Chapter 2
The bell at the top of Luke's Diner door rung as Lorelai bounced inside and held the door open for Rory. Passing through she looked up at it for the first time and decided it was her most favorite noise.
"I have coffee!" Liz proclaimed, whizzing out from behind the counter and setting too large mugs of coffee down at a table.
It looked to Rory like she bad been waiting there with the mugs in hand, forsaking all other customers regardless of how much a fuss Joe kicked up at the counter.
"For us I hope!" Lorelai said, taking a seat and clasping the mug in both hands like it were made of gold.
Rory sat opposite and slowly curled her fingers around the handle.
"Wouldn't dream of teasing the Gilmores with coffee," said Liz, taking the notepad from her apron and waving a pen in her hand.
"Smart lady," said Lorelai.
"Infinitely," added Rory.
"So tell me about your first week back home. All warm welcomes I hope," Liz said, tapping her pencil against Rory's shoulder.
"The warmest," said Rory.
"In fact," said Lorelai, "Instead of a fireplace, I was thinking of just having a few of the townspeople stand by the wall in our living room continuously welcoming Rory home."
"No fear of the house burning down," Liz encouraged.
"Egg! And Bacon! On toast!" Joe bellowed behind them.
"In a second!" Liz called back brightly. She looked down at the two women and smiled, pencil ready.
"What'll it be?"
"Pancakes?" Lorelai asked Rory.
"Sounds good," Rory agreed.
"Two serves of pancakes," said Lorelai to Liz.
"Light breakfast?" Liz asked, concerned.
"This is our second breakfast," said Rory.
"Right away, then," said Liz, and just as Joe inhaled to shout again, Liz slapped her pencil against his lips.
"Egg and bacon on toast, got it, Joe!" she said and then disappeared behind the counter and into the kitchen.
Lorelai shifted in her seat, smiling at Rory.
"So," she said, "What time are you meeting Lane?"
"Twelve," said Rory. Her anxiety didn't escape her mother.
"Nervous?" she asked.
Rory found patterns in the grain plastic top of the table and tried to recognize exactly what she was feeling. Lane had tried to keep in touch. Rory had taken her calls for granted. They came less and less and without Rory even realizing it, she was not expecting them anymore. Even now as she tried to remember her best friend's phone number she couldn't complete it in her mind. The sequence of numbers, whatever she tried, sounded so foreign.
Lorelai seemed to sense everything her daughter was feeling. She reached across the table and slipped her hand over hers. Rory looked up and gathered some of her professional composure. But everything inside her was crackling. People lose touch as they grow older, establish their own lives. Rory had never believed it before leaving Chilton. The people in her life she would hold close forever. And then, in one fragile moment, that Rory died. She couldn't even pin point the exact moment. It had just happened.
Life was suddenly about ambitions and power and control, shiny cars, grand offices, the front page and the apartment with the best view. She had emptied her heart of feeling, exiled everything she cherished and cast them out, sealing herself in an impenetrable barricade of false treasures and insincere gestures to keep them from seeping back through her skin.
She filled her life with fleeting passions and heated affairs and called them meaningful. She had forgotten what it was truly like to connect with something, to connect, mind, body and soul to something, anything no more complex than a blade of grass that tickles the skin of a bare foot. She had not even truly connected with her mother until she made the call to say she was coming home.
Now, Lorelai gave her daughter's hand a squeeze.
"I know you're back," she said.
Rory's eyes lifted, hoping.
"And Lane will know it too," Lorelai assured her.
Rory took in a breath and relaxed.
"Luke and April come back on the seventh?" Rory asked.
"That was the plan," said Lorelai.
"She must have grown a lot since I last saw her," said Rory.
"A fair bit."
"Freshman at Yale," Rory nodded, and then winced silently as a thousand images of her first year at Yale crashed into her mind at once. Looming buildings, filled auditoriums, millions of books, hundreds of people, that mattress. Rory tried to slow them down. Endless parties, intimidating professors, the smell of glue. She held her breath and willed everything to stop. Sand, sun, historical documentaries, drinks, music, dancing, lights…
"Here's your pancakes!" Liz said, and Rory felt everything flutter from her mind like startled seagulls. She didn't even try to remember what she was grateful to Liz for.
"Yummy!" Lorelai chirped and attacked the golden brown syrup soaked pancake with knife and fork.
It was delicious and Rory allowed herself the simple pleasure of enjoying good tasting food. The breakfast they had tried to enjoy at home had burnt in a spectacular display of little flames and Lorelai had decided it was time for a new toaster. Rory watched her mother eat. In many ways she looked the same as she ever did. At first Rory thought the years had decided to leave her alone. As her eyes held the image of her mother's face she could see there was something about the glow of her eyes.
They were steady. Rory couldn't help but feel a gentle tremor of shock beholding such strength and calm. She felt she were looking into seas of moments in which Lorelai had sailed against violent and terrifying storms, swam furiously through raging waters, floated peacefully down tranquil streams and sunk to the bottom of deep darkened pools. Still, they glowed.
Outside Lorelai touched her daughter's arm.
"I'm going to head to the Inn. Now are you going to make your own way to Hartford or do I pick you up at home?"
"I'll make my own way," said Rory.
"Okay. Say hi to Lane for me," said Lorelai, and she went hopping off the curb and was soon driving off in the old jeep.
"I don't even know what I'm going to say to Lane," Rory sighed aloud and then smiled because she hadn't spoken to herself in years. It was funny, she had lived alone for so long but had not enjoyed her own company since her sophomore year of Yale. Sitting alone in her room, exhausted after digging her way out of a grave of assignments, simple times when she still held onto that delicate notion that she was still Rory.
She made her way to Doose's Market and as she stepped onto the road to cross the square she could see Kim's Antiques, the yard scattered with the same old chairs, tables and benches and baskets as they had been seven years ago. She was supposed to be meeting Lane at the mall but she still had a few hours to while by. Smiling, Rory crossed the square, her chest suddenly fluttering with an unfocused compulsion.
She pushed open the door.
"Everything half off!"
Rory grinned and shook her head. Everything was half off seven years ago.
"Really? That's an incredible deal," Rory called into the maze of tangled old wood.
As she moved carefully through the jungle, relishing the smell of the ancient mahogany and balsa, a figure suddenly turned out in front of her. Gray was claiming her hair and time was gripping her skin but flames still burned as brilliantly in her eyes as Rory remembered them.
"Rory?" Mrs Kim breathed, surprised.
"Hey, Mrs Kim," Rory said, smiling.
"I heard you were back in town. Something about a fancy silver car and four hundred dollar pair of shoes," Mrs Kim snapped disapprovingly.
"I do have a fancy silver car but these shoes were only thirty dollars," Rory assured her, lifting her heal. Mrs Kim assessed her footwear critically and then her eyes flashed up at her again.
"You reek of city. Horrid place. Corrupts the soul. You look corrupted," the old woman sneered, disgusted.
Rory nodded.
"I feel corrupted," she said.
Mrs Kim blinked at the honesty and her small but solid frame softened. A hardened spirit, Mrs Kim could respect a confession. She glared Rory up and down, burning her all over not with loathing but something more compassionate.
"Come. I will make us some tea," she said finally.
"Thank you," said Rory.
It might have been strange to sit with the mother of her best friend, alone in the tiny kitchen still in the smell of herbs, spices and tofu. Rory found it as comforting as she expected it to be. Mrs Kim poured the pale green liquid into a small cup and Rory watched the steam roll up to the ceiling.
"You are meeting Lane today," said Mrs Kim, as she sat down. There was a lot in her voice and Rory knew she had to be careful.
"At the mall, yes," she replied.
A silence ticked by. Rory sipped her tea.
"I shouldn't have let today drift so far," she said. Mrs Kim looked up at her and then smiled. Rory felt more stone crack and fall from her shoulders.
The look in the old woman's eyes said that she knew Rory was talking about more than meeting her daughter. After tea Mrs Kim followed Rory to the front door and hung in the doorway as Rory stood, admiring the yard. Rory smiled and turned to face her.
"I'd like to buy something," she said. The flames in Mrs Kim's eyes danced eagerly.
"What are you after?" she asked.
Rory looked around.
"Everything here," said Rory, gesturing to the antiques that littered the yard.
"Is all half off," Mrs Kim told her.
"I'll take it all," said Rory, and before Mrs Kim could perfect the look of shock that had sprung on her features, Rory held up her hand.
"But I'm not going to take it with me. I want you to keep everything the way it is," she said.
Mrs Kim softened again, understanding. Rory needed something to be stable. She needed to be responsible for it.
"Very well," she said, then she chirped, "I will get the calculator!"
Rory waited in the yard. She tried to think of the last time she had visited the Kim's Antique shop. Instead a quake of nerves rumbled in her chest as she thought about the Chilton school reunion. She tried not to let faces flood her mind. She wanted to see them, but not before she deserved to.