by Julia Watts
“People who haven’t found Jesus yet,” Mike finished for him.
Of course, Lily thought. You Lieutenants of the Lord are willing to disguise your racism in order to preserve the patriarchy.
“Well, of course,” Ida said, smiling sweetly, “there are ... undesirables wherever you go. In small towns, you get the trailer trash and the Holy Rollers.”
“How’s that?” Big Ben asked, leaning over the table intently.
“What my wife means is, those Church of God people,” Charles said. “You know, the ones that shout and dance and speak in tongues and act crazy.”
“They’re very unrefined,” Ida said, with a superior simper.
“Some of ’em even drink strychnine and set themselves on fire,” Mike laughed.
Big Ben set down his knife and fork. “I was raised in the Church of God. Now, we wasn’t the kind to handle snakes or set ourselves afire or nothin’ like that. But we would shout and speak in tongues and get happy. And you wanna talk about some fine people ... they was some of the best folks you’d ever meet in that church.” He took a slug of Coke. “Now, I ain’t in that church no more, mind you. Jeanie and Mama joined up with the Presbyterians a while back, and I joined up with ’em. I don’t hardly go to church there, though, ’cause the preaching and the singing’s so quiet, it seems like I have to start snoring just to make a little noise.
“I’ll tell you somethin’, though. A few years back I was down in Mississippi on bizness, and I looked up this ole army buddy of mine—a black feller. He invited me to a tent revival his church was having. I was the only white man in that tent, and I swear to God, I don’t believe I sat down once during the whole service ... I was too busy standing up and clapping and singing. Them people knew how to have church, let me tell you.” Big Ben picked up his silverware and dug back into his steak.
“Well, of course, there’s good people in every group,” Charles waffled. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant, buddy,” Big Ben said, looking Charles in the eye.
“So,” Jeanie said, with determined cheer. “We got pound cake and chess pie. Who wants what?”
As everyone sat with their coffee in the living room, Lily crawled down on the floor with Mimi and helped her to a standing position. “How about a little after-dinner entertainment, Mimi-saurus?” Lily said. “Why don’t you show Grandma and Grandpa how you can walk?”
Mimi stood with her little hands clenched, steeling herself for action.
“Come on, sweetie. Walk to Mama.”
Mimi knitted her brow, sucked in her breath, and took one, two, three faltering steps before falling into Lily’s arms. At the sound of her grandparents’ applause, she grinned crookedly.
“I swear,” Big Ben said, “I think she’s just about the happiest baby I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, of course she’s happy,” Jeanie added. “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s well taken care of, and loved.” She looked straight at the Maycombs. “Mimi may not be hers by blood, but Lily’s still one of the best mamas I’ve ever seen.”
Lily’s stomach clenched. All evening she had been wondering how to broach the subject of Mimi’s custody with the Maycombs. Now it seemed that Big Ben and Jeanie were going to cut to the chase for her, which, she noticed, had caused the Maycombs to squirm as though the cushions in their chairs were stuffed with gravel.
“Well,” Charles said, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room. “I’m sure Lily is fine at seeing to the child’s basic needs —keeping her fed and clean, that kind of thing.” He smiled self-righteously. “But as I’m sure some of the ladies in the room know, there’s a lot more to being a mother than that.”
“Oh, yes.” Ida looked at Mike in the same way Jocasta must have looked at Oedipus. “If you’ve not carried the child in your own body, you don’t know what it is to be a mother. Nobody knows children like a real mother does.”
That’s funny, Lily thought. You barely could have picked your daughter out of a lineup.
“Well, that’s certainly a sentiment you could needlepoint on a pillow,” Ben said. “But Mimi’s biological mother is no longer with us. Lily and I are just trying to create the best family for her that we can.”
“Well,” Charles said calmly, “we feel that Mimi needs to be in an environment where she can learn the difference between right and wrong—”
“Now you just hold on a minute here,” Big Ben interrupted. “You can ask anybody in Faulkner County, and they’ll tell you the McGillys is fine folks. We’re a decent, hardworking family, and Benny Jack here is a good boy. We never had a bit of trouble outta him, and I can’t say the same thing for his brothers. And Lily — she may not look like you’re used to girls looking, but she’s a good, honest person.”
The word stung Lily, but she was touched by Big Ben’s impassioned defense.
“Look,” Mike said impatiently, “there are certain factors here you don’t understand. I don’t want to go into them because there are ladies present. Let’s just say that given these factors, we feel it would be in Mimi’s best interests to live with the remaining members of her biological family.”
“But Mike,” Lily interjected, “Ben is Mimi’s biological father.” So much for the honesty theory, she thought.
“Oh, I don’t believe that story for a minute. Mimi’s daddy was in some test tube at a sperm bank.” Mike’s bald spot flushed red, and a vein in his forehead bulged. “Just because you found some sissy to marry you, just because you put on a dress and shaved your legs, that doesn’t change what you are—”
“Calm down, son—” Charles interrupted.
Heedless, Mike ranted on. “And don’t think for a second we don’t know who you are, Lily...
McGilly, as you call yourself. For whatever perverted purposes, you may claim to be a normal wife and mother, but deep down you’re still a godless, man-hating…”
A crash issued from upstairs as though a door had been ripped from its sockets. Something huge barreled down the stairs and soon was standing on its hind legs with its front paws positioned on the arms of Mike’s chair. A low growl issued from its black, curled-back lips.
“Mordecai!” Big Ben hollered. “Down, boy!”
The rottweiler didn’t budge. Mike’s face, so recently aflame with anger, was now frozen in terror.
“Mordecai!” Lily called. “Down, boy”
Mordecai wagged his stump of a tail at Lily and moved his bulk to rest in front of her and Mimi, creating a physical barrier between them and the Maycombs.
“Oh, I see how it is.” Mike rose from his chair. His plaid pants looked suspiciously damp to Lily.
“You invite us down here so you can make a mockery of us. You sic your dog on us —”
“Now hold on a minute, buddy,” Big Ben interrupted. “We didn’t sic our dog on you. He was shut in the bedroom upstairs.”
“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