked her feet in the air and leaned over the edge of the bed.
"No, Grandma—I have to take that on the plane with me. It's Luke's chess set—I don't want it to get crushed," she said.
Emily looked up. "Oh, yes, the glassware. We'll keep the leather bags separate, as well, to keep from creasing them. Anything else that you'd like to hold on to? What are these?" she asked, picking up two triangular-shaped packages. "Oof. They're rather heavy."
Rory ducked her head slightly. "They're bookends," she said. "Really beautiful, dark wood, with all these ornate carvings on them. I found them at a used book store out by the Vatican."
"Who are they for?"
"Grandpa," Rory said.
Emily paused before tucking them in among Rory's pajamas and shirts. "To replace those dreadful brass ones on his desk, I suppose? A lovely idea. I've always hated those things; they really are quite the ugliest thing in the room."
"In the house," Rory said. "They're hideous. I think he'll like these." She bit her lip, watching her grandmother closely as she continued to organize. "I guess he's been calling Mom pretty regularly," she said.
"Really?" Emily said, her voice even, disinterested.
"They've been having dinner together, too. She said something about his having sort of retired, but I didn't understand."
She reacted slightly to this, a twitch of the lips, a raised eyebrow. "Well, that would be something," she said in the same careful voice. "What on earth are all these little boxes?"
Rory scooted over the edge of the bed, placing her elbows against the floor, balancing against the mattress on her middle. Emily waved at a group of eight or ten small jewelry boxes. "Oh, those are for Lane. I bought her a whole bunch of cross necklaces. They each go with a different shirt from a different city. And some of them are rosary beads for Mom."
"Rosary beads?"
"She collects them." She hitched herself back on the bed. "Is it legal to put gifts and everything like that in suitcases? What if they stop us and go through it?"
Emily seemed amused by this. "Rory. In over thirty years of traveling, I have never once been stopped. Even in the past few years, I have never had a problem."
"Don't they weigh suitcases, though? What if they're too heavy?"
"I have been doing this a very long time, Rory. I know what I am doing."
Rory rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. "Okay, Grandma."
It was their last night in Rome. Rory had spent the day wandering, walking down past the Circus Maximus and the Mouth of Truth, past the Victor Emmanuel memorial, down Via del Corso. She passed the Forum and the Colosseum, the Theater of Marcellus. She had left the apartment with no agenda, only wanting to walk. She paused and threw her three coins in the Trevi Fountain; she closed her eyes as she tossed them over her shoulder but made no wish. She ended up in the Piazza della Rotunda outside the Pantheon. She stood a long time before the central fountain, watching people wander past, listening to the sounds of the city. Even in the short time she had spent, Rory thought Rome felt strangely like home—not a home forever, never a permanent place of residence, but a home when for those times when she felt transient, disconnected, weary with herself. She understood writers, expatriates who had left home and headed for some place else—it was easier, she thought, to see the place you'd left, to understand it and your place in it, at a distance. From far away, the view was something else altogether and she thought she could see more clearly.
They were leaving for the airport at eight for a ten thirty flight. They had a connection in Amsterdam, and they were scheduled to arrive in New York at four thirty in the afternoon. Emily decided at the start of the trip to stay in the city that night, rather than tack on a two or three hour car trip, with traffic figured in, onto an eleven hour flight, and Rory had readily agreed.
She had been waiting since Saturday for her grandmother to suggest packing and last things, watching her carefully all the while. Emily had gamely gone on a few last tours with her—Byron's statue in the Borghesi gardens and the museum there as well—and was just as she had been since they left Venice: tired, pale, and impassable. On Monday afternoon, she remarked that they might start getting ready to go the next day. There was nothing in the apartment, really, to take care of, she said, so it was only the packing they should worry about. Rory assented and began to pick up the few things she had left scattered around, but Emily stopped her. They could leave it to tomorrow, there was no rush.
"I have some things planned for tomorrow, Grandma, and I don't want to forget anything. It's not a big deal, I'll just start piling my stuff up in my room," she said, stacking books in her arms.
"Whatever you like," Emily had said. "Leave the packing to me, Rory, I'll take care of it."
And so Rory was on her bed, watching her grandmother fold her clothes and fit everything inside the suitcase like pieces in a puzzle. There was a comment for most things, approval of gifts or clothing or a slight "tsk" for other things—the "wanker" shirt she'd bought Lane, the novelty Pope statue for Lorelai. She handled everything with care, smoothing things with her hands, folding clothing just so. Rory closed her eyes.
Emily was shaking her awake at ten of seven the next morning. "You looked so peaceful last night," she said. "I didn't want to disturb you. Come, you have to shower and pack your carry on still. I threw our your old knapsack—tatty nylon—so you should use that nice leather bag we bought."
Groggily, Rory nodded. "Coffee," she croaked.
The driver came for them at eight exactly and took them beyond the outskirts of the city to Fiumincino Airport, which Emily detested. She was correct, however, about getting their bags checked and passing security measures. She looked at Rory over her shoulder as they boarded, as if to say, "there, you see?"
They had not been in the air long when Rory reached into her new bag and extracted her journal. She pulled down the dining tray and placed the notebook there, staring at it a moment. She ran her fingers along the spine, the edges of the paper, the elastic band, the cover. She slipped the elastic off—it had become loose over the trip but still held—and flipped past pages and pages filled with her tiny, neat script. She smoothed down the next blank page and uncapped her pen.
Dear Mom,
I feel like I should be thinking about something important right now. Like I should have some grand, important observation about the time I spent away, or some sort of philosophical mantra to take with me. I know you said I couldn't leave expecting to have all the answers when I came back (and I did remember the expensive chocolates, just for you), and I didn't. I don't have all the answers. I don't know that I have any answers, or even what the questions really were.
There was something about Rome that I think I missed the first time around. When you and I went, there was so much to see and do and talk about and eat and everything, and it was an amazing experience, but we never sat still, not for a minute. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, because I wouldn't have had it any other way. That was my trip with my mom just the way we'd always planned it. But this trip let me do something different, too, and I think it's just as important. I'm leaving feeling full of something, but I can't quite articulate it.
Grandma said she loved Rome because it was old world. Everything's squat there—St. Peter's will always have to be the tallest building—and it somehow made me feel taller. What I just can't get over, though, is walking through the city, being passed by people on motorbikes and those weird smart cars, seeing the buses and the trams and the advertisements everywhere—and of course, the cats; who could forget the cats? All the stray cats in the world live in Rome—and then turning just to the right and seeing the ruins of something older than you can really understand. I think that's one of the things I like best about this city, that right alongside metro stops and office buildings are the remains of temples and monuments. You could walk the city end to end and you'd never run out of reminders of the past. And more than that, they protect them—there are sections of the Forum you can't go into anymore because they're so fragile. They put ramps and railings in the Coliseum. The history of this city is just memorialized everywhere you go, even the bad things, like the path Mussolini cut in the middle of the city during World War II.
I want to think that's comforting. That it's possible to keep bumping into the things that remind you of the way life used to be and that they're built into the present, the reality of who you are and where you are at any given moment. There are things I've learned to live with before, like you and Dad and Sherri and Gigi, how it didn't work out the way we thought it would, and how it hurt when it happened—but that's a hurt I've learned to walk around, to see it and recognize it and just keep going. Maybe that's just the way you have to deal with the past, with the terrible things you said or did or saw or felt—let the ruin stand, let it be. They're called ruins for a reason: eventually, they start to fall apart. They never go away, but they don't hold up, either.
I don't know, maybe I'm just talking in clichés. Maybe it's trite to say we're all just walking microcosms with our own personal ruins to build around, that some are newer than others, and some are so old they're buried and we won't find them unless we're looking for them, and some are just so big you can't see around them. But there are buses and footpaths, and you can get around them, even if you can't ignore them.
Are you going to disown me for that? Was it too much? Would it be better if I quoted Lloyd Dobler? Here: "Maybe the world is a blur of food and sex and spectacle and everyone's just hurtling towards a necropolis." But I know you don't think that. Well, except for the food part.
Dean and Jess—I can't go back to those places anymore. I know that. But it won't do me any good to pretend it never happened, either. There's still a lot I haven't figured out, Mom, so you were right—and you can wipe that grin right off your face, I know, you're always right. But I'm coming home with so much, too. What's that lyric? You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need? I think I just killed it, but that's the gist, right? So, no, I don't know what's going to happen next. But I do know myself a little better than I did before. For the most part, anyway.
Love you, Mom.
Rory.
Rory shut the journal slowly, replacing the elastic before she slid it back into her book bag. She drew her feet up to the edge of her seat and clasped her hands at her shins, hugging her knees to her chest. She saw Emily watching her from the corner of her eye.
"What's up, Grandma?" she asked. "Besides us, that is."
Emily smiled. "I see you scribbling away in that thing all the time. What are you writing?"
Rory shrugged. "It's just a journal. Something to remember the trip by."
"What a good idea," Emily said. "And some day, when you write your memoirs of your days in the field as an international correspondent—"
"Grandma," Rory groaned.
"—you'll have this to look back on," she finished. "I used to keep a journal, before I married your grandfather."
"Did you keep them?"
She shook her head. "I burned them just after college."
Rory's mouth fell open. "You burned them? Why?"
"They were very… precious to me. It seemed a way to keep them sacred," she said. "Just a silly romantic notion."
They chatted for a while idly about the stories they would tell, what their favorite moments had been, the best things they saw and bought and ate. Emily's smiles were wistful, her eyes brighter than Rory had seen in a while. The conversation paused a moment, and she seemed to remember.
"Grandma?" Rory said, her voice tentative.
"Yes, Rory?"
"What are you going to do when you get back? I mean, are you going to go home, or—I mean, where will you go?" she asked.
Emily sighed. "I don't know, Rory. I suppose I've tried not to think of it." She put her hand to Rory's face, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "And you? What will you do?"
Rory thought a moment before she answered. "The right thing," she said. "Whatever it is."
Emily seemed to understand this, and said nothing, but again smoothed the hair off Rory's face. "I cannot thank you enough, Rory, for coming with me on this trip."
"Oh, Grandma, I should be thanking you—it's been so amazing, and it was just what I needed, and—"
Her grandmother shushed her. "No thanks, then. We'll just say we're both grateful for the experience and the wonderful company, be very dignified about the whole thing."
Rory giggled. "Okay, Grandma. I am quite grateful, then, for the experience, the wonderful company, and also the food and the shopping."
"Oh, goodness, how could I forget the food and the shopping?" Emily said, smiling.
The flight was uneventful. Rory snoozed and suffered through half a Julia Roberts movie before giving up and reaching for a novel. They arrived on schedule, but in waiting for luggage and taxis and all the other details of traveling, did not get to their hotel until well after six. Rory collapsed on the bed, rubbing her hip.
"I am so sore. Sitting down is tiring," she said. She immediately reached for her phone. "I have to call Mom."
"Yes, do. I'll order up some food. What are you in the mood for?"
"A cheeseburger and fries from Luke's," Rory said. "But I'll take the closest thing to it." She flipped the phone open and pressed her speed dial.
The phone didn't ring. "This is Lorelai Gilmore, and you've reached my cell phone. I'm unavailable, but please leave me a message and I will call you back as soon as possible."
She groaned. "Mom, we're back and your cell is off? I'm slightly offended. Call me!" She hit the end button and dialed again.
"We're out, but leave us some love and we'll consider calling you back."
"Mom, are you home? Mom?" She sighed. "Okay, when you get this, call me. We're back, we're at the hotel, we're in one piece, we're tired and wounded and returning from battle and are really hurt by the lack of enthusiasm at our arrival." She snapped her phone shut. "She's not answering her phones," Rory said. "I could call the Dragonfly or Luke's, but I think I'll just wait."
Emily came to sit beside her. "Room service should be here any moment," she said. "I had to get you a cheese and steak wrap, is that all right?"
"Sounds good."
"If it's not what you'd like, I can always send for something else."
"It's perfect," Rory said.
When the food arrived, both women picked at their meals silently. Rory looked around the hotel room, as nice as any she had seen, but the stiff wallpaper and the satiny coverlets depressed her suddenly. She shoved fries in her mouth, trying to swallow over the lump building in her throat. When she had almost finished her dinner, she pushed the plate away and curled up on the bed, hugging herself. Six weeks away from home and here she was, not three hours away, experiencing the most crushing wave of homesickness she'd felt since going. She wanted to talk to her mother—she wanted someone to know she was coming. She kept checking the face on her cell phone, waiting for Lorelai's call, but the battery was rapidly depleting and her charger was in the bottom of the biggest suitcase. At a quarter after nine, she sat up.
"Grandma, I know this is going to sound awful and crazy and you can totally say no if you want to, but I just really need to go home," Rory said, speaking so quickly she stumbled over her words. "I just—it's just hit me that we're back and we're here and I just really want to see my mom." There was a catch in her voice she hadn't expected. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just—I think I need to go home."
Emily's face was blank as she registered this. After a moment, she looked Rory in the eye and nodded. The pale, wan look had returned and Rory felt guilty, childish.
"I'm sorry, I'm being a baby. It's just that we're so close and everything," Rory said, "and—"
Her grandmother rose from her seat and put her arm around Rory. "No need to apologize. I understand. It has been a long trip today, and we're both tired. The prospect of spending another night in a hotel is unappealing at best. Perhaps we didn't plan this quite as well as we should have." She gave Rory a squeeze. "I'll see what I can do."
"If it's going to be a big deal—"
Emily gestured dismissively with her hands and walked to the telephone. Rory sat on the bed, open-mouthed, as Emily negotiated for a driver. She was by turns friendly, understanding, condescending, hostile, and polite. She spoke to five people before she got the answer she wanted and hung up.
"Grandma, you are good," Rory said.
"They'll be here in an hour. I think you should just leave your big suitcase here, for now, and take the carry-on with you. I'll bring down the larger one tomorrow," Emily said.
"You're not coming?" Rory asked, eyes wide.
Emily sat heavily on the bed. "At this time of night? No, Rory. I'm not coming. I haven't decided where to go yet, and I can't just appear on your mother's doorstep in the middle of the night begging for a bed."
"Sure you can!" Rory said. "People have done it before!"
But she was emphatic, and when Rory got into the car an hour later, Emily stood on the sidewalk, waving and smiling. Just before Rory got in the car, Emily embraced Rory tightly.
"I am very grateful for you, Rory," she said. She touched Rory's face, her eyes bright.
"Me too, Grandma," Rory said, kissing her cheek. "Tomorrow, we'll see you tomorrow, right?"
"I will see you tomorrow."
Rory curled into herself in the backseat, watching the city roll by her on her way back home. She closed her eyes. It was time to go, she thought.
Emily returned to the hotel room, bereft. She sat on the bed, feeling the walls press in on her. With a sigh, she undid the top button of her collar, kicked off her shoes, and moved to her suitcase. Just behind it was the hotel desk, the light on. Right in the center was a slim package. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. In the bottom left corner, in her fine, tiny letters, Rory had written "For Grandma." Emily slid the paper wrapper off carefully.
It covered a journal just the size of a volume of poetry. The cover was a rich red velvet, the pages' edges lined in gold. Emily opened it, her brow furrowed in bewilderment. The paper was thick, smooth, the color of cream. She read the inscription Rory put just inside the cover.
Dear Grandma,
I don't think I have the pull necessary to get you a spot with the circus, and feather skirts are totally out of fashion, anyways. We can't have you going to Hollywood, either, because it's just too far away. And unfortunately, the Queen of England is a hereditary post and there's not much we can do about that short of a bloody coup, and the stains are just so hard to get out that it's not worth the effort. So that leaves writing, which isn't so bad. Jorge Luis Borges said "when writers die, they become books, which is not so bad a reincarnation." I bought this for you on the last day in Rome, at that stationary store down by the Pantheon. I hope you like. I hope you use it—for whatever it is you want to write. Memoirs, poetry, romance novels, a journal; just write what you want to write, Grandma.
This trip is one of the best and most important things I've ever done, and I got to do it because of you. It's not much, but it's my way of thanking you.
Love, Rory.
Emily sat heavily, tears in her eyes. She closed the journal and hugged it to her chest, letting herself cry, just a little. After a moment, she rose, wiped her eyes, and carefully put the journal into her purse. There would be a day, perhaps, when she'd be ready for it, she thought. With that, she readied herself for bed and tried to sleep.