Julia Watts - Wedding Bell Blues

Lily could tell that Ben wasn’t used to women crying on his shoulder. He patted her in the distracted way a person who isn’t particularly fond of dogs might pat an affection-starved beagle.

“Fucking breeders,” he muttered.

“Hey,” Lily sniffed, “you promised Charlotte and me you wouldn’t use that word anymore after we decided to have the baby.”

“It’s different with queers,” Ben said. “You and Charlotte made an informed decision to become parents. Breeders litter the earth with their progeny without even giving it a thought. But even that’s not enough for them; they have to take our kids, too.”

Dez and Charlotte used to make fun of Ben’s dismal views of the plight of gays. Dez always said Ben sounded like one of the tragic homos in those 50s pulp novels with titles like Children of Twilight.

Today, though, Lily wondered if Ben’s bleak view might be valid. She sniveled some more on his Tommy Hilfiger T-shirted shoulder, even though the way he was patting her was starting to get on her nerves.

“Okay, enough of this,” Ben said abruptly. “My shoulder is falling asleep.”

Lily sat up. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to test the bounds of your sensitivity.”

“I’m just trying to be practical. Crying gets us nowhere. We’ve got to decide what we’re going to do.”

“Do? There’s nothing to do. I mean, I’ll hire a gay positive lawyer, and we’ll go to court and everything. But we’re doomed. Don’t you know how every single custody case involving a lesbian mom has turned out? Judges would rather see kids raised by a child-molesting serial killer than a dyke. And I’m not even Mimi’s biological mother!”

Ben rose from the couch and started pacing. “Well, it certainly is a complex problem.” He paced back and forth across the living room floor. “Hmm. Let me ask you this. You’re not bound to Atlanta for any reason, are you? I mean ... you could do your work somewhere else, right?”

Lily was the author and illustrator of several books for children. As long as she had her drawing board, she, could work anywhere. Of course, the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t felt much like working.

“Sure... I guess I could go somewhere else.” She tried to picture herself and Mimi and Ben on a cross-country trek, hiding from the Maycombs. “But Ben, I don’t think we can run away from this, and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you don’t exactly strike me as the Thelma and Louise type.”

“You’re right on that count. All I could think about the whole time I was watching that movie was how long it had been since those girls had taken a shower.” He paced some more in silence, then asked,

“What kind of relationship do you have with your family?”

“Not much of one. Mom and Dad are divorced. Dad and I exchange Christmas and birthday cards, and that’s about it. Mom and I have lunch every couple of months or so. She tells me that I’m a grown woman and should get a decent hairstyle and take that ridiculous thing out of my nose.”

“And if you mention your private life?”

“She sticks her fingers in her ears and sings ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ When she has no choice but to acknowledge Mimi, she refers to her as ‘your friend’s daughter.’ ”

“Well, obviously we’re not gonna get much help on that front.”

Lily poured another glass of wine. “Ben, nobody’s gonna help us except other queers, and nobody’s gonna listen to them anyway ’cause ... well, they’re a bunch of queers.” She slammed her wineglass so hard on the coffee table that the base broke, nicking her index finger. “Goddamn it!” She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I am most certainly not okay. My daughter is going to be raised by Republicans.”

Ben sat down next to her. “Lily, I need to ask you a question.”

“So ask.” The cut on her finger was almost a relief — a small dose of physical pain to distract her from the pain that mattered.

“Okay, I’m very serious here. Would you do anything to keep Mimi?”

She didn’t have to pause to think. “Yes. She’s all I have left. If anything had a chance of working, I’d try it.

“Even if it meant putting yourself in a hellish situation?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, buddy, I’m in a hellish situation right now. Stop being so damned mysterious. What are you thinking?”

Ben sighed. “Okay. My family — they drive me nuts, but they have the two things that might get us out of this situation.”

“An AK-47 and what else?”

“Better than that. They have the two things in this country that can get you out of just about any situation: money and power.”

Lily had always known that Ben was on the payroll for some family business he rarely did any work for. The way Dez had told it, Ben’s parents kept him paid off so he wouldn’t come back to his small north Georgia hometown and flaunt his homosexuality. “But from what I’ve heard from you and Dez, your family hasn’t exactly joined up with P-FLAG. Would they be willing to use their money and power to help us?”

“Under the right circumstances.”

Lily smelled compromise — an odor she hated. But she had said she would do anything to keep Mimi, and she meant it. She took a deep breath. “And what circumstances would those be?”

“Okay,” Ben began. “Suppose — just suppose for a second — that I’m actually Mimi’s biological father.”

“But we both know Dez is.”

“For a writer, you’re not being very imaginative. Let’s say that unbeknownst to you and Dez, Charlotte and I were having an affair.”

For the first time in two full weeks, Lily laughed out loud.

“I know. It’s ridiculous. But remember: We’re cooking up a story for the breeders. They want us to be straight so badly, they’ll believe any bullshit story we come up with.”

Lily cleared her throat to stifle a giggle. “So you and Charlotte were having an affair.” She tried to imagine Charlotte and Ben locked in a passionate clench. “She was the top, obviously.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was the top. I’m the man, aren’t I?” His voice squeaked as he defended his masculinity.

“If you say so, dear.”

“So anyway, Charlotte and I had been having this affair, and she tearfully confessed to me when she got pregnant with Mimi, that she was sure that I, not Dez, was the father ...”

“Where did you come up with this story, Soap Opera Digest?”

“We both know it’s absurd, and Charlotte and Dez are probably giggling in their graves at the idea.

But don’t you think they’d want us to do whatever it took to keep their baby away from those Cobb County cretins?”

“Of course they would. I just don’t see where this flight of fancy is taking us.”

“Wake up and smell the patriarchy, Lily! If I can convince a jury that I’m Mimi’s biological father, then I’ll have a legitimate claim on her.”

“But they can do tests for that kind of thing now, if the judge orders it. DNA ...”