5.13: Wedding Bell Blues addition. One Small Spoiler. Lorelai reflects.
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The perfect man...
Well, so much for that.
No, not fair.
He is perfect.
Or, was. Gotta remember that past tense thing now.
Perfect for her, anyway.
Too grumpy for many.
Not the sparkling conversationalist needed by some.
And he didn't really like to go out and do stuff, that was true. A lot of people like to have that.
No Mayflowering ancestor required by certain others, that was for damn sure.
(She grit her teeth at the last.)
But perfectly perfect for her. And what she wanted. Who she wanted.
Only didn't have any more.
"B-but... I love you," she'd said quietly (surprising even herself after he'd told her again that it was all too much.)
And which froze him up quicker than red-painted toes cramped into Manolo Blahniks on Groundhog Day.
She'd waited a lifetime of a moment for a response then, and when it did not come, turned around and marched out...
...The Blahniks, clicking out of the garage, carrying her right along with them.
And now, as she lay for the twenty-seventh straight hour in bed, her baby blues parched beyond anything, she knew that if nothing else, she'd said it.
Finally. And had meant it too.
And perhaps, ultimately, at the grand Pearly Gate weighing in come judgment day that would be the important thing.
But cold, cold comfort now when you realize you're so far gone, you've almost ordered the sparkly fish sweater in navy from the Quacker Factory.
She flipped over to the re-run of the Giant Vegetable special then, wondering, yet again, what exactly one did with a sixty-three pound celery after it had been weighed and affixed with the winning blue ribbon.
Compost? Bloody Mary stirrers for five hundred?
She blinked at the giant celery on the tv then, trying to stay awake.
She didn't want to fall asleep. Not again.
Giant vegetables haunted her dreams. She ran from them in sparkly fish sweaters, wearing yellow Morton's salt boots.
Augh!
She threw the beloved remote against the wall.
But the thud and crack were not at all satisfying so she turned over into the silence of the room.
She should have known better, she realized (again) as she squeezed her eyes shut at the shuddering memory of it all.
She watched the little floating shapes inside her too-dry eyelids for a moment then.
"Your mother cannot tolerate this silence from you, Lorelai," her father intoned imperially over the phone.
"Well, that's too damn bad," she hissed back, twelve years old again.
"We're talking about your mother here, Lorelai. You mother. Not another of your many boyfriends. Shame on you, young lady!"
"No, Dad. Shame on her! Shame, shame, shame!..."
"I'll speak to you again, Lorelai, when you can be reasonable."
Her father hung up, reducing her another two years to ten.
She picked up the alarm clock and heaved it at the door.
It made an odd ring before it landed.
Then closed her eyes again.
And with the end of that conversation she knew herself to be, once more, shuffled away by her parents and their wants. Their surety that what was right and good in the world came along with to whom you were born. Your birth certificate no more than pedigree papers at Westminster. And, as she could not align herself with that, her punishment was to become nothing more than a Sheldrake to them, to be sent off to the second class club across town that featured a stone boy peeing into a fountain at its entrance.
To prodigally return, all she need do was accept that they were right.
That some were born to marry certain others in this world.
And to hell with the rest.
She rolled over onto her back then and stared up at the crack in ceiling plaster (Luke had been planning on fixing it next weekend), and suddenly remembered something from childhood that she'd not thought of in a long time.
The book.
That weighty Wharton-esque reference, if one were ever in doubt as to where one was in the order of things (born to marry certain others, or consigned to hell), known as The Social Register.
The so-called Blue Book.
This was the catalogue of appropriateness. Not Debretts perhaps, the loftiest of such tomes (a listing of the families dating back a thousand years and depicted on that stupid French tapestry of the Norman Conquest, whatever it was called.) But acceptable to Emily and Richard nonetheless.
How could she ever explain The Blue Book to Luke?
For Men The Blue Book identified those girls who might safely be brought home to mother.
The Rory sorts of the world.
Girls not listed there could, of course, safely be nailed. And only that.
And vice versa.
Except for the fact that Blue Book Girls (Young Ladies) do not nail anyone.
Or get pregnant.
At least not until they've been suitably hyphenated.
Dirty!
"What advice would you offer a couple hoping to join Society?" some nitwit had written to Miss Manners once in the newspaper.
"Don't bother," she'd returned.
Lorelai reached then for the melting margarita next to the bed and chugged heartily.
The ponderous suffocating weight of The Blue Book had been one of things she'd fled those years and years ago.
That and all it could do and be. The set-up Blue-booked dates with boys who didn't even know how to use a payphone because they'd never had to learn (long before cell phones even existed, man am I old.)
Then there'd been The Mayflower Society Coming Out parties and balls...
The Daughters of the American Revolution Coming Out parties and balls...
The War of 1812 Society Coming Out parties and balls...
The Daughters of the Union... of The Confederacy... Signers of The Declaration of Independence...
All before she'd been old enough to even come out.
Good practice, sniffed Emily.
Gah! She punched her pillow. It made a weak 'whoosh' of a sound.
She turned her face into the pillow then. That damn book. That damn Blue Book. Luke could have all the money in the world and it wouldn't matter to Emily. Luke could be the man she truly loved and it wouldn't matter to her either.
Because Luke wasn't blue.
So, she'd had to leave her mother again.
Not literally from the house in the night with a suitcase this time maybe, but it might as well be.
Because where Emily lived, pale-faced and tight-lipped, thin blue lines cris-crossing her arms and heart, there was no air. And no room for not-blue Luke.
Of course she didn't have not-blue Luke any more so this was only margarita-logic.
But it made sense to her.
"I could kegel until I'm blue in the face," sighed Sookie in her condolence call, "but if you have a baby after thirty, you're pretty much gonna pee a bit in your pants every time you sneeze for the rest of your life. That's something they should warn you about up front."
Lorelai could only sigh her co-misery. She had no words. Could not pretend to take the distraction her good friend offered. Could not joke over 'wee pee' word plays...
Of course, Sookie wasn't blue either. Useful as a talented chef, yes. But not blue.
She threw her hair scrunchie at the wall then.
It made no sound at all.
"Luke can't face it when things aren't perfect, Lorelai. You know that. He hates conflict. He avoided dealing with Nicole. He hid at your house when Rachel moved the milk, for Godsakes. That's who he is. Not perfect. Just like the rest of us."
He is. He is perfect.
"Thanks for the bulletin."
"Let me finish. He's in love this time, Lorelai, so it's different. You'll work it out. You two always work things out. If only your stupid mother hadn't... then you two would have just talked... Dammit, I'd like to slug Emily in the nose right now!..."
Get in line.
"...Oh, gotta go, hun! Davey's just puked all over his good sweater and I've got a mother-in-law coming in ten minutes! It'll work out, I promise!..."
She clicked off the phone then and rolled over to look at the curtained window and picture Davey's good sweater. White with curling blue waves and a little boat on it, sailing toward a smiling sun...
She started then at what was clearly the sound of a green truck door closing.
A vintage green truck door.
She hopped out of bed and wobbled a little as she flung herself at the stairs.
Breathless at the front door, she whipped it open to face him.
"I thought you might be at work," he said uncomfortably and then handed her a box.
"Just bringing over some stuff you left..." he went on.
"Oh."
She looked dumbly down into the carton.
"Are you sick?"
She looked up at him. Yes, heartsick.
"No."
"Well, good. Okay, gotta go. Just wanted to drop that stuff off. I know you don't like to be without the blue suede high-heels."
She looked back down into the box and focused on the shoes. They had pretty stacked heels.
"Hope you didn't step on 'em," she joked lamely, looking up.
But she was too late. He was gone.