Wedding Bell Blues

by Julia Watts

  “If the value of a child is beyond that of gold and diamonds, we would be selling Mimi short by placing her in an environment that values sodomy over Sunday school. The future of a child is in your capable hands, Your Honor, and I pray that you make the right decision.”

  Lily’s mind reeled. What was this “videotaped evidence” Hamilton had mentioned? Was it one of those loony antigay documentaries produced by the Christian right? Or—Lily shuddered—hadn’t she and Charlotte videotaped themselves having sex once? But they had erased it after they’d watched it. Hadn’t they? Lily was so busy panicking she didn’t even hear the judge ask Buzz to make his opening remarks.

  When she looked up, she saw Buzz standing before the judge in a suit that looked as if it had been slept in last night and then used as a napkin this morning.

  “Your Honor,” Buzz began, “I wanna tell you a little about my client, Lily McGilly. Mrs. McGilly is an award-winning author and illustrator of several books for children. In her hometown of Atlanta, she did a great deal of volunteer work for organizations that helped women and children. She has volunteered to teach art classes for after-school programs for underprivileged youth and has helped prepare food in soup kitchens that feed hungry children and their parents. Mrs. McGilly’s love for children is so strong that when her friend Charlotte Maycomb made up her will, she knew that Mrs. McGilly would be the best person to care for her baby girl.

  “And when Lily Fox married my other client, Mr. Benny Jack McGilly, whom we believe to be Mimi Maycomb’s biological father, they entered into marriage in the spirit of creating a stable, loving family for Mimi to grow up in. Through the testimony of members of the McGilly family, I intend to show that Mr. and Mrs. Benny Jack McGilly have created a stable, loving family. Charlotte Maycomb’s wishes should be respected.”

  “Is that all?” Judge Sanders asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor, that’ll do it,” Buzz said, returning to his seat.

  Lily had serious doubts that Buzz’s opening remarks would “do it.” Not only were they brief compared to Hamilton’s, they lacked Hamilton’s sense of theater. Also, while Hamilton’s entire argument was built on the perceived evils of homosexuality, Buzz didn’t even touch on the gay issue.

  Lily looked at Ben, whose face was an unreadable mask. He might still be under the impression that the McGilly family name would get them out of this mess, but Lily thought differently. Things looked bad.

  Hamilton’s questioning of the Maycombs only made it worse. When Ida Maycomb took the stand, Hamilton spoke to her in soft, gentlemanly tones. “Mrs. Maycomb, I know this is a difficult subject for you, but I want you to recount for us a conversation your daughter had with you six years ago, after she had met Mrs. McGilly.”

  Ida Maycomb was the very image of the tragic, martyred mother. On some level, Lily was sure, she was enjoying her role in this drama. “She called me up one day and said there was something she had to tell me. . . and it had to be in person. So she invited me to lunch the next day. Of course, I was dying to know what it was she had to tell me. I thought to myself, maybe she’s finally found a man who’s agreed to marry her.” She shook her head sadly. “But of course, that wasn’t it.”

  Ida looked down and cleared her throat. “I went to her apartment for lunch. I remember she’d made a tuna salad that had too much celery seed in it. Charlotte never was much of a cook —”

  “Mrs. Maycomb,” Judge Sanders interrupted, “in the interest of our getting to have some lunch today, could you please stick to the topic at hand?”

  “I’m sorry, your honor. It’s just that it’s so difficult ...” She began to sniffle. Hamilton pulled a small packet of Kleenex from his jacket pocket. She took one and dabbed at her eyes. Lily wondered how many times they’d rehearsed that little exchange. “Continue when you’re ready, Mrs. Maycomb,” Hamilton said soothingly.

  Ida took a deep breath and continued. “We sat down to lunch. Charlotte was just playing with her food, not really eating, and she said there was something she’d been meaning to tell me for a long time, but she had just kept putting it off. Now, she said, she couldn’t put it off any longer. ’ Mama,’ she said to me, ‘I’m. . . I’m a. . . lesbian.’ “ Ida said the word lesbian as though she was sounding it out from a dictionary’s pronunciation key. She wiped away another tear.

  “And why,” Hamilton asked, “was it that your daughter felt that after all this time she had to tell you about her homosexuality?”

  Ida looked at him with wet eyes. “She said she had fallen in love ... that was how she put it, just like it was a normal thing to do. She said she’d been seeing this woman, and they had decided to settle down and make a life together.”

  “And who was this woman?”

  Ida nodded toward Lily. “That’s her, right over there.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Maycomb. I know this is difficult for you. I just have one more question. A little over three years after the conversation you just discussed, Charlotte told you she was pregnant—that she had been artificially inseminated and that she and Lily were going to raise a child together. What was your reaction when she told you this?”

  “Well, naturally, it just broke my heart,” Ida said. “When you’ve got two adults who are sinning together, there’s not much you can do about it. You can pray for ’em, and you can try to bring ’em to the Lord, but they’re adults, so they’re gonna do what they wanna do. But to bring a child into that sinful environment . . . like I said, the thought of it just broke my heart. That’s why we want to raise Mimi ourselves...there’s some things a small child shouldn’t be exposed to.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Maycomb. No further questions.” Judge Sanders nodded toward the table where Lily was sitting. “Mr. Dobson?”

  Buzz rose and smiled at Ida. “I won’t take up much of your time, Mrs. Maycomb.” He was polite to the point of deference. Lily had to give old Buzz some credit for this tactic — in a small Southern town, you weren’t going to win any points by being mean to somebody’s mama. “Could you tell us, please ma’am, what your daughter did for a living?”

  Ida looked puzzled. “She taught at Atlanta State.”

  “Yes.” Buzz glanced at his notes. “At the time of her death, she was a tenured associate professor of English, was she not?”

  “Uh, I think so.” Ida’s hesitation didn’t surprise Lily. Ida had never taken much of an interest in Charlotte’s career. “But I don’t see what that has to do with the case.”

  “Well, the way I see it, Charlotte’s achievements have quite a bit to do with the case. If she became a tenured associate professor at such a young age, it must have meant her colleagues thought she did a good job. And she must have. Her teaching evaluations were high. She published numerous articles and coauthored one published book. It seems to me that Charlotte’s career is somethin’ a mother could really be proud of.”

  Ida was clearly baffled about where Buzz’s line of argument was heading. “Well, Charlotte always was...book-smart.”

  “It sounds like she was. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because, by giving her tenure, by promoting her to the rank of associate professor, her colleagues were saying that Charlotte was of sound mind...that she knew what she was doing, that she was capable of making decisions. And if she was of sound mind to make decisions at work, it seems like she’d also be of sound mind to make up her own will to decide who should get custody of her child in the event of her death. What do you think, Mrs.

  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. Ma
ycomb’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,

  ‘We’ve come for your children!’ Did you see Judge Sanders’ face when he saw that? He turned positively gray.”

  “Well, all we can do is get out there on the field and give it all we’ve got,” Buzz said.

  Great, Lily thought. Super-slick Stephen Hamilton has proven our entire marriage to be a fraud, and now our lawyer thinks he’s back on the high school football team. Well, what do you expect from someone who graduated from a law school in a building that sits smack-dab between a Krystal and a Church’s Fried Chicken?

  Back at the hearing, Jeanie McGilly testified that Lily was as good a mother as she had ever seen

  —that she not only saw to Mimi’s basic physical needs, but also spent a great deal of time reading to her and playing with her. When Stephen Hamilton rose to cross-examine Jeanie, Lily’s stomach knotted in fear for her mother-in-law.

  She needn’t have worried. When talking to Buzz, Jeanie’s demeanor had been warm and maternal, soft as the petals of a magnolia. But when she faced Hamilton, her entire presence changed until she could’ve been Joan Crawford playing a tough-as-nails businesswoman.

  “Mrs. McGilly,” Hamilton smiled. “I just have to ask you... when you saw the videotape, the one with Miss Maycomb and your son and daughter-in-law and the man holding Mimi who was shouting,

  ‘We’ve come for your children ...’ “ He paused. “How did you feel when you saw that videotape, Mrs.

  McGilly?”

  Jeanie smiled a little. “Well, I didn’t laugh out loud the way my husband did, but I did think it was kinda funny. I mean ... you just had to kn
ow Dez. He didn’t mean nothing by what he was saying; he was just joking, like always. Benny Jack used to bring him down here to visit sometimes. We all just loved Dez. I cried my eyes out when I heard about the accident.”

  Hamilton leaned toward her, going for maximum drama. “Did it ever occur to you that your son and Dr. Reed, or Dez, might have been ... more than just friends?”

  Jeanie rolled her eyes dismissively. “Sure, it occurred to me. I ain’t blind nor stupid. But the thing is, Mr. Hamilton, after your children grow up, you still love ’em, but you leave ’em alone. Once they’re grown, you’ve done your job. They’re adults, and they’re gonna do what they wanna do.”

  “But what if that behavior is harmful?”

  “Benny Jack and Dez wasn’t hurting anybody that I could see.”

  “And what about Mrs. McGilly?”