November, 2005
Liz has a habit of calling Luke once or twice a week, usually when she and TJ get into some snit and need moderation or third-person intervention. Sometimes, TJ would really piss her off and then she keeps Luke on the phone for an hour, for what says is a "bouncing of ideas" and "mental cleansing" except it's torture for him to have to listen to the excruciating details of somebody else's fights. So when he finds 4 messages from her on his machine after work, he shakes his head at the phone, and grabs a beer from the fridge. It is a summer day, the daylight hours persist late into the evening, and he'd be able to grease his garage door before going to bed.
The phone disturbs his carefully constructed silence in no more than 10 minutes, and he resigns himself to having to deal with whatever the latest crisis is.
"Where have you been all day?" She screeches at him and he holds the receiver a couple of inches away from his ear.
"Working. Did TJ plug up the toilet again?" He asks dryly.
"That's Jess level humor, big brother."
He doesn't argue with her point.
"Listen, Lorelai came into the shop today."
Luke stiffens immediately and feels his teeth grinding against one another in response to the stress he feels.
"And?"
"It's the first time she's come in."
"Okay, Liz, this is worth 5 phone calls, how?"
"Oh, get off it. I know you've wanted to ask about her for months. People and their stupid pride, that's the problem."
He gets irritated now, angry that she's called him out on it and angry that she's right and angry that now he'd be thinking about the stunning brunette with bright blue eyes for the remainder of the night.
"Whatever, Liz."
"She left me something for you. A check. Thirty thousand dollars! Yeah, that's right. When did you give her that much money?"
"It doesn't matter. Why did she give you the money? I told her when I left I didn't need it back and didn't want it either."
"She said she didn't feel right keeping it, she said if things should be neatly over between you, then this is part of that and that she knew you wouldn't accept it, so she had one drawn up in my name."
"Well, I don't want it." He says petulantly.
"You don't want it." She repeats.
"No. Whatever, give it back to her. She knows this is unnecessary."
Liz shakes her head, frustrated with his black and white vision of the world, and even more frustrated that she's now personally involved but can't do anything constructive about it.
"I can't give it back, as she pointed out, since it's a certified check and it's already out of her account! You want me to just dump the money in the garbage?"
"No, you know what, this is ridiculous."
"I agree." She shoots back at him, and he routinely ignores her.
"Cash the check and draw up another one, give it back to her."
The continue to bicker for a few more minutes, and Liz spends most of the time not-so-subtly trying to convince Luke that he is being hasty, that he's been hasty for months now and that sometimes you have to swallow your pride and put yourself out there. He ignores her implications and suggestions and tells her in no uncertain terms that he is doing fine and that contrary to popular belief, his life didn't end the day Lorelai Gilmore left it, or he left her, to be more exact.
Liz eventually agrees to do as he's asked, and the next day, she cons TJ into going to Hartford with her, to their bank, to renegotiate their mortgage rate, because she knows he'll whine to no end if he knew what the real reason behind the trip is. She softens him up by taking him to a lunch buffet with all you can eat pasta, and once he's washed the tortellini down with a couple of Heinekens, he's almost agreeable while they stand in line at the bank teller.
On the way home, she tells him the whole sordid tale and he grows irritated with the evening traffic and how high their fuel consumption is when Liz insists on blasting the air conditioning all the way.
She drives them to Lorelai's house and instructs him to stay in the car. His mood can't help the situation any, and it's already more awkward than it should be.
Lorelai opens her door soon after the second knock. She's in a pair of grey exercise pants riding low on her hips and a tiny baby blue tank top that Luke would surely appreciate.
Liz hates the nonsense of this all.
"Hi, Lorelai." She smiles politely and Lorelai sees Luke's features on Liz' face.
"Wow, Liz, this is a surprise."
"Yeah, listen, I can't stay long, TJ is waiting for me in the car, probably ready to blow a gasket, so I should get going, but I just wanted to drop this off for you."
She hands her the new certified cheque, now in Lorelai's name and then watches Lorelai study it carefully for a minute.
"What? Why?"
"He didn't want the money back." Liz tells her apologetically. "You know how Luke is, once he gets something into his head, he's sticking with it and there is no convincing him otherwise."
"It was a loan." Lorelai insists quietly.
"I'm sorry."
"I don't want to be indebted."
"He doesn't think you are."
"But it was a loan." Lorelai tries again and her voice is weak.
"Maybe it wasn't to him." Liz tells her as gently as she can. "Maybe he's trying to atone for his mistakes? Once he broke up with a girl in high school and he felt bad because the next day she was crying in the cafeteria, so he walked over to her and told her to punch him in the stomach so she would feel better."
"Did she?"
"I think, yeah." Liz chuckles. "He broke your heart, just take the money."
Lorelai looks at Liz, unable to stand it anymore, unwilling to allow the sham to continue. She swipes angrily at her tears with the back of her hand and tries to steady her voice.
"He didn't."
"What?"
"I slept with Christopher. Rory's father. Before Luke left. I broke your brother's heart. Mine too."
"But I thought…"
"That he didn't want to get married?"
"He said so." Liz adds, confused.
"He was trying to protect me. He didn't want people talking about me. I'm really sorry, Liz. I shouldn't have let him do it."
"No." Liz agrees.
They look at each other, two women who love the same man in different ways, trying to find some middle ground, with Lorelai silently begging for forgiveness. It is about to get granted when TJ comes running up the walk and front steps.
"Okay, maybe you girls like being in a soap opera, but some of us have things to do."
"TJ, I'll be there in a second." Liz turns around and tells him exasperated.
"We're going." He says with a degree of finality. "And Lorelai, the check is for $29,992, because the bank wanted 8 bucks for the fee. So I don't think I should pay for it. Also, it cost me a lot of gas to get to Hartford."
"TJ!" Liz screams out his name in a warning.
"What? This isn't Junior High. I'm not the brightest bulb in the room, sweets, but at least I don't play broken telephone with my women."
He turns to a stunned Lorelai. "This whole stupid town has been talking about the two of you. Enough! Get him back or shut up. Keep the money or drive your ass down and give it back to him. This isn't Dr. Phil!"
"TJ, go back in the car." Liz commands and he throws his arms in the air in protest but then stalks down the front lawn.
Lorelai shakes her head at Liz apologetically.
"I'm sorry. He's right. I'm really sorry."
She turns around and disappears into her house before Liz can say another word.
July, 2009
It is a hot and unseasonably dry day for late July. They both still sit there sweating, but it's because the sun beat hard against the back of their necks, where the wisps of hair start to stick to the nape. The game unfolds on the pitch below, the stands are full enough, but not completely sold out. There are lots of young kids in large groups, probably day camps, a few young families and the odd couple on a cheap date. And then the two of them, oddly mismatched and not really talking, only one of them paying attention to the score and the base hits.
"Thanks for the waffle bat."
"Yeah."
"He hasn't yet tried to kill me in my sleep, but it's good to know the tool's there when he needs it someday."
"And you and Amy?"
He shrugs, Luke exhales.
"You weren't meant to be." He guesses.
"Hey, if you want to resort to an overused cliché, be my guest."
"Oh, cut the crap, Jess. You only get to be a teenage rebel so long. You've got a kid now."
"And nobody says I have to stay with his mother."
"Nobody did say."
"Then don't worry about it."
Luke shakes his head, sensing the end of this conversation is soon approaching. Does he keep at it or give up while he's slightly ahead? He's got no idea, but it does strike him that there are other men there in the stands, with their sons and their grandsons and their best buddies and their eyes are peeled on the players and their fingers are tightly wrapped around the beer they're holding, which has started to perspire on the outside of the large plastic cups.
He envies women at that moment. For thousands of years, they've cooked together, heaven help him for associating that with them first. He can't figure out why that should be so, as his mother died so long ago he had no recollection of her meals, Liz could barely muster up a box of no-name mac and cheese and Lorelai may as well have disconnected the electrical supply to the room of her house loosely called the kitchen. The three most important women in his life and none fit his backwards notion of femininity. Nonetheless, he imagines women around a hearth with large earthenware pots, as a brothy soup bubbles over. They share stories, old ones passed through their oral traditions and new ones that will be old someday. They have babies and they raise babies, their own and their neighbours'. They sew clothes together, knit sweaters from tangled balls of yarn, dry the laundry with their bare hands, squeezing droplets out one by one. They heal each other, help their sisters out, stay with their mothers as they lay dying in their beds. They talk about silly things, go shoe shopping, make girly pastries with pink frosting, buy overpriced bath beads and fruity shampoos, braid each other's hair and cry in each other's arms when their hearts get broken again and again.
All men have is beer and a baseball game and no way to relate. And he doesn't want to talk endlessly nor does it think it's necessary to overanalyze every last thing, but he envies them either way.
"You going to see her now?" Jess finally asks when the crowd is asked to participate in the 7th inning stretch.
"Nah. I'll go at the end of September. They're busy now, I'd just be a pain in their ass."
"Delivering another waffle bat?"
"They're having a girl. You didn't know?"
"Liz didn't say."
Luke raises his eyebrows at Jess using her first name.
"She's still your mother."
"And we talk every Christmas." Jess shoots back, glancing at Luke sideways.
"Long time no see."
"When's the last time you've been up there?"
"I'm going in a couple of months." Luke says, ignoring the original question. "For the Christening."
"Right."
"You should come along. Bring Danny with you, show him off."
"Not my style. Not my kind of town."
"It's been a long time, Jess."
"Is it your kind? I don't see your return address boasting a Stars Hollow zip code."
"Yeah, well. You know your Mom would love to see her grandson."
"Maybe."
Luke doesn't bother hiding his smile.
"Yeah?"
"Thanksgiving? You going back then?"
"I'm not sure."
"Too much Connecticut?"
"It just might be." Luke agrees. "But if you want to go, I could do that – go with you."
"You know you'll have to share a room with me and a 2 year old, right?"
"He's a great kid."
Luke can see the pride in Jess' eyes, and he doesn't comment on it or tell Jess how calm he feels about the way he's stuck around, worked the night shift to pay for half the diapers.
The game draws to an end and they make loose plans for November. Luke promises he'll let Jess know if the town is still unbearably quirky and therefore best avoided, especially around major holidays. They walk on down to the parking lot and stand beside Luke's car while the other people empty out in a hurry, hoping to beat the traffic on the way to the freeway.
"I'll take the train. No sense in you paying the toll twice."
"I don't mind."
"No, really. I like it at night."
"When all the weirdos come out?"
Jess nods in Luke's direction, tosses him the free baseball hat they got with admission and heads down to the main road.
"You should have one." He says when he's still within hearing range.
"Sure, thanks."
"A kid, not a hat."
Luke laughs shortly at that surprising suggestion.
"I'm no Larry King."
"You're not that old."
"Getting there."
"She's not that old either." Jess throws back and disappears past the ramp.