Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

by Julia Watts

  “He musta heard you yelling at Lily,” Jeanie said. “Ever since Lily got here, Mordecai’s just took to her. It’s like he’s her protector —”

  “My knight in shining flea collar,” Lily said, hoping a joke would lighten the bleak situation. It didn’t.

  “Well...” Ida was holding her purse in her lap. “It’s getting awfully late.” She looked at Charles hopefully.

  He picked up his cue. “Yes, it is, and we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Thank you for dinner—”

  “Wait,” Ben said. Everyone’s head turned toward him. “My wife and I asked you here tonight in hopes that we could settle our differences outside a court-room. Now, Lily and I have talked about this a lot, and we both agree that you can see Mimi as often as you like— as long as you agree to respect the terms of Charlotte’s will.”

  “I loved my daughter,” Charles began. “But no matter what my feelings for Charlotte were, I can’t uphold her will. We...just feel that Charlotte was under some ... undesirable influences” — Lily felt Charles’s disapproving stare. “ — when she wrote the will. And it was bad enough for those influences to affect my daughter. There’s no way I’m going to let them affect my granddaughter!”

  Lily was seething. They always made it sound as though Lily had converted Charlotte...corrupted her into leading an “undesirable” lifestyle. Charlotte had known she was a dyke since she was twelve years old! “Charlotte was a grown woman —”

  “I think what Daddy is saying,” Mike interrupted as he headed for the door, “is that we already have a lawyer. Maybe you should think of hiring one, too.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that, funny boy.” Big Ben was making no effort to hide his anger. “We’ve got us a lawyer. We was hoping we wouldn’t have to use him, but there’s just no talking to some people. I believe you can find your way back to the interstate exit. And I reckon the next time we’ll see you will be in the Faulkner County Courthouse.”

  Mike glowered at Big Ben. “Fine. This seems like a decent town. I’m sure they’ll do the right thing.”

  Big Ben grinned. “I’m sure they will, too. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, now.”

  After the Maycombs’ car had backed out of the driveway, Big Ben said, “Okay, who wants a beer now that the Baptists is gone?”

  Everybody but Mimi raised a hand.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Ganny!” Mimi squealed when Lily opened the front door for Granny McGilly, who was weighed down with a heavy-looking cardboard box.

  “Here, let me take that for you,” Lily said, relieving the old woman of the box’s weight.

  “That’s just a few little ole things I thought you could use to brighten the place up a little ... a picture or two, a few little gewgaws. I’m getting to the age where little things like that just look like clutter to me. I thought maybe you could use ’em.”

  “Well, thank you.” Lily looked at the framed picture that was sticking up out of the box: a Victorian print of a golden-haired female angel guiding two dimple-faced children across a bridge. It was kitschy, but Lily kind of liked it. “Nice picture.”

  “That pitcher’d been hanging in my bedroom for years, but yesterday, I got to looking at it, and it put me in mind of Mimi — in all this trouble you’re having, it seems like she needs her a guardian angel.”

  Lily was touched. Since the disastrous dinner with the Maycombs, all the McGilly clan had rallied around Lily, telling her those awful people had no right to treat her that way and that they’d live to regret the day they crossed a McGilly. Their support made Lily feel reassured and guilty at the same time — guilty because she knew the McGillys would feel differently if they found out her and Ben’s marriage was a fraud.

  “Mimi definitely needs all the help she can get,” Lily said. “Buzz Dobson’s working on setting up a date for the hearing. I’m a nervous wreck about the whole thing.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Granny McGilly said. “There ain’t never been a McGilly to lose in court in this county.” She nodded toward the door. “I got somethin’ else for you out in the truck, but I don’t know how excited you’ll be to see it.”

  Lily picked up Mimi and followed Granny outside. There, in the bed of the green Chevy truck, was Mordecai, panting and wagging his stump of a tail.

  “Mookie!” Mimi exclaimed.

  “Uh ... what’s Mordecai doing here?” Lily asked. It was a question she feared she already knew the answer to.

  “Well, I stopped by the big house on the way over here. Jeanie said that ever since you moved out, Mordecai’s stayed up all night howling for you. He won’t eat, neither. Just sleeps all day and howls all night. Big Ben said he reckoned if Mordecai loved you that much, he orta go live with you. He’s too old to be much of a guard dog anyway.”

  Lily looked into the big dog’s adoring, chocolate-brown eyes. “Well, I don’t know what Ben will think of this —”

  “Benny Jack’s mother and daddy write him a check for five thousand dollars every month even though he don’t do a lick of work for the company. I figure five thousand a month’s enough to cover the care and feeding of a dog.”

  “Well, I guess it is,” Lily said. “Come on, Mordecai. The backyard’s fenced in. I guess we can put you out there for the time being.”

  Mordecai jumped out of the bed of the truck, delighted.

  “So, Mimi,” Lily asked, “do you want Mordecai to be your doggie?”

  Mimi wrapped her arms around Mordecai’s bull neck and cooed, “Big doggie. My doggie.”

  Well, they were cute together. Lily didn’t know how she and Mimi would handle having such a big dog when they moved back to the city, but then a terrifying but familiar image flashed in her mind: She might not have Mimi when she moved back to the city.

  “You okay, honey?” Granny McGilly asked.

  “Yeah... just kinda stressed out.”

  Granny patted her shoulder. “You’re a high-strung little thing, ain’tcha? I told you not to worry about nothin’. This ugliness in court’ll be settled soon enough, and then you and Benny Jack can get back to being a normal married couple.”

  A normal married couple. Yeah, right. Lily watched Granny climb into her truck and drive off, noticing for the first time the rifle in the gun rack of the truck’s back window. Lily had no trouble picturing Granny using that gun, firing away at squirrels or rabbits or the Maycombs. Now, that last image was one she could enjoy.

  That afternoon, Ben came in the door, humming. When Mimi announced his presence with a squeal of “B-Jack,” instead of correcting her, he picked her up and swung her like an airplane.

  “B-Jack funny,” Mimi laughed.

  Ben smiled the kind of smile someone in a Walt Disney cartoon might when a bluebird alights on his shoulder. “B-Jack certainly is.” He focused for a second on the guardian angel picture Lily had just finished hanging over the couch. “Say, isn’t that picture from Granny’s house?”

  “Yeah, she brought it over this morning. She brought something else, too, which might not make you too happy.”

  “Mordecai? Yeah, I saw him as I drove up. That’s okay. He’s not so bad, as quadrupeds go.”

  Lily looked at Ben in amazement. “So... what happened to that adorable, perpetually kvetching homosexual that I married?”

  Ben sat down in the armchair, hugging his knees. “I had a good day, that’s all.”

  “Do tell. It’s the first good day you’ve had since we moved to Versailles, so I think that makes it a newsworthy event.”

  “Well, this morning when I was dropping those papers off at Buzz Dobson’s office, I kind of ran into somebody from my past.”

  “Your past?” Lily teased. “I didn’t know you had a past.”

  “F u-c-k y-o-u,” Ben said, spelling his profanity so Mimi wouldn’t parrot it. “It was this guy, Ken, I went to high school with. And god, I was obsessed with him back then ... he was a nerdy little gay boy’s wet dream: a National Merit Scholar, president of
the Beta Club, and with these big, brown eyes to die for. Have you ever known anybody like that? Somebody you just can’t stop thinking about?”

  “Just Charlotte. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go five minutes without thinking of her.” She shook off her pain. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get maudlin. So you ran into this guy today?”

  “Sure did. Now he’s a chemistry professor over at Faulkner County Community College. I was kind of surprised that he’s teaching there, but the academic market’s tough these days. He’s still gorgeous, and ...” Ben paused dramatically. “He’s never married.”

  “So do you think —”

  “I think he might be. I mean, he dated girls in high school, but hell, I even dated a girl or two in high school. He really set my gaydar off today, but it could just be wishful thinking.”

  “Shame on you!” Lily laughed. “A married man!” Ben flashed another Walt Disney grin. “On Saturday, he and I are playing golf at the country club.”

  Lily felt a sudden tingle of fear. “Now, Ben, you have to be discreet about this —”

  “Do you honestly think there’s anybody in this town who would think of two men — one of them married — playing golf together at the country club as a date?”

  “No, I guess not. Excuse my paranoia — it’s just that I know for a fact that there are people out to get me.”

  “I promise to be discreet. Hell, there’s probably not even going to be anything to be discreet about. I don’t even know if this is a date.” He tried to fight the smile creeping across his lips. “But I hope it is.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Lily was trying to work. She sat at the kitchen table, with a spiral notebook and a sketch pad in front of her. When she was starting a new children’s book, she never knew which would come to her first: the words or the pictures. She rested her chin in her hands and stared into space. She rubbed Mordecai, who was resting under the table, with her bare feet.

  Today, neither the words nor the pictures were coming.

  But it wasn’t just that she was having an off day. Since the accident, since the Maycombs’ attack, Lily hadn’t made a single sketch or written anything more creative than a grocery list. Her hands, which in happier days had itched with the urge to create, were now numb and impotent.

  The problem with being an artist, Lily thought, is that my work reflects my life. During her days with Charlotte, Lily’s happiness had spilled forth onto the pages of her books. Her playful spirit had perfectly matched the spirits of her young readers.

  Now, though, her spirit was far from happy and playful, and she refused to write a children’s book that reflected her current state of mind. Lily couldn’t write a children’s book about the all-too-human capacity for inhumanity, oppression, and injustice. Children would learn about these things soon enough without reading a book about them.

  And Mimi, who was now napping so innocently in her crib, might learn about these things all too soon. She might be taken away from the person who loved her most in the world by the people who thought that person wasn’t fit to live. Lily rested her head in her hands. She tried to take comfort in the McGillys’ confidence in the hearing’s outcome, but it was confidence she couldn’t share. The McGillys’ lack of concern concerned her.

  Mordecai hefted his bulk up and ambled toward the kitchen door.

  “Need to go out, tiny boy?” Lily called Mordecai by diminutive names, like “teensy lapdog” and “my little Chihuahua.” The one-hundred-eighty-pound beast seemed to enjoy thinking of himself as a daintier creature.

  Once Mordecai was in the backyard, she closed her notebook and her sketch pad. If the inspiration isn’t there, she had learned, there’s no forcing it. Still, she was going to have to get some inspiration from somewhere. Regardless of how the trial went, there would be a day in the not-so-distant future when she would be kicked off the McGilly family gravy train.

  She used her once-creative hands to make tea and wash dishes. What a fine little housewife I’m turning out to be, she thought.

  Ben, of course, was out with his new/old obsession. The golfing date had gone well; Ben had come home so excited about spending the day with Ken that Lily had suggested that he change his name to Barbie. “Besides,” she had said, “you don’t really want to go through life as a couple named Ben and Ken.”

  “Is it any more ridiculous than going through life as Lily McGilly?”

  Lily had conceded his point. She also had to concede something else: Her sarcasm toward Ben’s giddiness was due to nothing more than good, old-fashioned jealousy. It didn’t bother her that her ersatz husband was stepping out on her; she didn’t give a shit about that.

  It was Ben’s happiness that drove her crazy, that made her think of her first days with Charlotte, when their love was green and about to blossom. That kind of joy was the complete opposite of what she was feeling these days. Tennyson may have believed that “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” but Lily wasn’t sure.

  Of course, there wasn’t anything for Lily to be jealous of yet. Neither Ben nor Ken had admitted to the other that he was gay. Ben said they had each “dropped a few hairpins” during their game of golf, but being in a public place, neither of them had let his hair down entirely. Today, though, they were meeting in a more private setting. Ken had invited Ben to spend the afternoon at his house, listening to Brit pop and then eating sushi for dinner, which Ken had prepared from ingredients he had bought at the international farmer’s market in Atlanta. Lily had opined to Ben that he was home free: straight white men don’t make sushi.

  Lily dried the last dish and sipped her tea. Just then, her eardrums were pierced by a high-pitched cry of pain. She dropped her cup into the sink and ran to Mimi’s room, only to find the little girl resting comfortably. She heard the cry again, and this time, with her maternal instinct laid to rest, she could tell the sound was animal, not human. It was coming from the backyard.

  She ran down the hall and out the kitchen door. Mordecai was lying on his stomach, his face pressed against the chain-link fence, whimpering and howling in pain.

  “It’s okay, Mordecai,” she said as she approached him. “It’s me, Mordecai.” Animals in pain, she knew, could strike out without thinking. She softly repeated his name to remind him that she was his friend.

  When she got closer, she saw what had happened. Mordecai, famous for digging his way out of his dog pen at the big McGilly house, had attempted to do the same thing with the chain-link fence here. But he had, hit a painful snag.

  The section of fencing he had exposed was torn, as though someone had clipped a jagged hole in it— a hole just the right size to trap one of his mammoth front paws.

  There was a lot of blood. In trying to remove his paw from the trap, he had only succeeded in digging the metal into his flesh.

  “Poor baby,” Lily cooed. Mordecai whimpered in agreement.

  Lily locked her fingers in the links above the hole and pulled upward. The big dog looked down at his freed paw with mournful eyes.

  Lily had to agree that it did look pretty bad. His dark fur made the nature of his wounds hard to detect, but when he tried to stand, the injured foot dangled limply. For all Lily knew, it could be broken.

  “Sit tight, Mordecai. Let me go inside and get the baby and the car keys. We’re gonna get you some help.”

  The one thing she could say in favor of the monstrous Chrysler New Yorker Big Ben had bought was that it was a vehicle of sufficient size to comfortably transport a toddler and a rottweiler. Lily’s old Honda, which was sitting unused in the condo parking lot in Atlanta, barely had enough room for her and Mimi, let alone a one-hundred-eighty-pound dog. She had wrapped Mordecai’s paw in a clean towel. Even so, she was sure he was bleeding all over the car’s plush upholstery. She knew this kind of thing would cause Ben to have a hissy fit, but she didn’t care. The day she cared more about personal property than living things was the day she’d have her woman’s symbol tattoo r
emoved and become a cheeseburger-chomping Republican.

  After Lily was already on the road, it occurred to her that she could have called Jeanie and asked who Mordecai’s regular vet was. But it was too late for that. Since he was losing blood, expediency seemed the best path. Down the road from the sock mill, she had noticed a green double-wide trailer with a sign,

  FAULKNER COUNTY ANIMAL CLINIC. Lily hoped they would see animals on an emergency basis.

  Once they arrived, Lily had no doubt that the Faulkner County Animal Clinic was where Mordecai went for his shots and checkups. He had been exceptionally cooperative about getting into the car at the house, but now, at the sight of the foreboding trailer, he froze in terror. Being careful to avoid his hurt foot, Mimi tried to pull him out of the car, but it was impossible. His huge muscles were locked, such that moving him was as impossible as moving a heavy marble statue.

  “Okay, fine. You wait here.” She left the window cracked for the obstinate canine and freed Mimi from her car seat. Mimi grabbed her hand and toddled alongside her to the trailer’s entrance.

  A round old lady with a pink slash of lipstick on her puckered mouth sat at the desk in the paneled waiting room. “May I help you, dear?” she asked, through puckered lips.

  “Um, yes, I hope so,” Lily said. “I don’t have an appointment, but I have an injured dog in the car. He’s Big Ben McGilly’s —”

  “Mordecai?” the old lady asked.

  Lily was amazed. She had already discovered that every person knew every other person in this town, but until now, she hadn’t realized that this knowledge extended to lower members of the animal kingdom. “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Well, you can bring him on in.”

  “Well, actually, I can’t. He won’t budge from the car.”

  The old lady smiled. “Well, I guess if Mordecai doesn’t want to move, it’s kinda hard to make him. Have a seat. I’ll get Dr. Jack to help you.”