Disclaimer: Yep, again it's not mine.
CHAPTER FIVE
"How does someone grow up?"
Lorelai's question popped out between the end of salmon piccata and the start of coffee.
Her father regarded her with a tired smile. "In what way, Lorelai?"
Fiddling with her fork, and pretending half her food did not remain uneaten, Lorelai said to the table, "Well, y'know. I like stupid goofy dumb things and I suck at dating and I'm pretty much a mess. How'd you do it, Dad? How did you grow up?"
The plates were cleared and coffee set before them. The waiter was an old hand at the Dragonfly Inn. He did not linger when Lorelai had meals with her father. Everyone knew they were somber occasions, and treated them as if they were in mourning.
They were, as far as Lorelai was concerned.
"I think you may have a different idea of adulthood, of maturity, than I do," replied Richard wearily, and took her hand, squeezed it, released it. Lorelai cherished the brief warmth. "I still love ice cream as much as I did when I was a little boy. If we measure only by those small things that delight us…" Richard's attempted smile fell, and Lorelai wished she'd never said a word. "Then no one grows up. We grow older."
Lorelai nodded and diluted her coffee with cream. The longer she went without Luke's coffee, the less she wanted any coffee. The mere smell took her to memories she endured as punishment.
"We have an idea of what it is to be an adult. We fit ourselves into that idea. Family dignity. Standards of conduct."
Lorelai raised her hands and made a slight pushing motion in the air. "Okay, Dad, I get it, I didn't do it right. I know that!"
"I enjoy my life. It suits me. It usually has," snapped Richard, drawing out his wallet, and then replacing it when Lorelai snatched the check off the table's edge. "The life I enjoy does not give you pleasure. Why, I don't know. I don't ask anymore. Thirty years of asking has resulted in no better answer than… You, Lorelai, are you. Perhaps if we'd been less strict, less severe, when you were a child, and you'd felt freer then, you wouldn't have felt a need to rebel. I truly don't know." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Headache?"
"Not quite yet, but soon, I suspect."
Lorelai wanted to hug him, and did not dare. "You see Mom today."
"Unfortunately."
"Dad," she said gently, and meant it as a hug.
"It's been twenty years, Lorelai, of the same song, the same refrain, you belong with Christopher. Yes, I wish you'd married and stayed in Hartford and become part of the things we enjoy and find important."
Fighting down anger, Lorelai sighed, "I know, I'm sorry, Dad."
"But it's been twenty years. Even I can realize it's rather ludicrous to demand you live according to the rules and dreams your mother and I had when you were sixteen." His smile went awry. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Emily made a promise. No more interference, and no more Christopher, and no more…"
Lorelai tried to fill in with a chirpy, "No more bash-the-Lorelai-piñata?"
Her father let her interrupt, with a cutting glare that softened at once. "Rory is older now than you were when your mother began this insistence of hers that you fit our plans. I think it is safe to say that we have long since passed the expiration date on that possibility, and I am sorry, Lorelai, I did not allow myself to… That this… I wish I had been able to say these things and feel these things much sooner."
That time, Lorelai did rise, and clumsily hug her father, with a teary-eyed, "Thanks, Dad. I mean it."
He patted her arms, and shifted subtly out of her embrace. "And I thank you, Lorelai, for this lovely lunch, and for bearing with an old man's regrets."
"You're not old," protested Lorelai. "You're aging to best quality like one of those brandies of yours."
He laughed briefly, stood with a small wince for what Lorelai knew were aches and pains from stress and lack of good sleep in his own comfortable home. "I shall bear that in mind. Now, into the dragon's teeth."
Guilt and grief slammed Lorelai, and she whispered, "Dad, you can… Mom…"
He hugged her, lightly, left behind a whiff of bay rum cologne. "Our usual time and place this weekend?"
"You betcha," she answered, forcing lightness she did not feel and had not felt for some time. "Sookie loves figuring out how to make something decadent and heart-healthy."
At that, a real smile lit her father's eyes. "Is there any hope of that amazing risotto, do you think, for Sunday with you and Rory?"
"I know the owner and the chef here," quipped Lorelai, walking him to the door of the inn. "I think I can arrange a risotto."
He gave her another smile, and she waved until his car was out of sight.
A light touch on her shoulder told her it was Michel.
He handed her a mug that held, unmistakably, not-coffee. It was ice water.
They watched the day unfold, the birds and squirrels and leaves and dust of summer.
Michel offered quietly, "You did not eat enough."
Lorelai smiled to think of calorie-counting Michel encouraging anyone to eat. "I'll have something later."
"Lorelai," he admonished.
"Michel," she mocked, half-heartedly.
He gave her a sad, scolding look.
She gave up. "Nothing tastes good anymore, that's all."
Michel's gaze was shrewd, understanding. "Perhaps your palate is refining itself. Now, some of us have work to do."
She gazed fondly after Michel. He, Sookie, Rory, her father, Jackson… They cared. It helped.
Her phone buzzed. She made a face. She was beginning to hate weddings.
"Always a planner, never a bride," she said to herself, to prove she was all right, and answered the phone with a bright, "Lorelai Gilmore, Dragonfly Inn, how may I help you? Oh, Cassidy, yes, of course, I got your e-mail, I was about to reply. Yes, I still think it's better to avoid releasing doves."
She was walking through the lobby, and as she said that, she rolled her eyes at Michel. He rolled his to heaven. Yes, some things at least were still normal in her life. Whatever "normal" meant.
GG GG GG
Awaiting Emily's arrival on a bench, Richard sipped at a bottle of water. Behind him, traffic hummed quietly through downtown Hartford, along the prettily landscaped Jewell Street. Before him lay Bushnell Park's lily pond, though it was rather more brackish-looking than adorned by blooms. The spouting fountain pattered pleasantly. The warm breeze rustled. People walked, or sat, and he was suddenly assailed by a memory of a young Lorelai, begging to go ride the carousel. He'd immediately agreed to it, only to have Emily dig her nails into his forearm, with a curt, "She's not dressed for it, Richard."
Stuck in a museum-appropriate dress, Lorelai had gazed pleadingly at him. He could hear her so vividly that he thought he'd fallen through time. Please, Daddy, I'll ride side-saddle!
He'd known Emily's feet ached from the museum tour. She'd been new to its board of something-or-other. Wentworth? No, it was the Wadsworth, for all the world like some oddly misplaced movie-world castle, with a squat block attached. It wasn't bad, really, until they reached the twentieth-century art exhibits and collections. Richard still didn't grasp what was considered "modern" art. And, oh, how he had wanted to go home, too. Yet a carousel ride and an ice cream were small reward for a child who had endured three hours of museum. Or, really, for a man who had endured the same.
He'd taken Lorelai's hand and promised her they'd ride the carousel some other day.
He wondered if that day had ever arrived. He had a horrible feeling it had not.
"Good heavens, Richard, you said by the pond, you could've been more specific!"
"There is only one lily pond in this park, Emily," answered Richard mildly, and offered her a bottle of water. The afternoon was unusually balmy, but Emily was dressed for autumn. She looked beautiful. He said so.
She smiled and smoothed her skirt unnecessarily, turning her body toward him. "You look well. How is Lorelai?"
"Busy," said Richard curtly. He could still see Emily in that blue dress, so long ago, the one that meant she hit him like lightning. Unfortunately, he also saw a hard sheen to her eyes, and his heart twinged with purely emotional pain at the loss of youth, and the temptress she'd been. "Oh, Emily, why must you want the impossible?"
She continued to smile, the one he'd seen her give people like Shira Huntzberger. "I want what is proper for this family."
He turned his eyes to the little spurting fountain in the pond.
Emily's tone was waspish. "You have wanted the same thing, Richard."
"I have," he admitted, watching a young couple with twins in a stroller, on the other side of the pond. "I do. I want Lorelai to find a good, loving husband who can support her and her ambitions and her goals. I want that for Rory, as well. I also want a wife who doesn't break her promises."
Silence bubbled hot between them.
Richard thundered through it.
"You promised, Emily. After that disaster at the vow renewal, after the way Lorelai reacted to that as she has always done to any insistence she do things the way we want, you promised me, on our marriage vows, Emily. We nearly lost Lorelai over that, let alone the mess with Rory and that idiotic yacht incident, and doing it your way very nearly cost Rory…" He drew breath, let it out as his cardiologist advised him to do, during anxious moments. "Yes, I also saw a chance. A redemption, if you like." His hands flexed on his knees. "And yet… Yet…" He twisted to face her, jaw set, eyes stern. "She came to us, Emily, utterly devastated, and your first reaction was to tell her how horrible she was! How wrong her choices, how shameful her behavior! My God, Emily! You even knew they were having trouble, yet you broke your promise to me, to her! You brought Christopher to our house!"
"He is Rory's father!" shrilled Emily, pink-faced.
"Tell me how trying to arrange a date for Christopher, when you know Lorelai is unhappy, right under Lorelai's nose, does not somehow lead us back yet again to the eternal chorus of Lorelai needing to marry Christopher!" He stood, swigged water to buy himself a moment, and restored his composure with effort. "She said no when she was sixteen. He never put any serious effort into Rory or into a real relationship with Lorelai. Our disapproval of her led us both to blame her for his deficiencies, our injured pride led us to decide she had shamed us long after everyone else forgot or ceased to care if Rory was born out of wedlock, and you…"
"I did it for everyone's best, Richard!"
"A drunken Hayden at our vow renewal did not lead to any positive outcome, Emily. And a flimsy attempt to make Lorelai jealous, by showing her that Christopher had other women to choose, with that silly matchmaking?"
"That is not what I intended!"
Richard succumbed to petty spite. "Oh? Then why did our family dinner become a dating program?"
"I was doing Rory's father a kindness. He'd been much better about involving himself in Rory's life, and…"
"Balderdash!" roared Richard, startling a pigeon into flight. "You hoped that Lorelai would turn to him, and away from her fiancé! What good would that do for anyone?"
"I don't know!" shrieked Emily, and Richard sat flat down on the bench with a gasp. "I don't know, fine, there you are, Richard, I don't know!" She had leapt up, either on the verge of tears or of buying out a department store. He'd yet to know which, when it came to Emily. "He's single, she was miserable with that stupid diner man, why not try? He's a Hayden, he's Rory's father!"
A lump clogged Richard's throat. "Emily. Marriage to Christopher wouldn't tie Lorelai to Hartford society. He's never been part of it, either," he admitted. He scowled at the clouds beginning to cover the sky. "I have had a great deal of time to think, and to wonder, and no matter how I try, I cannot understand your reasoning, nor accept your deceit."
"My what?" rasped Emily, shoulders flung back.
"You do recall that promise to stay out of her romantic life? Her decisions?"
"Well, I didn't push, I simply…"
"And then," said Richard coldly, "you berated her as if she were still sixteen. I was not thrilled to know she was again unwed and pregnant, but I certainly understand that she was engaged to be married, and is certainly an adult, and in vastly different circumstances."
"Oh pish," sniffed Emily, dismissing Lorelai with a wave of her hand. "Those silly shirts and movies and toys of hers. She's ridiculously immature!"
"She is not alone in that," he said with compassion. "We all have preferences, and hers aren't ours. Is something like that truly worth losing our daughter?"
"She's never even tried, Richard!"
His eyes burned with tears. "Did you?"
She raised a hand to slap him, but he'd already stepped out of range.
"The definition of insanity, Emily, is repeating an action but expecting a different result. I am opting for sanity."
Her lips thinned.
"I will have someone come for my things."
"You're leaving me."
He felt sorry for her, against all expectation. "I have left you, my dear. Not without regret or pain, but I cannot do this anymore. I want peace. I cannot have it if I remain with you."
"I will take every penny," threatened Emily.
"My dear, I wish you joy of those pennies," Richard smiled acidly. "Now, I think I shall walk to the carousel, and watch the children play."
He left Emily stunned, and baffled, and felt a surge of grief combined with hope. Someday, he could bring a child to that carousel. If not Lorelai's, then Rory's. He might ride it himself.
AN: Hartford locations are real. That carousel is on my bucket list.