Great Thou Art,” since it had been “one of Charlotte’s favorites.” To the best of Lily’s memory,Charlotte’s favorite song had been Patti Smith’s version of “Gloria.”
As soon as the service was over, Ida made a bee-line for Lily. “There’s my little precious!” shesquealed at Mimi. “There’s Grandma’s little angel!”
“Gamma!” Mimi sprang into Ida’s arms, and Ida carried her away without even acknowledgingLily’s presence.
Lily watched as Ida showed Mimi off to her church friends. As she watched the bald men andshampooed-and-set women coo over her daughter, Lily was reminded of that scene in Rosemary’s Babywhere Rosemary discovers all the wrinkled old Satanists keeping watch over her baby’s black bassinet.
Five minutes, she thought. They can fuss over Mimi for exactly five minutes, but then we’ve got to getout of here before I turn into a pumpkin or a pillar of salt or something.
She watched the seconds tick by on her Timex, gnawed her already nubby fingernails, and thoughthow much Charlotte would have hated this whole thing. As she approached Ida and one of her church-lady friends, she heard the friend say, “Cremated? Really? Well, of course, I would just never feel rightabout being cremated, but Charlotte always was” —she stiffened when she saw Lily — “different.”
“Mama!” Mimi called when she saw Lily. Lily was sure it wasn’t her imagination that both Idaand her sour-faced friend cringed.
“I guess we’d better be taking off,” Lily said.
“Ooh, can’t this precious angel stay with her grandma just a few teeny-weeny minutes?”
Great, make me the bad guy, Lily thought. “Well, it is getting to be her dinnertime ...”
“Oh, all right,” Ida sighed, careful to hand over Mimi without making any physical contact withLily —wouldn’t want to catch those lesbian cooties. “But I think the boys had something they wanted totalk to you about before you left.” She looked around in that desperate, dithering way she had, calling,
“Charles! Mike! Lily’s leaving!”
Charles and Mike appeared at her side. Charles nodded at Lily and said, “We’ll walk you to yourcar.”
Walking to the car with a large, gray-suited man on either side of her, Lily felt like she was in oneof those scenes in a movie in which the mobsters politely escort their victim to a car with the destinationof a deserted warehouse where no one can hear the screams.
When they reached her car, Charles said, “We didn’t want to say anything at the reading of the will
— didn’t want to make a scene. We know how upset you were— how upset we all were.” His tone was