Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

“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.”