“I guess that’s about the size of it. Uh...maybe you’d like to use the spare bedroom. Charlotte and Iwill be in our room whenever you’re, uh, ready.”
“Give me that issue of Premiere with Mark Wahlberg on it, and I won’t be a minute.”
Four minutes later, Dez knocked on Lily and Charlotte’s bedroom door. “Here it is, ladies — mycuppa, cuppa burnin’ love.”
Lily gingerly accepted the jar, and Desmond bowed out of the room, with the comment that hewas confident they had things under control from there. Lily did her business with the turkey baster, andthen Charlotte stood on her head because she had read somewhere that it aided conception.
But the evening of eggplant parmesan was not to be the night of conception. Only unluckyteenagers get pregnant after just one ejaculation. Soon Charlotte, Lily, and Dez had done the jar-and-baster routine so many times that they lost all their self-consciousness. It became a running joke. Oneafternoon Lily had rung Dez and Ben’s doorbell and greeted them with, “Excuse me, but could I troubleyou for a cup of sperm?”
On their last attempt, Dez delivered his jar to their door and said, “This better do the trick. Thehair I’m growing on my palms is starting to cause some painful friction.”
It did the trick. And nine months later, little Artemesia Gentileschi Maycomb (Mimi for short) wasborn. Lily, Dez, and Ben were all present in the birthing room, although Ben had to excuse himself tothrow up when he saw the placenta.
Charlotte and Dez had lived long enough to see Mimi’s first birthday. And if it hadn’t been forDez’s morbid fear of airplanes, they might be alive still. But he refused to fly, so if he and Charlotte weregoing to attend a conference, no matter how far away it, they always rented a car. So instead of flying intoMiami for the gay/lesbian studies conference, they drove, and the rainy roads of southern Georgia robbedMimi of her Mommy and Dezzy, Lily of her lover and her friend.
Lily gently shook her daughter’s shoulder. “Wake up, sweetie. Time to go see your grandma andgrandpa.” Who are batshit crazy, she thought, but obviously she wasn’t going to say this to a one-year old.
“Mama?” Mimi’s blue eyes, the image of her mother’s, were droopy with sleep. “Mick.”
“I’ll get you some milk, Mimi-saurus.” She supposed it was lucky that Mimi had been weanedfrom breast milk just before her first birthday, since the only kind of milk Lily could provide for her camein a can.
She carried Mimi downstairs and heated up some formula. After Mimi had sucked it down, Lily