MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter ten

November 2000

Westfarms Shopping Mall, Hartford

13:00

THE LAST place I want to be is here.

It's less to do with the fact that I hate shopping – a product of being forced along with my mother and Lorelai for hours watching them try on clothes I couldn't care less about while I grew increasingly more uncomfortable with waiting – and more to do with the fact that I'm with my mother. I thought I got out of shopping with my mother when I left the house, but this is what she wanted for her birthday and so here I am. Gift number one of three ticked off.

Gift number two is a new set of silver candlestick holders from Kim's Antiques in Stars Hollow – Jethro took me there on our tour of the small town and I'd clocked them as something my mother would actually like, so I couldn't fumble the chance to actually make her happy. Gift number three is a new necklace that she's going to pick out today to match her outfit for tomorrow's party and that I get to pay for.

My mother has always been easy to buy for – expensive, meaningless, and which will probably sit in the basement so she doesn't have to look at it.

I stand behind her now, holding her bags, watching her flip through dresses I would never pick out for myself. She grabs one, and then another, and then another and throws them into the arms of the poor store worker being forced to walk around with us to attend to my mother's needs.

"Mother, really," I try to argue, knowing it is to no avail, "I don't need a new dress. I have plenty I can wear tomorrow."

She freezes, one hand on a dress the color of spilled red wine, and turns her head slowly to glare at me. It completely immobilizes me. If I wasn't her daughter, I'd just be another bug buzzing in her ear to swat away.

"You cannot wear a dress you already own. What if someone has already seen you in it?" She turns back to the dresses and swipes right past the red one. "Honestly, Leighton, you act like you were raised in an entirely different family."

Sometimes I wish I was.

Her hand pauses on the hanger of an emerald green dress. My stomach twists. I'm afraid I've said it out loud and I'm going to get the Lorelai treatment. First freezing me out and then, when she feels bad for herself, trying to sweeten me up so I fall back into her arms. Lorelai has never fallen for it. I would. I'd make my fingers bloody trying to crawl back to my mother.

"How much green do you wear?"

"I don't – I've never worn green. Green was more Lorelai's color."

She hums and lets her fingers run over the satin. "She does suit green." Her head snaps to the trembling worker beside us. Her name badge says Emmy. My mother will complain about it being a made-up name when we leave. "Show me all your green dresses. I'm sure we will find something that suits my daughter."

Lorelai has always suited any color my mother throws at her. She glitters in emerald, shines in sapphire, glows in diamond. She was always the belle of any ball, sweeping across the dance floor with Christopher, the object of every desire, every jealousy. Especially mine. I was always too pale, or too red, or washed out, or too skinny, or too chunky. I slunk into the shadows my sister left behind.

When I was sixteen, I tried on all the dresses she left behind and cried because I would never be my sister.

When I visit my parents' house, it is never my room I hide in. It is always hers.