October 2000
Ms Gilmore's Classroom
16:00
HIS KNOCK comes an hour after the final bell has rung and all my students have gone home for the day. I'm at my desk, staring down at the tests I've yet to mark staring up at me. The last half of my day has been a blur since Lorelai slammed my door closed, leaving me behind to wallow in tears that bubbled over and have stung the back of my eyes since.
We're not sisters.
I've known it all along. Lorelai has never wanted to be my sister. That's why she always leaves me behind, always walks away. So many times as a child, she'd shake my grubby hands off of her and pretend I never existed. As we grew older, I started to realize she never wanted to be around me. She had friends who would come around, who would sit in her room, and I would sit outside the door, crying as they launched vicious attacks against me. I was thirteen and my sister was just another stranger in this house who picked me apart. And yet, I loved her. And yet, I dared to believe we could still be sisters.
I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes, begging the tears to stay back, just for a moment so that I can focus. So that I can do anything but stare at the sheets in front of me. They can come when I'm at home, when I'm sitting in a bath, listening to classical music, drinking red wine that spills over my chin every so often because I'm too clumsy when I'm crying. They can come when I'm lying in bed, in fresh pajamas, staring at the wall in front of me where there used to be a person to hold me.
Maybe, finally, I'll cave and call Harrison.
The knock comes. Three knocks in quick succession and then his voice through the wood that separates us.
"It's me. Can I come in?"
I thought he'd never want to see me again.
I fix my clothes, making sure my tan trousers haven't creased as I've been sitting. I call out for him to come in. The door swings open and I stand to greet him, but the words get caught in my throat when I see the unamused look on Jethro's face. His eyes glisten with disappointment. I wish I'd left when my students had. I wish I wasn't forced to sit here for another hour and pour over test answers and homework that needs grading. I wish I had a life to go home to. But I've got nothing. Nothing but darkness.
Tomorrow is Saturday. I'll do nothing all day. I might not even go out for coffee. Maybe I'll clean my too-big house. Maybe I'll go outside in the chilly October air and hope that I get hypothermia so I never have to go back to work and face him, and face Rory, and face Lorelai, and face my mother.
"How has your day been?" His accent doesn't drawl out of him like always, stuck behind the indignant bitterness that has followed him since I walked out of his classroom and never went back. He hates me now. Everyone does. I had a chance to be pulled out of the loneliness and that has come crumbling down around me because I suck at holding onto relationships.
"And don't lie–" he cuts in, just as I open my mouth to say the hollowed-out version of it was fine that has been my go-to answer for that question since I learned how to talk in a gilded cage like this. "–I know that it wasn't fine."
My shoulders tense. Do you really know me so well, so soon? How can you stand there and stare at me and know that all I need is someone to tell me that they see me? It's like you're the only person in the entire world who knows me, but I will never know you like that. I'm not allowed to know anyone like that. My mother has always taught me to keep people at arms-length, that way they can't hurt me, that way I can run without having to cut ties.
I wish I could cut ties with my mother.
I hate myself for thinking it.
"I'm– I'm sorry for earlier. I shouldn't have walked out like that." Jethro's eyebrow raises. Just the right one. His eyes never waver. I can feel myself shrinking beneath his gaze, growing smaller and smaller and smaller, until finally I can be squashed beneath his shoe like a little scurrying bug. I wish he would. It is easier than being scrutinized under pretty brown eyes.
"Yeah. You're right. So what happened?"
I don't know I do know it's like my entire head was exploding with this thought that this was my life and it was nothing like I had dreamed of I was alone nobody likes me nobody laughs at my jokes because I don't make jokes because my parents never taught me to make jokes yet Lorelai can makes jokes how the hell does Lorelai joke around like she does how the hell do I make a joke and make somebody laugh and have somebody smile at me I am not used to smiling and I am not used to jokes and yet you you are so used to both god I really like it when you smile and you smile so easily but how can I tell you this I can't even tell you that my day was so shit because I realized nobody likes me and nobody will ever like me if I tell you this you won't like me you probably don't anyway nobody likes me and everybody leaves me and holy shit why are you always staring at me like that with those big brown eyes that remind me so much of coffee I don't want to look away but I hate eye contact so I do but I need to look at you so I don't but I do but I don't but you confuse me because you smile and you joke and you remind me of Lorelai and yet you like me enough to follow me outside when I'm smoking and smile at me.
God, you're smiling at me again and I lose my train of thought and I think my entire day was shit because I think I ruined everything with you.
But I can't say that. So I say: "I realized that you're the teacher I always wanted to be. And I panicked. A lot. And I cried. A lot. And Lorelai showed up. So. Yeah. It's a bit weird."
His gaze softens. And, suddenly, I want to cry again. The last person who ever graced me with such softness was Harrison, who told me he wanted to leave me and let me cry in his chest. Who packed a bag that night and let me sleep alone after years of getting used to his warmth curling into me.
"Just because our teaching styles are different, doesn't mean one of us is better." His hand curls around my shoulder and I have to keep myself from launching into his arms. When was the last time I truly hugged someone? "Most of the students like you just as you are. Sometimes when they have a class with me after you, they're still talking about you. They say you make math easier to understand than Hannigan." His thumb carves circles into the bones of my shoulder. There is warmth shooting through the valves of my heart. Does he even realize that I will rest my happiness on his words?
"Thank you."
I needed that.
I need someone to tell me, when I look in the mirror every day and fight an inner battle whether to hack all my hair off or grow it longer, that I'm doing the right thing. That just by living I am doing okay. That, one day, I won't ask myself whether or not this is worth it anymore.
I lift my hand to curl around his on my shoulder and squeeze it tightly. His face, close to mine, warms. I can see the blood start to rush to the surface, skidding along his nose like ice cracking along a river. It is pale enough above his beard that nobody would notice unless close enough. Unlike me. Anybody could see my blush from miles away, a big red sign that points out that I am here and I am blushing.
LOOK HERE! LOOK AT HER! SEE! SEE! SEE!
Our hands drop and we step away. I turn to tidy the papers on my desk. There are a few pens sitting out. Red which I use for marking, blue which I use for scribbled note taking, green which I use for my diary, black which I use for everything else, including neatly writing out the notes I'd scribbled earlier in blue. I rush to tidy them into the metal pen holder.
"Are you busy tonight?"
No. Yes. It's Friday, shit, I have to go to dinner with my family. Every night, bundled into that house that has never felt like home, cutting into food cooked by someone other than my mother, playing pretend with a family who doesn't know how to broach the subject that none of us wants to be there.
Yet, it's not an obligation for me. For Lorelai, it is paying back our parents for paying for Chilton. For me, it is an excuse to get out of the house on a Friday night. But if I have another choice. If someone offers me anything – literally anything. I'd even go mechanical bull riding in a honky tonk bar – better, I do not have to worry.
I am free.
"No. I'm free."
Jethro smiles. "Good." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat. It's corduroy and looks warm over his usual knitted sweater. I still can't believe he's allowed to wear it in class. I barely feel as if I can wear these trousers without Charleston's disapproving glare burning through me. "You wanna come to mine for dinner? I can drive. And we can pick up your car on the way back."
Dinner. In Stars Hollow. With Jethro and Evie. Will their house feel like a home even though it belongs to someone else? Will it be filled with warmth? That smell that all homely houses seem to have, as if someone is baking just somewhere in the distance, as if a candle is lit just below your nose. I want to live in a house like that.
"I'd like that." I grab my long, tan-coloured Burberry coat from where it hangs on the back of my chair and swing it over my shoulders. "But you don't have to worry about my car. I took the bus. Trying to broaden my horizons."
He chuckles. I laugh too, because even though it's not a joke, it made someone laugh. It's enough, for now, to at least have one person laugh. I push my marking into my bag and swing it over my shoulder.
And then, I follow Jethro out the door.
JETHRO'S HOUSE is everything I imagined it to be.
It is smaller than Lorelai's, in the middle of town, staring across the town square where a pretty gazebo laden with fairy lights stands tall and proud. Everything you could ever need is within walking distance, a diner on the corner, a grocers, a bookstore, an antique store. There's a place called Al's Pancake World that does not – according to Evie, who half hangs out of the car window to point it out to me – even sell pancakes.
Their garden is boxed in by a freshly-painted pale green fence. There are vegetables growing in a patch near the front and I follow them past a row of pretty pink flowers I don't know the name of. Evie shouts out a greeting to the neighbor sitting on their porch, their swing squeaking every so often as they use their feet to push themselves back and forth. They barely look up from their crochet project as they call a hello, Evie darling, back.
When we get inside, Jethro asks me to kick off my shoes. "Old habit," he explains with a shrug even though I don't question him. Harrison was the same. I always keep a pair of slippers by the front door so I don't trail dirt through the house. There's a small hallway that acts as an entrance hall, with an old rug covering most of the old wood, photographs covering the walls, and an antique set of drawers that are pushed next to the only space beside the staircase. There are misshapen flowers stuck in a cracked vase on top.
I kick off my heels and thank God for the tights I always wear when not wearing socks so that my feet aren't subjected to any cold wood.
Evie tells me all about their home as she gives me the tour. The photographs in the hallway are all of her, and Jethro, and her grandmother in New York. Some of her friends from Stars Hollow. None of her friends from Chilton. Some of Jethro graduating college. No mother anywhere. I don't ask and she doesn't tell.
The living room is on the right. The walls are white but covered in paintings picked up from yard sales or posters from Jethro's years in college. There's a fireplace on the wall opposite the door, with fairy lights strung in front of it and more vases stuffed full of fresh flowers. More wooden floors covered in old fraying rugs. Big bay windows with pillows shoved on the windowsills, and a TV nearby. A lumpy sofa that has a few knitted blankets strewn on top, cushions that don't match, and leftover clothes from this morning's rush to get dressed. An armchair close to the fireplace that has a knitting bag full of yarn sitting on top of it. There is a stack of DVDs beside the fireplace, and beside that, a stack of CDs to go in the Hello Kitty CD player that used to be Evie's when she was younger but now they both use it. And there are books everywhere. Cook books, and novels, and biographies. Stacks shoved in corners, hidden beneath the chipping coffee table, sitting between the vases on the fireplace. They don't have the space for a bookshelf so they make do with perfectly spaced piles that haven't toppled yet.
I fix the skewiff diploma hanging near the door as I follow Evie back out into the hall. Jethro has disappeared somewhere, but I'm pretty sure I hear heavy footsteps on the floor above.
"This is the kitchen. My kitchen. Dad can barely cook a steak right, but don't tell him I said that." Evie winks as she tells me all about her favorite recipes. Their kitchen isn't very big, but it's full of lights and potted plants, more fraying rugs under the dining table shoved up against the window, pans hanging from a rack on the ceiling. There are shelves above the counter pressed tight with glass jars. All herbs and spices I've never heard of before. They have two seats hidden under the dining table and on the other side is a bench with a knitted blanket and cushions covering it. "To make it more comfy," Evie explains, waving it away to pull down a glass jar titled chai and holding it under my nose. "How nice does that smell?"
I'm tugged upstairs for a quick peek at the bedrooms. More fairy lights. More old rugs. More lumpy beds and posters and potted plants. Knitted stuff everywhere. Signs of mayhem at every corner. Of life. Of a house where every person is loved, and warm, and at home.
I want a house that can be messy without being noticeable.
"You like it, then?" Jethro suddenly appears behind me as I peek over the bannister upstairs that looks down onto the hallway. Evie has run away to start dinner, telling me I'm gonna love it even though she hasn't told me what it is.
His arms appear beside me on the bannister. He's changed out of his knitted sweater and is just in a plain black top, long sleeve. "Chamud, change out of your uniform before you start cooking!" Evie groans loud but, moments later, she's trudging up the stairs past us, grumbling about needing time to perfect it. Her door slams shut and then, barely seconds have passed before she's pushing her head out to say sorry. Jethro just laughs and knocks his elbow into mine.
"Kids, right?"
I wish I could agree. But, the only children I've ever known are the ones that I teach. I've never been particularly maternal. Never felt the need to raise a child to mould into my standards. To dress a baby girl in pretty pink dresses, or a boy in little sailor suits. I never really wanted to go through the whole pregnancy thing, feel my body weighed down with the new life growing inside me, have swelling ankles and glowing skin and cravings. I never came up with baby names, never thought about painting a nursery, couldn't care less about the difference in prams. I guess that's why Harrison and I got on so well together. Neither of us wanted kids so it was never something that we had to argue about.
I can't have kids anyway. Probably better. I wouldn't be very good at it.
Some people are made to be mothers. I don't think I'm one of them.
He leads me back down to their living room. I sink into his lumpy sofa and, all at once, my muscles unwind. I don't have to worry about ruining this sofa, creating an imprint of myself where nobody wants me. I can simply lay back, let my neck roll against the back of the sofa and breathe.
"Sorry about the mess."
Don't apologize. I like it. I like the mess more than the sterile cleanness of my own house, which never has a single thing out of place in case my mother decides to visit without warning. I wish I could sit here forever and be swallowed by this sofa and become a part of this life.
"I like it." I don't mean to say it out loud but it hangs heavy in the air between us. He stares at me and I stare at him and I'm not sure how to tell him that I want to live here with them because I have never known a home like this. It is so warm in here. "My house is too clean. I'm not – I'm not used to mess. But, I like it."
He grins and it comes so naturally to him. I wish I could smile like that. I wish I could sink into this sofa. I wish I could live in a house like this.
I wish my life was not mine.
I think, sometimes, that I wish I had never been born.
"You wanna come watch Evie cook?" He gets to his feet, running his hands down his jeans. He's so relaxed here. He's so relaxed everywhere, but here it is like his movements have slowed down completely. I'm more tense at home. Like there are hidden cameras everywhere watching my every move. "She didn't use to like distractions, but since working in Sookie's kitchen, she's gotten used to all sorts of stuff. Sorry, Sookie is a friend of ours. She's the head chef at the local inn."
The kitchen smells familiar. It doesn't evoke a memory from my youth, not one of sitting on a kitchen counter watching someone cook. Not when it was always the same stuff. Always lamb, or steak, or mutton. Always drizzled in some sort of wine sauce. Always accompanied by tiny vegetables. No. This is more recent. This is five years ago, half a bottle of red wine down, dancing in the kitchen to 60s songs playing on the radio, his arms warm around my waist, mine around his neck, singing to each other. Whispering how much he loves me in my ear. Spinning me under his arm. Spitting out shit as he remembers about dinner. Making me laugh. Making me laugh so much my stomach hurt. My arms around his middle as he tries to cook dinner. Him and me and a kitchen.
"Are you–" I pause and sniff again. Tears sting the back of my eyes as memories stir. Him and me. Our kitchen. His kisses. His love confessions whispered against my skin. "Are you making beef rendang?"
Evie grins as she spins around, spoons splattering beef stew on the counter. "You know it? It's Malaysian! I found a recipe online and I've been trying to perfect it."
"You have." I blink but the tears cloud my vision and I pretend to be focusing on fixing the knitted blanket I'm about to sit on. "It smells like the stuff my husband used to make. He's half-Malaysian." My spine grows rigid. It smells like home. "Sorry. Ex-husband. I really keep forgetting to say that."
I finally look up, hoping that my attempts to blink and blink and blink have gotten rid of the tears. Jethro and Evie are staring at me, expressions softening, and I realize that a few may have slipped free without my noticing. I use the back of my hand to wipe my face free of any stray tears and plaster a smile on. It feels sticky against my skin, plastered on like face paint.
"What spices are you using?"
Evie seems happy to talk about food. "Cinnamon, cloves, star anise, cardamom and a spice paste. My spice paste is made from shallots, galangal, lemongrass, garlic, ginger and dried chillies." She talks me through her recipe as she cooks and I decide not to sit down after all, instead standing next to her so that I can taste when she offers me the chance. I hum along. Harrison only ever cooked Malaysian food. I could never cook, I don't really get it. She shows me the rice she has steaming and the chicken satay she made last night and is heating up. Jethro sets the table, always smiling.
Is this what it's supposed to be like?
I don't know what it is but it is warm, and it feels like a unit who do things together, and it creates a stir in my stomach that almost brings me to tears again. I could stand in this kitchen every day, trying recipes, laughing at something Jethro says to make Evie roll her eyes, helping set the table with mismatched plates and oddly sized cutlery. Jethro grabs the jug of water from the fridge while I collect glasses and Evie plates the food. It is warm. It feels like we move in tandem. A string pulling one way, pulling another, always moving in just the right way to fit together.
Is this what a family is supposed to feel like?
When I sit down to eat, Evie sits next to me. She talks about her day. Talks about all the teachers I know. I know what they eat at lunch. I know how they feel about the staff room coffee – if they like it, I don't trust them. No sane person likes it – and if they secretly – or not so secretly – hate all their students and never wanted to be a teacher in the first place. But she talks as if I'm seeing them for the first time. Neha's silent yet overpowering presence fills the room with tenderness, where their eyes track her every move, where they feel comfortable enough to ask her for personal help. Hannigan's sardonic mocking of students who get the answer wrong, who blush when called out without warning, who pass notes when they think he's not looking. They're all scared of him. They all hate math because of him. One of the history teachers is both dry and gentle, the other friendly but smug. They all love Max Medina in English, and they all hate Lilja Karjala in Biology. I laugh my way through dinner. Laugh at Evie's offhand comments about people who have stolen parking spaces from me. Laugh as Jethro pulls faces when someone he doesn't particularly like is mentioned. Laugh as I chew, as I swallow, as I clean my mouth out with water.
By the end of dinner, the smile on my face feels natural.
I never want it to end.
But, my eyes find the wonky clock hanging crooked on the wall. I've been here for hours, slowly making my way through my meal, listening as Jethro tells stories about young Evie as we wash the dishes and she does homework behind us, forcing my way into a family unit I'm afraid has no space for me.
Jethro notices me looking at the clock. "Guess it's time to take you home." I nod, afraid to say anything. I must leave the warmth messiness of this place and return to the clinical cleanliness of my own. The too big rooms. The silence that seems to echo around me at all times.
I dry my hands on the closest dish cloth and plaster on a smile. I've overstayed my welcome. My entire life is me overstaying where I don't belong. Pushing into places I'm not supposed to be. Nobody really wants me around and yet they're all too afraid to say it to my face. At the end of the day, I'm always going to go home alone.
"I had a great time. Thank you for the dinner, Evie. It was amazing."
She beams and looks so much like her father that it takes me back. I look nothing like my parents. Lorelai looks nothing like our parents. She crosses the room and hugs me tight, skinny arms planted around my middle. I suck in a gasp. I hug her back. I think about the way Rory hugged me without care, the way Lorelai stared at me over her shoulder, like once upon a time she would've hugged me too but now it's too late. When Evie pulls back, she tells me to stop by again. She has so many recipes she wants me to try.
I follow Jethro out to the car.
In Stars Hollow, the cover of darkness allows the stars to peek out through the light sprinkling of clouds. No light pollution to hide them from view. They shine, pretty and bright in the sky, and I am frozen to the spot, staring up at them. I wish I could be up there. I wish I could shine silver beside you. I wish I didn't have to go home.
The old car smells like the house. Like old books shoved in corners and fireplaces filled with freshly cut logs. I sink against the plush seat and close my eyes, listening to Jethro fiddle with the radio. He tells me he's going to find his favorite channel. Old 80's rock music fills the small space, nothing too heavy at this time of night, surprisingly soft enough to almost lull me to sleep. I wish I could fill my life with this moment. This gentleness that passes between us as we smile at each other without moving. I wish I could thank him, but the words get caught in my throat, stuck in the bubble steadily rising.
This will never be my life.
I'm too scared to let it be.
I push through the bubble. "Thank you." I wonder if he hears how choked up I am. I wonder if he knows I struggle to look at him any longer as the warmth from the heater fills the space between us and he is a haze. Maybe those are the tears.
I swipe my hand across my eyes.
It is not enough.
Moments later, I am crying so much I start hiccuping. The tears bubble over my cheeks, like boiling water on a stove in a college kid's apartment, hot and humid and stinging. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes and beg, out loud, for it to stop. Just for a moment, to give me peace. Jethro's arm slides around my shoulder as best as it can in this space. I cannot stop the tears. My throat hurts from the hiccups and my face hurts from the muscles being screwed up so tight. I wish I wasn't so alone. I wish I could live in a house like this. In a life like this. I wish my sister liked me. I wish I had a family who acted like a family. I wish for all these things but I know my reality is to be forever alone.
Jethro's thumb circles soft patterns into the bone of my shoulder.
I'm so lonely. I'm going to go home to a house with white walls covered in paintings I don't even know the name of, hanging heavy in silence as I walk past them. I'm going to go home to a house with a kitchen that is too big for someone who can barely cook, who slices vegetables without music playing in the background, who stares out of the kitchen window in the hope that I'll see someone walking by the street. I'm going to go home to a house with a bed that I can no longer sink comfortably in, staring as the digits on the clock keep moving, as my head does not stop turning, as I grow more tired without actually falling asleep. I'm going to go home to nothing. I am always returning to nothing.
If I died, tonight, in my bed, nobody would notice until Wednesday. When Charleston grows so sick of me not picking up my phone and not coming to work that he sends his secretary to force me in, and she finds me, already rotting.
Nobody would cry at my funeral.
I cannot stop the tears from falling. I am so lonely it hurts. I am so afraid of being alone forever that I don't do anything about it, because it's scarier to be rejected by what I've always wanted than it is to just live without it.
"How about you stay the night, huh?" Jethro's sympathy pierces my heart and I cry harder. I'm a mess. I bet my hair is sticking to my cheeks. I bet my eyes are puffy. I bet he will never talk to me again after this. "You come in and I'll make you some hot cocoa, huh? It's Evie's favorite when she's upset. And, then, we can talk it out if you want. Or, if you wanna sleep or shower or even watch a movie, we can do that too. I'll even let you take my bed."
I don't argue. I can't push the words past my throat. So I allow him to lead me inside. He waves off Evie's concerns and pushes me up to his room. He sinks me into the warmth of his bed. He passes me hot cocoa. And we sit, in silence, as I drink it and think about all the ways in which I could see myself living here. Every night drinking hot cocoa. Every night having someone to talk to.
I rest my head on his shoulder as I tell him about the loneliness that cuts through me like knives.