How Gilmore Girls Do Money: Emily Gilmore

“Lorelai, I’m thinking about selling the house.”

“Wow, Mom, what happened to hello, how are you, did you get that mole checked out?”

“You have a mole?”

Lorelai sighed, making it emphatic enough so that her mother would hear it over the phone. “No, Mom. It’s a metaphorical mole. A meta-mole.”

“I swear I don’t understand half the things you say to me, Lorelai.”

“That makes two of us, because I thought I just heard you say you wanted to sell the house.”

“I do.” Emily was smiling, from her end; Lorelai’s teeth clamped down in an equal and opposite reaction. “It’s too large for me, and I’ve been thinking about doing something different with my money and time.”

“Like what, Mom?”

“Well, I’d like to get involved in international development. I could travel to India and work with orphans.”

“Mom, I’ve seen you send a water glass back because it isn’t room temperature enough. You are not cut out to be Mother Theresa.”

“I’m entitled to a second act,” Emily said. “Anyway, I just may surprise you.”

“But you don’t have to sell the house to go to India,” Lorelai said. “Don’t you have, like, a million dollars sitting around somewhere?”

“Lorelai, you know that talking about money like that is inappropriate. Are you where other people can hear you?”

“No, Mom, just at my job, like I am every day during business hours.”

“That was the other thing I was thinking about. I could go to India for a year, then come back and be the Dragonfly’s Social Coordinator.”

Lorelai sighed again. “We don’t need a Social Coordinator.”

“Yes you do, I just saw you post it on the Facebook this morning.”

“That’s a Social Media Manager, Mom. Completely different. And the first requirement of the job is that you don’t call it the Facebook.”

“Well, I’d like to be involved somehow. I’m sure you could find something for me to do.”

Lorelai realized that her mother had been playing verbal chess with her this entire time, and that she had once again been placed in check. India, she thought in her best Tim Curry voice, was just a red herring. “And if you were working at the Dragonfly, and you sold the house…”

“I’d live with you, of course!”

This time Lorelai muffled her sigh.

“I’ve just been so lonely since your father died,” Emily said. “It’s like I wake up every morning and I don’t know what to do with myself, and everything in the house reminds me of him, and I just feel like the next 20 years of my life aren’t going to have any meaning, unless I come up with something that’s as important to work towards as a marriage.”

“I know, Mom.” Lorelai wished her mother would be this honest all the time, instead of trying to manipulate everyone into meeting her needs without having to reveal why she needed them. “Um… do you want to come over for dinner tonight?”

“I’d love to.”

Previously, in How Gilmore Girls Do Money: Logan Huntzberger.

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