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 afterwe decided to have the baby.”
“It’s different with queers,” Ben said. “You and Charlotte made an informed decision to becomeparents. Breeders litter the earth with their progeny without even giving it a thought. But even that’s notenough 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 saidBen 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 TommyHilfiger 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 todo.”
“Do? There’s nothing to do. I mean, I’ll hire a gay positive lawyer, and we’ll go to court andeverything. But we’re doomed. Don’t you know how every single custody case involving a lesbian momhas turned out? Judges would rather see kids raised by a child-molesting serial killer than a dyke. And I’mnot even Mimi’s biological mother!”
Ben rose from the couch and started pacing. “Well, it certainly is a complex problem.” He pacedback and forth across the living room floor. “Hmm. Let me ask you this. You’re not bound to Atlanta forany 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 drawingboard, 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’llforgive 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 washow 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?”