chapter six

xv.

The first time that she had cried in Luke's presence had been on her daughter's thirteenth birthday. Now there was a day that she wasn't proud of -- neither for Christopher's behavior nor for herself in hoping that he'd actually do what he'd promised his daughter.

They'd been planning it for weeks: Christopher would drive up from where ever in the hell it was that he was staying at that week and pick up Rory; they'd go to Hartford for dinner and be back by nine-thirty, an extra half hour after Rory's regular bed time.

And of course Christopher called from an airport terminal in Atlanta, Georgia, saying that his flight would be delayed and that he'd have to be back in the morning anyway to work, so he'd just see her the next time he came to Stars Hollow.

"And I'll FedEx her the gift."

Only Christopher wouldn't make the trip out for almost a year, and even then it would be with a car full of people whom neither Lorelai or Rory knew, and he couldn't stay long. But on the day of Rory's birthday, all Lorelai could see was that today he was not there, and that it was this day that he had promised.

Luke had noticed her drawn face as she entered the diner. As he poured her cup of coffee, he asked her, "You okay?"

"Just about as okay as my kid is going to be when I pick her up this afternoon."

"Oh, hey," he said. "You mean Chris isn't going to show up?"

Rory had been talking excitedly about her father taking her to Hartford for weeks before her birthday. Lorelai was certain that Luke knew the itinerary better than Christopher by now -- more than Christopher had probably ever known it.

"No," and Lorelai'd looked darkly down into her cup of coffee. "I just can't believe that I let myself believe his promises and his lies again. You'd think I'd learn the first time that he let me down -- or even the first time he let Rory down. But of course I don't."

Luke had awkwardly arranged the sugar canisters as she spoke. She'd known that he was giving her an ear to confide in and trying not to have the appearance of interest to anyone around them. She wasn't certain how she knew; she simply understood it.

"And of course," she'd continued, "it has to be her birthday. He can't break any other date with my daughter -- no, he has to promise her a birthday, and then he takes it away." She sniffled a bit and felt immensely more stupid for having done so. "I mean, she just wanted to be with him."

There was no one else in the diner, and so Luke came to her and took her hand.

"C'mere," he said gruffly, pulling her along and grabbing a handful of napkins as they passed a dispenser. Getting her around the counter, he brought her to the bottom of the stairs and set her down. "We can talk here until it's time for you to get Rory."

That was when Lorelai'd smiled up at him through already watery eyes and begun to bawl in earnest. She'd met the kind, considerate piece of Luke alongside the shy and awkward bits of him that afternoon. He'd been the nicest thing ever, she thought, for taking her away from any prying eyes; he'd been young and cute when he'd squirmed as she'd buried her head into his should and cried.

It took only five minutes, and when she was finished, no other customers had even entered the diner. Lorelai gave Luke an embarrassed, grateful look and asked for some water to dip her napkins in so that she could wash her face. After these ministrations, she looked just as composed as she had when she'd come into the diner.

"Thank you," Lorelai'd said. "You don't know what that means to me."

"Any time."

Before, Luke had been the diner man to tease and torment; he had been a willing and distant ear for Rory's chattering; he had provided her with coffee. That day, something in their relationship changed, and Lorelai went from knowing him as Luke's diner guy and as Luke.

Of course, thinking back on it, Lorelai likes to wonder if the first small bit of love was created for her that day -- if not the full, blooming love that she shared with him now, at least the respect and appreciation of a friend. Time tempers thoughts and true feelings; she could no sooner tell you how she'd felt than she could tell you how she breathed.

xvi.

It was the apple that did her in.

This was the second time that she'd sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried because of what a little bit of pee on a stick could tell her. This was the second time alone. It was a stupid little plastic stick that both ruined and blessed her life the first time; the second time it was even smaller. Lorelai felt insignificant.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

Though Lorelai knew that it was impossible, she couldn't help but feel that if she had not enjoyed the bread pudding so much, she would have not started eating apples again out of habit. If she had not begun once more with the apples, she almost believed that she wouldn't be standing here today pregnant.

Lorelai should always check the apple for poison.

She touched her stomach with the tip of her fingers, thinking about how it would harden and swell until it was large enough to carry several pounds of little person there inside of her. She imagined where she'd be in eight or nine months time -- it would be in late May, and Lorelai would be thinking achingly of bathing suits that she'd never wear and shorts for the hot days already upon her.

Lorelai would go through spring, the busiest time for the rich parents and their young children on break, unable to work at her best. Even by Christmas she would show, and the pictures would reflect the four month belly just beginning to stick out of her shirts.

Her breasts had swollen and gotten tender with Rory; so much so that by the end of the pregnancy she had wished that she hadn't had any breasts, the very first time since she'd learned of the pregnancy that she'd thought that.

Lorelai tossed the three sticks into the trash can, then carefully washed her hands. As she began on her face, she thought, this is what Luke wants. She had known this for some time; Luke wanted a baby, but he was willing to wait. She turned the faucet to cold and plashed water on her face. Would it be so wrong to do something that would make Luke happy?

And unbidden images showed themselves then of possibilities: a little girl with the bluest eyes that a father could give and tiny brown curls; a little boy with a skinned knee, doing an appropriate hop-of-pain (Lorelai recognized it as one of her own). Both, in her thoughts, stayed away from the grass.

Lorelai thought about how happy she was with Sookie's children. Davy and Belle were the world's brightest and cutest babies born since a Bush had taken office. She loved playing with them, spoiling them, and taking them aside to whisper silly secrets to. Having her own child would be like that a little.

A very little. She sighed, thinking, it's not like I can change it now. Lorelai had to buck up, take it all (the good and the bad). A kid would never be unwelcome to her, only unexpected.

Luke wanted a child. Lorelai was having one. It was only natural that she square her shoulders and put a smile on her face.

xvii.

She wasted no time in going to the diner and grabbing Luke.

"We need to talk," she said.

Luke was standing, pad out and pencil ready, in front of Kirk and Lulu, both of whom were pursuing the menu as if they did not order the same exact thing every single time. For once, Lorelai was more impatient than Luke in this process, and she snapped at Kirk to hurry up and order, for God's sake.

"Double cheeseburger with no cheese, a coke, and fries," sulked Kirk, and Lulu ordered the same cheerfully.

Luke had barely given Caesar the order ("Ah! Kirk and Lulu are here!") when Lorelai tore up the stairs with him, her hand clutching his so tightly that, by the time they entered the old apartment, his knuckles hurt.

The apartment looked much the same, though quite a bit had changed. There was no bed in here anymore, and all the appliances save the stove and refrigerator had been transplanted to the new house. However, the essential bachelor feel of the place remained, as did the chairs upon which they both sat.

Now that she had him here, Lorelai wasn't sure how to begin.

"Girls are so lucky," she said, putting to words the first thing that came to her mind. "When they jump, they have boobs to keep the joy alive."

"What?"

"I'm just saying, I like it when my breasts bounce."

"Lorelai," said Luke, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, you've taken me upstairs by saying it's important; maybe you could tell me what I'm here for."

Lorelai generally was one to soak a band-aide in a hot bath and slowly easing it off with a generous amount of soap and the speed of a three-toed sloth. It was easier than taking an edge and pulling -- less painful and less irritating. There would be no red welt under any bandage she removed.

"I'm having a baby."

Today she was in the mood for yanking.

Lorelai watched Luke's face, wondering, did I misread him? Did Luke want a child as much as she had thought all those weeks ago, or had it merely been a flight of fancy for Lorelai to assume that they'd been on two different wavelengths concerning the matter?

It turned out that it was only shock that kept him quiet.

"A baby," said Luke, the edges of his mouth twitching upward into what would soon be a smile. Lorelai smiled as well as she reached over and traced the path his lips were taking. "A baby?"

"A baby," she replied. "A baby, a baby, a baby. Luke Danes, you and I are going to have a baby!"

Luke picked her up then, and she was spun around and around until she was too dizzy to breath. He was laughing -- Luke Danes was laughing a thick, excited laugh that filled the entire room and made Lorelai feel as if she'd done something more wonderful than get knocked up. He put her down on the floor again, and she swayed to have two feet firmly planted.

He steadied her.

"Okay," he asked, his two hands cupping her face.

"Yeah."

They kissed, and the feel of her body pressed into his was something that Lorelai relished all the more because, she was aware, it would soon be disappearing. She laced her fingers through Luke's hair and kissed him more intensely, putting all the fierce good-byes that she had into it. Good-bye, Banana Republic.

They broke apart, both gasping a little bit for air.

"So," she said, smoothing her clothes, "I've disposed of the three tests, I've told you, and I've washed my hands. In a different order, of course. I think we should discuss some things about the pregnancy."

Saying the last two words made her feel a queer sort of happiness, and Lorelai let herself fall into the feeling until she was certain it was an abyss. There was no halfway -- it was all or nothing.

"Okay."

"Right. Um --" and Lorelai searched for the words to express herself. "I don't want to tell my family yet. I don't want anybody to know yet."

"Lorelai, everybody's going to know. You took a home pregnancy test. You took three. Our trash man might miss one -- maybe -- but never three."

"No! No one will! I did a marvelous thing. I used a room at the inn. The guests had already left, and the trash hadn't been emptied yet. I was like that chick on Alias. Super spy. The trash man is just going to think that one of our guests is knocked up!"

Lorelai didn't well with the clever and witty sayings -- knocked up came to mind -- when she was under this sort of pressure. She gave herself a deprecating smirk, and bowed her head to hide it from Luke.

"Okay. We'll keep it quiet."

Lorelai wanted to explain her reasons in the most honest way possible. She lifted her head and ran her fingers through her hair, thinking about how much easier it was when her parents had gotten referrals to fat farms than it was going to be having a town help her through her pregnancy.

"This is ... this is ours, our secret, and I want to keep it that way. I want it to stay special. When it's between us, nothing can ruin it, you know?

Luke took her hand.

"I'm so happy."

"I know," she said. "Trust me, I know."

xviii.

Not long after, Lorelai came home one evening to find Luke at the breakfast table with the baby magazine that she'd brought so that she could find something for Sookie. She hadn't yet gone through it, though it was almost two months later.

Next to the magazine lay several pages of white paper, some with scrawling and numbers on them, others still blank.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Luke looked embarrassed.

"I'm sketching a crib."

"Why?" The word was more exhaled than said; Lorelai bent low over his work and looked with amazement at what Luke had produced. On the page he was working on, there were three or four different cribs.

"I thought I'd make one," he said, and Lorelai fell in love again like a feather coming from the sky. For her he was soft and gentle as he never was with any other. This was her husband and the father of her child. "And a cradle. Babies like cradles when they're little. Jess did."

"Oh, Luke," and she reached for his hand. "I love you so much."

He turned to her and kissed her temple briefly. "I love you too."

Lorelai decided that now was not the best time to tell him that she was going to be picking the color for the crib (white was so last year). In fact, she thought, she would probably let Luke build all the things he wanted for the baby's room, but she would definitely be decorating it -- and none of that silly green-is-the-new-pink bull that Sherry had spouted the year before.

It occurred to her that she was looking forward to sewing bedcovers and curtains for the baby's room, and Lorelai realized that within only a week or so, she had begun to think of it as a baby, not just in the abstract but as their child.

She was still terrified that she would screw up, but she was more anxious to meet this new person in her.

"Life rocks," said Lorelai. "I've got everything I've ever needed here with me right now."

"You need your family."

For a moment, Lorelai almost got upset -- but she couldn't really manage to make the effort, and so she settled on a somber but gentle explanation of her hurts to her husband.

"I have you, Luke," she said, because that was all she felt she had to say. "I have you, and I have this new one." She gestured at her midsection. "We are a family. My mother and father and Rory are playing at it. They don't understand how to love someone like we love. What we have is special."

"You know Rory loves you, Lorelai." She knew, but she didn't answer. "And you know that Emily and Richard do too. You know that like you know you love them."

"It's a different sort. It's a broken sort."

"If it's broken," Luke said, "it's because you're missing."

Lorelai sighed, not sure if she agreed or disagreed.

xix.

"I helped Grandma plan her winter greenhouse today."

Paint chip samples lay scattered across the kitchen table. Lorelai shuffled them experimentally as she spoke, looking for colors that would go well together to paint the walls and borders of the room that she had Luke had decided was to be the babies. It was one of the three upstairs bedrooms (discounting the master), and it shared a bath and walk-in closet with another room. The third and final room too was connected to a bathroom, though that bath was also accessible from the hall.

There was a window seat overlooking the back yard where she imagined a small child curled up with a book on a rainy afternoon.

"Use some Nu-skin on your paper cuts," Lorelai said, shoving aside some verdant chips rather viciously. Underneath them was a paper with a note to herself on it: her first doctor's appointment was scheduled for the next week, but Lorelai realized with a start that she would have to call and cancel. There was a convention that week at the Dragonfly.

"In the garden, she wore a toque."

Lorelai laughed, images filling her head. Her mother had rarely gardened personally when she'd been a child -- she preferred instead to plan it out and let someone else execute her strategies -- but when she had deemed to enter the garden, she'd worn enough cloth for a beekeeper.

"Lemme guess. Blue with white flowers?

"Yeah," and her daughter sounded two parts amused and one part curious. "How did you know?"

"Oh, Rory, how well I remember that toque."

She wondered then if maybe she ought to stop talking to Rory like this; it probably wasn't healthy for her, and she had a better, less insane alternative in the form of speaking to her unborn child. But she couldn't stop -- for one, it felt like abandoning Rory to just ignore her for a new kid; for another, Lorelai had come to depend on these one-sided dialogues to keep her commonsensical.

"I'll just talk to you both," she whispered to herself.