Insert Picture Here (Part 4)
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story other than the privilege of being able to write about a wonderful character. Oh, that and a character here and there.
A/N: Sorry for the long hiatus... words just haven't been flowing together lately. For those of you who have been wondering where Rory's been… here she is. Oh, and I realize I've left a lot of loose ends open… I'm sorry! Thanks to everyone who supports this story and me. You all are really angels. Angels, I tell you. Credit for excerpted script goes to: gilmoregirls.net
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"What's the girl's name again?"
"I think it's Corey. It might be Lori. I'm not sure. Rory?" A dark complexioned woman shrugged.
"Oh, okay, I was just wondering. How do you suppose they've lived there all of these years?"
In a drawing room of the Independence Inn, two waitresses were tucking napkins into swan shapes and observing the activity at the lakeside. A teenage girl was plodding across the grass with several textbooks and colored folders resting in her left arm. She approached the threshold of what seemed to be an ivy-covered tool shed and disappeared inside.
"Who knows? I certainly don't…"
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Lorelai pushed on the door lightly, but it still managed to emit a cringing noise similar to a screech owl. She winced and reminded herself to bring some WD-40 from the Inn's cleaning closet back here some time.
"Mom?"
"Yeah? I'm coming! Walking towards your room. Walking past the bathroom. Now I'm at your door, now I'm opening your door –"
"Now I'm walking into your room." Rory and Lorelai spoke simultaneously.
Lorelai gasped. "You're psychic! Quick, what other powers are you hiding?"
Resisting the urge to laugh, a fifteen-year-old Rory replied, "Um, the power to eat toast without dropping a thousand crumbs onto the table, into my lap, and down the front of my shirt." She gently closed the book she had been studying and turned to her mother.
"I wish you would share that power, young sorceress." Lorelai flounced onto the two mattresses that formed the basis of Rory's bed. "They need to make a toaster that makes soft toast."
"Well, then it wouldn't be toast, now would it?" Rory slid over and hugged her knees while leaning against the wall.
"I guess not. So, what are you up to? I don't have much time to chat because I've got a meeting with Mia in a few minutes, but I did want to stop by."
"That's cool." Rory held out a red textbook entitled: The History of Connecticut. "This is what I've been studying. I have a History test tomorrow over chapters twenty-two through twenty-six."
Groaning as she lifted the book, Lorelai questioned, "How can you carry twenty books around with you when you've got to carry this one?" She opened the book to where a piece of notebook paper was slipped in.
"Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet establishes a school for the deaf in West Hartford on April 15, 1817. How…um, interesting? It'll be nice and convenient for your grandparents later on…"
"Mom, I haven't even met my grandparents, so I'm going to ignore that comment and say this: It is interesting. Even though we live here, there are so many things that I never knew and am in the process of learning. The history of Connecticut is what makes it…the state that it is." An enlightened Rory beamed.
"You should be chosen to represent Connecticut in the Senate when the time comes." A bored Lorelai continued to flip through the pages.
Rory rolled her eyes and then pointed to the book. "Well, look at this: In 1877, the first telephone exchange in the world is opened in New Haven, Connecticut."
"Oh, so that's why there are so many chatty people there!" Lorelai tilted her head, crossed her eyes, and made a clucking noise with her tongue.
"Grow up!" Rory laughed and gave her mother a definitive whack on the shoulder. "It's a wonder why you even took me to those museums in Hartford."
"Honey, don't you understand that I'm always trying to introduce new things to you to further enrich your educational learning process?"
"You know, Mrs. Gauntt tells me that you shouldn't use too many words to represent a simple idea."
"Well, Mrs. Gauntt is a fuddy-duddy." Lorelai tossed a moon-shaped throw pillow at Rory.
"There goes your conduct grade." Rory caught the pillow and grinned over the top of it.
"Once a rebel, always a rebel." A feeling of contentment encircled the room as a mother placed her arms around her only daughter. Her only source of comfort.
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With only sixteen years between the two of them, Lorelai often considered Rory to be more of a best friend than a daughter. Apparently, so did everyone else.
Sometimes she would collapse onto a beanbag and sit there for hours: just pondering and attempting to analyze the unusually wonderful relationship between the two of them. Like most things that Lorelai dealt with on a regular basis, she ceased to arrive at a sturdy conclusion. Speculation has it that perhaps the wonder in it all may have been formed by the difficult road that had been taken to arrive… here. The road 'less traveled by'.
One particularly agonizing experience for Lorelai was taking Rory to her first day of kindergarten. Lorelai walked hand in hand with Rory down the long hallway in the elementary school as her tiny finger pointed to cotton-stuffed fabric apples and hanging planet mobiles. Rory's eyes lit up with excitement and Lorelai became light-headed with the fume of sharpies furiously scribbling nametag after nametag. When they entered the room, they were surrounded by dozens of other mothers and their children. Lorelai approached the sign-in table and was received less than warmly.
"Excuse me, ma'am, we only allow parents to sign their children in."
Lorelai looked around her and then back down at the woman speaking.
"Are you talking to me?"
"Yes. The little girl's mother and/or father needs to sign her in."
Confused, Lorelai hesitated. "I…I'm her mother."
The woman's eyebrows skyrocketed. "If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"
At barely a whisper, she replied, "I just turned twenty one."
"Oh." The receiver turned up her nose and reluctantly handed Lorelai the clipboard bearing names of other parents before her. A majority of the blanks left for parents were filled with two names: the mother and the father. "Chris should be here." She thought. Hurriedly, Lorelai filled in her and Rory's name and placed the clipboard back onto the table.
"Right, well, thank you. Please remember that pick-up time is at 2:00. You do have a car, right?" A bit of mordant venom spat from the woman's mouth.
Blinking back tears, Lorelai answered shortly, "Yes. I have a car. I will be back here at 2:00."
She turned away and took Rory to an isolated corner of the hallway. She got down on her knees to look into her daughter's eyes.
"Rory?"
"Yes Mommy?"
"Rory, do mommy a favor today, okay? I want you to have a good time…make some friends…learn your math and science…and don't let people make you unhappy, got it?" Lorelai's lip began to tremble.
Rory nodded and her pigtails bobbed. "Okay Mommy. I'll do that." She smiled and threw her arms out in front of her. "I love you."
Lorelai wrapped her arms around Rory, backpack and all. Burying her own head into Rory's mouse brown hair, she said, "I love you too."
Lorelai then proceeded to lead Rory to her room and they waved goodbye. She could accept the fact that Rory was going to be away from her for a while. She would come back and get her in less than five hours anyway. She could accept the fact that Chris wasn't here to wave Rory off on her first day of school. He was never around anyway. What she couldn't accept was the fact that as she walked out of the school, other parents sneered and jumped aside away from her in the hallway. Lorelai looked down at her faded jeans and hot pink Bangles t-shirt and compared them to the suits and skirts of the other parents with a frown.
Lorelai could only hope that her daughter would be accepted into the world that she had only dreamed of belonging in.
Time passed, as it always does, and the bitterness towards ignorant people gradually melted away and Lorelai realized what maturing and growing up was all about. Her only goal left now was to teach Rory the same, even though, ironically, Rory was the one who had taught her in the first place.
Elementary school went by quickly with straight A's gracing every report card and teacher conference card. At her fifth grade graduation, Lorelai felt proud to be the only mother there whose child received not one, not two, but three awards. She reminded herself that it was elementary school and she wasn't receiving scholarships, but it made her happy nonetheless.
Instead of the typical boys and makeup, during middle school, Rory Gilmore began to immerse herself into the world of books. Stories of wounded soldiers, heroic martyrs, frivolous teenagers, and utopian worlds filled the shelves of her room. Her desk was covered in newspapers and club bulletins. Lorelai helped her put up maps of foreign countries and stunning prints of far off places like Botswana and the Mediterranean.
Her middle school graduation was more of a graduation for Lorelai than Rory. At last, she could feel the other parents' eyes struggling to figure out who she was. Memories of Lorelai in cut-off jeans and t-shirts vanished from their minds and were replaced with memories of a great mother who sacrificed everything for her daughter. A couple parents actually smiled and waved at single Lorelai, and she couldn't resist but to return the gesture. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she fished a small silver camera out of her purse. Rory shook hands with the principal and a flash illuminated the room.
High school triggered change. Rory transferred from the local high school to an elite preparatory school by the name Chilton Academy. Rory melted into the exemplary mold quite well and breezed through her courses. She became an avid member of the student council and was highly respected by her students for her work on the Franklin, the Chilton newspaper.
Her love of literature continued, but soon found herself sharing that love with other figures…that weren't fictional. Lorelai grew quite fond of Rory's first boyfriend, Dean Forester. She remembers him as being the tall, protective, and romantic boy who used to change out the water bottle when need be. He attended a few of Rory's infamous dances, built her a car, and constantly reminded her that he wasn't a bookworm like she was. Rory decided that he would get the honor of being the first boy that she had ever loved. Unfortunately, after two and a half years, the relationship disintegrated, but a friendship remained intact.
Rory's study habits continued to be excellent and as long as her brain was focused on the square root principle and the law of cosines, her eyes and heart were free to focus on a new person in town: Jess Mariano, Luke Danes' nephew. Both shared the same feelings toward each other and eventually, they ended up together. Their personalities were almost complete opposites, but each complimented the other like a fine chardonnay to a filet mignon. Many a conversation spurred from their common interests and Rory swore she could've loved him too. Lorelai never started out on the right foot with Jess, and she never really found a placid medium for them to stand on, but she grew to know him as a person and placed her judgmental thoughts aside. She also never knew the complete story of how the relationship ended, but it had been on good terms and she knew that Rory would be missing some things for a while, if not a little bit of everything.
Graduation quickly dawned upon the Gilmore house, as did the acceptance letters from a majority of the Ivy League colleges. Rory came to the ultimate decision and chose to attend Yale University in the fall of 2003. Not to anyone's surprise, she was named valedictorian and stunned the crowd with her moving speech. She spoke of journeys through delicate plots and twisted settings, as well as novel titles that had inspired her throughout her high school years.
Best of all though, the graduate dedicated a small portion of her speech to her mother, to the person who had taken care of Rory when it was already hard enough to take care of herself. Lorelai wasn't sure if she deserved the words that the entire Chilton academy faculty, students, and supporters could hear.
"My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn't do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith. As she guided me through these incredible eighteen years, I don't know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her."
Through her tears, Lorelai felt triumphant. Christmas had always been fantastic when she had received gifts of angora sweaters, trendy perfumes, and feminist biographies. On this very day, Lorelai began to understand that the things you don't ask for are sometimes the things that you desire the most, and when received, are truly appreciated.
"Thank you, Mom. You are my guidepost for everything."
Lorelai telepathically spoke to her daughter, "So are you, Rory Gilmore, so are you."