Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

Lily laughed, while Ben muttered an incantation against the female sex and helped himself to some coffee.

“I’m just teasing you, Benny Jack. You want three eggs or four?”

“Mother, I’ve told you a thousand times that I don’t eat eggs anymore. I know the doctors in Versailles haven’t heard of cholesterol yet, but —”

Jeanie rolled her eyes. “I know all about cholesterol, Benny Jack. I just thought you might want a real breakfast this mornin’ since it’s a special occasion. I mean, if a man don’t wake up after his wedding night with a good appetite, then there’s somethin’ bad wrong —”

“Two,” Ben mumbled.

“What was that, honey?”

“Two eggs, Mother.” He sank into a kitchen chair.

Mimi pulled herself to standing and leaned against Ben’s knee. She grinned up at him with her jack-o’-lantern teeth. “B-Jack,” she crooned.

Jeanie looked up from her cooking, delighted. “What was that she said?”

Lily laughed. “I think she just called him Benny Jack.”

Jeanie grinned. “Now, Mimi, honey, you don’t call him that. You call him daddy, just like always.”

Mimi gave Jeanie a puzzled glance. Daddy was not a familiar concept to her. She looked back up at Ben, giggled, and repeated, “B-Jack.”

Ben slammed down his coffee mug in exasperation. “Ben! Why can’t everybody just call me Ben?

It’s just one little syllable! Is that too much to ask?”

“Now, now, honey,” Lily cooed with mock affection. “I think Benny Jack is an adorable name.” She thought it only fair that if she had to suffer the indignity of being named Lily McGilly, Ben should also be saddled with a name he hated.

Jeanie brought Ben’s breakfast to the table. “Your daddy wants y’all to meet him down at the mill at eleven. He’s got y’all a one-thirty appointment with Buzz Dobson, but first, he’s got a little surprise.”

Lily wondered with some trepidation what the surprise could be. Surprises weren’t really what she craved these days.

“And I was hoping,” Jeanie said, “that you might leave Mimi with me. I’d just love to show her off and maybe take her shopping. The poor little thing barely has a stitch of clothing to her name.”

Lily looked down at Mimi, who was wearing a plain white T-shirt and a pair of tiny denim shorts.

Lily had bought most of Mimi’s clothes at Goodwill, and her main criteria for selecting infant wear was that it would not be permanently stained by milk, cereal, spit-up, or pee. “I’m sure she would love to go shopping with you,” Lily said, against her better instincts.

At five after eleven, Lily and Ben pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Confederate Sock Mill.

As they went in the side entrance of the building, with Lily toting Mimi and a bag full of baby supplies, the all-female clerical staff descended on them and crowed, “Oh, is this the new grandbaby?” “I want you to look at her!” “Isn’t she the sweetest thing?”

When Jeanie rose from her desk and approached them, the other women cleared a path for her.

“There’s Mamaw’s little sunshine!” she called, opening her arms to receive Mimi. “Benny Jack, your daddy’s out on the floor if you want to go get him. You can take Lily, too — show her the production

The production area of the Confederate Sock Mill hurt Lily’s ears and nose. The clicking and chugging of the machinery was deafening, and the smell of the textile fibers caused her to have a sneezing fit. The two dozen mill workers, engrossed in their repetitive tasks, didn’t seem to notice the sounds or smells at all.

Big Ben, who had been deep in conversation with a machine operator, spotted them and waved.

“Hey,” he yelled over the rumbling machinery “Y’all ready to go for a ride?”

As they walked to the parking lot, Big Ben said, “Well, I reckon we could go in Benny Jack’s car or my truck.” He grinned. “Or Lily, we could go in your car.”

“Excuse me?”

Big Ben cackled and nodded toward a long, shiny silver car parked in the rear of the lot. “That’s for you.” He pressed the keys into Lily’s hand. “A little wedding present from Jeanie and me.”

Lily’s vocabulary failed her. “Uh...I...uh ...”

“Now I know it ain’t as nice as Benny Jack’s Lexus,” Big Ben apologized. “But you really sprung this marriage thing on us, and a New Yorker was the best we could do on short notice. I tell you what, Lily. You stay married to this rascal a year, and we’ll get you any make of car you want!”

“Big Ben, it’s a beautiful car, I ... I just couldn’t accept it.”

“Of course you can,” Big Ben said. “It’s just our way of welcoming you into the family. This car’s a piece of shit compared to what we got Sheila and Tracee when they married our other boys. But we had a little more notice then, so we could go to Atlanta and pick out somethin’ nice, you understand.”

“Well, uh ... thank you.” Lily felt as though she were on some bizarre game show, an updated version of The Liar’s Club, where the gay person who put up the most convincing pretense of heterosexuality could win a snazzy new car.

“So, little lady,” Big Ben boomed, “how ’bout taking us for a ride?”

“Sure...okay.”

The plush interior of the Chrysler New Yorker had that unmistakable new-car smell. It was an undeniably gorgeous vehicle, and yet it wasn’t a car Lily would ever have picked out for herself, even if she had possessed the funds to buy it. While she was sure that in Big Ben’s eyes, the New Yorker’s roominess made it a good family car, to her, a big car meant nothing but bad gas mileage and more exhaust fumes to pollute the environment. Besides, weren’t gays supposed to be boycotting the Chrysler company?

Damn it, Lily warned herself, if you’re going to pull off the happy hetero bit, you’re going to have to start thinking less. She turned the key in the ignition. “Where to?” she asked brightly.

“Hang a left out of the parking lot,” Big Ben said from the backseat. He had insisted on sitting in the back so the “newlyweds” could sit in the front together.

Lily hung a left as instructed and drove past barns and fields of cattle. This was her first real experience with country driving, and she had to admit it was much more pleasant than dealing with the stressful, stop-and-go traffic of the city.

“Now turn right at this church over here.” Lily turned right at the Free Will Baptist Church — a name which she considered an oxymoron.

“Now you’ll wanna go down this road a piece,” Big Ben said.

The road was a rural residential area, dotted with well-maintained brick ranch-style houses.

“Now turn at that mailbox that says 104,” Big Ben directed.

Lily did as she was told, but had no idea why she was pulling into a strange house’s driveway.

She didn’t begin to catch on until her hapless husband said, “Now Daddy, what have you gone and done?” At that moment, Lily saw the realty company sign in the yard with the banner across it announcing, SOLD.