Disclaimer: Theirs.
Author Note: Oh crap, I'm scared. Yes, this is going to be full of angst and "No!" moments and "ARgh!" and "No way!", but I had a really bad two years in real life, and basically dumped that into Stars Hollow. I love the characters, but, well, y'know... Cheap therapy? OK, yeah, shutting up.
NOTE: CHAPTERS WILL ALTERNATE CONSISTENTLY WITH LORELAI/RICHARD, THEN EMILY/LUKE. But please don't only read evens or odds, since some moments continue over from one to the next (Luke to Lorelai, for example).
CHAPTER THREE
Lorelai lay still.
"If I hadn't told him, we'd still be together," she whispered.
"Mom?" asked Rory in a shrill gasp.
"I mean, I lost it anyway, right? So if I kept my mouth shut, then… Then…"
"Mom," moaned Rory. "I'll go get Grandpa!"
Rory fled the bedroom of the residential inn suite.
It had been three weeks since that fateful, awful, miserable day. It had been five days since the most recent of awful days.
Not being an idiot (despite popular opinion), Lorelai had read up on pregnancy for those over 35. A twenty or more percent risk of miscarriage didn't seem too terribly high, until she added in the fact she was a serious caffeine addict who'd decided one missed menstrual period wasn't that big a deal. And, given her levels of stress, it wasn't. Even on the much-hyped "pill", cycles weren't going to react as desired.
Still, she'd been freaking out. The one positive of having to avoid the diner had been drinking less coffee. She didn't want any coffee if it wasn't Luke's. Still…
Still, she'd taken vitamins, just in case, other than the daily multi-vitamin that her doctor told her to take from age 30 onward. Still…
She'd been drunk beyond recall at Lane's wedding. How could she do that knowing she might possibly be pregnant? Still, one test had shown positive that first month, and one showed negative. Still…
None of it stilled her mind, no matter how still her body.
She knew that after 35, risks went up. She'd never admit to anyone but herself that her biological clock's very loud ticking had played into her hope for that whole package with Christopher. She knew, after all, that Chris could get her pregnant.
"I suck," she said.
Who thought like that? Who let stupid fluffy daydream clichés run their life?
"I suck," she repeated.
The doctors had all told her that chromosomal abnormalities, unavoidable and undetectable, caused most miscarriages. Some flaw in the egg or sperm, and the body said, "Sorry, no can do," and that was that.
Still, Lorelai knew it was her fault.
"I should've gone to the doctor the first time," she said.
Her father rumbled soothingly, "Given the situation, Lorelai, I think anyone would question the validity of a test bought for five dollars at a grocery store."
"I needed to not drink coffee. I had to eat more salads. I should have listened to Luke, and…"
Luke had become a very nasty four-letter word. It ended any conversation it entered.
After a long time, her father took one of her hands in both of his. "Lorelai. Rory…"
"Wants to go to London."
"Well, yes, but she also wants to understand this odd gift that Huntzberger boy gave her. And to know why he bought her a ticket for Christmas. Mostly, however, Rory wants me to tell you that…"
Lorelai waited. Stillness was new to her, but it was oddly addictive. Passivity seemed to solve a lot of problems. Mainly, it meant she didn't cause any.
"Rory seems to think you don't know I love you, Lorelai."
Lorelai studied her father. He looked terrified. Dignified, but terrified.
"I don't," she answered bluntly. "I mean, you don't like me much, and you dislike everything about my life, and I can't thank you enough for all this help, but you love Rory, you don't love me."
Her father's eyes closed. She waited for guilt. It appeared on cue.
"I'm sorry, Dad, that's…"
"That's the truth," said Richard firmly, yet quietly. "You don't know. Your truth is that you are not loved by your parents."
She barked a not-laugh, and lifted a finger. "Have you met my mother?"
He countered smoothly, "You are loved, Lorelai."
She sighed, turned her head. The décor was American Bland. She for once didn't mind. "Dad, you don't have to do this."
"I don't like many of your choices, but I do love you."
She shrugged, the tiniest possible effort required, in response.
"Do you know why I left your mother?"
Lorelai frowned. "No. I didn't want to ask."
To her shock, her father said, "Your mother kept breaking a promise she made. After a certain point, I realized she never intended to keep that promise to me, and she feels no regret whatsoever about breaking that promise."
Lorelai tried to think, and slowly she pushed herself up to a sitting position, back against the pillows. "Mom broke a promise? To you? But… Wait, I thought you… It was no more Penny Lott and all good?"
Richard shook his head. Slowly. Sadly. He seemed to Lorelai like a big, lonely bear.
"Dad?" Woman of many words, Lorelai found none that worked.
"She promised, after our vow renewal, to stay out of your love life."
"I know."
"No, Lorelai, she didn't only promise you. She promised me. I excused it. Her concerns. Our family status." An odd smile writhed over Richard's face. "My pride. Then, you came to us, and her reaction has been as if the situation is not different. As if… I couldn't bear it, when she had sworn to me she…"
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Lorelai reached out to hug her father, then drew back. Hugs were not something that happened in the Gilmore family. She and Rory hugged. She and Sookie hugged. Lorelai liked hugs. They weren't very Gilmore, however, and so she stilled again.
He dabbed his face with a handkerchief. Once it was neatly folded away, he continued, "I do not understand her broken promises."
This time, Lorelai did hug him, quickly pulling away. "I'm so sorry, Dad, I should've just dealt with it and then…"
"For God's sake, Lorelai!"
She flinched, cowered inwardly. Here came the Lecture. She had heard it many times, preceded by that impatient, irritated exclamation of her name.
"This is not something you did, Lorelai. This… This problem… It existed without you. Your news merely caused it to resurface, and in such a way that I could no longer ignore or accept it."
"Accept what?" asked Lorelai in a tiny child's voice, cleared her throat, and tried again. "Accept what, Dad?"
"That your mother is not all I thought… Needed… I do not know her, I fear."
Lorelai burst into tears.
It was strange, how the tears came, without her bidding, or her permission.
I do not know. I fear.
Yes, that was it. Fear. Not knowing. Broken promises. Eventually, a broken heart.
Her mother broke her father's heart.
Once, Lorelai would have scrambled to fix their marriage. Someone had to have it. The whole package happy-ever-after. Someone. Everyone. Anyone. More to the point, if her parents failed, then what were her own chances? If the unconquerable duo of Richard and Emily could part ways, then who would stay together?
Rory had returned. "Grandpa?"
"I believe your mother and I have a problem in common, Rory," said Richard, while patting Lorelai's back and holding her against his very good shirt as if it were a giant tissue for her use. "We are not certain we know the one we love. Or loved, as case may be. Can you still love if you are mistaken, to this extent, about the character of the person who is the object of love? Did you love reality, or a dream?"
"How can you philosophize?" wailed Lorelai in thick sobs.
"We all have our ways of staying sane. This is, for the moment, my method. I do not claim it lacks madness."
"Shakespeare," sniffled Lorelai. "That's from Hamlet. There's method in the madness."
"Mom?" yipped Rory, as if shocked that her mother had ever been exposed to literature.
"I read her the plays when she was little. I did voices. Hamlet is, I believe, responsible for her love of horror movies."
Without thought, Lorelai confirmed, "It's a ghost story, it's cool, I was in high school before I found out everyone died at the end."
"Well," said Richard in his majestic, simple way, "I wanted you to have happy endings to your stories. I'd do the voices for The Jungle Book, as well."
"Wow," whispered Rory in awe. "That's so cool. Mom did that, for me, till I was, like, ten."
"I was five," said Lorelai, shoulders and chest hitching as she battled down more sobs. "He stopped when I was five. I thought it was because I did something wrong at school, so I made sure I only got good grades, so he'd read to me again."
"And I never did," concluded Richard softly, wearily. "You see, Rory, Emily decided Lorelai was too old for such nonsense, and…"
Lorelai couldn't bear to hear more. Stillness could not be borne. Movement, however, was not an easy habit to recover. It took her two tries to reach the bathroom, and there cry while she kept washing the tears from her face.
GG GG GG
Richard Gilmore watched his daughter sleep.
He had not done that in thirty-plus years.
She slept the same way, he noticed. In deepest slumber, she melted, mouth slightly ajar, and one hand reaching for something. What, he didn't know. In infancy, she'd liked a toy. Now, he assumed she missed Luke. Or, possibly, her dog. Richard had drawn a line at having the dog in the residential inn suite that he shared with Lorelai at the moment. He didn't mind animals, precisely, but the dog was notoriously neurotic.
Richard had enough neurotic creatures in his life.
Parental love had not been a valuable commodity in his own youth. It was, like air, assumed to exist. Parental approval, by contrast, came with diligent effort, and was therefore prized.
How odd, thought Richard, that his daughter had neither. Had she received a degree from some Ivy League university, her entrepreneurial spirit and success would… Yes, he admitted, they would matter more. It was how his brain was formed before he had a chance to protest, and the pattern was etched deep. He could not approve the road she'd taken. It ought not have included cleaning up after others, in such literal fashion. He was proud of her, yes, naturally, yet…
It caused a pang in his chest, to know his daughter assumed she was not loved, as well as not accepted.
In sleep, her forehead crinkled up. A bad dream, he supposed. He feared to touch her, drew back his hand, and sighed.
A woman suffered in ways men never understood. Richard had accepted that truth from his own mother, and never questioned it. He never wanted to know the details. He began to think perhaps he ought to have asked for a few. It might have explained more of Emily's obsessive need to control and shape Lorelai. Would more children have thinned that, given them all more freedom, permitted mistakes? How much exactly did a uterus control a woman's dreams and how did expectations about a uterus build hopes and disappointments? The whole thing was, for Richard, very mysterious. A miscarriage was tragic, yet hardly uncommon. Would Lorelai be this devastated if she and Luke were intact? Somehow, he thought she would be, but he could not know.
He hated that it took this situation for him to be an active parent to his daughter. When he did see her, as a child, it seemed only to involve irritation.
Emily's voice greeted him from within the depths of his memory. "Richard, do you know what that girl did today?!"
Memory allegedly faded with age. It apparently did not.
"I swear, Richard, here's your drink my darling, that girl is…"
Scowling, Richard tried to recall a time when his coming home did not begin with a drink, a kiss from Emily, and a litany of that girl complaints, centered on their daughter.
"One more, Richard, one more, and I just don't know what to do!"
Tired, irritable, wanting nothing more than quiet evenings with a book, Richard Gilmore had thirty years ago begun walking into The Lorelai Complaint Zone. He couldn't very well tell Emily to shut up and deal with it all, when clearly the girl exasperated her to such an extent.
The girl, his conscience prodded, was his daughter.
The last thing Richard wanted to hear, on reaching home, was a shrill, upset Emily. Lorelai caused it, therefore Lorelai had to be reprimanded.
Thus, Lorelai's greetings to him became, "I'm sorry, Dad." Then she had become a teen and simply avoided them, or said nothing, or sassed them, but she had done no worse than others her age. Emily pretended teen pregnancy was the end of the world, but it wasn't. Men at his club had daughters who needed special week-long "breaks" from "a situation", and it was understood without being said that the girl was off to have a termination that would, of course, never have happened. Since she was never admitted to be pregnant. Granted, it happened infrequently but it happened enough that everyone knew without having to say dreaded words such as "pregnant".
He remembered Emily sobbing to him one of those terrible nights long ago. "Oh, Richard, she's ruined everything!"
He remembered shouting at Lorelai. "How could you do this to us!"
What if he had hugged her and said, "Oh Lorelai, how do we fix this? What do we do?" Would she have remained in Hartford? Gone to a good school on schedule, as planned, and let them help her with Rory?
With a wistful sigh, Richard released that daydream. It would have required Emily's cooperation to make that work. And he'd been angry, tired, sick of the squabbling and complaints, the blasted drama. It was simplest for him to withdraw. Let the women fight it out.
He shook his head at himself. How a few unheeded, thoughtless words and choices could change a lifetime. They really needed to teach people about those sorts of things. How, he didn't know, but it would have been helpful to him to know he'd face regrets three decades later.
"The hell of age," he told sleeping Lorelai. "You are only wise enough to be a parent when you reach the age to be a grandparent."
She didn't stir.
He looked down at his book. He had no idea what book it was. He'd simply snatched the most imposing tome at the bookstore's best-seller table, and here he sat.
He settled his glasses on his nose. Reading offered escape, and balm. Lorelai preferred television and films, but he suspected that was sheer contrariness. Rejecting erudite literature in order to prove she was not the sort of woman Hartford society could ever accept. Then again, his daughter might reject books as taking more time than she'd been able to afford as a single young mother with an arduous job.
Concentrating, Richard discovered he could about grasp the word "the".
He shut the book.
Lorelai squeaked, sat up, slapping herself.
This, Richard knew.
He took her hands quickly. "They're not there. It's not real. No bugs, Lorelai."
She sucked air loudly into herself, then blinked, shook her head hard. "Wow. I haven't had that one in a long time."
"Night terrors," said Richard casually. "Everyone has one now and then. Mine were always some strange figure watching me from the ceiling. You've always had insects crawling on you."
"Under my skin," corrected Lorelai, but smiled weakly. "Why're you up?"
"I think the question is, why are you down," he countered. "It's only two in the afternoon."
"Ugh," sighed his daughter, and yawned. "I feel like I can't get enough sleep. I thought I'd close my eyes and think, and then, wham."
"Wham, indeed."
Lorelai promptly fussed the couch into order. "You don't have to hover, Dad. I'll be okay. Somehow, I will, I promise."
Richard was too well-bred to squirm, much as he wanted to. "Where would I go, Lorelai? I've no idea what to say to… Or… Well, let's call this a well-earned impromptu break for me, and leave it at that."
She nodded, mouth turning down. The last weeks had aged them both. He could see more Trix in Lorelai, did not dare look in a mirror too closely at what showed in him.
She stood, wearing her "Yale Mom" t-shirt and some sort of baggy exercise shorts that reached to her knees. "Tea?"
"Yes, please, the chamomile-mint."
She went into the kitchen area, and made him a mug of tea. She had her own, of instant coffee, heavily flavored with some sort of powder that was meant to taste of hazelnuts. She left him to his book and stood at the window, watching nothing at all.
Duty and conscience prompted Richard to say sternly, "We must face the world sooner or later."
"I know. I should be at the inn. I can only do so much from here."
Richard said it, to have it done, ripping away the band-aid, so to speak. "He did not look for you there, either, Lorelai."
Her face flushed. He had not meant to hurt her. Not that deeply.
"I meant…"
"No," interrupted his daughter quickly, "no, it's okay. You're right. It's just… I made Stars Hollow this magical place, and it's not. And I made Luke this magical guy, and I can't stand that house anymore, it's this big huge symbol that says I failed, that nothing I do, nothing I am, is ever enough, and…" She turned away, head dropping. "Thanks again. For paying off the investments he made."
"It is a pleasure to add your inn to my portfolio."
"Thanks, Dad."
He had heard much from Lorelai in her life. That robotic tone was one thing he wished he'd never hear again.
"I'm certain we'll find a buyer for the house."
"I know."
Richard tried again, this time aiming at her business acumen. "I think it's quite wise of you to use the house sale to create a cash fund, against possible troubles at the inn."
"Common sense, Dad."
At last, Richard inquired delicately, "Does he know?"
"Rory said she told him. I didn't want her to. It was my job to tell him."
Richard winced for his daughter. Self-destruction was not a Gilmore trait, except in Lorelai.
"At least he didn't ask if I got rid of it on purpose."
The falsity of her cheer grated on Richard's remaining nerve. "I think I'll take a walk, ponder the future. Shall we meet for supper?"
"Sure, Dad. The restaurant next door?"
"At six."
"Okay."
No one could call Richard Gilmore a coward, but everyone had limits. His were reached, when it came to watching Lorelai build a sparkling glass shell around herself, yet again, to show the world how little it bothered her. He'd taught her that. Emily had taught her that. He finally understood why she suffocated in their world.
A person in a glass shell had no air to breathe.
GG GG GG