chapter two
iii.
Lorelai wondered if Luke went to an apothecary for the ingredients to be used in her morning's breakfast. He could be commissioning upon the syrupy stuffs and make right for the gooey love potion without her knowing it. It was the only way that she could see that would have her so happy to be awake at six forty-five, fully dressed and out of the house.
"It helps that I'm closer to the diner now," she told him over her blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes. "The walk isn't so long, and I can pop in here more often."
"Lorelai, if you were in here any more, I'd have to expand the apartment upstairs and charge you rent. And this includes the time before our marriage."
"Coffee, sir, for your impertinence!"
"I've got a customer," Luke said, but he grabbed the pot and filled her cup up to the brim before turning to Taylor.
It was a bagel-to-go for Mr. Doose, and the diner was deserted again.
"Why do you even open up this early in the morning?"
"For people like Taylor, who wake at a normal time to begin their workday. He provides a service to the town, and I provide a service to him. My turn just happens to come first."
Lorelai snorted in a distinctly unfeminine manner.
"Service. Dirty."
"Aw, geeze."
"Your turn first," she continued. "Dirtier."
"Rory called the diner last night," Luke said by way of introducing a less 'dirty' topic. "She was sorry that she missed you."
She knew why he hadn't told her earlier; he had arrived home when she was fast asleep, and the early morning hours had been spent in activities not suitable for one's daughter to be in attendance. He had been looking for a way into the topic (and had stumbled on it out of desperation to shut her up).
"What did she want?" Lorelai greedily stole in secondhand information about her daughter as way of making up for the fact that she could not gather it by primary source.
"She's going to the West Coast with Emily for a couple of weeks. Well -- she and Richard and Logan are going with Emily."
"My mother doesn't have a family, she has an entourage."
The conversation would have perhaps become more strained if it had been allowed to continue. However, luckily for Lorelai, a group of strangers arrived then and distracted Luke from making any comment to her last statement.
She finished her coffee, stabbed half-heartedly at her chilling pancakes, and decided to make for the Dragonfly. Pushing her plate away, Lorelai grabbed her jacket off of the back of her chair.
"I'll be back for lunch," she said as she passed Luke and the tourists.
Just as she reached the door, someone asked a question in a whisper that was probably not supposed to be that loud (though it was a large and empty room, and so why shouldn't they expect to be heard?).
"Did you see her pay?"
"She's my wife," Luke said, and she heard him chuckle. If he had ever laughed in the low, sexy way before, she had never been there to hear it (at least, not outside of the bedroom). Was she the cause of such good?
Lorelai grinned as the door swung shut behind her.
iv.
That afternoon, she waited upon her best friend.
"Lorelai!" Sookie cried. "I was just about to call you. Belle did the cutest thing today. When she spit up after lunch, she made little bubbles with her mouth. She seemed so surprised by them. I don't know if she can see them -- I mean, I don't think that I could have seen them, and I'm an adult while she's just a baby -- but I think she could feel them there."
If there were one person in the world who could babble as much as Lorelai, it was Sookie. She dropped her jacket on the edge of the couch.
"What a clever little girl!" she exclaimed, zooming over to the pile of blankets where the baby lay. "And isn't she just looking so gorgeous today? You got dressed up nice for Aunt Lorelai, didn't you, sweetie?"
Belle said nothing, just stared with her blue eyes that were still deciding on which color they wanted to settle. Hazel, said Lorelai, and she would not be dissuaded, though Sookie was certain that her daughter would follow suit to her brother and have brown eyes.
"She's just up from her nap, so you came at a good time."
"Oh, I've impeccable timing, Sookie. Just ask Luke. The other day, I knew what the date was and everything. It was the perfect example."
"Oh good!" said Sookie. "With the baby, I've lost all track of time. What is today?"
Lorelai threw her hands into the air with exasperation. Baby Belle watched solemnly from her place on the blankets. What a bewildering sight it must have been for the little one to see this wild woman dancing in her abode.
"Do I look like a digital watch maker or something? Why do people keep asking me these things?"
"A digital watch maker?"
"Duh," said Lorelai. "I would have to program the date. And maybe the time too."
"Where you get these things, I will never know."
Davy came bounding in then from the hallway (and, presumably, his bedroom). He was wearing very little in the way of clothes -- in fact, the one article of clothing in which he bedecked himself was not in the proper spot at all.
"Sookie, your son is wearing his underwear on his head."
Sookie sighed.
"He thinks that it turns him invisible when he wears it like that. He marches right into the kitchen and goes for the cupboard where I keep the sweets if I'm not careful."
"You don't have any creepy uncles that taught him that, did you?"
"Nope," Sookie said cheerfully. "This is just my son, the nudist."
Lorelai was on the brink of telling Sookie that she ought to really inform Davy that it was sunglasses, not underwear, that made one invisible when remembered how difficult Rory had been in her own way as a toddler -- her resisistence to wet grass being quite tame as compared to her desire to wear all white shirts, even when she managed to soil them quite easily, grass or no grass. She'd give a lot now to see Rory dressed in a white dress and smile.
"Let him run naked," she said. "It'll be something to think about when he starts dating. Just make sure to take lots of pictures."
"So got you coverd there. We already have an entire roll." Sookie leaned over and picked up a photoalbulm. "Three pages, dedicated to Davy showing the world what he's made of. Jackson thinks it's hilarious," she added as Lorelai bent over the pictures. "I think he's just glad that somebody around here doesn't flinch when you go near his groin area."
"How is Jackson, by the way?"
"He told me that, as a Catholic, he feels that life is important, and he wants to get the procedure reversed."
"That dog," Lorelai declared. "I never seem him go to church on Easter. It's not like I'm there, but I know that he hunted eggs with me last year. Catholicism falls flat with his habits."
"Especially as his mother is Lutheran."
"Well, that's like Catholic-lite. Maybe he got confused."
"Yeah," Sookie agreed with a snort. "That's it. Davy! Slow down before you kill yourself or I have to do it for you!"
Beginining a circular route about them, Davy sped on past like a little demon. Once he learned to walk, the kid had lost no time in running. Thank God, she thought, I do not have to deal with this. She could leave the naked kids to Sookie and fawn over the little babies that lift their heads up all the way yet.
"Sookie, the is prettiest little girl that you have ever birthed. There is no improving with her. I mean, look at that hair."
"Isn't she just precious? I wonder how long she'll keep that hair before it all falls out and something brown grows in."
"Oh, no, I'm sure that won't happen."
"You said the exact same thing with Davy."
"Yes, well, Belle's a girl. We girls have a special way with hair."
"Davy's is an entirely different color altogether!"
"But it's red hair, Sookie! Red hair is like the Holy Grail."
Sookie scoffed at that with a flip of her own tresses.
"Oh, sure, the Holy Grail," she said. "Until you're in second grade, and somebody decides to call you 'Carrots.' And maybe Belle might take the scissors and chop off all her hair. It gave -- it give -- it would give the kids something more to laugh about."
Lorelai patted Sookie's arm.
"It's all in the past, Sook. Let it go."
"Carrots!" she said, throwing her hands up into the air. "I couldn't eat them for months."
v.
That night, she spoke to Rory. Distances untraveled and numbers not dialed separated them, but Lorelai found that if she squinted into the bathroom mirror after having washed her face, she could just make out a ghost of an image that could have been her daughter.
"What are your plans?"
"They're rather nubilous."
"Okay, you're going to have to tell me what that word means, because I'm getting a vague Humbert Humbert reading off of you."
"Pervert."
That part of the conversation came more as a bit of self-mocking than for any real substance. She could not help but avoid what she really wanted to say, even if there were no one to listen to her. Lorelai recognized that humor provided a layer of comfort beneath which lay the hurt.
Juvenile. Lorelai grabbed the tube of toothpaste and tried again.
"Where are you going?"
"San Francisco. I've never been--" (but Lorelai knew that; why was Rory telling it to her?) "--and Grandma likes to watch -- and I quote -- 'the quaint little walk that the homosexuals do.'"
"My mother certainly is a people-watcher."
She spat into the sink and ran a cup of water to rinse. It just couldn't feel real enough.
"Why won't you call? Are you that stubborn?"
Lorelai wasn't certain as to whom she was really speaking.