Author’s Note: Another year gone by although amazingly I’m updating. Moreover, I’m done. Finished. I want to thank all the readers who have managed to persevere and stay the course. I want to thank all the readers who are long gone, and I don’t really blame them considering the time frame it took for me to write this. Also, I think this is it for me. I’m not writing another series like this again, for a number of reasons including lack of time. But I’ve enjoyed the crazy, insane ride. Finally, I want to thank B and Bug, because you’ll always be the most fabulous of girls.
Disclaimer: Extract from The
Lover belongs to Marguerite Duras.
Chronicling
6.
Revelations (and so it begins…)
“One day,
I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He
introduced himself and said, “I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were
beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more
beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your
face as it is now. Ravaged.”
--
extract from The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Winter came and went. All the snow
had melted too soon and the earth – soft, yielding and consuming – had opened
up to take Emily Gilmore. It was three days before spring but the flowers had
bloomed early this year. Unfurling white petals on green reedy stems were cut
to create extravagant sympathy wreaths that saturated the air with sweet, heady
perfumes.
Dressed all in black, Rory was pale
and beautiful in the bright light of spring. It was a blue sky day of sun and no clouds but Tristan could not see out to forever. Dirt
thudded onto the lowered coffin and it was hard to imagine that the sleek
mahogany and walnut contained the force and vibrancy that was once Rory’s
grandmother. The final darkness of earth covered Emily and then wreaths and
flowers were propped against the headstone as if in a grandiose testament of a
life lived.
Standing at the edges, black jacket
billowing a little as a small breeze took up, Tristan
took the time to see Rory. Really see her. She was like one of those lilies on
a nearby wreath – cut at the root and slowly fading in the center. Her eyes
were blank, framed by tears and lashes. Her lips were thin and hurting from the
polite smile that she kept plastered on her face as she greeted Emily’s last
guests. Richard and Lorelai stood nearby her, but
they were tired and drained – father and daughter huddled in a shaky lean
without foundation. So the burden of Gilmore dignity and decorum was laid on
the colorless curve of Rory’s too tense shoulders.
Tristan longed to go over and
envelope her in his arms; brush the wayward tendrils of hair off her face; to
be the body she could lean on. But he had promised her, early this morning, that he would stay away.
“Don’t…don’t touch me,” she had
begged. “If you touch me, I will crumble. And I can’t…I just can’t break down.
I need to be strong. Grandma would hate it if I made a scene.”
So he stayed away and hated the
distance between them. He hated this world, this society with its false
sympathy, and the ladies with lacy handkerchiefs who dabbed at non-existent
tears and were careful never to ruin their eye-makeup. And ten feet away,
Tristan watched as Rory wilted, just a little more, every time another
It hit Tristan then, as Rory lifted
her head and glanced his way (but not seeing him, because her eyes were blank,
blank, blank), that he loved her still. They were meant to be just friends. He
thought they were just friends. Three years over, with the heat of Malaysia,
grey moths, red sunsets, the last one and half months gone by, the cold of
Emily’s cancer, the desolation of the Independence Inn, ghost ships and demons,
the memory of New York, the shattered glass of unfulfilled dreams, and he loved
her still.
Eventually the crowd dissipated and
it was just the two of them – Tristan and Rory, Rory and Tristan – standing in
the graveyard with ten feet between them. Richard and Lorelai
had bustled into the stretch of black limo a few minutes ago, sparing several
concerned glances Rory’s way, only to leave with the confidence that Tristan
would be there to take care of her.
His heart should have warmed at the
trust.
Instead he was terrified.
He knew he could break her, with a
palm caress of cheek. Knew, too, that there was something murky, twisted and unabsolved seeded within him that would relish such an action.
A festering never-quite forgotten old wound. God, he loved her...and he wanted
to hurt her. Because pain, pain was the only certainty.
The only way he could be sure that he could still make her feel something.
Rory stood before him: tiny and
frail and too much like the doll he had snatched from Amber Gordon, the day
Amber declared in the school yard that she was going to marry Tristan DuGrey (when she was six and he was seven). He had grabbed
the doll – made out of porcelain with colored glass for eyes and real human
hair for the doll’s pretty brown ringlets – and thrown it hard on the concrete
ground. Then, carefully, deliberately, he had lifted his right leg before
bringing the solid heel of his shoe down. The doll’s face had been devastated.
A shattered porcelain arm, pulled out of joint, had lain limply on the ground –
the tiny fingers still reaching out. A glassy eye had popped out and rolled in
circles along the concrete. Hints of green and blue glinted and streamed as the
sun had hit the colored glass eye like it was a prism. Amber had stood in the
school yard sobbing as the delighted squeals of their classmates rocking high
and low on the nearby swings echoed through the air.
Seven years later and Tristan had
repeated (or was it completed?) that trudge of destruction. Seven years later
and Tristan had broken all that Amber Gordon had to give. On the grassy green
of the school yard, he had pushed into her with the fumbling vigor of his
fourteen years. His hands had gripped her shoulders until her pale skin
darkened. Her face was marred by dirt and her carefully curled hair was mussed
and splayed against the ground. And pretty doll-like Amber Gordon who had only
dreamed of white dresses, lacy veils and a bouquet of white roses had screamed
and screamed and screamed at every thrust. Later, she was sobbing again (in the
school yard) as Tristan stood up, zipped up his pants, and coolly walked away
from the not-so-secret corner behind the Chilton gardener’s tool shed.
At six, his mother had declared Tristan
just like his father. And maybe that was true. Because he had broken Amber,
Kate, Jennifer, Gwendolyn, Iris and countless others like they were a long line
of porcelain dolls on his mantel piece; like in a mimicry
of his mother who was perpetually being destroyed by his father.
So staring at Rory, sunk in her
black coat, with several chrysanthemum petals caught in her hair (little white
petals that had been blown off the wreaths and swept up by a gusty wind),
Tristan was terrified. The trust was too much. And Tristan did not dare touch
Rory.
Instead he offered her a wan smile.
She could barely smile back in return.
“We should go,” he told her.
“Not yet,” she whispered and walked
over to the fresh grave.
Her hand stroked the grey marble
headstone, fingers tracing the carvings that spelt out Emily’s name. Then her
fingers drifted down to the words: Born to Eternal Life.
“I miss her. I miss her so much,”
Rory sobbed.
She collapsed to her knees and
there was the contrast of black coat and crushed white flowers against the
green of grass and the grey of headstone. Tristan stepped closer, his hand
reaching out. His fingers were almost caressing Rory’s hunched shoulders and
then he touched her. She didn’t break at his touch – Rory was much stronger, more sturdy than any porcelain doll. So Tristan knelt down
and wrapped his arms around her. They remained like that: two solid figures in
black, clutching onto one another with the desperation of life.
*****
Spring
warmed into summer and Tristan saw Rory every day. At Rory’s insistence, he
took to sleeping over at her place. And it was like the period right after
college when Rory had been virtually broke – living off the pittance of her
first salary and saving up for a place of her own – and had ended up crashing
at Tristan’s apartment for over a year.
It was like the grinding wheels of
a grandfather clock had been wound back and they were back in the center of
their friendship again. There were picnics in a park during lunchtime,
and constant telephone calls during the work day, and salsa dancing, and bar
hopping, and the general laze of a Sunday afternoon in bed. They shared the
same bed and he would wake up in the mornings with Rory curled under his arm.
They fell into rituals like coffee, breakfast and the exchange of newspapers in
the morning, or dinners on the couch flipping through channels with the tv remote. Tristan thought he
might be happy.
Sometimes, though, he wondered if
Rory was clinging onto the past, onto him, too tightly as she still
tried to grapple with the loss of her grandmother. The specks of blue in her
eyes were sometimes adrift. Sometimes she wrung her fingers, fidgeted with the
placement of ornaments, and couldn’t quite smile. Once Tristan thought he had
caught her crying, but Rory had wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands and
declared the room dusty.
But the pain was subsiding. And
they were there for each other. Tristan liked heading into the bathroom during
the mornings and nights to find Rory already there brushing her teeth. She
would hand him his toothbrush with a fresh squeeze of toothpaste already
squirted onto the bristles. They would brush in silence, sometimes elbows and
hips jostling one another. There was comfort in the accidental bump of bodies
in this twice daily norm. He would hand her a red plastic cup filled with water
and wait for Rory to rinse and spit before taking his turn.
Living with Rory was much more
preferable than existing in the hallowed halls of the DuGrey
mansion. The sometimes frantic but always soothing domesticity of Rory’s home
made Tristan wish and believe. It was the stirring of the forever dream when
Tristan had only known nightmares for three years (and all of his childhood).
Now, Tristan thought of possibility
as he and Rory fell into the rhythm of washing and drying. It was late evening
with the soft beams of the streetlights filtering through the white lace of the
kitchen curtains. The pile of dirty dishes in the sink slowly subsided with the
squeak of towel and glass, the splash of water, the clang of forks and spoons
and knives. In the background, the low monotones of the radio announcer could
be heard.
His fingers slid against Rory’s
when he took a dripping plate off her hands. He threw her a smile and she
flicked soapy water at him in response. A bubble floated upwards, drifting to
the tip of Tristan’s nose where it landed with a ‘pop’. Rory sniggered and
Tristan scowled.
“You think that’s funny, do you?”
he growled.
“Yes, absolutely hilarious,” she
giggled.
“We’ll see about that,” he
proclaimed. With a devious twinkle in his eye and a wicked grin on his face, he
gathered the tea towel long in his hands and prepared for retaliation.
Rory eyed him cautiously, easing
away, with her foamy hands thrust out in a block. Her actions were futile.
Tristan angled his hands and the tea towel snapped through the air hitting Rory
on the bottom.
“That’s it, DuGrey,”
she threatened. “This means war. And just as fair warning: the Gilmores fight dirty.”
The next few minutes were squeals
and shouts as water and towels went flying. Chairs, books and lamps were
knocked over as the fight escalated out of the kitchen and into the living
room. Rory skittered in front of the couch in an attempt to use it as some kind
of fortress. Cushions were flung in the air hitting Tristan with a solid thump
on the arm, head, chest but they didn’t deter him. Steadily he progressed
closer before leaping and tackling Rory. They landed on the couch, a tangle of
limbs and soggy clothes.
“So much for ‘Gilmores
fight dirty’,” Tristan taunted. “I do believe I’ve just won the war.”
“Not quite,” Rory murmured and
suddenly Tristan was acutely aware of her body pressed against his.
He could feel the softness of
curves, the warmth of flesh contrasting the chill of their wet clothes, the
heave of chests as they breathed. And they were breathing rapid and shallow.
With the slithering swiftness of a snake, Rory launched up and struck – a kiss
square on his mouth.
Tristan tumbled back with the memory
of Rory’s lips. Their positions were reserved now. Tristan sprawled on his
back, on the couch, and Rory on top of him.
“Rory?” he had to ask; his mouth
still burning from the sear of her kiss.
She looked straight at him. Her
blue eyes bore into his with promise, dreams and possibility. Deliberately she
pressed her forefinger against the cross of his mouth, forbidding questions.
Her hands skidded up his chest, dragging the waterlogged cotton of his shirt up
and over his head.
Rory took all the initiative and
Tristan let her. She scattered kisses over his torso, traced swirls along his
abdomen, and his nails gripped into the yarn of the couch at each of her
actions. His breath hitched as her tongue lingered over the concaves of his
collarbone. He watched with too much want in his eyes as she undid the buttons
of her top, letting the material fall down her shoulders and onto the carpet.
She undressed them both until they
were bare and naked before one another. The overhead glare of lights shone down
on Rory and she was a radiant sheen of Tristan’s present.
“I want this. I want you,” she told
him.
Tristan’s hands rested on the curve
of her hips as Rory straddled him. He continued to wait for her – letting her
make the choice.
Rory chose...and moved.
She pushed down and he could feel
her – trembling but certain – as the walls crashed in. Their mouths met with a
stumble of things to come.
He kissed her now; and his vision
was hazy with the shift of Rory’s choice. He could see her – a slow blur of
motion – as she rocked against him. Her hair fell to one side and it was longer
than Tristan had ever remembered. His fingers got caught in the brown strands
as he held her in the kiss.
The radio announcer was a muted hum
in the background and Tristan and Rory moved discordantly to the drone of the
announcer’s voice. They were erratic and fumbling in their eagerness; like
years compressed in this one moment of bodies thrusting towards merger.
It ended quickly, in the hoarse
cries of the other’s name. And started again; with the next version of the
steady pound of Tristan in Rory. On the couch. On the coffee table. Against the wall.
In bed.
The mattress squeaked and the
springs buoyed then compressed as Rory wrapped her legs around him and Tristan
surged deeper into her. Her fingers left marks on his back, nails digging into
him. In return, his teeth grazed her shoulder and she moaned and arched at his
bite. She was supple and slick and when his nose nuzzled her skin, he could
smell the mingle of sweat, sex and rosewater.
When he glanced at her, Tristan was
unprepared for the wrench of blue eyes, glazed with desire but also candid and
open. It was like the void of layers between them had been peeled away during
Rory’s earlier striptease. He held her wrists down to the cream of bed sheets
and entered her again and again and again, with the measured friction of all
that she had to give and all that he was willing to accept.
They over-burst.
Love, desire, want, anger, pain, need,
dreams, nightmares spilled out, coating their bodies. Tristan held Rory in his
arms, both of them quivering, shivering, shuddering.
They breathed the air of the other in raspy gasps and tried to still the
tremors.
After the free fall, her body was soft
and pliable against his caressing touch. He remained within her, enjoying the
sensation of Rory so intricately wrapped around him. Their movements grew
languid and his eyelids grew heavy. She placed a curled hand over the top of
his chest – to the left, where the heart was. He closed his eyes and dreamed
that Rory said: “I love you, Tristan. I’ve always loved you.”
*****
“Hello?”
“I love you, Tristan. My baby with my blues.”
“Mother, where are you?” he asked
with a gripping fear creeping over him.
“At home. Love you, my little boy. Goodbye.”
Tristan startled at the barely
lucid sing-song of his mother’s voice. The fear firmly in place and he
scrambled for his clothes before dashing out to his car. The engine revved too
slowly for Tristan’s liking as rubber tires squealed off to
The mansion was eerie in its
darkness when Tristan arrived. He hurried through rooms –too many rooms, too
many closed doors, too many empty spaces – in search of his mother. It looked
like the help had been dismissed; and it seemed like it was just the mansion
and Tristan and no sign of Evelyn DuGrey.
Finally Tristan entered his
father’s bedroom – it had been twenty years since his parents had slept in the
same room. He found his mother there: prostrate on the bed, pallid skin, blonde hair strewn over the pillow. She looked like Elaine –
out of Arthurian legend and floating in a sea of silk sheets in the glorious
beauty of death.
He walked over to her, pressed his
palm against her forehead, and she was cold and clammy to touch. He tried to
shake her awake, but she remained listless to his touch. “Mom?
Mommy?” the little boy in Tristan cried,
“She’s not dead,” the low command
of a barely familiar voice spoke. “She’s just sleeping off three sleeping
pills.”
Tristan turned and saw William DuGrey standing in the shadowy glow of the bathroom,
leaning against the wooden arch of the doorway.
“Father,” Tristan greeted. “What
the hell did you do to her?”
“Nothing. She took those pills on her own
accord, Tristan.”
“Bullshit. You might not have been
there spoon-feeding her those pills but this is your
fault nonetheless. There’s a direct causal link between my mother’s current
state and you. This is all your fault,” Tristan
accused.
“You’re right,” William said.
The admission stunned Tristan. And
then he noticed that his father’s face was lined with worry. Could his father
actually care?
“This is all my
fault. I should have never have let things get this bad. I loved her once, you
know. She was my everything but somewhere along the
line it all turned to dust. And I hate her so much, now. It hurts to look at
her, to see the woman she has become. And to know that it is all
my fault.”
“Why don’t you walk away?” he had
to ask. “Why do you continue to stay and hurt one another.
Nowadays divorce isn’t that completely scandalous.”
His father rubbed his temples. The
shine of the bathroom light illuminated the grey of his father’s hair. “Because I still love her. And I’m not strong enough to live
without her.”
Maybe it was the unexpected candor
of his father. Maybe it was the intimacy of the moment – father and son
distanced in the room but speaking as Evelyn DuGrey
lay in a motionless sleep on the bed. Maybe it was the night and shadows and
the emptiness of the DuGrey mansion that compelled
Tristan to speak.
“I slept with Rory,” he blurted
out.
His father moved away from the
doorway, stepping closer and closer until all distance was bridged. He placed a
hand on Tristan’s shoulder and stared gravely into his son’s eyes. “The Gilmore
girl?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t Emily just pass away?”
“Yes.”
William’s hand was firm and
gripping against Tristan’s shoulder. “Tristan, I know you’ve always been
infatuated with that girl but taking advantage of the situation like that…”
“I didn’t,” he protested. “It
wasn’t like that. And it’s not an infatuation. I love her.”
“I love your mother, too,” his
father pointed out. “We’re DuGrey men, though. We
have a history of hurting the ones we love the most. We’re charmed with the
ability to get any woman we want and cursed with the inability to keep them
happy. I’m not completely oblivious of your life, Tristan. I’ve seen you and
this girl together and do you really want it to end like this?”
William pointed to the pale frailty
of Evelyn DuGrey and Tristan’s heart clenched. He
wanted to scream to his father that he and Rory were different. That he,
Tristan DuGrey, was nothing like William DuGrey. But the words did not come. And all he could
remember was the day of Madeline’s funeral: waking up naked and alone and with
no sign of Rory.
“You’re stronger than me. Always
have been,” his father continued. “And there is one thing I’ve always meant to
tell you: I’m proud of you. In the end, you’ve always done the right thing,
son.”
Tristan nodded, accepting his
father’s praise. William clasped Tristan on the shoulder one more time before
walking over to Evelyn and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. He then
walked out of his bedroom, leaving Tristan to stare at the dark outline of his
father’s departing back.
Turning his attention to his
sleeping mother and Tristan felt the weight of his father’s words. And Tristan
was acutely aware of the indentations across his back – the nail digging
imprint of a too precious moment with Rory.
*****
Autumn was
falling leaves as everything died. It gave way to the bareness of winter and
the brown twisted spindle of frost covered trees. Back in
Tristan tried not to think of the
circle of events as he stood alone on the balcony of his penthouse apartment,
swirling brandy, and watching snow fall from the sky like ash. In the distance
he could see the brightness of
It was a Sunday morning. Early morning. So early in the morning that the dawn had yet
to arrive and the sky was still streaked black and grey. There were no stars
and moon. There was only the monochrome of life painting the horizon. Tristan
sipped his brandy and, in an undershirt and boxer shorts, he did not feel the
cold.
He had left his balcony door
slightly ajar and there was the constant rustle of curtains fluttering. With
his ears so acutely attuned to sound, he wasn’t surprised to hear the soft pad
of shoes against carpet that stopped at the archway of the balcony door.
“How did you get in?” Tristan asked
although he didn’t turn to greet his visitor.
“I have my ways. Gilmores fight dirty, remember?” Rory said. “And this isn’t
a fight I’m willing to lose.”
“There’s no fight to lose,” he told
her, eyes concentrating on the random drop of snowflakes. “I’ve bowed out. Game
over. The end.”
“That’s not up to you to decide,”
she informed him; her voice raised. “You can’t just walk away.”
“Why? Because you
own the copyright? After all, walking away is what you do. Only this time
I beat you to it.”
“I wasn’t going to walk away. I
love you.”
Her words killed him. Tristan
clenched the glass of brandy so tightly; as if he could squeeze out all the
blood of his hand, of his heart, of his love, in that very action.
“No, you don’t,” he told her.
She took a step forward. He could
hear it, the click of her heels as she stepped onto the balcony. “Yes, I do.
Didn’t you hear me? I told you I loved you that night we slept together, for
the second time. That I’ve always loved you.”
“You don’t mean that. This is just
about your grandmother’s death. Our having sex meant nothing. Just like after
Madeline’s funeral.”
“That’s not true. It meant
everything. It means everything. Both times. I’ve been
scared, Tristan, but I’m not scared anymore. If my grandmother’s death taught
me anything, it’s that I’ve got to hold on to dear life to the people I care
about. Because you never know when you could lose them.
And I don’t want to lose you, Tristan. It’s not our time – it’ll never be. I
love you. I’ve always loved you. And I know you love me too.”
Tristan took a sharp intake of
breath, desperately denying her words, before letting go. The glass slipped out
of his hands and smashed against the tiles of the balcony floor. Broken,
shattered glass and the amber pool of spilled brandy. Without looking, Tristan
knew that Rory had flinched and taken a step back. And he was glad. Cruel
indifference would see him through this repeat of a past he was trying to
leave.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she
said and sounded wounded.
He wondered if she could comprehend
his own festering wounds. He was still cut, in the back, with the dent of her
nails and the imprint of her across his skin.
“I wasn’t thirsty, anymore.”
“That’s no reason to throw away a
good thing.”
Tristan spun around and stared at
Rory. His eyes penetrated hers. With a twisted line for a mouth he asked, “Were
we ever a good thing? I think we spent more time hurting one another,
inflicting as much pain as possible for no fucking reason at all. So, I
wouldn’t call us a good thing.”
“You’re wrong,” she informed him.
“We weren’t a good thing. We were the best thing that has ever happened to me.
You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
He scoffed. But staring at her, as
the blaze of dawn crept over the city’s sky, Tristan thought Rory was still the
most painfully beautiful thing in his life. The paleness of her skin was
highlighted by the warmth of reds, oranges and pinks. She was the contours of
lightness in the darkness of this Sunday morning. It was almost enough for
Tristan to reach out and touch her. But he did not.
“I can’t be the best thing that has
ever happened to you. I can’t be that person, Rory. I’m not genetically
disposed for it.”
“That’s not true. I know what
you’re scared of. I know what happened with your mother and your father. I
spoke with both of them, in my frantic search to find you. And they’re
different. We’re different. I won’t let you break me. I can’t be broken. All
you have to do is believe. And I’ll be here to catch us if we fall.”
Rory stretched out her arm and
offered him her hand.
The sun rose out from the dip of
the horizon basking Rory in a golden glow. The morning haze lifted. The stench
of the city dissipated, swept away by the morning street cleaners. The air was
fragrant with the old from the remains of yesterday, and the new from the aroma
of food vendors, diners and restaurants preparing for their early-bird crowd.
Tristan and Rory remained on the balcony, frozen in this hour, as the ash of
snow coated them with flecks of white.
He thought of destiny, of blood, of
dreams, of doing the right thing. The city’s skyscrapers seemed to tower over
him with the shadow of decision. Rory’s hand was still outstretched and it
looked pink and warm despite the cold of winter. He thought of years gone by,
of Sunday mornings, of destruction and falling, of this one hour, and he
trembled.
But when Tristan wrapped his hand
around Rory’s, her fingers were small and sturdy.
(fin)