MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter two

It'll be my only respite throughout this whole night.

The doorbell rings, again. The champagne falters on its way to my lips. My mother definitely never said anything about guests but she never would have prepared for anything less. Somehow this is some sort of an intervention that I've been caught up in, but nobody is filling me in on the facts, just letting me tag along while they hustle their friends into a business deal that makes them look like imbeciles. I'd been at too many of those to count when I was younger, jostled along by my parents so that their friends could all coo about my pretty hair growing longer or my 4.0 GPA that saw me granted Valedictorian of Chilton Preparatory Academy. I was their poster child while Lorelai went rogue, and here I am, even with my own life falling apart, somehow entangled in all of this again.

My mother, poised as always, pushes herself to stand and brushes invisible dust – as if she would allow dust in her home! – off of her grey satin shirt. Every step she takes reminds me of watching a figure skater on television, gliding gracefully across the ice, every step glimmering and gleaming, swirling until it makes me dizzy. She steps out of the room and I'm alone with my father. If it's possible, the air grows even more stifling. I take a few more sips of my martini, unable to hear anything of my mother's greetings except the falsely excited high pitch she puts on to make people more comfortable. The thing is, it doesn't work. It just puts us all on edge. Even now, my back straightens with the knowledge that at any moment she'll enter the room again.

I never used to notice when I did that.

God, why did I divorce Harrison again?

My father barely glances up from his newspaper, but every time he does, I can feel those eyes of his drilling tiny little holes into the armour I've had to build up over my skin. My father has these eyes that are such a deep grey they feel like metal blocks just to try and look at, usually carved into a languid glare that he passes off as uncaring but I know better. I've been made to know better. When those eyes are on you, nothing goes unnoticed.

There is nothing more unnerving than my father.

But don't tell my mother that, she'll turn it into a competition.

"Richard, look who's here."

Their heads all swing towards the young girl being carted into the room by her grandmother. Are you able to feel the tensing of every muscle in your body? You know it's coming, that oddly unnerving storm and yet when it blows in it still manages to take your breath away entirely. Why did I agree to this? Why did I let my mother talk me into having dinner with her and him and them? She knew that I wouldn't be able to say no. I've never been able to say no to my mother.

"Rory! You're tall."

She is. The last time they saw her was Easter, and she's grown a few inches from then, with her hair much longer too. She looks just like her mother. It transports me back to a time I thought I had forgotten, having to watch my big sister leave me behind with nothing but a sneer on her face. Do not try to contact me. I never would have been able to anyway, I had no idea where she lived, what her number was, any of it. All I knew of Lorelai for years was that searing image of her turning her back on me. My big sister – gone.

And here she is, walking in behind her daughter, calling out a greeting to our father. She barely glances at me. Still mad she wasn't invited to the wedding, I guess. Oh well, we all know how that ended. Can't she get over it and let us be sisters again, close confidants or whatever it is we're supposed to be? I have no idea. What are sisters like?

In this household, we're all just people brought together by the blood in our veins.

"Lorelai, your daughter is tall."