Wedding Bell Blues - [13]

“Well, I wouldn’t want him to hunt anyway,” Lily said. “I’m an animal lover.”

“And this way you won’t be a widow during hunting season.” Jeanie smiled. “Well, I’ll let y’allget settled in. I’d better be heading to the store if we’re gonna have a barbecue tonight.”

Lily had already popped open a Bud tallboy before she realized that only the men were drinkingbeer. The women at the poolside barbecue appeared to be sticking to diet soft drinks. Ben’s brothers,Johnny and Wayne, were knocking back beers and laughing, threatening to push one another into thepool. Lily couldn’t help but observe how muscular both of Ben’s bathing-suited brothers were. With theirbulging biceps and V-shaped torsos, they would have been the gods of the gay scene if they had sharedtheir brother’s sexual orientation.

Ben stood with his buff brothers, looking unamused at their high jinks. He was the only male atthe party drinking Diet Coke instead of beer.

Johnny and Wayne had five kids between them —scrawny, unruly boys between the ages of fourand ten. Mimi sat on a beach towel, playing with her nesting cups and occasionally looking up at her newcousins’ antics with the critical gaze of an anthropologist.

“You come on over here, Lily,” Sheila, Wayne’s wife, said. “Me and Tracee wanna give you acrash course on how to handle a McGilly man.”

Lily managed a smile, knocked back some beer, and sat down at the redwood picnic table acrossfrom the other McGilly wives. Lily could tell she was going to have a hard time telling Sheila and Traceeapart. They both had dark tanning-bed tans and peroxided blond hair. Their aerobicized bodies didn’tpooch or dimple in their bathing suits, and diamond rings and pendants glittered against their brown skin.

They were the kind of girls who had made Lily’s life hell in high school.

“So...” Sheila purred, “how did you meet Ben?”

“Through a mutual friend.” It was true. Dez had been dating Ben at the time he and Charlottestarted collaborating on papers. To celebrate the publication of Dez and Charlotte’s first paper, the four ofthem had met for dinner at an Indian restaurant one night. Lily could have gone into detail about her andBen’s first meeting, but she figured the best policy here was not to lie unless it was absolutely necessaryand to never give any more information than the bare minimum. “We were friends for a long time beforewe got…involved.”

“Is that a fact?” Tracee laughed. “I had Johnny engaged to me before he knew what hit him. Andof course, we had John Junior seven months after the wedding, so I don’t guess I can say much aboutyour little un over there being born outta wedlock. Me and Johnny just got in under the wire ourselves.”

Lily smiled politely and took a big swig of beer.

“So, Lily, let’s see your ring,” Sheila said.

Lily looked down at her hands — so different from Sheila’s and Tracee’s well-manicured, gold-encrusted ones. Lily had artist’s hands — long, callused fingers with nubby nails and ink stains that neverquite washed away. “My ring?”

“You know,” Sheila enunciated as though she were talking to a particularly slow-witted child,

“your diamond. That Ben bought you.”

“Oh,” Lily said, “we haven’t bought a ring yet.”

“But, Lil-eeee!” Sheila whined. “You absolutely have to make him buy you a ring. That’s one ofthe fun parts of being married. And let me tell you, you better enjoy the fun stuff while you can, becausemost of the time, being married’ll just make you wanna tear your hair out!” Despite Sheila’s words ofdoom, a smile was plastered across her face as she studied the enormous diamond that winked like a thirdeye on her hand.

“Well, I guess I’m just not that interested in material things,” Lily said.

Sheila and Tracee wouldn’t have looked at Lily with more shock if she had just confessed to beinga serial killer.

Jeanie and an old woman Lily assumed was Ben’s grandmother were arranging a buffet on afolding table. “Wayne!” Jeanie hollered. “I reckon you’ll have to put the ribs on the grill. There’s notelling when your daddy’ll get home.”

The old woman stuck a serving spoon in a bowl of potato salad and then made her way to the tablewhere the McGilly wives were seated. “Oh, lord,” Tracee muttered, “here she comes.”

“Honey,” the old woman said to Lily, “I just wanted to welcome you to the family. I’m BennyJack’s Granny McGilly.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McGil —”

“Now, there ain’t no sense in you calling me Mrs. McGilly when your name’s Mrs. McGilly, too.”She grinned, revealing a mouthful of sparkling dentures. “Lily McGilly — that’s a real humdinger of aname, ain’t it? You must love my grandson something fierce to let yourself get saddled with a name likethat!”

Lily laughed. “Well, that was the first thing I thought of when he proposed — if I could actuallystand to go through life as Lily McGilly.”

The old woman smiled back at her. “Well, Lily McGilly, you just call me Granny, you hear?”

“I will. Thank you.” Granny McGilly was a stout old woman with soft white hair cut close to her