Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

by Julia Watts

  “Hmm,” Jack said. “You lead a complicated life, don’t you, lady?”

  “Far too complicated.” Lily felt as though she might cry again.

  “I’ll tell you what. Spend the night at my place tonight. I’ve got an extra bedroom.”

  “I told Ben to call me here if he needed me.”

  “Hang on a second. I’ll take care of that.” Jack disappeared behind the shop, and Lily heard her holler, “If anybody calls here for Lily, give ‘em my number. She’s going home with me.” There was a pause, and then Jack hollered, “Not that way, you hussies!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Jack lived in an old white saltbox with a tin roof. Even in the darkness, Lily could tell that the land around it was rolling and beautiful. The sky above the farmland was sprinkled with stars.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Lily said, as they stood on the porch.

  “Oh, yeah.” Jack unlocked the front door. “There’s the stars on a clear night, and on a cloudy night, there’s nothin’ like the sound of the rain on the roof.” The house seemed to be furnished with the same pieces Jack had grown up with. The flowered up-holstery on the arms and seat of the overstuffed sofa in the living room was shiny from years of sitting, but the worn appearance of the furniture only made it more inviting.

  “Your room’s upstairs,” Jack said, her boots clomping on the hardwood floor. “Sorry for going right off to bed, but if I get a farm call, I’ll have to roll out in four hours or so.”

  “That’s fine. I’m pretty tired.” Lily followed Jack up the stairs, noting in a purely clinical fashion that Jack filled out her Levi’s attractively.

  Jack flipped on the light in the room at the head of the stairs — a small bedroom with floral wallpaper and an iron bed covered in a handmade quilt. A black-and-white cat who was curled up on the bed lifted his head and squinted at them irritably. “That’s Hank,” Jack explained. “This is kinda his bed, so he may want to share it with you. I’ve got two house cats, Hank here and Patsy, who sleeps with me.” She smiled, a little shyly, Lily thought. “Well, you make yourself comfortable. The bathroom’s next door, and there’s towels in the hall closet if you need ’em.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jack studied the floor sheepishly. “If I have to get up for a farm call in the mornin’, I’ll just let you sleep. Feel free to let yourself out if you wake up before I get back. If I don’t get called to work, though, maybe we can have breakfast, and I can show you around the place, introduce you to the animals. Sandy used to call this the Island of Misfit Critters.”

  Lily laughed. “About half the time, I feel like kind of a misfit critter myself.”

  Jack grinned. “I know what you mean. Well ... ’night.”

  “Good night.”

  Lily undressed, crawled under the quilt, and, for the first time in a long time, fell right asleep.

  She awoke to a gentle knocking on the bedroom door. Despite the fact that she wasn’t sure where she was, she called, “Come in.”

  Jack entered carrying a tray. Lily couldn’t see what was on it, but she smelled the coffee, and the aroma of caffeine, was enough to make her sit up. “Good morning,” she said.

  “It sure is,” Jack replied. “Nobody called, so I got to sleep in.”

  Lily glanced at the Timex on the nightstand and saw it was eight-fifteen. Since when was sleeping till eight o’clock “sleeping in”?

  “I hope you don’t mind me bringing you breakfast.” Jack set the tray down before Lily.

  Lily surveyed the spread: hot coffee, toast with butter and honey, and a blue bowl filled with sliced Georgia peaches. “It’s lovely, Jack. Thank you.”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m not much of a cook, but toast and coffee I can handle.”

  “Care to join me?”

  “I ate about an hour ago. I’ll keep you company, though.”

  Jack sat on the edge of the bed while Lily ate her peaches and toast and honey. The peach slices were sweet and juicy and sunny-tasting, and Lily felt almost uncomfortable eating them in bed in such close proximity to Jack. Eating peaches in bed near another woman was the closest thing Lily had had to a sensual experience in quite some time.

  “Hank was still in bed with you when I got up this morning,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, he was good company — a much less obtrusive bedmate than Mordecai.” Lily sipped the coffee, which was strong but good. “I had a cat that died about three years ago. She was fourteen years old. I loved her so much I’ve never been able to get another cat. I just don’t think I could stand that kind of loss again.”

  “Hmm.” Jack reached into the bowl and popped a slice of peach into her mouth. “When I have to put sick animals down — which is the hardest part of my job, believe me — I always tell the owner to go out and find another pet. They won’t be able to love the new pet the same way they loved the old one, but maybe they can find a new way to love.”

  Lily looked into Jack’s clear blue eyes and wondered if it was really pets they were talking about. “So,” she said, opting to change the subject as soon as possible, “do I get a tour of the farm before I go?”

  “Sure.” Jack’s tone lightened. “I tell you what. Let me take your tray. You get yourself cleaned up, and just knock on the door of my room when you’re ready. There’s clean towels in the bathroom and a new toothbrush.”

  After Lily made herself presentable, she entered Jack’s room to find her working on a computer, which looked incongruous with the rustic farmhouse surroundings: IBM meets American Gothic. “Hey,” Jack said, looking up at Lily. “Even horse doctors keep their records on computer, these days. Speaking of horses, I’ve gotta vaccinate a couple mares on Wednesday. You wanna come?”

  “Sure. I’ve not gotten to sketch any horses yet.”

  Jack turned off the computer and stood. “Okay, well, let’s start the tour. This is my room.”

  Lily looked at the overflowing bookshelves that lined the walls. “Quite a book collection you’ve got here.”

  “One of my city girlfriends used to tease me ’cause I talk like a hick. She said as many books as I read, I oughta know better.”

  “I like your accent.”

  Jack looked down. Was she blushing? “I think the way you talk oughta tell people somethin’ about you. I don’t like the idea that everybody oughta sound like they’re reading the nightly news.”

  “Me neither.” Lily scanned the volumes in the nearest bookcase—they were all veterinary medicine books, with polysyllabic titles. “Not exactly light reading here.”

  “Nope, that bookcase is just professional stuff—boring to everybody but me.” She glanced at the case across the room. “What you want’s probably over there.”

  Lily’s jaw dropped when she saw the other book-case— six wide shelves stuffed with lesbian fiction. The books were paperbacks mostly: classics like We Too Are Drifting, Beebo Brinker, Desert of the Heart, and Curious Wine. But there were also several recent titles Lily hadn’t read. “It’s amazing to see so many books like this in a place ... like this.”

  “Yeah. Versailles doesn’t even have a bookstore, let alone a place where you can buy lesbian books. Let’s just say I’m on a first-name basis with all the gals who take mail-order calls for Naiad Press. I call this bookcase the Faulkner County Lesbian Lending Library. If you wanna borrow somethin’, go ahead. I don’t even charge overdue fines.”

  “Thanks.” Lily pulled a couple of mysteries off the shelves. “Charlotte used to tease me about how many mysteries I read. She said the difference between her and me was that she read books to put them in a theoretical context, whereas I read books to find out whodunit.”

  Jack smiled. “I’m sure she wouldn’t have thought much of my reading habits either.”

  Lily winced at the appropriate but still painful use of the past tense in reference to Charlotte. Jack must have noticed it, because she quickly blurted, “So, ready to see the farm?”

  The morning sun shone on the green pasture
and freshly painted barn, making the pastoral scene so cheerful it could have sprung to life from the pages of a Little Golden Book. Of course, in a Little Golden Book, the horse in the pasture wouldn’t be quite so swaybacked.

  The old chestnut gelding’s spine dipped in the shape of a horseshoe. “This ole boy was treated awful mean by his owners,” Jack said. “I figured the least I could do was let him get old and fat.” The horse nuzzled the pocket of Jack’s coveralls in search of sugar cubes. Jack fished out a cube and handed it to Lily. “Here, feed it to him. Just hold it in the flat of your palm. Not that he’s got much teeth to bite you with.”

  Lily offered the sugar cube and scratched the horse’s velvety nose.

  As they walked across the farmland, they were assailed by dogs— brown dogs, black dogs, yellow dogs, and spotted dogs, all of questionable breeding but unquestionable devotion. Jack led Lily into the barn. A black streak shot past them. “That was D-Con,” Jack explained. “Barn cat. Standoffish.”

  “Runoffish, more like,” Lily said. “Thing took off so fast I wouldn’t have known it was a cat if you hadn’t told me.”

  Jack laughed. “I told you about my one-horned goat, didn’t I?” She led Lily to a stall, the home of a black-and-white ram with a single, curlicued horn. Seeing company, he rested his front hooves on the fence. His eyes, like all goats’ eyes, were innocent and knowing at the same time.

  “Well, aren’t you cute?” Lily scratched his bony back. “You might just be making a cameo appearance in my new book.”

  “Ole Pan here’s the way I got Sandy to come to my place the first time. I told her I had a unicorn and asked her if she wanted to come see it. Pretty slick, huh?”

  “Pretty slick indeed.” Lily was attempting to rescue her shirttail from Pan, who was nibbling it as though it was a delicacy. She finally pulled it out of his mouth and, laughing, turned toward Jack, who was looking at her with a hard-to-read expression.

  “Was Charlotte pretty?” Jack asked.

  It took Lily a moment to get her bearings. “Um, yes, I thought so. She wasn’t that emaciated, doe-eyed kind of pretty that you see in the magazines. Hers wasn’t a fragile beauty ... but bigger and stronger.”

  “Butch?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could call her that. She wasn’t butch in the same way that —” She started to say that “you are,” but stopped herself. “In the same way that Mick is, but yeah, you could call her butch. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was just curious about your...type.”

  They walked out of the barn and into the sunlight. “Well, Charlotte was definitely my type.” She thought of Charlotte in her various guises — in her jeans and blazer, in her motorcycle jacket, in nothing at all. “I miss her so much.”

  “I know you do.” Jack draped a companionable arm over Lily’s shoulders. “I know you do ’cause I miss Daddy. I know it’s not the same thing, but I did live with him my whole life except when I was off at school. ’Course, it was easier for me. I was expecting him to go.”

  Lily was sobbing now. She was embarrassed to be doing it, but embarrassment wasn’t enough to stop her.

  “I’m sorry, Lily. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just...you mentioned Charlotte earlier, so I thought it was okay to talk about her.”

  “It is okay. Sometimes, though, this wave of loss just sweeps over me.”

  “I know. And if I hadn’t brought her up, it wouldn’t have happened.” She produced a clean white hanky from the pocket of her coveralls and handed it to Lily. “I want to make you feel better, not worse.”

  “You do make me feel better. Thanks for the tour ... and the peaches.. . and the snot rag.” She wiped her eyes. “I’ve gotta go, though. I’ve got to meet Ben so we can pick up Mimi, after our alleged overnight trip.”

  “Don’t forget those books you left on the porch.”

  “Thanks.” Lily retrieved the books and opened her car door. “Well...see ya.”

  “Yeah. You still wanna go see those mares this week?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll carry you there, then?”

  Lily smiled at Jack’s Southern speech. “That’d be great.” Lily backed out of the driveway and watched as the receding figure of Jack stood in front of the farmhouse, watching Lily drive away.

  CHAPTER 15

  When Lily came into the living room to announce that dinner was ready, she found Jack lying on her back on the floor, holding up Mimi, whose little arms were outstretched like the wings of an airplane.

  “She’ll play airplane forever,” Lily said. “My arms get tired before she does.”

  “Not mine. If I can carry a calf, I can play airplane with a baby girl.”

  Lily and Mimi had gone with Jack this afternoon while she vaccinated the mares. Mimi had played in a pile of sweet-smelling hay while Lily had sketched the beautiful animals.

  Lily had been planning on cooking dinner for Ben and Ken tonight, and so she had invited Jack to join them. She was making ratatouille with fresh vegetables Granny McGilly had brought them from her garden. A one-dish meal could always be stretched to feed one more person.

  The only creature in the household who seemed to object to Jack’s presence was Mordecai. When he saw his veterinarian walk in the door, he had slunk down the hall and hidden under Mimi’s crib. Jack had lured him out with Milk-Bones and assurances that she was not there in an official capacity.

  Ben and Ken were cuddling on the couch. Lily had never seen her “husband” so happy. For as long as she’d known him, Ben had a cynical streak that was equally likely to express itself in dark humor or sulkiness. Since Ken had arrived on the scene, Ben’s sulkiness had disappeared entirely.

  Lily, Jack, Ben, and Ken sat companionably around the dinner table. For a moment it reminded Lily of her and Ben’s old days with Dez and Charlotte, except that Ken lacked Dez’s flamboyance, and Jack ... Jack was not Charlotte.

  After dinner, Ben announced that he and Ken were going back to Ken’s place for dessert.

  Lily grinned as she cleared the dinner dishes. “I bet I know what’s on the dessert menu.”

  Jack laughed. “Not been married half a year, Lily, and he’s already stepping out on you.”

  Ben’s face reddened, but he was laughing.

  “You just be sure not to fall asleep over there,” Lily warned. “You need to be spending the night at home, like a dutiful husband.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t neglect my husbandly duties.”

  With Ben and Ken gone and Mimi tucked into bed, Lily and Jack sat together on the couch, coffee in hand.

  “Mimi’s a sweet little thing.” Jack paused to sip her coffee. “Fun to play with.”

  “Well, thanks for wearing her down. She went out as soon as her head hit the pillow.”

  “I like kids. I reckon if I hadn’t been a vet, I woulda been a pediatrician. Of course, I wanted kids to like me, and no kid ever likes going to the doctor.”

  Lily sipped her coffee. “Did you ever think about having kids of your own?”

  Jack grinned. “I thought about it before. I could actually picture myself changing diapers and heating bottles, but there was no way in hell I could picture myself pregnant.”

  Lily laughed. “A pregnant butch is a sight to behold. You should’ve seen Charlotte. Once she started to show, she went to Kmart and bought a bunch of oversized T-shirts and drawstring sweatpants. She said there was no way in hell she was putting on a maternity dress.”

  “I don’t blame her. So how come she was the one that ended up carrying the baby?”

  “We determined it very scientifically. We drew names out of a hat. So I could just as easily have been Mimi’s biological mother instead of Charlotte, and Ben could have been Mimi’s biological dad instead of Dez.”

  “Have you ever thought how much easier your life would be now if things had turned out that way?”

  “Many times. Of course, if Ben and I had been the parents, we would’ve had a diff
erent little girl than the one we have. And I wouldn’t trade Mimi for anything.” Lily set down her coffee cup. “God, the closer the hearing gets, the more nervous I get. I’m afraid to say I’ll be glad when it’s over, though, because I’ll only be glad if everything turns out okay.”

  “I know.” Jack took Lily’s hand in hers.

  Lily’s first instinct was to pull away, but the strength in Jack’s big, gentle hand was comforting.

  “I also feel bad about lying all the time,” Lily said. “I’ve never been so dishonest before. I spend so much of my time just hoping I’m doing the right thing.”

  Jack looked down at Lily’s hand in hers. “I’ll tell you what, Lily. It’s wrong that anybody would try to take Mimi away from you. It’s so wrong, that anything you do to get to keep her is the right thing.”

  “Thank you for saying that. I’ve wondered what you think of me for doing this. You’re a good friend, Jack. I’m glad I met you.”

  “I’m glad I met you, too.” Jack was silent for a moment, looking down at Lily’s hand. “It’s been real lonely around the house with Daddy gone, and the past few years I’ve ended up being the bachelor friend to all my friends in couples, and then —” She cut herself off. “I’m sorry I’m doing a bad job of saying this.”

  Lily pulled her hand away. “Of saying what?”

  Jack half grinned. “See? I told you I was doing a bad job.” She looked down, and her voice became serious again. “I guess what I’m trying to say is...oh, hell.” Jack looked up at Lily and reached out to plush Lily’s hair out of her face. Lily watched passively as Jack leaned toward her and softly touched her lips to hers. Lily was paralyzed.

  As soon as Jack pulled away, Lily scooted to the opposite end of the couch. She hadn’t felt another woman’s lips on hers since Charlotte’s, and the feel of Jack’s lips made her ache for Charlotte’s kisses. But there was something else, too. “Jack, I’m not ready...”