hated to wake her up to take her to this damned thing. Charlotte’s real funeral had been last week — a small, private service in which Charlotte’s friends had gathered to remember Charlotte the way she really was.
They had told stories and read poems by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde to the accompaniment of a softly strumming guitarist, and Lily had cried until she marveled that there was any fluid left in her body.
But today’s service had nothing to do with Charlotte. Had she been alive, it would have been the kind of thing you couldn’t have dragged her to. Today’s service was about Charlotte’s parents and how they wanted to remember her — which, of course, was in complete contrast to her. Now that Charlotte was dead, her parents could shape her into what they had always wanted her to be: a dutiful, passive, Christian daughter. Of course, the only reason they could make this transformation was that Charlotte was no longer around to defend herself.
But Lily was still around — a fact, she was sure, that troubled Charlotte’s parents no end. And for as long as she was around, she would defend Charlotte’s real memory. Charlotte’s parents might not like it, but they would have to put up with Lily’s troublemaking for one reason: Mimi, the bearer of Charlotte’s genetic material, who was snoring sweetly in her crib.
The story of Mimi’s conception, like the conception stories of all children of lesbian parents, was a long one. Lily and Charlotte had often discussed the fact that if straight couples had to go to the same trouble as lesbians to get pregnant, there would be fewer cases of abused and neglected children because there would be no instances of “oops, a pregnancy.” Every child would be wanted because the parents would have gone to a whole hell of a lot of trouble in order to conceive.
Even though Mimi’s conception was the result of many frustrating months and so many intimate encounters with a turkey baster that Thanksgiving would never be the same again, the method by which Mimi’s biological parents were chosen had been as simple as a game at a children’s party.
Lily and Charlotte’s best friends were Desmond and Ben, who lived in the condo adjoining theirs.
Ex-lovers whose personalities were as different as RuPaul’s and Bruce Bawer’s, Desmond and Ben had continued to share the same living quarters even after they had stopped sharing a bed. It was as if they had decided that now that they were no longer lovers, they would be brothers instead — with a special emphasis on sibling rivalry.
On the evening Lily and Charlotte had naively thought their baby’s conception would take place, Lily had made a pan of her famous eggplant parmesan while Charlotte had gone out to buy the biggest jug of decent wine she could find. That night, after Lily, Desmond, Ben, and Charlotte had eaten dinner and swilled down enough wine to giggle away any awkwardness, Lily had set two black hats on the coffee table, one labeled sperm and one labeled egg. The slip of paper drawn from the sperm hat would determine the sperm donor; the egg hat would reveal the biological mom’s identity. Since Lily and Charlotte’s cycles were in sync, they figured they were equally likely to conceive.
“Who gets to pick?” Charlotte asked.
“Well, one of the boys should get to pick from the sperm hat,” Lily said.
“You do it, Ben. I’m too nervous. I feel like I’m a game-show contestant or something,” Desmond said, his amethyst pinkie ring glittering as he poured himself another glass of wine.
“Oh, for god’s sake—” Ben closed his eyes, picked a slip of paper out of the hat, unfolded it, and glanced at it. “It’s you, Dez.”
Dez leaped out of his chair and began dancing around the room, singing, “I get to be the patriarch!
I get to be the patriarch!” The sight was made all the more comical by the fact that Dez’s large body was clothed in a purple flowered caftan at the time.
“Are you girls sure you want him to be the father?” Ben asked. “I mean, what if the kid turns out to be a boy? Do you really want a son prancing around with Dez’s genetic material?”
“Oh, I want you to listen to her,” Dez said. “Just because she’s got a closetful of Tommy
