Lorelai's Sanity
Disclaimer: If it was mine, I'd be busy doing the revival, not another one-shot.
Summary: A random glimpse at Lorelai's days as a maid, and the importance of television in it.
AN: I know GG canon shows Mia as a loving second mother, but she was also Lorelai's employer, and Lorelai was still quite young. Ergo, my following one-shot has that as a guideline for the interactions between them. It has no real point, and a lame title. Sorry about that.
GG GG GG
If asked, and Lorelai Victoria Gilmore never was asked, she would say she loved television for its absolutely wonderful, zany, irrepressible disregard of reality. It was a common response to television, and hardly worth mentioning, to most. To Lorelai, it was sanity.
Rising from her knees, Lorelai searched her memory for something from Carol Burnett to get her through the next four rooms. She carefully rinsed the scrub brush, wiped clean the sink, and finally struck gold. "Hutzpah, hutzpah," she sang softly to herself, her head full of Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball, dressed not unlike herself. Mia was lovely, no doubt of it, but maids wore maid outfits, and Lorelai Gilmore was a maid.
A maid scrubbing substances out of tile grout. She didn't ask what substances. She'd curbed her curiosity on that topic after one look at a bathroom floor following someone's romantic getaway. From the stink alone, it had involved more tequila than Lorelai herself ever drank in her life, and she'd amassed quite the experience with tequila.
It was, in its way, how she found herself assembling everything neatly back onto the cleaning cart and pushing it into the hall. Tequila. Chris. A condom that had not been there, after all. And, voila! Three years later, the debutante-that-wasn't fluffed pillows, made hospital corners to do a US Marine drill instructor proud, and left, perfectly centered on each pillow, a complimentary mint.
She even wiped the doorknobs behind her.
Mia, walking by, stopped to give her a toothy smile. "Honestly, Lorelai, I wish all my girls put in the work you do!"
"Thank you, Mia," said Lorelai.
Of course, Lorelai had seen what happened to those who failed the standards of Emily Gilmore. All her life, she had witnessed the white glove tests, the sniffs, the scowls, the sneers, directed at the staff of the Gilmore mansion. Maids were regularly hired and fired by Lorelai's estranged mother, to such an extent that no agency in the tri-state area dared allege that Gilmore staff were anything but temporary. Emily Gilmore had no idea of her reputation-or, mused Lorelai as she vacuumed up cigarette ashes from a flowered rug, she pretended ignorance-but anyone at half a dozen employment agencies could tell you: Nobody lasted. Not under Emily Gilmore.
Not even her own daughter.
After a careful inspection of the rug, on all fours, Lorelai plucked out a carpet brush-she was one of three people at the Independence Inn to know which was the carpet brush and which the tile scrubbing brush-and worked gently at the fibers for a few moments. A match-head appeared, black and spent. The rug was undamaged, leading Lorelai to conclude that the ashtray had been knocked over. She noted the fact on her clipboard, sprayed the ashtray with polish, and rubbed it to a shine.
In the next room, Lorelai took a moment to watch the television left on by the guests on their way out to shop for antiques at the nearby towns of Stars Hollow and Woodbridge. Some enthusiastic middle-aged woman was squealing in ecstasy that she had won a washer and dryer for guessing the price. A sunny-smiling man put an arm around the woman's shoulders, his tan as fake, thought Lorelai, as his teeth.
She turned off the television. It was not in her job description to watch television.
Some sixth sense, inherited from her mother, perhaps, alerted her to the mattress. She scowled at it, and knelt on the dirty sheets to save her knees another round of carpet-rash. She took a few deep breaths, murmuring, "I'm Cagney, she's got the cool clothes. No, Lacey, she's got kids and she's still totally kick-ass, and nobody cares if she's not skinny." Her hand strayed to her own abdomen, which would horrify her mother with its lack of concavity. "On three… Three!"
She pushed, scrunching up her face much as she had in labor, her pinned-up curls wobbling.
She groaned as she dropped the mattress. Panting, she sat back on her heels. "Okay, Danno, now what?" she quipped to herself.
After a long pause, she pushed the dirty sheets into the cavernous canvas sack on her cart, and made the bed anew. Wiping the doorknob behind her yet again, she made her notes, jaw set.
"Sunday Monday happy days," she sang under her breath, "Tuesday Wednesday happy days, Thursday Friday happy days, Saturday, what a day, grooving all week with you… Mia!"
The inn owner paused, arms full of silk flowers. "Yes, Lorelai?"
Blushing, Lorelai stammered, "Um, wow, I didn't know we had those."
Mia's broad smile flashed quickly. "Guests occasionally arrive with allergies to actual living things. Now, what is it, Lorelai?"
Remembering belatedly that she'd hailed Mia, Lorelai swallowed her apprehension and muttered, "I found a bag of marijuana under the bed in 12."
Mia's eyes cut sharply to said room's door. "Looking for money, were you?"
Certain she was about to be fired, Lorelai cleared her throat and said sharply, "No, but I saw something was a little off, and people hide strange things under mattresses. Where I come from, it's usually their drug stash."
Mia's face softened. "Oh, I see. You didn't…"
"No, I wanted you to decide what to do, if anything," recited Lorelai, her old etiquette lessons re-asserting their control over her.
"Well, we make sure that guest never has a room available in future," said Mia, and peered intently at the teen mother. "You have a very good instinct for this business."
Lorelai thanked her.
"And your rooms are exquisitely maintained."
Lorelai bit the inside of her cheek to avoid bobbing a curtsy. Mia was not Emily. Both had rigorous standards, but Mia admitted Lorelai had positive traits. Those were, as far as Lorelai knew, something she'd lost in Emily's eyes long ago. Around the time she learned to talk, she suspected.
"Is that your last room?"
Lorelai succumbed enough to training to bob her head. "Yes, Mia."
"Off to lunch, then, and take your afternoon break."
"Thank you, Mia," said Lorelai, and did all she had to do before she could "off to lunch". Haul the laundry to the chute. Shove laundry down chute. Tidy up her cart. Empty the vacuum cleaner's bag. Replace the bag with a new one. Refill all bottles with cleaning solutions. See her brushes were rinsed and hung to dry on their little rail, as per (Emily) Gilmore standards. Fold her cleaning gloves away in the little drawer. Wash her hands and face at the small sink in the small dim room labeled "Staff" on this floor. Then she at last went downstairs at a quick trot to the kitchens, to find that staff lunch was nearly over.
She ate the reheated soup-the cook's failure at yesterday's supper-and smeared six slices of bread with peanut butter. She wrapped those in a large faded kerchief, once a bright blue, and tucked them into her shoulder bag. From the fruit bowl, she chose a banana, and raided the tray of vegetables set out for the afternoon's cookery. Pockets full of celery and carrots, she wove through the kitchen, waving briefly at the new trainee, a cheery redhead named Sookie, before she escaped the inn.
Moving rapidly down the path toward the inn's outbuildings, she sang to herself, "Who can turn the world on with her smile?" By the time she reached a small building, she'd reached, "You can have a town, why don't you take it, you're gonna make it after all…"
She opened the door.
A tiny blue-eyed brunette whirlwind struck her knees. "Mommy!"
"Hey, sweets," cooed Lorelai. "Ready for lunch?"
"Yeah!" chirped Rory. "Picnic?"
"Picnic!" agreed Lorelai, took up a blanket from the bed, and filled two sippy cups, before downing a glass of water herself. She glanced at the young woman shoving books into a backpack. "Was she good, Allison?"
"Angelic," said Allison, and took the bills Lorelai carefully counted out. "See you in a couple days, Rory!"
Allison jogged off.
Lorelai led her daughter to a shady spot with a view of the lake.
She handed over a peanut butter sandwich, half the banana, and a fistful of vegetables. Rory munched it all enthusiastically, chatting about the pictures in the book she had borrowed from the inn's lobby. Lorelai nodded and smiled, love nearly suffocating her. She knew she'd be fired if Mia found out about the extras she took from the kitchen. Vegetables meant for the supper were not meant for staff. But vegetables were good for small growing children, and Rory was small and growing. She needed everything Lorelai could get for her. Whatever it took, it took.
Rory yawned, curled up against her, and fell into deep sleep within a heartbeat.
Lorelai sighed. She'd paid a babysitter half the week's tips, which put her ahead, but she had to save for the lean season. And Rory needed new clothes. And new shoes. And at three, she was going to need books to help her learn to read and understand numbers. Those weren't something Lorelai could ask to borrow from the inn. Nor could she afford a car or the time to walk to the nearest library.
She had been up at six that morning, on the job for over five hours, and had another few hours ahead of her, cleaning up after guests who would even now be checking out at their leisure. Her knees and shoulders and hands ached at the thought of more sheets, grout, toilets, mattresses, rugs, odd stains, peculiar smells.
Rory snored a tiny snore. Lorelai forgot her woes, smiling as she brushed at Rory's wispy little bangs.
"Don't worry, sweets," she told her sleeping child. "We got hutzpah. We're gonna make it after all."
GG GG GG
AN: You can find all of the following via Google, and credit to appropriate persons for each.
"Hutzpah, hutzpah!" was sung by Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett on the latter's variety show, in a skit in which they played cleaning ladies. "Happy Days" was a sitcom in the 1970s that emphasized the idealized world of the 1950s United States. "Cagney & Lacey" was a 1980s cop show featuring two women leads, with men as the supporting cast. "Danno" is a character on "Hawaii Five-O" (original series). The song "Love is all around" comes from the iconic "Mary Tyler Moore Show", though most of us remember the chorus of "you're gonna make it after all" better than its title.
And before anyone flames, yes, I know, Mia adored Rory and Rory grew up in the inn… But it's a bit too fairy tale for me. Mia couldn't watch a small child all day while she was working, and neither could Lorelai. Ergo, Lorelai has a babysitter for those times she or Mia can't take care of Rory.
Longest AN ever, I know, but I do have to add, all icky incidents are based on real life. One short stint as a maid at an inn, and I decided to work in a laundry to pay for things like food. Doing someone else's laundry was much less disgusting.
Cheers.