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Sitting by the Roadside (Ghosts Riding Shotgun Remix) by >>Jae "Kind of fantastic, actually," she said as she bent to pick up the mail. "Fat lot of good that does me, though, if he's going to be off gallivanting out of town three weeks out of four. Or not even gallivanting, because there's some excuse for gallivanting, a lot of excuse for gallivanting, actually, because at least you get to say the word gallivanting and that's a good time for everyone, but he's not even gallivanting. He's out risk assessing and optimizing and value-adding and probably planning his father's imminent demise, for which I do not blame him one teeny tiny " "It's a sign of madness, you know," a familiar voice said. Rory dropped the mail and stood up quickly, banging her head on the table on her way. "Talking to yourself, I mean. Especially talking that kind of nonsense to yourself, although goodness knows you and your mother always talked enough nonsense to each other. That was bad enough, but talking that way to an empty room is even worse. I hope you don't make a habit of it." Rory didn't say anything. She didn't even turn around, just stood frozen in her stocking feet with the American Express bill balanced on her right toe. "Although I suppose some might say that it's better to think you've gone mad than to think that this is how you'd keep your house if you were in your right mind, shoes thrown every which way, papers strewn about, and a glass sitting without a coaster on that sideboard, which, if I'm not mistaken and we both know I'm never mistaken about these things, is colonial. Quite nice, actually, very well restored, it'll have a ring on it now that you'll never be able to get off but I guess that's how young people treat old things these days, just take them for granted, passed through three hundred years and goodness knows how many hands but oh well, I'm sure you were thirsty. This is no way to keep a husband, you know. It's unfashionable to say so, of course, and I'm sure Gloria Steinem would be deeply ashamed, but it's true. Men say they don't care and I'm sure they actually think they don't care but they do, deep down they're fussier than women. I know your mother wouldn't have taught you that, and heaven knows I know nothing about how short order cooks like their homes kept, just throw some ground meat right on an open flame and he's happy as a pig in mud, I'm sure, and what an apt saying that is, but Logan isn't like that, you know. He's more like Richard, and Richard could never stand a cluttered room. 'Oh, leave the maid alone, Emily,' he'd say to me when we were first married, 'I'm sure the woman's doing her best,' but put his favorite cufflinks away in the wrong drawer and you'd think someone had cut off his hands from the way he carried on. I thought I'd taught you better, but I guess that's how it is, as soon as I'm gone you forget everything I " "Grandma," Rory said, all her breath rushing back at once. "Grandma, I could never " "Rory," Emily said, and it sounded like she'd caught her breath, too, caught it and lost it again in one soft word. Rory spun around and saw Emily sitting on the sofa, her legs neatly crossed. "Grandma," she said, and started to run to her. "You can't touch me," Emily said sharply. Rory stopped. "It's not that I don't it's not my rule," she said. "Oh," Rory said. "But but how aren't what are you doing here?" "Don't sound so pleased." "I am pleased," Rory said. "If you only knew but I don't understand. How can you how can you be here? You can't be here. You're not here. This is my mind must be playing I've been feeling odd all day, I was sick after my meeting this morning, I knew I should have known better than to eat eggs at a place called Hot Dougie's. That must be it, I'm just I'm feverish. Or, actually, I'm not right now but I was earlier, that was the first stage, and this must be the second stage of illness, hallucinations, weird dreams while I'm still awake " "Rory," Emily said. Rory stopped talking and looked at her. She looked just the same. But of course she would, if this were a dream. "If this were your dream, would you really not be allowed to touch me?" "No," Rory said. She looked down at the floor. "Look at me," Emily said quietly. Rory looked up. "I have something important to tell you, and I want you to listen." Rory listened. Emily didn't say anything. "Um, I'm listening," Rory said after a moment. "I don't know if you could tell, because, I mean, how can you tell if someone's listening when no one's talking, it's like the tree falling in the forest dilemma, or like one hand clapping, although really that's not the same thing at all, because you can test out one hand clapping yourself, but the tree falling thing is pretty much outside the scientific method, although maybe if you used some sort of remote camera " "Rory," Emily said. Rory shut her mouth. "Put your shoes on, please. I can't talk to you while you're half-naked." "I'm not " Rory said, then she sighed. She found her shoes and eased them back onto her sore feet, hopping on one foot for the first shoe and leaning heavily on the table for the second. "Ow," she said. "There. I'm decent, although in terrible pain." "And no wonder. Those shoes are very impractical, although I must say they're absolutely darling. That color is stunning." "It's called Bovary red," Rory said, "and they are completely impractical for my life, and unbelievably expensive besides, but as soon as I heard that name I had to have them." "Of course you did," Emily said. "You're my granddaughter, after all." Rory laughed, but she must have breathed in wrong or something because it sounded more like a sob. "All right now," Emily said. "You must listen, because I can't stay long. You might laugh or think it's foolish, but after all I think I've earned a little indulgence. I mean, if people won't listen to you when you're dead, when will they listen?" "Grandma " "My name," Emily said. "I want it remembered. You must make sure. Promise me, Rory. I don't want to be forgotten, promise me you'll make sure " "Of course, of course I won't forget, of course " The phone shrilled from the table behind her and Rory jumped in surprise and looked over her shoulder. "You should get that," Emily said. When Rory turned back, Emily was gone. "No," Rory said. She leaned against the wall and covered her mouth. Behind her the phone rang and rang. Finally she looked down at the caller ID and picked it up. "Hey, Ace," Logan said. "Miss me?" "Awfully," Rory said. "When I'm sitting on the couch watching Law and Order, there's no one to bring me a nice cold Coke. I have to wait for a commercial and go get it myself. It's horrible." "You sound sad," Logan said. "Are you sad?" "No," Rory said. "Yes," Logan said. "It's all right to still be sad. It hasn't been that long." "It has been, actually. Months and months and months." "I think some things always feel like it hasn't been that long," Logan said. "I think this is one of them." "I'm fine," Rory said firmly. "I've just been feeling a little weird. I think I made a disastrous breakfast choice, and you know how that can throw me off for days. Anyway, how was your day? I hope you made a lot of money so you can keep me in the style to which I am accustomed." "Yes, those New Yorker subscriptions and paperback books don't come cheap." "Trade paperbacks," Rory said. "I'm a woman of expensive tastes." "You're in luck," Logan said, "because I had was a very profitable day of raping and pillaging, corporate style, of course, which I'm willing to bet is a little less thrilling than the Viking kind, but what you lose in bloodlust you save on dry cleaning bills, and I do like my suits." Rory let her head fall back against the wall as she relaxed into Logan's voice. She didn't look at the empty sofa as she braced one foot behind her. Her feet were killing her, but she didn't take off her shoes until she was ready to go to bed. The next morning Rory woke up smiling in a patch of sunlight. She stretched out, nearly purring with the luxury of a whole bed to herself, and rolled over onto her stomach. Then she remembered the night before and ran to the bathroom and bent over the toilet, retching. Then she sat back against the tub and cried. "Stop it," she said finally. "You are a strong, smart, dedicated professional, surrounded by people who love you, and yes, it is natural to miss your grandmother, but you had her a good long time and so many people have lost so much more and oh my God, stop talking out loud to yourself like a crazy woman!" Rory got dressed and packed up her laptop and her notes and was in the car and on the road before she even let herself think about where she was going. She was just going to drive a little, get out of the city and clear her thoughts, find a nice little coffee shop where she could get some real work done on her story about the primary, somewhere nice and quiet where she wouldn't be distracted by the noise and bustle of the newsroom. "Oh, please," Emily said. "Do they implant some sort of homing device in you people during one of those interminable festivals, so that you'll actually explode if you stay away from Stars Hollow for more than ten days?" Rory nearly drove off the road. "I'll just put on my seatbelt then, shall I?" Emily said. "It's it's hard to concentrate in the office," Rory said. "And there are too many sources of procrastination at home. I have a lot of writing to do today." "And of course there are no coffee shops closer than an hour's drive away. Ah, well, if you don't have anything better to do, why not? It must be a nice life " "Don't you have anything better to do?" Rory said. "I mean, that sounded awful, but I mean I don't know, I would have thought that, you know, you'd have a lot to do up there, or out there, or, you know, where you come from." "It's nice to get away every once in a while," Emily said. Rory glanced over at her. Emily was sitting primly in the passenger seat with her seatbelt carefully fastened across her chest. "Isn't it don't you like it?" "Oh, of course. It's perfectly nice." Rory looked at her again. Those were the exact words Emily had once used to describe the party the Hartford Homeless Shelter had thrown to thank the DAR for their generous donations, a party at which Oreos and Nescafe had been served. "I mean, they obviously try very hard. They do their best. I suppose." "You don't like it!" "I do! Actually, it's impossible not to like it, while you're there. It's just I don't wish to sound ungrateful, and, you know, the spiritual side is very nice, very lovely, and I'm very happy, of course, but I do sometimes think that perhaps a tiny bit less emphasis on the unending choral hymns of praise and a little bit more on the choice of drapes would not have gone amiss. For heaven's sake so to speak you should have seen the color of the rugs in my house when I first " "You have a house?" "Of course I have a house, Rory, don't be ridiculous. It's heaven, why wouldn't I have a house?" "I I don't know," Rory said weakly. She tried to concentrate on the road. "And it's lovely, truly it is, underneath, but I've had to completely redecorate. Just start from scratch, and I don't know what kind of secret lives interior decorators lead, but it is impossible to find one up there. I always said that Mamie Vandervoorten couldn't have found those French sconces she used in the Broadwoods' dining room by any means other than witchcraft, but apparently I was more right than I knew." Rory smiled a little as she listened to Emily talk. She sounded happy. She sounded the same as she always had, and she sounded happy, and Rory didn't know how she'd missed that when Emily was when she had been before. But Rory was glad she knew now. "Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea. They're really quite nice there, and very conscientious, and I must say that my maid there is quite the best one I've ever had, I was pleasantly surprised " "You have a maid?" "Of course I have a maid, Rory. It's heaven, do you think people do their own housework?" "I actually, you know, I'd never thought about it." Emily made a small sound, one that in a less refined woman wearing a less expensive suit might have been called a snort. Rory smiled again. "Well, I shouldn't be away too long," Emily said. "Angelique is a gem among maids, but still, things go much more smoothly when I'm there to keep an eye on her. We were interrupted last night, so I thought I'd just pop back down and remind you of our conversation. You do remember?" "Of course, but Grandma no one's forgotten you, we all remember you, we talk about you all the time. I can't believe you'd think " "I want my name to be remembered, Rory. Promise me." "Grandma " "Promise me, Rory." "All right, you know, I'm getting a little tired of this," Rory said. She pulled a quick U-turn, ignoring Emily's protests. "Rory? Rory, where are we going? I thought we were going to Stars Hollow. Rory, slow down now, I may be dead but that doesn't mean I want to go through the whole process twice, it takes long enough to get everything settled up there without starting a whole new round of paperwork " Finally Rory pulled the car over across from a construction site. She turned off the engine and looked over at Emily. "Where are we?" Emily said. Rory pointed at a sign posted in front of the site that read Future Home of the Emily Gilmore Dance Pavilion. "It was Grandpa's idea," Rory said, "he really made it happen, although Logan's parents made a gift, and Logan and I did too, of course, and Mom and Luke, Luke was really generous, actually, Grandpa was quite touched. He was the one who went to the ballet with the idea. The hospital had asked him about a wing, after a discreet interval, of course, and Grandpa made a gift but he said he knew how he wanted you to be remembered and it wasn't at the hospital. He said, he said that he wanted people to think of you when they were watching something beautiful. So you see, we haven't forgotten you, I don't know what you think of us but I do know what we think of you and I can't believe, I can't believe you'd think we wouldn't remember you. I can't believe you'd think I wouldn't." Rory started the car again and Emily said, "Wait." She waited. Emily didn't say anything, just sat looking out at the raw earth and the sign with her name on it. As Rory watched she twisted her hands together, her right thumb brushing again and again over the two rings she wore on her left hand. She hadn't been buried with them, Rory knew. Rory's grandfather hadn't allowed it, had said that Emily would have wanted Rory to have them. At first Rory hadn't worn them; she was already wearing the rings Logan had given her and Rory had enough trouble getting used to wearing those every day. She'd never been much for jewelry. And Emily's engagement ring was quite a rock, as Lorelai would say, and was a large ring for such a young woman, as Emily would have said. But the rings had looked lonely, somehow, sitting in their velvet case on top of Rory's dresser, and she'd started wearing them on her right hand. Now she covered her right hand with her left and let her fingers brush against the rings, over and over, just as Emily did. "Time passes differently there, you know," Emily said. "Or rather, it doesn't pass at all. I still feel very close to to who I was before. To what I had before. And I know that you would never forget the past, but now you're all moving on, as you must do, into the future, and it will be a future without me, as it must be. And that is a little harder to accept than one might have thought. I wish I wish " "What, Grandma?" Rory said. "What do you wish?" Emily shook her head and brought her hands together with a hollow clap. "Oh, we're just talking nonsense now," she said. "I have a house I must be decorating, and you have a story to write, and we're both busy women. I shouldn't even be here. You have your own life to lead, and I have well, I must leave you to it." "Grandma!" Rory said, but suddenly the passenger seat was empty. Rory put her head down against the steering wheel and cried. Then she wiped her palms across her face and took three deep breaths and pulled back out onto the highway. By the time she got to Luke's the lunch rush was just starting. "Rory!" Luke said when she walked in the door, and wrapped his arms around her, even though he had a cheeseburger in one hand and a BLT in the other. "Grab your own plates," Luke barked to the people sitting at the table by the window, "what do you think this is, the Ritz?" and when his hands were empty he hugged her again, harder. "Hey, Luke," she said. "Don't let me interrupt you. I'll just sit " She looked around but the diner was full. "I'll make some room," Luke said. "You want a burger?" "No, don't bother," Rory said. "It's your busy time, I don't want to take up a table." Luke peered at her carefully for a minute and then said, "Lorelai was in for a cup of coffee an hour ago, but she's back at the inn now. I can make you something to go, a grilled cheese maybe?" "No, that's okay, I'll just --" "You gotta have something." "Here, I'll just take this," Rory said, grabbing something almost at random from the counter. "I'm going to see if I can find Lane, Luke, but thanks for this delicious, um " She looked down at her hand. "This super yummy apple." Lane was very easy to find, because she and Zach were on their knees in the town square studying a huge piece of white paper laid out across the grass. As soon as she saw Rory Lane jumped up and ran over to her, while Zach grunted and waved without looking up. "It's great to see you!" Lane said. "You look actually, you look a little is something wrong?" "What's this?" Rory said. "It's a life-size schematic of the van. Zach insists that we can fit an extra person and three extra guitars inside, and I am proving to him that we cannot." "Why don't you use the life-size actual van to figure it out?" "It's being used," Zach said. "Look, Lane, what if we moved this and put one of the guitars " "That's the steering wheel. I think we're going to need that." Lane looked at Rory again. "Seriously, are you all right? You look kind of " "I didn't sleep well," Rory said. "Actually, that's not right, I slept fine. It's the being awake that's a little troublesome. I'm kind of having I don't know what to call it. I keep I mean, I know it's just my mind playing tricks but it's kind of strange anyway, and it makes me feel a little I keep thinking that I'm seeing my grandmother." "Whoa," Zach said. "Rory sees dead people." "Zach! Van diagram!" Lane pointed and there was a rustling noise as Zach sank back down to his knees on the paper. "Sorry about that. Are you, like, thinking you're seeing her on the street or something? Because right after Johnny Cash died, I kept thinking I was seeing him inside stores while I was walking past on the sidewalk, but every time I went in to check it was never him. Which makes sense, because what would Johnny Cash be doing in Stars Hollow, and even if he was here what would he be doing in Kitchen Kapers, although I guess even the Man in Black has to buy his garlic presses somewhere. I mean, I know that's not the same thing, but " "It's not like that," Rory said. "It's more like she comes to see me. She keeps saying she doesn't want me to forget her, and she keeps coming to tell me that." "Are you even allowed to do that?" Lane said. "I mean, I guess you hear about it every once in a while in the Bible, but I always thought it was more of a special occasion type thing, not something they let you do whenever you wanted to drop by your granddaughter's for a chat." "If anybody could get out of there whenever she wanted, it'd be that lady," Zach said. Rory and Lane looked at him. "She always got her way. Remember the wedding?" "I told you not to wear sneakers to Rory's wedding." "Look, I wore a jacket and pants that I ironed and a tie that's enough. Plus, they were black Converse high tops. Those are, like, formal sneakers. And she could've just made sure my feet weren't in any of the pictures. She didn't have to make me change shoes with one of the waiters." Rory laughed. "I'd totally forgotten about that." "Yeah, well, easy for you. That guy'd been wearing those shoes for hours and they were all sweaty and gross, plus he totally left with my sneakers and I had to track him down the next day." "Served you right," Lane said. She looked back at Rory. "It's really kind of have you been under a lot of stress lately? Work maybe? Because that might make you start having crazy thoughts. And they are crazy, because you would totally never forget your grandmother." "I know," Rory said. "And I thought she knew." "Rory, she's " Lane paused, chewing on her lip for a moment. "Have you told Lorelai?" "No," Rory said. "No, not yet." Lane said, "You should go see Lorelai. She'll make you feel better." "I know," Rory said, and left Lane and Zach to bicker over their van diagram. As soon as she saw her mother standing behind the front desk at the inn, Rory did feel better, so much better that she wondered why she hadn't gone there in the first place. She let Lorelai hug her and admire her jacket and take her through the kitchen to see Sookie and steal some cookies and settle them both down in a corner of the dining room with coffee. "So what's wrong?" Lorelai said. "And don't tell me nothing, because the old Stars Hollow grapevine has gone twenty-first century. Luke called me on my cell and told me you didn't want a burger and that you looked like something was up and Lane texted me and said you seemed down, or actually what she wrote was RORY SAD??? but I know what she meant, and Kirk came by to tell me that you'd ignored him when you passed him on the street and I know there's nothing particularly techno-cool and modern about that but he's Kirk, he's timeless. So spill, kid." Rory spilled. When she said Emily's name Lorelai blinked hard, as if someone had bumped against a new bruise and she was trying not to cry out, because after all it had been an accident and she didn't want to let on how much it hurt. Rory watched her mother blink and remembered why she hadn't come here in the first place. She looked down at her coffee cup while she told the rest of the story, but when she looked back up Lorelai didn't look too sad. In fact, she looked like she was trying not to laugh. "First," Lorelai said when Rory had finished, "give me that cup." Rory handed it over and Lorelai put it on the table behind her, out of Rory's reach. "Why are you smiling at me like that? Are you trying to humor me until you can whisk me away to see a psychiatrist?" "Well, you're going to be seeing a doctor, but it won't be a psychiatrist." "What?" "Rory, come on. You're a smart kid, you figure it out. You've been sick in the mornings, you're emotional, you're having crazy dreams " "They're not dreams " "And Luke told me when he called that you turned down a burger and a grilled cheese and had an apple instead. An apple! Case closed, baby. No pun intended." "What case? What pun? What are you talking about?" Rory looked at her mother. "Wait, you're not talking about I'm not " "Please ask how this could have happened," Lorelai said. "Because I've got so many funny jokes along that line, you won't believe it." "I know how this could have happened," Rory said. "But I just don't know that it did happen. I mean, I think it hasn't been it's been " "Ah, I recognize that look. That's the look of a woman who's counting back in her head and realizing that she's counting back a lot farther than she thought she'd be." "Wow," Rory whispered. "Wow," Lorelai said, smiling as widely as Rory had ever seen. Then she reached across the table and hugged Rory, hard enough to knock her saucer onto the floor. "Wow is so, so right." "But but why would I be seeing Grandma now? What does that have to do with " "Sometimes your body knows before you do, I guess," Lorelai said. "Maybe subconsciously you were trying to tell yourself something, like maybe that in about seven, eight months or so there might be another Emily running around here. Or crawling, or actually just lying there for the first bit, if I remember correctly, but you get the idea." "Do you think maybe Grandma was trying to tell me? Do you think she knows, and she was " "Oh, hon," Lorelai said, and there was that look again, the one Rory hadn't wanted to see. "I don't know if it works like that. I mean, maybe somehow her spirit knows that we're all right, but I don't think she can really I don't know that she can really know." "I want her to," Rory said. "Me too," Lorelai said. They were quiet for a minute. Then Rory said, "So you don't think it must have just been me imagining things, or something, when I thought she was " "I think it must have been, kiddo. I mean, you said that she was all worried about not being part of your future, and I think well, maybe that's what you're worried about, that you're having this big thing happen to you, the biggest thing ever, and it's really natural to wish that she could have been part of it, and I'm so sorry that she can't be, but, you know, she would've wanted you to be so happy. And maybe that's the best thing you could do for her, just to let yourself be as happy as you know she'd want you to be." "Yeah," Rory said. "I guess it just seemed so real, talking to her." "Oh, yeah, I remember. I had the craziest dreams when I was pregnant with you, and they seemed so real at the time. I remember, there was this one where I was in my room, and David Bowie came in and he sat on the edge of the bed and he said actually, you know, I think I'm gonna keep that one to myself for now. Gotta save something for when I'm babbling in the old folks' home." "I can't wait," Rory said. She sighed. "I just wish " "Me too," Lorelai said. She stood up and crossed over to Rory's side of the table and hugged her again. Rory laid her head against Lorelai's and closed her eyes. Then she felt Lorelai jump. "What?" she said. "Nothing," Lorelai said. She was staring over Rory's shoulder. Rory looked back but she couldn't see anything. "Wait," Rory said. "Did you just see her?" "No," Lorelai said. Rory looked at her suspiciously. "A a trick of the light, that's all," Lorelai said weakly. "Ha!" Rory said. "So you did " "It wasn't her," Lorelai said. "It couldn't have been. Because it looked like she winked at me, and Emily Gilmore never winked in her life. It's vulgar and cheap and clichι and oh God." "What?" Rory said. She looked around the room. "Is she here? Do you see her?" "I don't see her," Lorelai said. "But I think she's with us." "How do you know?" Rory said. "Because I have a sudden urge to get some baby clothes monogrammed," Lorelai said. "And that's an urge I've never had before. And and I want to buy a silver spoon and just engrave the hell out of it. And that's not me! I don't engrave things! Maybe she's possessing me, and that's why we can't see her." Rory laughed. "Or maybe you're just more like her than you thought, and it's only now that you're going to be a grandmother that it's coming out." Lorelai laughed and shivered at the same time. "I don't know which is scarier," she said. "Come on, let's get out of here. You should call Logan, and I have to go register the baby at Tiffany. Oh God there she goes again! I don't know how I'm going to make it through this." Rory linked an arm through her mother's. "We'll find a way," she said. Read the original story [here]. |
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