Shaken And Stirred
"Constantina!" Emily Gilmore's cultured but harsh voice echoed in the foyer of her grand house. A few feet away in the dining room, the little maid from Turkey froze like a frightened rabbit.
"I told you an hour ago I wanted these flowers moved into the dining room," Emily continued, oblivious to the maid's terror and not even noticing that she was shaking in her plain regulation black shoes as she hurried to do Emily's bidding. The maid swept up the gargantuan floral arrangement that Emily wanted positioned just-so and fled, so terrified she didn't even hear the knock on the front door as she passed.
Emily rolled her eyes as much as was permissible for a society lady and called sarcastically, "Don't worry, Constantina, I'll get that."
Pointedly she threw open the door and greeted Lorelai and Rory, who stood reluctantly on the other side. "Hello, girls, come in, come in," she instructed briskly.
"Hey, Mom," Lorelai answered noncommittally, giving Emily a strange look. Her mother had narrowed her eyes and was peering over Lorelai's shoulder into the gathering dark, and Lorelai, against her better judgment, turned around to see…nothing.
"Is…Luke…not with you?" Emily asked. Lorelai told herself she was imagining the disdain that seemed to surround his name in her mother's voice.
"No," she answered, puzzled. Then a thought occurred to her, and she asked warily, "Why, should he be?"
"Well, I didn't invite him, and I certainly wasn't expecting him, but he is your boyfriend now, so it wouldn't be unheard of for him to show up at a family dinner," Emily replied smugly, letting a touch of sarcasm add weight to her words.
"Mom, the next time I can twist Luke's arm to get him to come to Friday Night Dinner, you'll be the first to know, trust me," Lorelai replied evenly, giving her coat and purse to Constantina, who had gathered her courage and returned to duty.
Rory looked from her mother to her grandmother uncomfortably. She loved them both, and she absolutely hated getting caught in these kinds of crossfires. She wasn't sure if it was helpful to know that if it came down to it, there would be no question of whose side she would be on. Dryly she thought that if a career as a foreign correspondent didn't pan out, she could always become a diplomat; any country in the world would hire her once they saw what she'd been through for training.
"Is Grandpa in the living room?" she asked brightly.
"I suppose so," Emily answered, a bit thrown off but doing her best to cover it.
"Let's go see, shall we?" Rory asked doggedly, maneuvering herself so she was in between the other two women. She could tell from Lorelai's face that she was doing everything in her power to stay calm and not let Emily have it at full volume for making digs at Luke, and she smiled proudly at her. Not too long ago a comment like Emily's would have been cause for a grand exit; as Alexander Woollcott would say, "Her huff arrived, and she departed in it." Now all Lorelai did was make a horrible face at Emily's back and think of a dozen very satisfactory responses to be used at a later date. Baby steps.
"Ah, there you are," Richard greeted them as they entered the living room and sat down on the expensively uncomfortable furniture. He handed Lorelai a martini, which she accepted gratefully, and poured a club soda for Rory.
"Your father's growing a mustache," Emily announced abruptly.
"So I see," Lorelai agreed. "Any particular reason, or do you just like looking dastardly?"
"Looking what?" Richard asked in confusion.
"Dastardly. You know, in all those old old movies where there's a clueless blonde chick tied to the train track by the villain who's always twirling a long mustache? He's dastardly."
"I see. And no, looking dastardly was not my aim. I simply wish to see how it looks."
"I think it looks terrible," Emily grumbled under her breath.
"I know," Richard said unconcernedly.
"As long as you don't try to grow a beard," she replied, shuddering. "That would be barbaric."
Lorelai's mouth tightened over the insult she wanted to hurl back, but she managed to settle for clenching her fingers around the stem of her glass until her knuckles turned white. Rory unobtrusively squeezed her arm encouragingly.
"Lots of very civilized men have beards, Grandma," Rory countered politely.
Emily gave her a skeptical look. "I don't know any," she sniffed with finality.
Lorelai cleared her throat loudly, a clear warning that if the subject wasn't changed immediately, unfortunate consequences would ensue. Only Rory seemed to notice the danger signal, but luckily the Gilmores had moved on.
"So how is the Inn, Lorelai?" Richard asked, not from any apparent interest; it was more of a dutiful, polite conversational gesture.
"Fine. Busy," Lorelai answered succinctly.
Rory rolled her eyes to herself. They were all so damn stubborn, perversely making encounters like these as difficult as possible. She'd thought there'd been a breakthrough over the last few months- really, since the fateful Friday dinner at Luke's- but apparently it was one step forward, two steps back for this bunch. She intervened, as she always did; the perfect, peace-maker go-between who diffused almost any situation with charm and a smile. It was definitely not her favorite role.
"It's been so busy because you've been booked solid for the last three weeks," Rory chided her mother gently for failing to toot her own horn. "I don't think I've ever seen the Inn this popular; there was one couple last week who found it on the internet and came all the way from California! And everyone who signs the guestbook raves about what a wonderful time they had."
Lorelai winced at the mention of the guestbook; that had been Sookie's idea. Sookie had her heart set on it, so Lorelai caved, even though the idea positively reeked of cheesy bed-and-breakfasts.
"Sounds like you've got your hands full," Emily commented.
"I can handle it," Lorelai answered quickly and a trifle defensively.
A loaded silence fell, and Emily quickly scanned the list of conversation topics neatly filed in her mind. Polite greetings: check. New developments in Richard's appearance: check. Career: check. Next on the list: boyfriend.
"And how is Luke?" the question sounded sincere, even to Lorelai's ears.
"He's fine, thank you," she replied, relaxing a fraction but still guarded. Silence fell again.
"Luke's even busier than Mom," Rory added, desperately. This was work, hard work; it had been awhile since they'd had a dinner as uncomfortable and awkward as this, and naively she'd thought they were past them. Wrong.
"He's been in the newspaper, did you see it?" Rory continued, praying her words would fill the air and hold it up, since it seemed to be unbearably heavy with tension. "He's famous, in Meriden at least…so he's been working at the diner pretty much twenty-four hours a day."
"Is that where he is tonight?" Emily asked curiously.
None of your business, Lorelai thought tersely.
"He's at a family dinner," Rory said. One glance at Lorelai by her side and she knew she'd revealed too much. Lorelai was strict about keeping anything to do with Luke completely separate from her parents; it was almost like she didn't want to taint her relationship by associating it with them.
"I thought you said his family was dead," Emily pointed out, aggrieved, as if Lorelai had lied to her.
"His parents are," Lorelai finally spoke, and her voice couldn't have been more strained. "But he has a sister, and a nephew."
"Jess," Emily clarified.
"Yes."
"So he's having dinner with his sister and Jess?"
"No, a cousin, or something. He wants to open a diner and he asked Luke for advice," Lorelai explained, as briefly as possible, in a tone that heavily discouraged further discussion.
"My, my, what an ambitious family," Emily sniffed superciliously.
Rory barely managed to grab Lorelai's drink out of her hand before her mother slammed her palms down on the finely upholstered sofa and shot to her feet. She gritted her teeth and glared at Emily, who looked slightly taken aback at Lorelai's passionate reaction. She met her daughter's eyes and raised one eyebrow, a silent comment on Lorelai's reckless behavior, and a superior acknowledgment that Lorelai was helpless and frustrated. Quickly regaining the upper hand, she merely watched Lorelai expectantly, waiting for her to live down to her expectations. Rather than give Emily the satisfaction, Lorelai stalked over to the drinks cart as if that had been her intention all along, and with shaking hands poured herself a glass of water, just to have something to do. She ignored the conversation that slowly started up again behind her, concentrating on calming down and releasing the tautness in her shoulders.
"That's very generous of Luke, to teach his cousin everything he knows about the diner business," Emily was saying, an unknown tinge in her voice that could be remorse if someone listened very, very hard. Lorelai held her breath, looking for an olive branch, her hand holding the lid of the ice-bucket frozen in mid-air.
"Of course, it probably won't take him more than an hour or two," Emily continued matter-of-factly. Her words weren't even meant to be vengeful, but they were the killing blow to her daughter.
Emily looked up in alarm as the metal lid Lorelai held clattered to the floor. "What on earth-?" she started, but she had breached Lorelai's last bastion and all hell was about to break loose.
"That's enough," Lorelai said, her voice low and deadly, angry tears glittering like ice in her eyes. Her mother had hurt her before, badly, many times, but somehow this was different. This cut too deep; it sullied something unbelievably beautiful and precious to her, and this, more than anything else, was worth defending.
"That's enough," she repeated again, in a tone that would not permit argument or debate. "You will not insult Luke in my presence. You will not mock him and our relationship. You will not attack him, when he isn't even here to defend himself-"
"He doesn't need to be," Emily shot back defensively. "It appears that you're more than willing to do it for him."
"Damn right I am," Lorelai retorted fiercely, her voice growing louder. "And you want to know why, Mom? Why I hate it when you use your carefully hidden words to insinuate that he's nothing but poor, blue-collar working-man trash? Why it hurts so much when you act as if he's not good enough for any woman, let alone your precious blue-blooded daughter? You want to know why?"
Rory's eyes widened; suddenly she knew where this was going, and she was powerless to stop it, even though she was positive that Lorelai was about to make a huge mistake that she would regret for a long time to come.
"Go ahead, Lorelai, tell me why you rush to defend him," Emily baited.
"Because I love him!" Lorelai finally exploded, with all the pent-up emotion that had been stewing for weeks. She clapped her hand to her mouth a split second later, horrified. She'd let her guard down in front of her mother. She'd exposed her greatest vulnerability; she'd laid her heart, raw and bleeding, on her sleeve for everyone to see, and she couldn't take it back. She couldn't look at anyone; the pain was right there in her eyes and she couldn't hide it or protect herself anymore. She stood frozen, eyes on the carpet, hands clenched in fists at her sides, posture defensive and cringing against another blow.
"Yes, I know," Emily agreed, in a ludicrously calm voice. "I'm glad you finally admit it."
Lorelai's head snapped up in total astonishment, and she stared at her mother like she was an alien from another planet. "I have to go," she said distantly, forcing her feet to move and carry her away from this torture. "I have to go."
Emily sighed loudly in frustration. "Oh, Lorelai, don't be so dramatic!" she exclaimed. She never had understood the powerful effect her words had on her daughter; she didn't think Lorelai cared about her enough to feel her disapproval or disdain. Lorelai didn't turn around.
"Lorelai, wait!" Emily ordered sternly as she caught up to her and blocked her exit. "I wanted to make sure. I had to see what it would take for you to defend him like that-"
Lorelai's eyes flashed dangerously. "I beg your pardon?" she asked icily.
"Lorelai, you know very well that I think Luke Danes is a completely inappropriate choice for you-" she held up her hand to staunch Lorelai's imminent outburst.
"But I am well aware that you don't care what I think, that you'll do whatever you like. So I've come to the realization that if we are to have any sort of normal contact with you at all, we have to at least be able to accept your choices and withhold our judgment, no matter how wrong we think you are."
Richard, still in the living room, was looking a little uncomfortable at suddenly being included in the conversation, but he said nothing.
"And if we are going to have to accept Luke, and make all the necessary adjustments that that entails, I wanted to make damn sure that you were going to stick with this. You're not the most committed person in the world when it comes to relationships, Lorelai, and I am not going to make an effort if this man is just a casual fling that you're going to tire of in a few months when someone better comes along."
Lorelai was silent for a long time, watching her mother as if hoping an interpreter would suddenly appear and translate that speech into Normal Person. "There is no one better," she finally said tightly. "And just for your own information, you have the most twisted mind of anyone I know."
Emily shrugged. "Invite him for dinner next week," was all she said.