Page 7 of Big & Lily

“Don’t slam that, you’ll knock it off its treads,” he shouts in a caffeine-starved way.

“Dad! I’m not going to. I’m late, and Cam won’t—”

“Who’s driving me to water aerobics?” My mother is back, wearing her bathing suit under a lime-green velour jogging suit. Her hair is already tucked under her floral swim cap.

“I can’t find my keys!” Annie shouts.

“I don’t want to be late!” counters my mother. “I need to be in the pool before Sylvia Goldberg takes my spot again. Annie, I’ll wait in your car.”

“Grandma, I can’t take you.”

“I don’t have the damn keys!” Cam bellows from upstairs.

“Then who’s going to drive me? Lily, drop me on your way home.”

“I don’t want to have to keep fixing that drawer,” says Tim, opening and closing a drawer that doesn’t seem broken. “You kids think everything in this house is disposable.”

“I didn’t drive here, Mom. I took an Uber.”

“Why? Why did you take an Uber? Were you drinking? See, I knew you must have caused some trouble—”

“For Christ’s sake, Mom!” says my sister. “I told you I didn’t—”

“Holy crap, enough!” I shout. Everyone freezes like we’re playing a game of Spud. No one expectsthisMom. They are used to the one who absorbs the chaos like one of those dehydrated towels that goes from after-dinner-mint size to a full-size bath sheet—just add water. Normally, that’s what they get. But every once in a while, the squabbling and the volume and the clashing of personal agendas make me pop. That gets their attention.Oh man, this is bad. She never wigs out. Mom’s losing it,they think, and for a few blessed moments I have their attention.

“Annie, your keys are on the counter above the junk drawer to the right of the mail you haven’t opened in a week. Mom, I’ll drive you to your class on my way to errands. Get inmycar. Lily, I’ll take you home after I drop off Mom. Tim, make sure Cam is up by ten, he’s got a lunch shift today.”

My daughter grabs her keys and leaves. My mother, who shrugs as if she doesn’t care who chauffeurs her as long as they take her where she wants to go, follows her out. Through the screen door I watch her climb into the backseat of my minivan. Okay, so this is aDriving Miss Daisykind of morning. It’s finally Tim’s turn at the Keurig, and I smell the coffee I’m not going to have. I take mylist off the counter, now sticky with something that wasn’t wiped up properly last night, and next to the crossed-out Number One,Peloton ~20 min., I write,Coffee and a chocolate chip muffin (for my troubles).

After I sponge off the counter and fold the bedding my sister left twisted on the couch and accept a peck on the cheek from Tim, who I’m sure is happy to see the back end of all of us, I climb into my car with Lily and my mother. Lily is in the front passenger seat, chewing on a cuticle, nose in her phone like a teenager.

My mother gives up on interrogating Lily and instead is using the twelve-minute ride to the senior rec center to give me a laundry list of honey-dos for the Cottage, as she likes to call her oversize luxury shed. This list is for Tim—a squeaky medicine cabinet door, a rhododendron bush scratching against the glass panes, a brighter bulb in the lamp next to her bed.

“I’m going blind reading in the dark,” she tells me instead of him. I’m not sure she’d give the same dramatic flair to her list of grievances if they went straight to my husband. Where’s the fun in that?

“Write it all down, Mom.”

“Why should I write it? I just told you.”

“I’m not going to remember it all, you need to make me a list.”

“What’s the matter with your memory? You need more intellectual stimulation, or you’re going to lose it. All those useless classes you take? Calligraphy and bullet journaling, or whatever you call it, isn’t going to do it. Pick yourself up some supplements when you get my meds today. And start doing crossword puzzles.New York Times, that’ll do it. That’ll sharpen you right up.”

“I don’t need sharpening! I need you to make me a list!”

It’s usually about now, when Lily is present for the kind of nonsense that goes on between my mother and me, that she chimes in. Not today. She’s scrolling and chewing on that poor cuticle. Chewing and scrolling. She can be forgiven for wanting to stay out of it this time. After all, in all the chaos of the morning, I almost forgot why Lily arrived at our house late last night. Clearly, she hasn’t.

We drop my mom at the center and watch for a few seconds as she fights with the sliding back door of the minivan.

“Leave it. I’ll close it from up here,” I shout over my shoulder.

“Oh, I give up,” she mutters and goes inside without so much as a goodbye or a thank-you.

Normally, Lily and I would have a quick laugh at our mother’s refusal to learn how to use a door she encounters daily, but my sister hasn’t lifted her eyes from her screen. The rest of the ride to my sister’s townhouse is quiet save for my questions that receive barely monosyllabic answers.

“Have you spoken to Eric yet?”

“No.”