Page 5 of Big & Lily

“Such angels,” Lily had said.

“At the moment,” I answered, but my smile belied my sarcasm. They were wonderful—vomit and all.

She lifted her chin and spoke with the determination of a twenty-one-year-old who had no apprehensions about her future. “This is what I want, Big. I want what you have. All of this.”

She was thirty-five when she finally met a man who could hold her attention. By the time she convinced him that he really did want children, it wasn’t as easy as her twentysomething self had imagined.

Every month, every year that went by without results weighed on her. I’m sure it weighed on her marriage too. How could it not? After a few years they talked about IVF, but it didn’t go anywhere. All their money was tied up in the store. When Tim suggested they use a line of credit, Eric insisted it had been maxed out, and we all believed him. I’m not saying Eric lied about their finances, but tonight’s news sheds an interesting light on my brother-in-law’s motivations.

My sister would make a great mother. Her joie de vivre is infectious. My kids adore her. A baby of her own might have grounded her. It could have been the string on a bright and colorful helium balloon that can’t help itself for wanting to bounce and fly off in the wind. Now Eric’s screwed that all up. She’ll never forgive him. Nor will I.

I wake up with a headache and go down to the kitchen, where I can tell right away Lily and my mother are about to make it worse.

“Mom, I didn’t start anything. Why do you always think it was me?” my sister yells from the couch, the sheet and comforter still twisted around her, at my mother, who is trying to put a K-Cup into the Keurig upside down. Again.

“You’re the one on the couch. Aren’t you?” asks my mother. She tries again to shove the pod into the coffee maker, and when it doesn’t fit, she throws it into the garbage, takes another one, and starts the upside-down process all over again.

“Mom,” I say, stepping into the fray. “Give that to me.” I grab the plastic pod and click it in right way up. I don’t need her throwing out perfectly fine, unused K-Cups and making me feel even worse about my lack of sustainability and the size of my carbon footprint. I make a mental note to add reusable Keurig filters to my list.

“Why is your sister sleeping on your couch?”

“I’m sure she already told you,” I say.

“I don’t like her answer. I want to hear yours.”

Ruth Ackerman is ninety-seven pounds of pure bulldog. When she latches onto something, she’s not going to let it go.

“I—I—I...” I don’t know what our cover story is. With a lifetime of experience being Lily’s spin doctor, I should have insisted we not go to bed last night without our cover story.

Lily throws back the bedding and stomps into the kitchen. She walks up to the coffeepot, takes the mug my mother was preparing for herself, and sloshes milk into it. My mother rolls her eyes. My sister flips her hair. Tiger, who has appeared out of nowhere, jumpson the counter and laps at the spilled drops of milk. My head, as predicted, throbs.

“Good morning, all!”

Tim strolls into the kitchen, still in his pajamas and slippers, beaming in the way a guy who still can’t believe he doesn’t have to go work this morning, after thirty years of having done otherwise, beams. He reaches over my mother and takes another mug out of the cabinet.

“I didn’t come here to get the third degree,” my sister growls at my mother.

“Then why did you come here?”

Tim’s brows rise as he finally reads the room. I make the face, the one he knows well after years of finding himself, through no fault of his own, in between my mother and Lily and me on more than one occasion.I’m sorry, the face says.Save yourself.He twists his mouth into a weary half smile and shakes his head.

“And so early in the morning too.” He sighs.

“I’m late! I’m late!” Annie thunders down the stairs, also still in pajamas, and throws herself into the mix. “Mom, where’s my scrub top with the kittens on it? Did you wash it?”

Of course I washed it. I wash everything. “Folded in a basket on top of the dryer.”

Annie dashes into the laundry room behind the kitchen and comes back with a pile of her clean and folded clothes. “Dad, can you move? I need to make my smoothie and I’m late!”

Tim takes his still-empty mug and, holding up one hand in submission, steps away from the counter where the blender sits next to the coffee maker.

“Why did you oversleep?” my mother asks, turning away from my sister to her next victim, my daughter. “You should have set your alarm.”

“I did, Grandma,” Annie says as she tears a banana from thebunch and breaks it into chunks. She then pulls a bag of frozen strawberries out of the freezer and opens a cabinet and busies herself searching for her chia seeds.

Lily comes to Annie’s rescue. “Mom, she’s an adult. She doesn’t need you to—”

Annie turns on the blender, and my mother shouts something over the grinding that none of us can hear. Probably just as well. Tim lets himself out the back door with his empty mug and walks down the driveway where the newspaper is waiting. If he’s smart, he’ll take his time.