Wedding Bell Blues - [3]

“I guess that’s about the size of it. Uh...maybe you’d like to use the spare bedroom. Charlotte and Iwill be in our room whenever you’re, uh, ready.”

“Give me that issue of Premiere with Mark Wahlberg on it, and I won’t be a minute.”

Four minutes later, Dez knocked on Lily and Charlotte’s bedroom door. “Here it is, ladies — mycuppa, cuppa burnin’ love.”

Lily gingerly accepted the jar, and Desmond bowed out of the room, with the comment that hewas confident they had things under control from there. Lily did her business with the turkey baster, andthen Charlotte stood on her head because she had read somewhere that it aided conception.

But the evening of eggplant parmesan was not to be the night of conception. Only unluckyteenagers get pregnant after just one ejaculation. Soon Charlotte, Lily, and Dez had done the jar-and-baster routine so many times that they lost all their self-consciousness. It became a running joke. Oneafternoon Lily had rung Dez and Ben’s doorbell and greeted them with, “Excuse me, but could I troubleyou for a cup of sperm?”

On their last attempt, Dez delivered his jar to their door and said, “This better do the trick. Thehair I’m growing on my palms is starting to cause some painful friction.”

It did the trick. And nine months later, little Artemesia Gentileschi Maycomb (Mimi for short) wasborn. Lily, Dez, and Ben were all present in the birthing room, although Ben had to excuse himself tothrow up when he saw the placenta.

Charlotte and Dez had lived long enough to see Mimi’s first birthday. And if it hadn’t been forDez’s morbid fear of airplanes, they might be alive still. But he refused to fly, so if he and Charlotte weregoing to attend a conference, no matter how far away it, they always rented a car. So instead of flying intoMiami for the gay/lesbian studies conference, they drove, and the rainy roads of southern Georgia robbedMimi of her Mommy and Dezzy, Lily of her lover and her friend.

Lily gently shook her daughter’s shoulder. “Wake up, sweetie. Time to go see your grandma andgrandpa.” Who are batshit crazy, she thought, but obviously she wasn’t going to say this to a one-year old.

“Mama?” Mimi’s blue eyes, the image of her mother’s, were droopy with sleep. “Mick.”

“I’ll get you some milk, Mimi-saurus.” She supposed it was lucky that Mimi had been weanedfrom breast milk just before her first birthday, since the only kind of milk Lily could provide for her camein a can.

She carried Mimi downstairs and heated up some formula. After Mimi had sucked it down, Lilychanged her diaper and brushed through her unruly baby hair — more out of habit than because it did anygood.

Lily sighed and wished for a drink, a joint, an excuse. But there was no time for the first two, andher mind was too clouded by grief to think up an excuse. She grabbed her car keys and Mimi’s diaperbag.

It was time to go to church.

CHAPTER 2

Lily felt empty and unsettled as she drove out of downtown Atlanta and into Cobb County. Sheimagined it was much the same feeling native New Yorkers got when they crossed the line into NewJersey: the feeling of being among “them” instead of “us.”

Downtown Atlanta had character, history, and the tolerant do-what-you-want quality of the city.

Hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurants sat next door to gay leather bars. You could see the church oncepastored by Martin Luther King, the Margaret Mitchell House, or (if your tastes ran to the morbid thestreet corner where Ms. Mitchell was fatally hit by a taxi. The junk-food establishments even hadcharacter and history: the Varsity, where comedian Nipsy Russell had once worked as a carhop, and theMajestic, the seedy all-night diner where Jack Kerouac used to kill time.

Driving through Cobb though, it was rare to see buildings that had been erected prior to 1975.

Restaurants consisted mainly of the usual suspects: McDonald’s, Chuck E. Cheese, Steak n’ Shake. Thestores were links in multinational chains and were housed in sterile strip malls. If someone blindfoldedme and dropped me in the middle of Cobb County, Lily thought, there would be no way I could figure outwhere the hell I was. The area had no distinguishing characteristics.

Calvary Baptist Church, the church where Charlotte’s family were having their little denial-fest ofa memorial service, was the biggest, ugliest Protestant church on a street lined with big, ugly Protestantchurches. Calvary was especially aesthetically offensive because of its puke-yellow brick and cream-colored, plantation-style columns. The plantation image was appropriate for the church, though, since theonly black person ever seen on the premises was the janitor.

“Damn,” Lily muttered when she saw that according to the church clock, she was five minuteslate. According to her battered Timex, she was two minutes early, but apparently her watch didn’t run onCobb County time. She scooped Mimi up out of her car seat. “Okay, kid, you’ve never been to one ofthese before, and hopefully you’ll never have to go to one again. It’s called a church service.”