Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

“Is that what you wanted, honey?” Doreen asked, firing up another cigarette.

“Yeah, it’s perfect.”

“Now I don’t know if Sheila and Tracee told you or not, but I am a licensed Mary Kay consultant, so if you wanted some more makeup to complete your new look —”

“Sure. Why not?” Lily looked at Doreen’s horrifying Kabuki mask of cosmetics. “But let’s keep it light and natural, okay?”

“Sure, hon.”

Lily’s “light and natural” makeover took thirty-five minutes. Sheila and Tracee returned from their lunch break and watched Lily’s transformation, oohing and ahhing as if they were watching the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel being painted.

When Lily saw herself in the mirror, her newly painted mouth formed an “O” of surprise, making her look not unlike one of those blond, blow-up sex-toy dolls. She would almost have preferred to be wearing Doreen’s Kabuki mask — at least it had a spooky, avant-garde quality. As it was, her cheeks were dusted with peachy blush, her lips painted with equally peachy lipstick, her lashes brushed with mascara to give her a wide-eyed, Mary Pickford appearance. She looked—she shuddered at the word —

wholesome.

“Doreen, you are a miracle worker!” Sheila squealed. “Come on, Lily, let’s go buy you some new dresses!”

A better name for the La-Di-Da Dress Shop might be Designed-to-Be-Dowdy, Lily thought, as she scanned through the racks. All the dresses were in the prim shirtwaist style preferred by Sunday school teachers and small-town librarians. Finally, deciding all the garments were equally vile, Lily closed her eyes and pulled two dresses off the “size eight” rack at random.

The oversolicitous saleslady went into paroxysms of joy. “Oh,” she crowed, “those are positively the real you!”

“Give it a rest, lady,” Lily muttered, marching toward the dressing rooms. “You wouldn’t know the real me if I bit you on the ass!”

“Lil-ee!” Tracee chided her. “You’re aw-full!”

But she had already shut the dressing room door behind her.

In her light blue shirtwaist dress, black Naturalizer flats, and stockings, Lily was totally unrecognizable, even to herself. She was reminded of the scene in the movie Tootsie in which Dustin Hoffman first appears in full, dowdy drag.

When Lily went to relieve Jeanie of her babysitting duties, Mimi screamed at the sight of her. The little girl eyed Lily suspiciously, then broke down in tears. “Where’s Mama? Where’s Mama?” she wailed hysterically.

“Mimi-saurus, it’s me. I’m your mama.”

“No! Not Mama!” Mimi screamed.

“Honey, of course it’s your mama,” Jeanie said. “She just went to the beauty shop. Don’t she look pretty?”

“Not Mama!” Mimi shrieked louder.

Lily had to carry Mimi to the bathroom and show her her tattoos in order to convince the little girl that the pristinely dressed, carefully coiffed creature before her was indeed her mother.

When Lily returned to the place she and Ben grudgingly called home, Ben took one look at her and cried, “Shit! Shiiit. Shi-it.”

Lily flopped down on the sofa. “Hey, now, no profanity in front of the baby.”

Ben shook his head like a wet dog. “Good god, you look like the president of the Junior League, and you say things like no profanity in front of the baby. It’s like you’ve turned into a...a...”

Lily put on a mock Cockney accent. “A real laydee? Just call me Eliza, Professor Higgins.” She kicked off her shoes and began unceremoniously peeling off her pantyhose. “We got any beer?”

Mordecai emerged from the hall and eyed Lily suspiciously. He approached her, sniffed her, and, satisfied as to her identity, settled down for an ear-scratching. Ben backed out of the room, still fixated on Lily’s transformed appearance. “I’ll...I’ll get you one.”

“Thanks,” she said. “You’re a good husband.”

Ben returned with their beers and sat down on the couch. “Say, why don’t I drive over to Callahan and pick us up a pizza for dinner? You can’t be in the kitchen cooking, looking like that. You’ll feel like fucking Harriet Nelson.”

Mimi looked up from her shape sorter and joyously exclaimed, “Fuckin’!”

“Mimi, that’s a grown-up word.” Lily leaned back on the couch and sucked down some beer. “A lot of good it’s gonna do me to change my entire image if my daughter’s gonna have the vocabulary of a longshoreman.”

“Don’t worry; she won’t have to testify.” Ben flipped through the Versailles/Callahan phone book.

Ripping that phone book would be no feat of strength, Lily thought. Mimi could probably do it.

“So...” Ben said, “mushroom, green pepper, and black olive?”

“Sure.” Lily was astonished at the tiredness in her voice.

After Ben went to fetch the pizza, Lily made a bowl of oatmeal and a slice of toast for Mimi, whose idea of good eating was breakfast three times a day. Lily tied on Mimi’s bib, sat down with her, and began to spoon the warm cereal into the little girl’s mouth.

“No, Mama,” Mimi said. “Feed self.”

“Well, okay, grown-up girl.” She handed the spoon over, and Mimi took it into her tiny fist. Mimi shoveled away, managing to convey about sixty percent of the food into her mouth. Overall, she was doing a better job than Buzz Dobson.

Every day Mimi was getting more independent, learning to do more things for herself, adding more words to her vocabulary, including some she’d be better off without. Colorful vocabulary or not, Lily was proud of Mimi, and she loved watching her grow and learn. She thought of the other steps Mimi would be taking in the next year or so — moving from a crib to a bed, learning to use the potty — and hoped she would be there to help her daughter with these difficult milestones.

Mimi reached a dimpled, oatmeal-gooey hand out to touch Lily’s stiff hair. “Funny Mama.”

Lily had to agree. “Yeah, I’m pretty funny looking all right. Are you done with your dinner?”

“All done.”

“Okay, let’s go hose you off, then.”

Mimi grinned, flashing her perfect, white baby teeth. “Baffy?”

“That’s right. Bathy time.”

As Lily watched Mimi splash happily in the tub, she found herself wondering what the Maycombs and their kind thought she would do to damage her daughter. Did they think she was simply raising Mimi to recruit her, to train her from the earliest possible age in the rites of Sappho? Such thinking — if it could even be called thinking — was ridiculous. As long as Mimi found someone who’d be good to her, Lily didn’t care whom she grew up to love, male or female. She and Charlotte had decided to have a child to love, not to recruit.

It was the fundamentalists who recruited. From the time their children were babies, they dragged them to Sunday school and church for hours on end, indoctrinating them when they were too young to know what hit them. Maybe this was why fundamentalists always assumed gays and lesbians were raising their children with some kind of agenda in mind; the fundamentalists themselves certainly were.