like her mother, by becoming a radical intellectual? Or would she rebel in a more reactionary and self-destructive way, by turning to drugs and promiscuous sex at an early age? Or, Lily worried, would she notrebel at all? Would she swallow every idea that the Maycombs spoon-fed her and grow up to be a self-righteous fundamentalist housewife who thanked the good Lord that Ida and Charles and Mike had savedher from being raised by a godless degenerate?
Lily, Ben, and Mimi crossed the hot asphalt of the hospital parking lot. “Well, I guess that’s that,”Ben said.
“That’s all you can say?” Lily yelled, not caring who heard her. Her eyes flooded with tears as shestrapped Mimi into her car seat. “You drag me to this fucking hellhole because you have a surefire planfor me to keep my daughter, and when it falls through, all you can say is, ‘That’s that?”
“I know...I’m sorry. I really did think it would work.” Ben started the car. “I was thinking...youand Mimi could always leave the country. I could have you back to Atlanta and on the first flight towherever you want to go on Friday afternoon.”
Lily didn’t bother to wipe the tears that were rolling down her cheeks. “I never quite picturedmyself as a fugitive from justice. Of course, it’s not justice that I’d be running from.”
She tried to picture herself raising Mimi in some unspecified foreign country. Before her move toVersailles, she had never lived anywhere but Atlanta. “Where would we go?”
“Amsterdam’s a great city. Nearly everyone there speaks English.”
“God, five months ago, I was thinking my life was getting too routine and that maybe I shouldsign up for a yoga class or something. Now I’m getting ready to hop the next plane to Amsterdam.
There’s something to be said for being in a rut.”
Jack had taken the afternoon off so she could spend it with Lily and Mimi. Now Mimi waswallowing around in the front yard with Lily the piglet and a couple of ill-bred hound pups while Lily thepiglet’s namesake and Jack sat on the porch. “Ben told me he’d help get Mimi and me out of the country,if that’s what I want.” Lily’s voice sounded as cold and dead as she felt.
“Is that what you want?” Jack sat on the porch swing next to Lily, her arm around her shoulders.
“No, not really. Fleeing the country doesn’t appeal to me, but ...” Lily watched Mimi gigglingbeneath a pile of pigs and pups. “God, just look at her, Jack. I can’t let those people raise her.”
“You know,” Jack said, stroking Lily’s hair, “Daddy left me some money when he died ... not a