She watched the seconds tick by on her Timex, gnawed her already nubby fingernails, and thought how much Charlotte would have hated this whole thing. As she approached Ida and one of her church-lady friends, she heard the friend say, “Cremated? Really? Well, of course, I would just never feel right about being cremated, but Charlotte always was” —she stiffened when she saw Lily — “different.”
“Mama!” Mimi called when she saw Lily. Lily was sure it wasn’t her imagination that both Ida and her sour-faced friend cringed.
“I guess we’d better be taking off,” Lily said.
“Ooh, can’t this precious angel stay with her grandma just a few teeny-weeny minutes?”
Great, make me the bad guy, Lily thought. “Well, it is getting to be her dinnertime ...”
“Oh, all right,” Ida sighed, careful to hand over Mimi without making any physical contact with Lily —wouldn’t want to catch those lesbian cooties. “But I think the boys had something they wanted to talk to you about before you left.” She looked around in that desperate, dithering way she had, calling,
“Charles! Mike! Lily’s leaving!”
Charles and Mike appeared at her side. Charles nodded at Lily and said, “We’ll walk you to your car.”
Walking to the car with a large, gray-suited man on either side of her, Lily felt like she was in one of those scenes in a movie in which the mobsters politely escort their victim to a car with the destination of a deserted warehouse where no one can hear the screams.
When they reached her car, Charles said, “We didn’t want to say anything at the reading of the will
— didn’t want to make a scene. We know how upset you were— how upset we all were.” His tone was gentle, calm. “But we just wanted to let you know today, Mike here’s been talking to some attorneys who are in the Lord’s Lieutenants with him—”
“Attorneys?” Lily’s stomach tied itself into a Gordian knot.
“Yes,” Mike said. “You see, we just don’t feel that a young lady on her own ... a young lady such as yourself, with no blood ties to Mimi whatsoever ... what kind of parent could you possibly be?”
“I’ve been a damned good one for the past thirteen months.” She ran her hand through her hair, which loosened her bun and made her dreadlocks fall loose on her shoulders. “Look, I don’t have to justify myself to you. You read Charlotte’s will the same as I did. If you loved Charlotte at all, you’d respect her wishes.”
Charles’s tone was irritatingly even. “We loved Charlotte very much. It’s just that we don’t feel she was capable of understanding what is best for her child. She was blinded by her ... her ...”
“Her sickness,” Mike finished helpfully.
Lily set Mimi in her car seat and spun around to face her enemies. “Her sickness, huh? Let me tell you, this, this, is the sick shit right here! Charlotte knew more about loving and raising a child than you fucking bigots ever did!”
“See, this is just the kind of thing we’re talking about,” Mike said calmly. “You should never use such foul language in front of a child.” He pressed a card into Lily’s fist. “If you decide you’d like to talk sensibly about this, you can speak to our attorney.”
As Charlotte and Mike walked away, Lily looked at the card in her hand: STEPHEN J.
HAMILTON, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. Hamilton was one of the most powerful right-wingers in the state.
And all Lily had on her side were the wishes of her dead lesbian lover.
She got in the car and pounded her head against the steering wheel. That was productive, she thought. Now what the hell am I going to do?
CHAPTER 3
Lily sat on the couch with her head on Ben’s shoulder, a glass of wine in one hand and a Kleenex in the other. When she’d put Mimi to bed an hour ago, she had stood by her crib watching her sleep. Mimi was perfect in sleep — her fringe of eyelashes resting on her round cheeks, her little rosebud lips slightly parted. Lily had trembled with the fear of losing her.
Charlotte’s absence left an aching void in Lily’s life, but even the second Lily heard about the accident, she knew she would go on. She would have to, for Mimi. Without Mimi, though, Lily couldn’t even imagine a reason for waking up in the morning, for keeping up a pretense of living.
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.”