Wedding Bell Blues - [38]

“Maybe so. Bye.”

Lily entered the living room to see Ben sitting on the sofa, bleary-eyed, still dressed in his T-shirtand boxers. Mimi was wide awake, playing a game that seemed to involve somersaulting over thereclining Mordecai while giggling a lot.

“She . . . woke . . . up . . . fifteen minutes . . . after you left,” Ben droned. His usually perfectlycoiffed hair was as unruly as Mimi’s. “The first thing she said was, ‘Mama gone, B-Jack. Let’s play.’ Andthat’s what we’ve done, nonstop, for the past three and a half hours. God, taking care of a baby is, like,really tiring, isn’t it?”

“There’s a news flash.” Lily ran a hand through his spiky hair. “You go back to bed if you want.

I’ve got her.”

He trudged back to his bedroom, as if shell-shocked from the unaccustomed childcare.

“Mama!” Mimi stretched out her arms and hurried toward Lily at a tippy-toeing toddler run.

Lily scooped up her daughter and held her on her lap. “Guess what I did this morning, Mimi-saurus. I stuck my hand straight up a pig’s patootie!”

“Piggy tootie!” Mimi repeated, and collapsed in a fit of giggles.

CHAPTER 13

Lily had been a good girl all week. On Sunday, she had made the potato salad for yet another ofthe McGillys’ infernal family barbecues. On Tuesday, she had taken Granny McGilly to the optometrist inCallahan, even though she had gone on a five A.M. farm call with Jack that morning and so had gottenonly five hours’ sleep. On Wednesday, she had even gone to aerobics with Sheila and Tracee again. Allweek, she had been nothing but a dutiful imitation wife, granddaughter-in-law, and sister-in-law. And she,for one, was sick of it.

Ben, Lily knew, was equally tired of playing the respectable small-town family man. This week,when he could have been spending time with Ken, he had been pressured to lunch with Big Ben and hisRotary Club pals, and he halfheartedly had joined in their witticisms about the demands of married life.

It was out of Lily and Ben’s exhaustion with “the demands of married life” that Lily’s idea for a

“romantic overnight getaway” was born. Last night, while picking at pasta and complaining about theagonies of compulsory heterosexuality, Lily had thought aloud, “Hmm ... I wonder if your mom would bewilling to keep Mimi overnight.”

“I’d venture to say that nothing would make her happier than having an extended length of time inwhich to dress her granddaughter in frills and stuff her full of junk food. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know...I was just thinking, I’m sure you’d like to spend some time with Ken, and there’sthis get-together thing tomorrow night that Jack told me about... all dykes, apparently.”

“So what are we going to tell my mom? That I’m hoping to finally have sex with this guy I’vebeen dating, while you go and familiarize yourself with the Faulkner County, Georgia, chapter of thelesbian nation?”

“Actually, I was thinking we could put it in the terms of a romantic overnight trip. After all, we’vebeen under so much stress lately with the hearing coming up...maybe we want to go away for a night,have some time just for the two of us.”

“Boy, it’s true what they say about women being devious, isn’t it?” Ben laughed. “Let’s do it.”

A pinprick of worry stung Lily’s brain. “Of course, it would be the first time I’ve left Mimiovernight.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that. Mom raised three unruly boys to adulthood; she’s perfectly capableof taking care of one tiny girl.”

Lily couldn’t push back her anxiety “But what if something goes wrong and we’re not wherewe’ve said we are?”

“I’ll tell you what. Ken has a friend who runs a bed-and-breakfast just north of Atlanta. Ken’s beendying to take me there. If he can get us a room for tomorrow night, we could give Mom the bed-and-breakfast’s number. If she calls me there, I’ll call you where you are, and you can go see to Mimi.”

“Okay, but you have to remember: If the phone rings in your room, you answer it, not Ken.” Lilyfelt as if she had to resort to the tactics of a double agent just to have a normal evening out. “God, ourlives are complicated.”

“Yup.” Ben flashed one of his uncharacteristically wide smiles. “But I’ll tell you what. I’m willingto resort to all manner of subterfuge to make tomorrow night possible. I’ve been dreaming about a nightalone with Ken Woods since I was a freshman in high school!”

The old road known by the locals as Peacock Alley was a ghost road, marked by crumblingmonuments to the tourist trade of the days before the construction of the interstate. Low-slung motorcourts with signs announcing AIR CONDITIONING, COLOR TV, and VACANCY dotted the road, andLily marveled that these little places managed to stay in business. She imagined that the family vacationmotels of yesterday became the sites of today’s clandestine trysts.

A clapboard building with a Confederate flag-bearing sign proclaiming JOHNNY REB’S

SOUVENIRS made Lily think of the chenille peacock bedspreads that gave this road its nickname. Thewindows had been painted with yellow block letters reading BEDSPREADS, DISHWARE, and CIVIL