What happened in the aftermath I don't remember quite as much. I've been told that Jess and Lorelai sat in the kitchen in defensive positions. Lorelai, her respect for her daughter shattered, trying to still stick up for her, while Jess tried to tell her who her daughter was. They didn't see eye-to-eye, and sometime after I was in my bed, trying to think happy thoughts, my Dad put on his coat and walked out of the house. Wondering the same haunts he used to when he was a teenager, smoking and drinking from a bottle he had bought at the twenty-four hour mini mart. Luke discovered him on the bridge, his shoes dangling in the water, a cloud of smoke over his head and well on his way to being hammered out of his gourd.
Luke having been a briefed of the situation when he had come home to Lorelai, sat down gently beside him.
"She doesn't love me and she doesn't love Addy or Le-Le, and I don't know why, what did I do to chase her so far away?"
Luke didn't know, Luke didn't know the 24 year old man in front of him, he known a young man, a teenager who had the same name and looked similar, but this man was different he was more responsible, more open, Luke couldn't put his finger on it. He was a father.
Luke rubbed Jess' shoulder, and took a gulp from the bottle sitting on the deck.
"I can't say Jess, people change and you and Rory have changed. I read her articles, I can't believe the person writing with such precision, and emotion is the same little girl I fed donuts to in my diner. I see her in real life and she's not the same either, she's less like her Mom, more unhappy, more serious. You, are different, I didn't recognize you at the airport, I didn't hear from you in six years, and in that six years I tried to forget that you were out there somewhere with a kid. I expected you to be the same; I don't know what you've been through practically raising Addy and Leigh by yourself. You have grown apart." Jess took another swig of the bottle and dug in his pocket for another cigarette.
"A thousand times I wanted to call you. A thousand times I hesitated. I-- I don't know anything." He rubbed his head, ran his fingers through his hair.
"Maybe tomorrow things will be better, being here having to deal with family its stressful, maybe tomorrow things will be different."
I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you, that in the morning things we not different. In the morning, Jess sat at the kitchen table nursing his hangover with a large cup of coffee as he and Rory glared at each other. Eye locked in pure hatred over toast and eggs. She left later in the afternoon to return to the Democratic Convention in Washington.
Three days later, we left Stars Hollow. A week after that Mom came home, they tried to make the best of it, they wrote their respective articles, Jess read his books, and Rory went to the office. After the article was published, she went off to Poland on another mission of perfection journalism and she never came back. She came back to England, she published her articles, she travelled the world, but she never came back to our apartment in Islington, she never came back to Le-Le or me. She never sent cards, or called. Just like that, my Mom went to Poland and fell off the face of the earth as far as we were concerned. I don't think its mean to say I didn't miss her; everything was the same as it always had been. She was never there. But there were moments, moments that I think everyone has, where life seems dark and sad, and all you want to do is climb in your Mom's lap and have her tell you, everything will be okay. Despite my Dad being unconditionally there for me, he could not be my Mom in those moments and in those few moments that were far between I missed her, with an ache in my heart. But for every moment I yearned for my Mom and was left alone and sad, there were fifty with my Dad that left my life light and happy. He has an easy smile, a good ear for listening and always something that is worthwhile to learn.
My Dad took a weekly review with the Guardian to make ends meet and became a leader for the English people on what books were worthy of reading and which weren't. Little excerpts of his reviews appeared on the back of dust covers and paperback novels, displaying below: Jess Mariano, The Guardian. He too, in his own way, had become a success. He read for a living and he didn't want anymore than that.
In the meantime, I grew up. I went from being a short six year old kid with cropped brown hair and eyes that were too big, to being a sombre eight year old who would rather read than make friends, who swapped letters with his great grandfather, and who continued to do so, until the sombre man with the bow tie died from a heart attack at the age of 71, who's best friend was his Dad. To a serious ten year old who loved to play football, who made friends kicking the ball around in the park, who got his first crush on a girl and who read at night underneath the covers with a flashlight. At twelve, I was a moody kid who loved to escape. Escape school, by wondering the streets and sitting in random parks reading and listening to music, who would kick a football up against a wall for hours just to hear it pounding. At twelve, I was angry, angry at the world. I was aggressive and unenthusiastic but I guess that's all a part of growing up. My Dad left me alone when I needed to be alone and was there when I needed him even if it was only to watch the world cup on TV, or talk about books or crank up music louder than our neighbours enjoyed. My Dad was still my best friend.
I looked back on my life, I looked up my Mom's address and went to her place and peeked in the windows and to find no one there, barley a trace of life, other than the mounting stack of mail sitting under the mail slot. I never went back. I wrote voraciously and didn't care about proper grammar, didn't care about much that constituted as rules.
At 14, I had grown into myself, if that's possible, I grew out my hair, lived with my ear phones around my neck and a readily supply of music, I had a backpack full of books that weren't for school, I wore my uniform tie loose, and pants that were too big for me, I fell in love with girls at first sight, but were too shy to talk to them. I had a group of tight knit mates that gathered to sit on the brick wall at my school, smoke and discuss all things important. Namely footy, music, and girls. We laughed, and I smiled, we drank stolen cans of beer on weekends and wondered around the streets of Islington, talking too loud and a little bit drunk. Some called us punks and we wore it as a badge of honour. My Dad and I fought, we fought as father and son about marks at school, the moral character of my friends and drinking, and we fought as best friends about the best Kerouac novel, British punk music and the girl I refused to ask out. I was a teenager and he was my Dad.
All the while Le-Le was there, not in the background by any means, for that girl is not meant to blend into the background. She's bombastic, loud and happy. I love her, she's my sister and I would do anything for her. When she starts dating, I'll have to harass her boyfriends because they'll have to know that when it comes to Le-Le its strictly a 'break her heart, I'll break your neck' basis, but then again I just may have to get in line because I'm sure my Dad will be willing to crack a few skulls in the name of his little girl. Le-Le is passionate about everything that she does, like our whole family she loves to read; she'll spend hours cuddled up in a papisan chair with books of all genres, to best sellers, to Jane Austen, to 'the Lord of the Rings' and 'Harry Potter.' But what she loves best is dance. When she was seven my Dad took her to see the Broadway production of Cats. She came home, wanting to become a dancer and she hasn't changed her mind yet. She'll dance in our front room when the light is pouring in, she'll dance glowing and watch her shadow and imagine that she's on the stage. She loves ballet, and jazz, and of course like a Mariano can name every 'important' punk band circa 1973-1979. She's good I'll give her that, and she's going to dance for an audience one day.
When I was 14, we moved, moved away from the house we'd lived for 11 years, away from the country I called my home, away from my friends, and away from my school. My Dad was offered a job, by the New York Times to be one of their top reviewers, to be one of the leader reviewers in the world. The offer had come before; he had always denied it, always stayed where he was, pleased being who and where he was.
One day driving back home from a business meeting in inner London, on a curvy dark street he was broad sided by a lorry, he spun out of control and came to a stop a centimetre from the centre lane. He told me later, had he put his foot on the break a second later, turned the wheel a second slower, he would have been struck in a head on collision by a silver Acura with a silver haired businessman talking into his mobile and going seventy km/h around a corner he couldn't he see. My Dad's thoughts as he spun, came to a stop, spoke to the police, watched his car being carted off to a garage, as he caught a cab home were on Le-Le and I. If he died, he pondered, what would happen to us? Would we become wards of the state, or shipped off to relatives in a far distant Stars Hollow whom we only knew, through the occasional letter and Christmas present. Who knew nothing about us, and vice versa. It chilled my Dad to the bones; he hired a solicitor and wrote a will. However, that didn't calm him, so that when the New York Times again made their offer, he accepted on a trial basis.
We moved against my wishes, against Le-Le's wishes. Tempers were high and my Dad and I didn't speak for nearly a week, but finally he sat me down and explained his reasoning, recounted his near death experience, and told me he was putting the majority of our things in storage, just in case we wanted to come back. Just in case we hated it.
We still got on the plane with less than amicable terms, Le-Le trying to do her best to keep us happy, sitting between us. Assuring us, and stating all the great things that could come of moving to America.
Looking back forth between us, she patted our knees and said. "It could be a total Kerouac experience."
I didn't really listen. I suppose it became obvious when again the three of us stood in the Hartford airport awkward with a cart of luggage looking at Lorelai and Luke and Lorelai took one look at me, in my shaggy black hair, and my dark eyes starring ruthlessly at them, and stated:
"Good god Jess, he's you." My Dad and I took one look at each other and burst out laughing. Le-Le eyeing us suspiciously, to see whether or not we were happy or just crazy. It still wasn't easy, living in Luke's small apartment, feeling as if we were living on top of each other.