Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

Maycomb? Was your daughter of sound mind?”

“Like I said.” Ida squirmed in her seat. “Charlotte always was book-smart, but she didn’t have a lick of common sense. And when she hooked up with that one” — she nodded at Lily — “any bit of common sense she had went out the window.”

“You don’t like Mrs. McGilly, do you, Mrs. Maycomb?”

“Objection,” Hamilton interrupted. “Irrelevant.”

“Your Honor,” Buzz said, “if you’ll bear with me, I’ll show how Mrs. Maycomb’s and Mrs.

McGilly’s relationship pertains to the case.”

“Go ahead then, Mr. Dobson,” Judge Sanders said wearily.

Buzz repeated the question.

“Why, I don’t think that question’s fair at all.” Ida’s blue eyes were flashing. Lily had never seen her so openly angry before. “How would you feel if some ... some lesbian came and seduced your daughter into a life of sin? Why, you’d just as soon see her dead as —” Perhaps seeing the rays shooting from Stephen Hamilton’s eyes, Ida clamped her mouth shut.

“You are a Christian, are you not, Mrs. Maycomb?”

“I most certainly am.”

“Well, aren’t Christians supposed to believe in forgiveness, in people’s ability to change?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr. Dobson.”

“What I’m getting at is ... look at Mrs. McGilly over there. She’s a changed person. She’s married a nice young man and is raising Mimi in a normal small town with more Christians in it than you can shake a stick at. Don’t you believe she’s changed, Mrs. Maycomb?”

Ida looked at Lily as though someone was holding something foul smelling under her nose. “No, I don’t. Not that one. Her sin’s still in there. She’s just covered it up with makeup and a nice hairdo.”

“Let you who are without sin cast the first stone,” Buzz muttered.

“Objection,” Hamilton said. “Mr. Dobson is a lawyer, not a minister.”

Judge Sanders shrugged. “Sustained.”

Buzz smiled sweetly at Ida. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Maycomb. No further questions.”

Lily couldn’t help but be impressed by Buzz’s line of questioning. Certainly he lacked Hamilton’s slickness and drama, but he did a good job of establishing Charlotte as a rational person and Ida as an irrational one. Of course, Judge Sanders had looked bored throughout Buzz’s presentation, so maybe he preferred a dramatic argument to a rational one.

On the stand for Hamilton, Mike Maycomb blubbered for his sister’s soul. “When I think of my sister, being eternally consumed by the fires of hell, all I can do to comfort myself is to save my niece from that same fate.”

“It’s interesting,” Buzz said in his cross-examination, “how you say the only thing that can save Mimi is to raise her in a Christian family, and yet the McGillys are a Christian family. Why, I see Jennie McGilly and Big Ben’s mama over at the Presbyterian church every Sunday. Doesn’t that sound like a Christian family to you?”

“It’s Mimi’s nuclear family I’m concerned about,” Mike said, pronouncing the word nuclear as nu-kyu-ler. Lily guessed they didn’t spend much time on vocabulary at the Christian junior college he had attended. “I’m sure most of the McGillys mean well, but Lily and Ben ... well, I believe our attorney has some evidence that’ll prove once and for all that whatever their relationship is, it’s not a Christian marriage.”

“Oh, so what you’re saying is that Mr. Hamilton is about to pull out the big guns?” Buzz laughed.

“Okay, then. No further questions. Hamilton, let’s see what you’ve got.”

“Because Mr. Charles Maycomb finds today’s matter too painful to discuss publicly, he has declined to take the stand and has asked instead that I screen this videotape, which I would like to do now, with permission of the court.” He held the videotape aloft in his diamond-ringed hand.

Judge Sanders sighed. “How long is this gonna take, Mr. Hamilton? The country club stops serving lunch in thirty minutes.”

“The running time on this tape is three minutes and twenty-two seconds, Your Honor.”

“Proceed.”

Hamilton popped the tape into the VCR. Lily watched as the Atlanta skyline appeared on the screen. The camera panned a long line of men and women carrying rainbow flags and placards. It was Atlanta’s gay pride parade — Lily wasn’t sure which year, but it was recent, judging from the, clothing and hairstyles.

A convertible in which a gorgeous black drag queen sat, smiling and waving, drove out of the camera’s range, and then another group of marchers came into view, carrying a banner reading LESBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL PARENTS. The camera zoomed in on four faces. One of them, Lily noted with horror, was her own.

There, onscreen, were Lily and Charlotte wearing matching T-shirts that read GAYBY BOOM.

Marching alongside Charlotte and Lily was Ben, wearing a white polo shirt with a small, discreet pink triangle on the chest.

There was nothing discreet, however, about Ben’s marching partner. Dez was decked out in a hot pink caftan and a rhinestone tiara. Though he was not in full drag makeup, Dez was wearing hot pink lipstick and a set of false eyelashes so large that they re¬sembled a pair of tarantulas resting on his eyelids. He held the tiny baby Mimi, who was laughing and cooing, high above his head, while he shrieked at the top of his lungs, “We’ve come for your children! We’ve come for your children!”

As the screen went blank, the only sound in the courtroom was Big Ben’s laughter. When Judge Sanders banged his gavel, Big Ben said, still laughing, “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I couldn’t help it. That Dez may have had ruffles on his drawers, but he was funny as hell.”

Judge Sanders removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Well ... on that note, let’s break for lunch. Court will reconvene at two o’clock.”

Lily sat at the table as if she had been turned to stone. When Ben turned to face her, she whispered, “Lost.”

CHAPTER 20

In Buzz Dobson’s dingy office, over cold sandwiches no one seemed to have much of an appetite for, Buzz, Lily, and Ben grimly discussed the morning’s proceedings.

“I just don’t understand how that bastard got hold of that tape,” Lily said, pushing away her uneaten sandwich.

“Oh, he probably got it from Charlotte’s crazy brother,” Ben said. “That group he’s president of has a whole collection of videos of gay marches —so they can use them to show the evils of homosexuality.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter how Hamilton got it,” Lily sighed. “All that matters is that he got it, and now we’re screwed.”

“Come on now, Mrs. McGilly,” Buzz cajoled. “We’ve not even made our argument yet. The testimony of the McGillys holds a lot of water in this town.”

Lily refused to be comforted. “Yeah, well, it’s kinda hard to compete with a man in drag shrieking,