“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. 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.”