I live in a small town or a big town. Dykes turn any town into a small town.”
Lily laughed. “I think you’ve got something there.” She looked at her Timex. She had been gone alittle over three hours. “Well, I’d better go inside. I want to be there when Mimi wakes up.”
“Okay, well, nice talking to ya. I’ll call you the next time I go to work on somethin’ other thanpigs. I figure you’ve drawn your fill of pigs. And hey, maybe I’ll see you over at Honey’s next week?”
“Maybe so. Bye.”
Lily entered the living room to see Ben sitting on the sofa, bleary-eyed, still dressed in his T-shirtand boxers. Mimi was wide awake, playing a game that seemed to involve somersaulting over thereclining Mordecai while giggling a lot.
“She . . . woke . . . up . . . fifteen minutes . . . after you left,” Ben droned. His usually perfectlycoiffed hair was as unruly as Mimi’s. “The first thing she said was, ‘Mama gone, B-Jack. Let’s play.’ Andthat’s what we’ve done, nonstop, for the past three and a half hours. God, taking care of a baby is, like,really tiring, isn’t it?”
“There’s a news flash.” Lily ran a hand through his spiky hair. “You go back to bed if you want.
I’ve got her.”
He trudged back to his bedroom, as if shell-shocked from the unaccustomed childcare.
“Mama!” Mimi stretched out her arms and hurried toward Lily at a tippy-toeing toddler run.
Lily scooped up her daughter and held her on her lap. “Guess what I did this morning, Mimi-saurus. I stuck my hand straight up a pig’s patootie!”
“Piggy tootie!” Mimi repeated, and collapsed in a fit of giggles.
CHAPTER 13
Lily had been a good girl all week. On Sunday, she had made the potato salad for yet another ofthe McGillys’ infernal family barbecues. On Tuesday, she had taken Granny McGilly to the optometrist inCallahan, even though she had gone on a five A.M. farm call with Jack that morning and so had gottenonly five hours’ sleep. On Wednesday, she had even gone to aerobics with Sheila and Tracee again. Allweek, she had been nothing but a dutiful imitation wife, granddaughter-in-law, and sister-in-law. And she,for one, was sick of it.
Ben, Lily knew, was equally tired of playing the respectable small-town family man. This week,when he could have been spending time with Ken, he had been pressured to lunch with Big Ben and hisRotary Club pals, and he halfheartedly had joined in their witticisms about the demands of married life.
It was out of Lily and Ben’s exhaustion with “the demands of married life” that Lily’s idea for a
“romantic overnight getaway” was born. Last night, while picking at pasta and complaining about the