A Present
"Mommy, I'm bored."
"Why don't you watch TV, Lorelai?" the little girl's mother suggested with an air of impatience.
"There's nothing good on. Just news and cartoons."
"Watch cartoons, then."
"But Mommy, I've watched cartoons all week. I'm tired of cartoons. I want to go outside."
Her mother sighed. An expression that resembled pity crossed her face, although it wasn't recognized by the five-year-old. Her voice softened. "The doctor's coming again tomorrow morning, Lorelai. If he says your ear looks better…"
"Then I can go outside?" the little girl asked eagerly.
"If Dr. Brown says it's okay. And if you're good." It was Emily Gilmore's personal child-raising tactic to tack "if you're good" onto everything she promised her daughter. It gave her an easy out should she feel the need to take it, and an easy punishment should her daughter misbehave.
"Can I play with my dollhouse?"
"I'd rather you stayed in bed."
Lorelai frowned. That meant no. "Am I getting a new nanny?" she wanted to know, beginning an entirely unrelated conversation.
"As soon as you're better and I have a chance to hire one, yes."
"Why can't you be my nanny?" Lorelai was enjoying the time with her mother, and didn't sense that her mother didn't seem to be thinking along the same lines.
"I'm very busy, Lorelai. I can't miss meetings every day to do what I can pay someone else to do."
Lorelai frowned. She'd asked what her mother did at her meetings many times before, but had never been able to understand why her mother had to go to them or what she did there. She'd seen parts of these meetings when they were held at her house and her nanny wasn't paying attention to her, and they'd seemed like a bunch of grown-up women having a tea party. She wasn't going to ask again. She knew she'd get yet another vague answer, and she was too tired to try to understand. "Is it bedtime yet?" she wanted to know.
"Are you tired?" Emily asked, a little too eagerly.
"Yes," Lorelai said firmly.
"Then it's bedtime." Emily turned on the baby monitor she took out when Lorelai was sick and picked up the end she used. "If you wake up and your ear hurts, say something," she reminded Lorelai. "I'll hear you."
"I will," Lorelai assured her mother. Emily left the room, turning out the light.
Lorelai put a hand to her ear. It still hurt a little, but was much better than it had been the day before. She'd been sick for a week, and by this point she was more bored than she was sick. She was tired of being in bed, and tired of making both the nannies and her parents want to leave. "I wish…" she whispered aloud, "I wish something really, really good would happen to me." She was tired of everything being bad. She just wanted one good thing, anything, to happen to her. That was all.
She knew it was being bad, and she knew that if her mother knew what she was doing she probably wouldn't get to go outside the next day, but she got out of bed, silently vowing never to let her mother find out. She shivered, realizing it was cold outside of her bed, and wrapped her soft, pink blanket around herself. She tiptoed to her big window and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. She looked into the clear night sky. She picked out the brightest star she could see and wished as hard as she could. Just one good thing. That was all she needed, all she wanted. She whispered it aloud again, concentrating on the star. "I wish something really, really good would happen to me." She pressed her eyes closed, wishing with all her might.
When she opened her eyes, the star was still there, shining as it had been before. Everything looked the same outside. She turned around, examining her room. Again, everything looked the same. She frowned. Maybe wishing upon a star didn't work after all. Pinocchio was a proven liar. She felt more like Cinderella than Pinocchio, anyway. Maybe her fairy godmother hadn't been listening. She tiptoed back across her room, defeated, and crawled into bed.
As she lay there with her eyes closed, not yet asleep, she became aware of two voices whispering in her doorway. Her father must have come home. "See, Emily?" she heard her dad's voice say, "she's fine. She's asleep."
"I could have sworn I'd heard something over the monitor," her mother's voice whispered. "Oh well, you're right. She's asleep."
"You need to stop worrying, Emily."
"I know, but I am a mother after all," she said. "Goodnight, Lorelai," she whispered in a soft, sweet voice that Lorelai had seldom heard before, "sweet dreams."
Emily turned and walked away from the room while Richard lingered for a moment in the doorway, smiling slightly at the sight of his sleeping daughter. Although Lorelai couldn't see him through her closed eyes, she sensed his presence there, and heard his barely audible sigh as he walked away.
When Lorelai woke up the next morning, the pain in her ear was completely gone. Still, she knew she'd have to stay in bed until she was told she could get up if she wanted to go outside later. She was supposed to tell her mother when she woke up. She turned toward the baby monitor, but acted on impulse instead. She got out of bed, taking care to be quiet, and tiptoed to the window like she'd done the night before.
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass as she'd done the previous night, but her eyes met with a completely different scene. Rather than dark, everything was white, and it sparkled like only new fallen snow could. A few fluffy, white snowflakes fell from the sky.
Lorelai smiled with delight. Maybe her fairy godmother had been listening after all. Maybe this was her present.