Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

“Queers!” Tracee finished for her. For two straight girls, they finished each other’s sentences like an old married couple.

“Now wait just a damn minute,” Jack said, towering over the two big-haired women. “I don’t see why there’s any reason to go off and tell Benny Jack’s parents. Lily’s a good mother, and if you go off blabbering like that, she could lose her daughter.”

“Last thing a lezzie needs is a little girl,” Sheila spat. “She’s probably already been messing with her.”

“Now, that’s ridiculous—” Ken began.

“No,” Tracee interrupted. “This is ridiculous. Come on, Sheila, we’re taking a drive over to the big house.”

And they were gone.

Jack punched the wall with the fist she had balled up while talking to Sheila and Tracee. “What do we do now?”

“Nothing to do but wait for the hammer to fall,” Lily said, her voice dull and numb.

“If I know Mother and Daddy, they’ll be over here within the hour. It would probably be a good idea if the two of you went home,” Ben said.

“God, I feel so guilty,” Ken wailed. “If I hadn’t brought the champagne—”

“This still could’ve happened,” Lily finished for him. “It’s not your fault.”

Jack kissed Lily’s cheek. “Call me the second you know something.”

Lily sighed. “I will.”

Their lovers scurried off, and Lily and Ben sat on the couch, holding hands in despair. They hadn’t even been to the courthouse yet, but they were already awaiting their sentence.

CHAPTER 19

“Well, this ain’t an easy thing to talk about.” Big Ben McGilly stared into his coffee mug.

Lily couldn’t believe she’d had the presence of mind to brew coffee. She and Ben had sat on the couch in miserable silence for twenty minutes when she had jumped up, saying, “Well, if you’re sure your parents are coming over, I might as well make some coffee.”

She had thought it was insane as she was doing it, measuring out coffee just as she was about to lose her daughter and possibly her life. (After all, it wasn’t inconceivable that Big Ben would arrive toting a double-barreled shotgun.) But now she saw the sense of her coffee preparation. The cups gave them all something to hold in their fidgety hands, something to stare into instead of each other’s eyes.

“No, it ain’t an easy thing to sit in your living room and talk about,” Big Ben continued. “But I reckon ya know why we’re here.” He looked over at Jeanie, who looked into her coffee cup.

“Yes, sir,” Lily answered, when it became clear that her husband wasn’t going to say anything.

Big Ben nodded gravely. “Sheila and Tracee was over at the house a little while ago. Now why they’d be rude enough to swing a body’s bedroom doors open is a mystery to me, but they told me what they seen. In no uncertain terms, you might say.”

Lily looked at Ben, whose face was gray. Good god, Lily thought. He’s not just upset over Mimi; he’s upset because his parents are going to cut him off without a cent. Benny Jack McGilly is stunned into muteness at the thought of having to get a job. “Yes, sir,” Lily said to her father-in-law, figuring that since the course of events was inevitable, she might as well speed things along.

“Now I can’t say me and Jeanie was surprised by what Sheila and Tracee said they saw,” Big Ben continued. “I reckon what surprised us was that y’all didn’t have the presence of mind to lock the front door before ya got nekkid.”

For the first time since his parents arrived, Ben looked up. “What?”

Jeanie set her cup down on the coffee table. “Why, Benny Jack, honey, we’ve knowed you was a homosexual since you was ten years old. And when you brought Lily home, we just kinda figgered she was one, too.”

With a shaking hand, Lily set down her cup. “You...knew?”

Big Ben smiled. “Honey, just ’cause we live in a little-bitty town in Georgia don’t mean we’re stupid. Benny Jack never cared nothin’ ’bout girls, and you know what they say: A tiger don’t change his stripes.”

“So you were going to help me keep Mimi even though you knew I was a lesbian?”

Jeanie shrugged. “Don’t see why not. You’re a good mama.”

“And besides,” Big Ben said, “I took a real dislike to them Maycombs. Never could stand people who meddle around in their grown children’s affairs. After your younguns is out of your house, what they do is their bizness.”

Ben was mute again, but Lily could tell it was a different kind of muteness from before — a muteness that came from the realization that in all his years, he had never given his parents enough credit for being decent, intelligent human beings.

“Well, I’m very touched by your support,” Lily said, “but no matter how supportive you are, it won’t do us a bit of good if Sheila and Tracee go blabbing about us all over town.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Sheila and Tracee,” Big Ben said. “I took care of them.”

Lily thought of all those stuffed hunting trophies that littered the McGilly house. “You didn’t ...

shoot them, did you?”

Big Ben let out a big belly laugh and slapped his thigh. “Naw, honey, I didn’t shoot ’em. ’Course, I’d like the sight of my bank book a little better if I had shot ’em. I bought ’em off ... it was the easiest thing in the world. You give ’em a little money to buy somethin’ shiny with, and they’ll shut right up.

They’re no better than magpies, those women. I went to the safe in the house and peeled ’em each off five thousand-dollar bills — pocket change was all it was. I told ’em if they breathed a word of what they seen at your house, that’d be the last of my money they’d ever see.”

Ben shook his head in wonder, and Lily rose to kiss Big Ben and Jeanie. “You’re the best father-and mother-in-law a lesbian in a sham marriage ever had.”

The doorbell rang before Lily had a chance to sit down. She opened the door to see Granny McGilly, holding the sleeping Mimi in her arms.

“I took her to the playground over in Callahan and ran her some,” Granny said. “Once the car started moving, she went out like a light.”

Lily took Mimi from Granny McGilly and held her close. The little girl smelled of sunshine and sleep, and Lily inhaled deeply.

The courtroom of the Faulkner County Courthouse did not have the polished wood sheen of courtrooms on TV shows. The once-white walls were dingy, and Lily, Ben, and Buzz Dobson were seated at a cheap folding table. Ida, Charles, and Mike Maycomb, with their Italian-suited attorney, sat at a folding table opposite of them. With its dinginess and cheap furniture, the room looked like an approximation of a courtroom for a high school production of Inherit the Wind.

The entrance of Judge Sanders failed to fill Lily with hope. Despite the fact that he was supposedly the official property of the McGilly family, the judge’s dour expression did not inspire confidence. Stooped and scowling, he looked as ancient and stodgy as some of the living fossils on the