Page 10 of Big & Lily

I’m an old hat at juggling the worry balls. My mother, my sister, Tim, and the kids have given me decades of practice. Pre-retirement, Tim worked too much, running his own construction company, something he loved, but a job that added hours of stress to his life. Now that he’s sold the business and retired, the routine we counted on as steady and dependable is smashed to pieces. Cameron, falling short of the GPA he needed to stay at Stockton State, moving home, and having to juggle new credits at Bergen Community and a job with crazy hours. I wish he’d chosen something besides the exhausting life of a chef and restaurateur. Annie, poor Annie, the breakup that we all saw coming. Moving out of their apartment and back in with her parents, adding insult to injury. Of course, can’t forget my mother, Ruth. Worrying about her is a full-time job—one for which she will poke me with a sharp stick if, even for a moment, it slips my mind. I could present a dissertation on fretting if I had the time in between errands.

Now I’m back to worrying about Lily in a way I thought I was done with. After a lifetime of keeping one eye trained toward my impulsive and sometimes reckless sister, things in Lily’s life seemed to be, well, not calm, but not chaotic either. Her marriage had, I thought, reached an equilibrium after the first few years of these two beautiful extroverts, two “look at me” babies of their families, fighting for the same airtime.

The business was a hit. The idea of getting a better night’s sleep was all over the news. Reminding the weary of the shortcomings of too little sleep on everything from their mental health to their sex drive had customers lining up at the door. Cue Lily and Eric, charismatic sandmen, without an eye bag between them, there to sell them the goose-down bedding, the 800-thread-count sheets, aromatherapy, crystals, noise machines, cashmere blankets, andrainforest sounds to metaphorically sing them to sleep. And man, were they willing to pay for it.

Yes, the fertility issues were heartbreaking. It shattered me as I watched my sister watching my kids, knowing how much she wanted that for herself. To her credit, she’d been taking it in stride, focusing on the shop and making the most of all the freedoms of a childless couple, knowing full well, as she’d say to me with that Lily glint in her eye, it was only a matter of time before they’d be up to their elbows in dirty diapers.

Overall, things had felt like they were settling. Eric and Lily worked together well. Lily’s customers adored her, stopping her on the sidewalk or in the coffee shop to tell her how she’d changed their lives, their marriages, their energy levels. I was feeling like that proud mom (yes, yes, I’m not the mother, I know) who’d successfully (after more years than the guidebooks recommend) launched her into the world. In her midthirties, Lily had finally grown and flown.

I don’t know what happened, where the golden couple went wrong. I didn’t see it coming. More important, Lily tells me neither did she. Now everything is blown up... about to rain debris on all of us, and I’m back to sitting vigil.

I gather my will, and my reusable shopping bags, and finish my errands. After all, I’m on the clock. When I pull up to the senior center, Ruth is surrounded by her cadre of water aerobics buddies, like aging Pink Ladies, on the bleachers, swapping out the jackets and cigarettes and saddle shoes for Day-Glo warm-up suits and slip-on Skechers. They are deep in conversation, not surprisingly my mother in the center of it. She doesn’t notice me, and I’m tempted to lean on the horn, but there are too many frail tickers in the group to risk it. Instead, I pull into a nearby spot and get out.

“Here’s my ride,” my mother announces when she finally sees me.

The gaggle hum their approval.

“What a lovely daughter you have, Ruth.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“My son lives in California. Never calls.”

“I could be dead, for all mine knows.”

“You raised this one right.”

My mother flaps her hand at them, taking the compliments for her nearly fifty-year-old daughter’s behavior.

I grab mom’s bag of wet things from her and turn back to my car. “Let’s go,” I say with more impatience than a daughter who’s beenraised rightshould have.

“What’s with you today?” she asks after we are out of earshot of her adoring fans.

I open the passenger door for her and watch her haul herself in without offering an arm.

“I’m worried about Lily,” I say and immediately regret doing so. My mother hasn’t heard the news. All she knows is that Lily slept on my couch last night and not for the first time. Lily and Eric used to love ending their bickering with dramatic departures. One or the other would storm out, over something as ridiculous as a disagreement over which Netflix movie to chill to. Lily would turn up at my door and sleep on my couch, completely over it in the morning. Sometimes she wouldn’t even be there when I came downstairs, having decided, I assumed, that a lumpy couch wasn’t a better alternative to watchingThe Shawshank Redemptionfor the tenth time.

“Worried about Lily? What this time?”

What the hell is the matter with me? Why did I open my big mouth?

“Nothing, Mom. She’s got a lot on her plate.”

This is not my news to tell. Sure, I’m usually first off the boat and onto the beach, covering my sister’s right flank. Bearing bad news like a failed math test or a third, or fourth, or fifth piercing.Softening the blow before the story about the lost job or the overdue rent or the missing heirloom brooch reached Ruth’s ears. Not this time.

My mother raises a sparse eyebrow. I glance over and then quickly train my eyes back to the road, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, controlling what I can. Here we go. “What are you not telling me?”

Lily would love me to handle this for her, to prep our mother so that the weight of her unfiltered comments is wrung out of the soaking sponge that leads from Ruth’s brain to her mouth. She tried it on me this morning, while my mother was in her pod getting her bathing cap on.

“You are so much better at this kind of stuff than me,” Lily had whined, running her thin wrists under cold water in my kitchen sink—the telltale sign that she’d had too much to drink.

“What? Bearing bad news?”

“Well, yes. It’s kind of your thing.”

“Great,” I’d grumbled. “Some women are known for their business acumen or their fashion sense or their Linda Hamilton biceps. I get the gold medal for being the town crier who brings everyone down.”

“Come on, you know what I mean. You’re... you’re diplomatic. And besides, Mom loves Eric. He’s her favorite child—”