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She felt bad; she hadn’t meant to yell at him.
At her fellow lunchmates at the neighboring tables: sure. They deserved it. Paris glared daggers back at anyone idiotic enough to try to sneak a peek at her: the shrill, rude girl who’d blown up at a man who’d told her how impolite it was for her to talk on the phone at a restaurant. She didn’t regret that. She did regret that when the waiter had stepped in to calm her down, she’d chased him away too.
The aura of a whole room of people’s dislike surrounding her was not something new for her. Let them judge—like they were any better. She knew all the patrons of the restaurant clicking their tongues at her yelled just as loudly in their own homes. These kind of people always screamed, mostly at their servers: just not in public.
Oh, believe her, she knew. She knew these people well enough to make sure to limit her forays back into settings like this one as much as possible. There was a reason the only time she’d been back to Hartford in half a decade was at that ridiculous Chilton “meet the students” function last winter—and, well, that had only been to see Rory.
At the thought, she sighed and looked down at her phone. Still fifteen minutes before Emily was supposed to show up.
Paris wondered what she had been thinking, coming up to Nantucket with so much time to spare before their lunch date. She’d spent about ten minutes walking down the streets by the ferry before giving up with boredom—there was nothing there to experience that she couldn’t replicate by paging through some somberly nostalgic paperback about America’s whaling past in an airport bookstore. She’d been sitting in the restaurant since.
The waiter approached her so meekly, she didn’t even notice he had come over to serve her her salad until it was right in front of her. He started to move away quietly, when Paris stopped him.
“Look, I’m sorry about before,” she blurted out sharply, and she knew as the words left her mouth that she sounded angry that she had to apologize. Well, what did he want from her? She was trying.
He nodded uncertainly, if with a little surprise in his lowered glance. He lingered for a few seconds, evidently wondering if Paris was going to say anything else. She raised her eyebrows impatiently to let him know to move it along.
He hurried away. She picked up a fork and pushed a grape tomato around on her plate. She imagined the disappointment of her fellow diners at her failure to provide another round of entertainment.
She still felt bad. She’d give him a ridiculous tip, she decided.
*
When Emily showed up, Paris glanced at her watch: three minutes early. She had meant to have the waiter clear the table before she’d shown up; she should have known Emily would arrive a little before the engaged time.
(It’d been too long. In New York, everyone was always a few minutes late: the subway train stalled, someone’s last meeting went over. Not back in this world. Not back home.)
Paris could see Emily’s eyes begin to scan the tables to search for her, and she stood up to help her find her. Meeting her gaze, Emily smiled brightly, if a little stiltedly.
“Paris, so good to see you,” she said warmly, extending her hand.
“Thank you so much for meeting me, Emily,” Paris replied, shaking her hand firmly. “I hope you don’t mind that I started eating early; I’ve been here for a couple hours.”
Paris’ voice almost managed not to betray her nervousness—she knew this was a faux pas, and not how she wanted this lunch to start out. She watched Emily’s eyes flit disapprovingly to the half-eaten plate of salad on the table, but, to Paris’ surprise, it only seemed to take her a second to recover from her instinctive distaste. Emily’s face broke into a second smile—this time, an unfamiliarly genuine one—and it seemed to Paris like her posture (just barely) relaxed.
“Oh, who cares?” Emily asked, dismissing the entire life’s work of Miss Manners with a wave of her hand.
Paris rarely laughed, and when she did, she was always surprised by how loud she sounded. She didn’t know exactly why Emily Gilmore shrugging off the finer points of table etiquette was so funny to her, but hearing her laugh, Emily met her gaze with surprise.
“Not me, clearly,” Paris answered.
“Screw it,” Emily said, winking at Paris as she moved into her chair.
Paris joined her, sitting down again. Yes, screw it. Screw them all.
*
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Emily asked, looking admiringly out the window at the waves just within their eyesight.
Paris gave a single perfunctory nod, squinting out towards the horizon over which Emily was gushing. It was fine, she guessed. Staring at anything for more than a few seconds made her anxious.
“I just love the sea air,” Emily added, leaning in confidentially. “The smell of it.”
Paris didn’t know what to say about that. If dead fish and salt were what worked for Emily, then go with God, she guessed. She tried to think through a way to raise the topic she’d set up the lunch to discuss, but was coming up blank. The gooey emotional sharing the moment required did not come naturally for her.
“But is this your first time on the island?” Emily asked, suddenly seeming to realize it was a possibility.
“I’m afraid it is,” Paris admitted with about as much interest as she had in the subject. She hoped she hadn’t sounded too caustic.
“Oh, it’s wonderful. You’ll have to let me take you on a tour after we eat,” Emily insisted.
“Well, I’ve read Moby Dick already, so let’s make it the abbreviated version,” Paris suggested with an impatient smile.
“Well, but did you know—” Emily started, unconsciously moving a hand forward on the table in apparent excitement. “Apparently Melville didn’t even visit Nantucket before finishing the novel. Isn’t that remarkable?”
It was, actually. Paris, in retrospect, felt slightly betrayed that she had persevered through pages of bloviating description from a man who was clearly unqualified to speak on the topic. But what else was new?
“Really makes you wonder who you can trust,” Paris joked.
“Very true,” Emily agreed. She took a sip of her ice water and leaned back in her chair. “I’ve been learning so much since I started volunteering at the museum. So much bizarre history.”
She put the glass back down on the table, and took in a contented breath.
“I don’t know why we didn’t come out here more for all those years,” she said.
“You and Richard?” Paris asked.
The name seemed to jolt Emily out of her dreamy mood. Paris wished, not for the first time, she knew how to come off as less jarring to people.
“Yes,” Emily replied distantly. She’d turned back to look at the ocean again, this time not smiling.
Well, as much as she had unintentionally killed the conversation, Paris had come to talk about Richard.
She turned to her bag at her side and pulled out a thin, well-weathered book.
*
The semi-annual lunches with Richard had started during her second year of medical school.
It had been an accident, and an unlikely one, at that—she remembered now how she had done a dramatic double take at her regular study spot, a coffee shop in Harvard Square, as she saw Richard wander in, shaking his umbrella out at the front doormat.
It was early December, and unseasonably cold and windy on top of the rain. The place was packed with people getting out of the way of the storm, which was the only reason Paris could think of that Richard would have found his way into the black hole of hipster garbage he had entered then.
She watched him smooth over his hair that had become disheveled in the downpour, and look down with frustration at his dampened clothing.
At that point, Paris hadn’t talked with anyone in 72 hours—Doyle himself had been notified by email that she was putting herself in study-related quarantine for the next seven days. Which is why it was so strange, how welcome the sight of a Gilmore was. For the first time in a hectic and nerve-wracking week, she felt at home.
She started walking over to him as he positioned himself in line, where it suddenly became even more clear that he was by far the oldest and the tallest person in the room.
He didn’t see her until she was only a few paces away. After a split second of searching his mind for recognition, he burst out into a laugh.
“Well, if it isn’t Paris Geller,” he said heartily.
Beaming, she extended her hand—which he summarily ignored, pulling her into a quick hug.
She winced a little as his wet clothes came into contact with her own. But she hugged him back.
*
They’d had coffee together as he’d quizzed her about the ins and outs of medical school, her career goals, her life with Doyle. In turn, he’d had a chance to lavish praise on Rory’s reporting from the campaign trail leading up to Obama’s election.
He was understandably silent about the past year’s lack of similar output from Rory. At one point, Paris thought he was maybe hinting for her to share any guesses she had as to why Rory’s career seemed to have stalled so suddenly, but he’d dropped the topic without too much protest.
If she were being honest, she didn’t really know. Last she’d spoken with her, Rory had told her she was taking a step back and spending some time on herself before deciding what she wanted to write about next. The whole plan was so far outside of Paris’ conceptual universe that she had made Rory repeat it a few times, trying to grasp her meaning. Step back? Doing what? Where? With whom? Why? Rory hadn’t been sure.
But with Richard, Paris played dumb on the topic. She turned the conversation back to him, asking questions about the current state of his business. He filled her in, from A to Z, on a difficult situation with a close business contact, and they spent an hour brainstorming power plays together in which he’d end up with the upper hand.
“Brilliant, Paris!” he exclaimed at one point. “Is there no way I can convince you to make a career change to the insurance business?”
She shrugged and smiled. She’d forgotten it: those few, wonderful occasions in which having Rory around made her feel like she had Rory’s family too. Like she had a family.
“Look, Richard,” she’d said as the baristas politely informed them the coffee shop had closed a half hour ago and it was time for them to vacate, “it’s been wonderful catching up.”
She reached into her bag to pull out her ever-ready business cards: Paris Geller, Student, Doctor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Class of 2011 .
He took the card into his hand and regarded it approvingly.
“I’d love to check in again sometime,” she added, speaking maybe a little too quickly.
He nodded, and if his face betrayed a tinge of pity, still, his voice was nothing but friendly in his response.
“I’ll call you tomorrow from the office,” he said, “and we’ll set up an appointment for six months from now.”
*
“That—” Emily seemed short of breath. “Is that one of Richard’s journals? How on earth do you have that?”
Paris looked down at the leather book in her hands and pushed it forward towards Emily, who grabbed it eagerly, pulling it close to her.
“I don’t know what it is,” she explained. “Not really. I haven’t read it. Richard gave it to me—to give to Rory.”
Paris waited a moment to let Emily process the information she had just shared with her. She watched as Emily traced her fingers lightly over the embossed Yale crest on the front of the journal.
She knew she’d have to start from the beginning, explaining to Emily how they’d started to meet for lunch. She was less concerned about that than about explaining the end: how she couldn’t keep her promise to Richard about Rory any longer.
*
It was a few years ago that Richard had first started losing hope in Rory.
“So much talent,” he said at one of their lunches, shaking his head as he distractedly shook the ice in the glass of water in his hand. “Such intelligence. Do you know, we used to discuss German philosophy together when she was in junior high school.”
Paris knew. She had started to get used to this speech. Her eyes wandered to her phone; she should really be on her way soon, she had thought. Obviously, Richard was right, but what did he want her to do about it?
“She’s aimless,” he declared, his voice abruptly switching from despondent to irritated. “She’s wasting time—and I know she’s with that Logan boy again, too.”
Paris looked up suddenly, meeting his face with surprise at the last comment.
“She’s never said anything about that,” she blurted out quickly.
Richard took a sip of his water.
“Come now, Paris, she didn’t have to.”
Feeling strangely caught off guard, Paris impatiently fiddled with the cloth napkin on her lap.
“Who do you think keeps flying her off to Europe?” Richard asked. “Lorelai?”
Paris didn’t know why the question had made her feel so sad. Actually, yes: she had hoped it was Lorelai, somehow. Or, actually, Richard.
“Well,” she interrupted as she stood up. She could tell he was just as surprised as she was by the crack in her voice. “I’m as concerned as you are, Richard, but I am, after all, very busy getting a law degree, so.”
He looked up in confusion as she gathered her things together.
She dramatically shrugged as she looked book at him, ready to go. “Wish I could help! Sorry, I’ve got no clue.”
He didn’t say anything, didn’t even resort to the barest formality of goodbyes as she turned to leave.
*
What was it he’d wanted her to say? That she knew? That Rory’s mind was the only one she knew as well as her own? That before meeting Rory, she hadn’t even imagined it was possible for all her tangled webs of thought and curiosity and worry and passion to interconnect with another person’s? That she hadn’t stopped thinking about Rory’s nuanced criticisms of the Jungian basis of Joseph Campbell’s project since that night they discussed The Power of Myth together on a hotel bed in Florida over greasy slices of pizza? That no one would ever be as patient with her as Rory had been? That no one would ever make her feel quite as comfortable, quite as safe? That Rory had stopped letting her in on her life years ago? That she was constantly worried about her?
That she loved Doyle, but she couldn’t live without Rory?
*
It was like he had known what would happen: he’d given her the journal during their last lunch before he died.
She’d apologized, of course, after that lunch. She never knew exactly how much he’d guessed, what he thought had happened in her brain during that meeting.
She thought that maybe he’d forgotten—until their last lunch.
It was the first time that they had decided to return, not to his club or to a high end restaurant in New York for their meeting, but to the coffee shop at which they’d first run into each other. He was heading to Boston for business, and had suggested it as a meeting place.
“Richard,” she’d said, smilingly extending her hand when he came in (umbrella-less and dry this time).
Just as he had done at their meeting at that coffee shop, Richard bypassed the handshake for an abrupt hug.
Sitting down after getting large mugs of coffee and sandwiches, they began their conversation by going over the successes of Paris’ clinic, a venture about which Richard was unfailingly enthusiastic. He had, after all, been the first donor to contribute to it.
As they made their way through the booklet of future plans for the clinic Paris had brought (mainly focusing on Paris’ dream of coordinating with non-profits to provide cost-reduced fertility treatments for economically disadvantaged parents), Richard seemed to grow quieter, more thoughtful.
“Everything all right?” Paris asked, after he let out a particularly obvious sigh.
“Well, it’s just—” Richard looked worried he was about to set Paris off again. “I want something like this, for Rory.”
He glanced over, waiting for her explosion, but she only nodded.
“I know, Richard,” she told him. Why not be honest? she thought. What did she have to lose? “I want that too.”
He took in another deep breath, this time less a sigh than to indicate he had made a decision.
“I know you do, Paris,” he said.
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a well-worn, leather book.
Tracing the crest on the front thoughtlessly with his thumb, he looked down at the journal.
“I found this the other day,” he told Paris, and passed her the book.
Taking it into her hands, she reached to turn over the cover, but was stopped by his hand pressing it back down.
“It’s not for you,” he explained. “It’s for Rory.”
Before he could let her ask the obvious question—okay, then why don’t you give it to her?—he kept talking.
“You know, Paris, it’s very easy only to remember the best parts of our lives,” he said, taking the book out of her hands and resting it on the table in front of her. “I have found it impossible to understand what’s wrong with my granddaughter, because to me she is—well, she’s just the same brilliant girl who memorized the periodic table before most children learn to read. I haven’t thought of her as a person. I’m afraid I don’t think we taught her enough…” He frowned. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger. “We never taught her to fight for something. Not just to be brilliant, but…”
He looked confused again as he searched for words.
“But to know who she is,” Paris filled in. “What she wants. She doesn’t want anything hard enough.”
Richard looked pleased as he nodded at that.
“Yes, precisely.”
He tapped on the cover of the book.
“This is from a time, not so long ago, when I forgot myself, who I really was. I almost lost everything—I almost lost Emily.” It sounded, Paris noted, like for him, those were the same thing. “I came to my senses because I had to, not just for me, but for her. For my family.” He paused, and met Paris’ gaze. “I—well, I don’t know if this is the right thing to share, or if this will help her, but I was hoping I could ask you to do me a very great favor, Paris.”
Paris didn’t know exactly what to say. She nodded, very quickly.
“When she’s ready,” he said. “When she starts really asking herself what she wants, who she is, I was hoping you would give this to her on my behalf. Let her know that I thought she might learn from my mistakes, and from what I realized.”
He was staring at her, waiting for an answer, but she still didn’t understand.
“Richard—I, well, I’m flattered that you would trust me with this, but with all due respect, can’t you just give her the thing yourself?” she asked.
His answer was one of the only parts she didn’t relate back to Emily as she told the story.
“I have no idea how long she’ll need,” he said. With an indecipherable smile, he added: “I don’t know if I will be around that long.”
But why me? she had thought at the time. He could have asked Lorelai: why me?
“I think,” he answered her unasked question, leaning in as if telling a secret, “she will appreciate knowing that I trusted you to give it.”
*
After they’d finished lunch, after she’d finished telling the story, Emily had insisted on walking with Paris along the beach. Paris had tried to keep talking, to say what she had come to say to Emily after giving back the journal, but Emily, each time, stopped her.
“Just give me a moment,” she said, waving Paris’ words away.
They walked, and Paris watched families gathering together along the coast, gazing out at the water that, now, was too cold to swim in.
Boys were running along the sand, kicking up grains in each other’s faces as they played—soccer? Who knows? Further back, parents and grandparents watched them approvingly, sharing inaudible conversations. Almost beyond her sight, she could see couples strolling off together, the emerging sunset crowning them with golden light. Everyone around her, she thought, was very slow, and very quiet.
She knew this kind of slow-moving, silent rich person too well: she’d known them her whole life. Of course she was jealous of them; she always had been. Why deny it? She would always envy her old classmates, how they knew their place in the world, how they never had to fight for anything. How comfortable they felt.
They floated along in their happy lethargy until eventually they dropped dead. Not her—not her family. Five generations of Gellers had gone to Harvard and still had never found themselves invited to those people’s insipid tea parties and cotillions.
Generations of Gellers had been smart enough and ruthless enough to force their way into this world while the contented, aimless, drifting, sunset-walking aristocrats who owned it fretted about whether or not they should harden their admission policies’ Jewish quotas to keep their schools from being ruined.
Emily was right: screw them. Screw it all.
She’d left them; she’d left the hope she’d ever be one of them back in Chilton with her breakdown over Harvard’s rejection letter. But the fight was still in her—even in Brooklyn—and it she knew it’d be in her till she died.
She was just thinking she should tell Emily that she had nothing else to say and she had better things to do than take a walk on the beach when the woman beside her stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.
Emily sighed admiringly, pointing out at the light rippling along the water.
“Well, how about that,” she declared, her hand—shockingly—resting on Paris’ back.
Paris couldn’t help letting her anger subside, just a little.
“Paris,” Emily started, still staring off at the dots of sun along the waves, “I think you came here to tell me that you want me to give Rory the journal instead of you—because you’ve given up on her.”
Paris wanted to debate (she was so good at debating), but the feel of the hand on her back made her feel suddenly so weak. So needy. It’d been so long since someone, even her kids, had touched her like that.
Emily turned to look at her, staring insistently even as Paris’ eyes began to blur.
“I understand that,” she said, her voice softer than Paris had thought possible. “Though I do think you’re wrong about her.”
Maybe, Paris thought. But wishing had never gotten her anything.
“How about this, Paris,” she started, with a smile that, just like Richard’s, she didn’t know how to interpret, “would you care to join me for lunch again in six months?”
Paris, for the second time that day, laughed.
“Of course, I imagine I’ll see you for Lorelai’s wedding soon, but I think I’d like to make sure we keep in touch more regularly.”
The ocean, Paris thought, was actually not the worst thing in the world to look at.
“I think I could manage to fit it in,” Paris told her, smiling back.
Emily nodded. “Good,” she said, moving her hand up uncharacteristically to squeeze Paris’ shoulder. “And I’ll tell you what, I’ll hold onto the journal for now. Unless you ever want it back.”
Maybe, Paris told herself, without finishing the sentence. Maybe. Maybe.
“But for now, Paris,” Emily went on, “if you have a little more time, I could take you over to get a better look at that lighthouse.” She pointed towards its figure on the horizon. “It’s Rory’s favorite part of the island, you know,” she added meaningfully.
Paris took in a breath, and thought, fuck it. Why fight it?
“You know what, Emily?” she told her, her voice brightening. “I do have some time.”