MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter eleven

November 2000

43 Magnolia Avenue, Hartford

17:25

I THINK I'm more like my mother than I want to be.

I have her nose, the long slant of it a blemish across our faces we try desperately not to draw attention to. I have her smile, small and subdued, not quite there in all the right places. I don't think it's really my smile but, it's what I was raised knowing and anything else feels all wrong. Feels too bright, too wide, too fake on my mouth. So, I have her smile. And her nose.

I throw cinnamon into the flour I'm rolling beneath my hands. I wish I was less like my mother. I wish, sometimes, that I was more like my father. And I hate myself for it. Why should I wish to be more like him than her? They are, in all the ways that matter, the same people. They uphold the same values, they like the same things, they turn their noses up at the same disgusts. I am just as much the both of them as I am made up of.

But, I'm my mother.

And I wish I wasn't.

"I'm actually surprised you came to this conclusion without a therapist."

On the other end of the phone, a distant voice yells for Harrison to boil some water for tea. I can almost hear him rolling his eyes as he switches on the kettle he gets shipped all the way from England.

"Do you think they like me?"

"Your parents? No." I bristle. I expect he hears the shudder rolling down my spine. I try to hide it by pulling apart the dough I've created with my own hands. "But, I don't think they know the difference between loving your daughters as parents and liking them as people."

"What is the difference?"

"To be honest, Leigh, I think your parents don't know what it's like to actually like anything. Do they have actual friends?"

"The Haydens are – oh. Well, they were friends before Rory."

He makes a noise as if to punctuate his point. I can hear him messing around with mugs, the teabag softly thudding against the bottom, and then the hot water joining it, steam rising around his face. He had always found making tea calming. The few minutes spent by himself in the kitchen. The whistling of the kettle. The clanking of the spoon against the mug. I liked to watch him when he didn't realize I was there, leaning against the doorframe, smiling because we were content.

He continues to let me monologue as I try to bake and he does whatever it is he does when he's not at work now. I'm pretty sure Jasper is home, because I can hear someone muttering curses at what I assume is a jigsaw in the background. Harrison, from the way he sometimes clacks against a keyboard, is playing online chess. A new hobby he'd picked up in the divorce. I think I need a new hobby. I'm baking right now. Jethro had ripped out a recipe from a magazine for me when I mentioned, at lunch last week, that I might try baking. There is flour all over my hands and I'm pretty sure I've ruined this Ralph Lauren sweater forever.

"I think I might move."

In my imagination, Harrison freezes, one hand hovering above his keyboard as he readies himself to make the next move. This means the end. He's already moved on, found a new place, settled down again. But me moving on, moving out, severing ties with the last remnants of our marriage means the end. I like to imagine him feeling devastated. And then, I hate myself for it. It's something my mother would do, so I try to rid myself of the thoughts.