Chapter Three
“Lily, clearly you’re upset. With good reason. But what on earth are you talking about?”
My sister’s eyes widen as if she is about to tell me a fantastic tale.
“As far away as I can. Buenos Aires. Costa del Sol. Istanbul.”
“I’m sorry, Lil. I can’t go to Istanbul. Mom has a periodontist appointment next Tuesday.”
I see Tim out of the corner of my eye, still in the driveway in his pajamas, looking toward the back door, weighing the pros
and cons of coming back in. Instead, he inspects the peonies that are about to bloom.
“You’re being funny, and I’m being serious. Do you understand what just happened to me? He ruined my whole fucking life!”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. This is serious. What I mean is, you can’t let him get away with this. That’s exactly
why I don’t think it’s in your best interest to take off. It’s not like you to let your flight instinct win out. The Lily
I know would stay and fight.”
Lily sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, deflated. She takes a sharp breath that sounds like it’s being stopped by a
sob trying to come out the other way.
“Jesus. The store.” Tears fill her beautiful eyes. They roll down her cheeks and drip off her chin. She places her hand on
her impossibly flat stomach. “And the baby.”
What am I supposed to tell my little sister now?
That it’s going to be okay? That she still has time to divorce her asshole husband, meet someone new, experience a whole relationship that will hopefully evolve into a long-term commitment and start trying to get pregnant all over again?
I mean, technically she does, but it’s not going to help.
It’s like telling someone whose house has burned down that they are lucky because now they can build that butler’s pantry and the extra bedroom they always wanted.
I want to go down to Sweet Dreams right now and smother that jerk with one of his two-hundred-dollar Canadian goose-down pillows.
Instead, I cradle my sister’s head in my arms and let her soak my sleeve with her tears.
The moment is interrupted as Annie flies into the kitchen, dressed in her kitty scrubs, a backpack tossed over one shoulder,
shouting, “I’m late!” Her frantic search through the junk drawer for the car keys mercifully allows Lily to wipe her face
and compose herself.
“Goddammit, Cam,” Annie shouts, even though her brother is across the house and up the stairs and in bed behind a closed door.
“Where’s the keys!” Cameron doesn’t answer. Annie slams the drawer as Tim walks back into the kitchen.
“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 expects this Mom. 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 in my car. 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 a Driving Miss Daisy kind of morning.
It’s finally Tim’s turn at the Keurig, and I smell the coffee I’m not going to have.
I take my list 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.”
“What are you going to say when you get home?”
“He’s not there.”
“How do you know?”
She taps her phone a few times and holds the screen up. It’s a map of downtown with Eric’s iPhone icon flashing over the site
of Sweet Dreams. “Find My Friends,” she says and lets out a quick, angry laugh. “Friends.”
“Do you want to talk about—”
“No.” She goes back to her screen.
Fine, whatever. I’m just trying to help. She came to me.
I set my jaw and stare straight ahead. In no time we are at The Grove, so named, I’m sure, to evoke breezy California living in the suburbs of New Jersey.
The Grove is a ten-billion-unit townhouse complex cropping up out of acres of rolling hills and impeccably designed landscaping.
Aside from some sporadic attempts at individualism in the form of potted petunias, decorative flags, faux marble lions, grinning garden gnomes, and the occasional Mary on the Half Shell, every home is the same.
Six units to a building, buildings as far as the eye can see—white siding, black shutters, green doors.
Of course, I could make my way up and around the winding roads to Number 56 Tangerine Lane with my eyes closed.
When we arrive at Lily’s, I put the car in park but let it idle. I’ve got to get going if I’m going to cross anything off
the list before I need to circle back and pick up my mother. Lily’s head is still bent to her phone.
“Lil, we’re here.”
Her eyes stay glued to her screen. A moment passes.
“Lil, I’ve got to go.”
She remains statue still, head bowed, except for one raised finger, signaling me to hang on. With her other hand she holds
the phone and continues to scroll. I want to be patient with my sister, but no one wants a finger raised to them. “Lil, I’m
late for—”
“I’ve got it,” she finally says. She shakes her phone in the air as if it’s the tablets brought down from the mountain. “I
found the perfect place.”
“Perfect place for what?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me? I’m getting out of here. I’m not dealing with any of this now. And nothing you can say
is going to change my mind. I don’t give a shit about your fight-or-flight theory. I need to leave. Clear my head. Make decisions
without all the noise—Eric, Mom, the store. It’s deafening. I need some quiet so I can think.”
I turn off the engine and face my sister. She is drained of that endless energy I’m always so jealous of. Her eyes carry bags