Chapter XI
Rory exits the bank with a glance around, as though she were a character in a mystery film. She feels uncomfortable carrying this much money on her, though the crime rate in Stars Hollow is extremely low. The recent spike this year are all minor complaints filed by Taylor, most of them involving the 'town hoodlum'.
Her tights are itching more than usual today, just like her arm under the heavy cast. She told the story to Paris, Madeleine, and Louise. Paris just rolled her eyes while Madeleine and Louise discussed how difficult it must be to style her hair and strap on her heels. As hard as Rory tried and as much as she enjoys her classes, concentration was not on her side today. Her mind came along for the ride at the beginning of class with the start of the French Revolution, but soon enough Marie Antoinette was executed and her brain was left with a large gap, having hopped off the learning wagon long ago. Though Rory could easily fill that gap with her own knowledge, that is not the point. Unfortunately, school was not her priority today. She has a plan, and it is scaring her that she is actually going to go through with it. A two-stage blueprint for the evening. Stage One. Dean. Letter. Stage Two. Town Meeting.
She gets home in time for Lane to call gushing about her new passion for drums. Though Rory is trying to be supportive, she is distracted by the sure knowledge that the Kims never come to town meetings. Maybe if Lane were there, Rory would find it easier to be brave.
Rory considers crumpling up the letter. Burning it. Tearing it to shreds. Sicking a troop of termites on it. None of these options are possible, since the car pulls in front of the Forrester house. Sitting on the porch steps, Rory almost shoves the note into her jacket, or through the slits of the porch slabs, or in her shirt to take cover between her non-existent breasts. Instead, she stands as Dean climbs out of the passenger side.
"Hey," he says as he comes forward, opening his arms for an embrace. Rory knows her expression is flooded with anxiety, and seeing it, he tries to recover by shoving his hands in his pants pockets.
"Hey," she goes as Dean's dad and Clara greet her on their way to the door.
Then Dean's gaze drops to her left arm. "What happened? What'd you do to your arm?"
I tripped. I was walking on some stairs. There was water. I tripped. I fell. That's it. People will tell you otherwise. Don't listen to them. I tripped, okay? Rory's desperation forges itself into a ridiculous excuse, but the inevitability of it all knocks it over with a tiny gust of rationale. It collapses into pieces, since it was filled with holes from the start.
Rory gives him the letter. "Here."
After a small exchange, Rory gets him to open the letter. Operation in motion. Stage One. Before he can start reading and fulfill her wishes, she says, "Wait. Read it out loud."
"Why?"
Rory bites her lip. "Just… do it."
"Okay… Dear Dean… First of all, you know that I love you. Well, I love you too."
Rory nods encouragingly while trying to smile. "Go on."
"Uh… I have something important to tell you that are not going to like, but keep in mind that I really care about you. That's why I want you to hear it from me. Oh no. What did you do?"
"Keep going."
"On Friday night after dinner with the grandparents, I went over to the diner to help Jess study. What? Why?" Rory prods and he continues, "Luke begged me to be Jess's tutor and threw in free snacks, so I was doing him a favor. We took a study break to get ice cream because Luke doesn't have cones at the diner. What?"
"Read." Here it comes.
Dean sighs. "Jess was driving so I could read him Othello. What?"
"You have about three more whats ahead of you."
Dean is speed-reading now, the words blending together in his voice, like too many paperbacks squeezed onto one shelf. "On the way back, an animal ran in front of the car and Jess swerved. I don't know what it was, it came out so quickly. We ran into the bench and pole by Doose's. I hit my arm on the dashboard and fractured my wrist. It barely hurts, and I only have to wear the cast for two weeks. Jess is still at the hospital, and I have seen him there. The car is totalled."
Dean hasn't finished the letter, but he looks up long enough to kick his duffel bag. It flies a few feet across the pavement. His jaw is jutting out from the bottom, pushing his mouth into a tense scowl. Dean is clutching the paper so tightly in his hand, Rory expects he'll crumple it into a ball and burn it, then drop the ashes in a canister to the bottom of the lake. Instead, he looks down and keeps reading, "I'm very sorry since I know you put a lot into building that car for me. I will miss it. Please don't be angry with me or Jess. It was an accident, and I'm sorry you had to come home to this."
As Dean completes the letter, Rory feels disappointed. She asked Dean to read it aloud so that she could hear it that way, as Jess heard it the day before. She wanted the words to reach her ears as they'd reached his, see if she could interpret what he did, know how he felt while she was reading it to him. It didn't help, though. Instead, she is just watching Dean fume.
"Where is he?" Dean demands.
Rory answers hesitantly, "At-at the hospital. Dean-"
"I'm going to kill him," he grumbles as he folds the letter back up messily, not following the lines already creased into the paper.
Rory shakes her head. She says again, as if it explains everything, helps anything, "He's at the hospital!"
"Well, he put himself there, didn't he? And he put you there! Look at your arm!" Dean gestures to her arm as Rory recoils away from him, though she admits now that he has every right to think this. Unlike the rest of the citizens of Stars Hollow, Dean can blame Jess without Rory deciding he's being unreasonable, even though she wishes differently. She- his girlfriend- in a car, which he built for her, with Jess - the guy he despises and warned her to stay away from- that crashed into the bench in front of the market, where he works.
She whispers, "It was an accident…"
"And why was he driving your car? The car that I-" Dean cuts himself off with a simultaneous clench of his teeth and fist.
"I know you're upset," Rory says genuinely. "I would be too. I'm so sorry about the car."
Dean shakes his head as he holds the letter back out to her. She takes it with trembling fingers. He says, "It's not your fault. It's his. We'll talk about this more later, okay? I'm tired and dinner is in a few. I'm just glad that you're alright."
Rory nods gratefully. She wants to defend Jess to him, but she doesn't have it in her right now. She has a much bigger audience to attend to. She wants to let out a sigh of relief, but decides on holding it in until she leaves, to make sure she is truly in the clear. "Thank you."
"Do you want to come in? My mom is making roast for dinner."
Roast? I just told you Jess and I got into a crash late on a weekend night in the car that you built, and you want me to sit with your family and eat roast? Astonished at the offer, Rory takes a moment before shaking her head. "I can't. I have to go to the town meeting. Thanks, though. I'll see you tomorrow?"
After Dean kisses her goodnight, Rory starts off for the Town Square. Once she has walked about ten feet, Dean calls out to her. As she twists around, he says, "I want him gone. I know you can't control that, but I want him gone."
Rory doesn't say anything, just bites her lip and heads out of the neighborhood, leaving him standing under the light of the streetlamp. How could she respond to that? It hadn't been pretty, but Stage One went much better than she expected. And… Dean may get his wish without lifting a finger.
With the thirty minutes before the town meeting, Rory walks to the bridge. As her sneaker-clad foot presses onto the wood, she is cast back to that day like the bait stuck to the hook on a fishing line. She doesn't have a choice; she is hurdling outward, plunging into the water of her own memory.
The sun is shining, the sky containing few clouds, as if the weather was trying to compensate for the convoluted situation in which she found herself. The dark water of the lake reflecting her image back to her, a wavering silk colored green by algae. She's sitting cross-legged near the edge, wearing her blue jacket and a headband. A little to the left in the reflection is the basket she made for her boyfriend, small and containing disgusting leftovers, a symbol of tradition and sentiment rather than effort and cuisine. Then his left ankle comes into view, covered by dark pants, not bandages. It's him, sitting across from her with his leg dropped lazily over the edge of the bridge, facing her with only the basket separating them. There, it's his oversized yellow-tan jacket reflected in the ripples of the water. His voice is echoing in her ears just like the circular successions on the lake surface. 'Ayn Rand is a political nut.'
Rory's jaw begins to hurt, and she realizes it's because she's been smiling widely for the past several minutes, just thinking about that day. She's thought about it more often than she'd admit to anyone, and it always comes back to sitting on the bridge with Jess and the pizza they got together afterwards. Then they wandered the bookstore together, Jess and Rory taking separate aisles, making recommendations over the shelves. Every now and then, she would look up at him over the volumes, and then his dark eyes catch hers staring. There was something in them, something she couldn't quite place. Jess left with only one less book than Rory did, which is impressive on all accounts.
Despite Dean's embarrassment and fury, Rory looks back on the basket contest with nothing short of happy reminiscence. That day started something, though Rory doesn't know what, and the Jess on the bridge across from her is the one she wants to know. She's going to face it all tonight so that he can return to the way he was then. Healthy, dressed in clothes that are oddly tight or oddly loose, with strong ankles and lungs. And when people offer their doubts, she'll remember him as he was then, the only other member in their unofficial book club duo.
Her mother said she was being blind, selectively blind, to all the wrongs Jess has committed, all the damage he has caused. She is wrong, though. Rory knows what he's done. She's heard it all. She doesn't agree with what he's done, or why he's done it, and she doesn't have to. Because seeing the good in other people doesn't mean the bad isn't there, in the clear line of sight. It means that the good matters more than the bad, especially with people like Jess, for whom there's no keeping score of positive v. negative qualities. Rory is a fan of tally mark systems, but she doesn't want to count the lines with him. She doesn't want to write it down because the results would frighten her. A pro-con list would prove to her what she'd prefer not to admit- that her relationship with Jess is not a beneficial asset to her life. But she can't think that way, not with him. She would just come back to that day above the water, no matter how hard she tries, and throw the list in the bin.
As she strolls across the bridge, she sees a couple spots on one of the planks. She kneels down trying to see under the light of the moon, and three small red blotches are illuminated on the wood. Blood. Rory knows where it came from. Luke said he found Jess on the bridge Friday night. That afternoon, she took the liberty of searching for resources on pneumothorax injuries in the Chilton library. Shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing up blood, all symptoms. She read for the entire lunch period, allowing her friend's case to become one among the statistics. Easier that way.
Rory stands up from her crouched position on the bridge, turning around to head to Miss Patty's dance studio. She won't back out now. The blood served as a reminder, a post-it note from her conscience hung conveniently on the refrigerator. No, it was a communication from Jess, sitting in an overcrowded room in a Hartford Memorial Hospital, received in what Rory considers to be 'his place' in Stars Hollow, if he has one. When she closes her eyes and thinks about him, he's sitting on that bridge across from her telling her that he can't bear The Fountainhead.