3. Mothers and Fathers
Rory turned on her bare heel and walked–drifted–back to the apartment. She felt drained, though tears continued to spill heedlessly from her eyes. She sat on the couch and automatically reached out to grab a coffee mug on the table, emptying it. She grimaced, realizing that she drank the cold dregs of coffee left over from the previous night. Automatically, she picked up the phone and punched the auto-dial to her mother's cellphone. She was running on auto-pilot.
"Rory?"
"Mom…?" She barely choked out the word, and that was all she could do. "How lame is, 'say hi to William and Harry for meeeeh…'?" She began sobbing again in earnest.
"Oh, hun."
Lorelei kept silent as her daughter cried at the other end, inwardly thanking the gods for the time given her to collect herself. She wished she didn't have to talk to anyone at all. Not now. Or ever, she thought with regret, looking at the unfamiliar green of the bathroom tiles, the unfamiliar face in the mirror. Chris's mirror. Just 10 minutes, she steeled herself. Ten minutes to be the mother of my heartbroken daughter.
"So I guess a serious wallow is in order. Shall I have Ben and Jerry ship 20 pints of their strongest stuff to your address?" Lorelei said gently, after Rory calmed herself.
"It's not a break-up, Mom. Though a wallow would be good, actually. At least I know I'd feel better. But this…this I don't know how to deal with. It seems so illogical," Rory continued, as fresh tears erupted, "He's not even going half-way around the world, not like he'll be in Afghanistan or Timbuktu. It's just London, London! Six hours away. Less on the Concorde. It's not like I couldn't live without him… Paris would be ashamed of me if she saw me like this. God, I've got to get a grip."
"Rory, Rory, take a breath daughter of mine! Give yourself a break. You have every reason to feel sad about this. Logan going to London for a year is no small thing. This is the stuff of epic love stories. Pop in An Affair To Remember and I'll be there in a jiff to pass the Kleenex." She needed a serious wallow herself, Lorelei thought inwardly. An escape.
"Gee thanks, Mom. I feel better already."
"Seriously, kid. You're crossing a threshold here, both of you. A lot of things are going to change. You are mourning the passing of a chapter in your lives. And you have every right to mourn."
"I guess I am. 'Cause it's been happy Mom, you know? Living together like this, being able to take care of him after his accident. We felt so…cocooned. But its passed us by, it's been too short... everything happened so fast since we got back together, and now..."
"Are you a bit worried about, you know, this being a long-distance relationship...?" Lorelei's voice drifted off as she and Rory silently recalled the bridesmaids debacle.
"That's the least of it Mom. We can weather the distance. I'm not too worried about that," Rory replied.
"Logan probably has a private jet stashed away somewhere exclusively for stow-away romantic reunions across the Atlantic, huh," Lorelei smiled. She never missed a chance to rib Rory about her boyfriend's astounding wealth.
Rory thought for a minute about where her distress was coming from. "I think I might be a little less sad if I knew that Logan really wanted to do this. Last night…Mom, he was so miserable," Rory revealed. "My heart was breaking for him, and I felt so helpless."
"Of course he's miserable. He's leaving you. And going off to do Papa's bidding. Now I don't know much about their relationship, but that one time I saw him with Mitchum was the coldest I ever felt in the middle of winter at Martha's Vineyard," Lorelei recalled. "Having to work for Mitchum, being groomed as a 23 year-old media mogul…that's pretty heavy stuff. I'd jump off a cliff myself if I had to do that."
"He asked me, Mom," Rory continued. "He asked me to tell him not to go. And I didn't tell him not to go. And now I don't know if I should have. In my heart I don't want him to go. But I also feel that he should, for his own sake. I don't know…this morning he seemed set."
Rory recalled with an ache in her chest how he calmed her before he left, how he assured her that she can still live in their apartment, how he kissed her and said I love you, Ace.
"But maybe I let Logan down," Rory said quietly, confused.
"Rory, no. It's not up to you to decide that for him," Lorelei said gently. "And he probably knows that, too. Whether he goes to London or not is his decision Rory. Don't burden yourself with it, okay? You are the best thing that has happened to him, the reason he feels he can go to London, if that makes any sense," she reasoned.
"Okay. Maybe. Thanks Mom." Rory took a few deep breaths and rubbed her eyes. "Uh, I think I need to clean up here. Take a shower. I'm all cried out. It would do me good."
"You do that, hun. Call me whenever, okay? The Ben and Jerry offer always stands," Lorelei said, sending a mental hug to Rory, her 21-year-old woman-child.
"Bye Mom." Rory set the phone down, and went to the bathroom to take a shower and wash out her eyes. Though he was the last thing she wanted to be thinking of now, the mention of Mitchum brought back memories of her one-sided conversation with him in that New York hospital.
And I'm figuring a guy like you, surrounded by nothing but a bunch of terrified sycophants, might not have someone in his life with the guts to tell him what an incredibly selfish, narcissistic ass he's being, so I thought I'd jump on in. Swallow your pride, get in your car, and come down here and see your son, now!
Was she scared of Mitchum? She didn't know. She did feel like throwing up whenever she saw him. In her entire life, no one ever made her feel so low, like her dreams were worthless, that she was just the "little girlfriend". But she felt different–strong–that time she called Mitchum. Because it wasn't about her, it was about Logan.
She saw Mitchum then for the first time as Logan's father. At Logan's bedside, she watched him sleep as she thought about what his life must have been like, raised by parents who thought a day at the spa and a cold shoulder were the appropriate responses to their son's near-death experience. Rory saw through Logan's carefully disguised disappointment each day that passed that Shira and Mitchum did not come to see him. And the iron entered her soul, she recalled.
Rory did agree with Mitchum on one thing though: Logan was talented, and he needed to get on a path.
And Rory agreed with Lorelei: Logan's path is up to him to decide, not her, nor Mitchum. Did Mitchum not realize that? Can he not see how unhappy Logan is? Doesn't he care?
Fueled by her sadness at Logan's departure and her anger at Mitchum, Rory threw on her clothes and left the apartment. She strode purposefully towards the elevator and punched the button. This is good, she thought. Going out. Doing something. Better than moping around the apartment, thinking of Logan.
As she waited, she settled down long enough to realize that what she was about to do probably wouldn't change anything now. That Mitchum would probably think her naïve. But heck, she would do it anyway. For the principle of the thing, so to speak. For Logan.
She pressed the elevator button repeatedly, frustrated that it was taking so long to get up to her floor. Was it stuck somewhere?
She lifted the phone beside the elevator and connected to the doorman. "Hello, George?"
