Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

Lily managed a smile, knocked back some beer, and sat down at the redwood picnic table across from the other McGilly wives. Lily could tell she was going to have a hard time telling Sheila and Tracee apart. They both had dark tanning-bed tans and peroxided blond hair. Their aerobicized bodies didn’t pooch or dimple in their bathing suits, and diamond rings and pendants glittered against their brown skin.

They were the kind of girls who had made Lily’s life hell in high school.

“So...” Sheila purred, “how did you meet Ben?”

“Through a mutual friend.” It was true. Dez had been dating Ben at the time he and Charlotte started collaborating on papers. To celebrate the publication of Dez and Charlotte’s first paper, the four of them had met for dinner at an Indian restaurant one night. Lily could have gone into detail about her and Ben’s first meeting, but she figured the best policy here was not to lie unless it was absolutely necessary and to never give any more information than the bare minimum. “We were friends for a long time before we got…involved.”

“Is that a fact?” Tracee laughed. “I had Johnny engaged to me before he knew what hit him. And of course, we had John Junior seven months after the wedding, so I don’t guess I can say much about your little un over there being born outta wedlock. Me and Johnny just got in under the wire ourselves.”

Lily smiled politely and took a big swig of beer.

“So, Lily, let’s see your ring,” Sheila said.

Lily looked down at her hands — so different from Sheila’s and Tracee’s well-manicured, gold-encrusted ones. Lily had artist’s hands — long, callused fingers with nubby nails and ink stains that never quite washed away. “My ring?”

“You know,” Sheila enunciated as though she were talking to a particularly slow-witted child,

“your diamond. That Ben bought you.”

“Oh,” Lily said, “we haven’t bought a ring yet.”

“But, Lil-eeee!” Sheila whined. “You absolutely have to make him buy you a ring. That’s one of the fun parts of being married. And let me tell you, you better enjoy the fun stuff while you can, because most of the time, being married’ll just make you wanna tear your hair out!” Despite Sheila’s words of doom, a smile was plastered across her face as she studied the enormous diamond that winked like a third eye on her hand.

“Well, I guess I’m just not that interested in material things,” Lily said.

Sheila and Tracee wouldn’t have looked at Lily with more shock if she had just confessed to being a serial killer.

Jeanie and an old woman Lily assumed was Ben’s grandmother were arranging a buffet on a folding table. “Wayne!” Jeanie hollered. “I reckon you’ll have to put the ribs on the grill. There’s no telling when your daddy’ll get home.”

The old woman stuck a serving spoon in a bowl of potato salad and then made her way to the table where the McGilly wives were seated. “Oh, lord,” Tracee muttered, “here she comes.”

“Honey,” the old woman said to Lily, “I just wanted to welcome you to the family. I’m Benny Jack’s Granny McGilly.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McGil —”

“Now, there ain’t no sense in you calling me Mrs. McGilly when your name’s Mrs. McGilly, too.” She grinned, revealing a mouthful of sparkling dentures. “Lily McGilly — that’s a real humdinger of a name, ain’t it? You must love my grandson something fierce to let yourself get saddled with a name like that!”

Lily laughed. “Well, that was the first thing I thought of when he proposed — if I could actually stand to go through life as Lily McGilly.”

The old woman smiled back at her. “Well, Lily McGilly, you just call me Granny, you hear?”

“I will. Thank you.” Granny McGilly was a stout old woman with soft white hair cut close to her head. She wore a plain blue T-shirt, sweatpants, and a pair of expensive white running shoes. Far from being a prissy old lady, she had an easy, comfortable manner about her that was almost butch. Lily liked her immediately.

“Well,” Granny said, glancing over at the food table, “Wayne’s got the meat on the grill and everything else is ready. I reckon I could sit a spell.” She sat down at the table next to Lily and across from Sheila and Tracee.

Sheila and Tracee exchanged glances, and Sheila said, “Excuse us. I think we’re going for a swim.”

When Sheila and Tracee got up, Granny said, “Lord, Sheila, that bathing suit you got on’s crawling right up the crack of your hind end!”

“Everybody’s wearing suits like this, this season,” Sheila said defensively. She turned to go to the pool, revealing most of her tanned, taut butt.

“She’s just showing off,” Granny whispered to Lily. “She had that thing done where they take a vacuum cleaner and suck all the fat outta your butt — what’s that called?”

“Liposuction?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Granny grinned. “Of course, she didn’t have that much fat in her butt in the first place. If she’d had the fat sucked outta her head, that doctor woulda had a real job to do.”

Lily laughed and looked down at Mimi, who started laughing, too.

“You know,” Granny said, “you’re the first woman I’ve ever seen drinking a beer at a McGilly barbecue. I think I just might have me one, too.”

Granny grabbed a beer from the cooler while Lily watched Sheila and Tracee in the pool. They were staying at the shallow end — no doubt so they could avoid wetting their carefully coiffed hair. Of course, given Lily’s recent conversation with the other McGilly wives, she thought the shallow end was an appropriate place for them.

“What’s your baby’s name?” Granny asked.

“Mimi — it’s short for Artemesia.”

Granny looked down at Mimi. “That’s an awful big name for such a little-bitty girl. Benny Jack her daddy?”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe she’d have another beer. The alcohol seemed to make lying easier — and it also eased the awkwardness of social interaction. Before her normal life had been interrupted, Lily had been a reclusive sort, content to spend her days bent over her drawing board, rising only to see to Mimi’s needs, until Charlotte came home from work. Lily had probably talked to more people in the past two weeks than she had in the past two years.

“Benny Jack’s the only one that’s been able to make a baby girl,” Granny said. “His brothers is just too all-boy, I reckon. I always did love me a little girl, though. You care if I hold her?”

“Go right ahead.” Lily helped herself to a second beer.

Granny knelt down and made eye contact with Mimi. “Hey, Mimi, you care to come sit in an old woman’s lap?”

Mimi smiled and raised her arms in the universal “pick-me-up” symbol.

“What’s all this about?” a male voice boomed.

Lily looked up to see a middle-aged man, balding, bearded, and broad-shouldered, with a sizable paunch beneath his plain white T-shirt. She knew immediately that he was “Benny Jack’s” father, Big Ben.