Kleenex in the other. When she’d put Mimi to bed an hour ago, she had stood by her crib watching her sleep. Mimi was perfect in sleep — her fringe of eyelashes resting on her round cheeks, her little rosebud lips slightly parted. Lily had trembled with the fear of losing her.
Charlotte’s absence left an aching void in Lily’s life, but even the second Lily heard about the accident, she knew she would go on. She would have to, for Mimi. Without Mimi, though, Lily couldn’t even imagine a reason for waking up in the morning, for keeping up a pretense of living.
Lily could tell that Ben wasn’t used to women crying on his shoulder. He patted her in the distracted way a person who isn’t particularly fond of dogs might pat an affection- starved beagle.
“Fucking breeders,” he muttered.
“Hey,” Lily sniffed, “you promised Charlotte and me you wouldn’t use that word anymore after we decided to have the baby.”
“It’s different with queers,” Ben said. “You and Charlotte made an informed decision to become parents. Breeders litter the earth with their progeny without even giving it a thought. But even that’s not enough for them; they have to take our kids, too.”
Dez and Charlotte used to make fun of Ben’s dismal views of the plight of gays. Dez always said Ben sounded like one of the tragic homos in those 50s pulp novels with titles like Children of Twilight.
Today, though, Lily wondered if Ben’s bleak view might be valid. She sniveled some more on his Tommy Hilfiger T-shirted shoulder, even though the way he was patting her was starting to get on her nerves.
“Okay, enough of this,” Ben said abruptly. “My shoulder is falling asleep.”
Lily sat up. “Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to test the bounds of your sensitivity.”
“I’m just trying to be practical. Crying gets us nowhere. We’ve got to decide what we’re going to do.”
“Do? There’s nothing to do. I mean, I’ll hire a gay positive lawyer, and we’ll go to court and everything. But we’re doomed. Don’t you know how every single custody case involving a lesbian mom has turned out? Judges would rather see kids raised by a child- molesting serial killer than a dyke. And I’m not even Mimi’s biological mother!”
Ben rose from the couch and started pacing. “Well, it certainly is a complex problem.” He paced back and forth across the living room floor. “Hmm. Let me ask you this. You’re not bound to Atlanta for any reason, are you? I mean ... you could do your work somewhere else, right?”
Lily was the author and illustrator of several books for children. As long as she had her drawing board, she, could work anywhere. Of course, the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t felt much like working.
“Sure... I guess I could go somewhere else.” She tried to picture herself and Mimi and Ben on a cross-country trek, hiding from the Maycombs. “But Ben, I don’t think we can run away from this, and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you don’t exactly strike me as the Thelma and Louise type.”
“You’re right on that count. All I could think about the whole time I was watching that movie was how long it had been since those girls had taken a shower.” He paced some more in silence, then asked,
“What kind of relationship do you have with your family?”
“Not much of one. Mom and Dad are divorced. Dad and I exchange Christmas and birthday cards, and that’s about it. Mom and I have lunch every couple of months or so. She tells me that I’m a grown woman and should get a decent hairstyle and take that ridiculous thing out of my nose.”
“And if you mention your private life?”
