Page 4 of Big & Lily

I snort. I can’t help it. Lily shoots me a look. She isn’t being funny. I regain my composure. “Go on,” I say as if I were a detective taking notes. All business.

“They weren’t anywhere. No condoms anywhere. And, believe me, I looked. I tore the place apart. Emptied every one of his drawers. His dresser, his closest, his desk. Tossed all his shit onthe ground. The more I looked, the more furious I got. Especially because I finally figured out where they were.”

“Where?”

Lily takes the last long drink of her beer and hands me the empty bottle. She leans back into the chair and folds her arms across her chest. For a second I think she’s going to make me guess. His car? His gym locker?

“Where were they?”

“At another woman’s place.”

My gut twists as if this is my news, my story.

“No, Lily. Not Eric.”

Eric can be an ass. He can think too highly of himself as young handsome men who have the ability to talk anyone into anything can. He and my sister have always been far from yin and yang. They are two yangs living under the same roof. Sparks—no, hand grenades—are known to fly. But not this.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Big,” she says bitterly.

“You’re making an assumption,” I say, fighting for this not to be true. “We talked about this. You know, when you assume, you make an ass—”

My sister holds up her hand. “Stop.”

We sit in a moment of silence. I wait for Lily. Finally, she says, “It turns out I am right.”

“What? No!”

Lily stands up and starts pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. Her face reddens. Her fists clench. Her hair hangs in chunks over her eyes.

“He came home and flipped out when he saw what I did to his shit. I should have set it all on fire. I pulled out the receipt. Shook it at him. Told him to explain himself. He didn’t even have a lie ready.”

Now she is crying. Tears stream down her face, still beautifuldespite this ugly moment. I’ve spent years of my life trying to protect my little sister from harm. It was a task handed to me early, and I took it seriously. Still do. But Lily’s spent as many years eluding me, going out into the dangerous world and living, disregarding my advice, my pleas, my warnings, as she’d laugh, “Big, you’re not the mother of me.”

“Guess who it is,” she demands. “Guess.”

“Lily, I don’t want to—”

“It’s Willa.” Willa. Willa, whose parents live down the street from us. Willa, who babysat Annie and Cameron. Willa, who I recommended for the job at Sweet Dreams. “Christ, he’s such a cliché! I hate him. I fucking hate him.”

I step forward and stop her pacing. I wrap my arms tightly around my sister, who stiffens but then gives in. There is so much to talk about, so many questions I’m sure Lily doesn’t have the answers to right now. I pull her into the kitchen, toss the empty beer bottle in the recycling bin, put up a kettle for tea. We sit quietly in my dark kitchen with only the light over the stove casting shadows across our faces. We drink silently, and then around two I throw a sheet and comforter on the couch that’s been her makeshift bed for all the years Tim and I have lived in this house and something in Lily’s life has fallen apart.

“Try to get some sleep,” I say. “We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Ugh. I don’t want to talk about it when Mom’s here.”

“Well, there’s not a lot of ways around that. She does live here.”

“You mean she lives in your backyard. I still think that’s weird as f. A dog lives in your backyard, not your mother.”

My sister knows that my mother doesn’t live in my backyard like a dog, but she’s tired and she’s mad, and I’m the target standing in front of her. She knows that, after all the trouble our mom caused in the assisted living where she had moved a few years afterher second husband, Phil, died and their house had become too much for her, Tim had built her what they call a “Granny Pod” on an open piece of property behind our house under a dogwood tree and next to his raised vegetable garden/deer buffet. What was she supposed to do after the Sunshine Retirement Community suggested my mother’s personality was better suited for more, er, independent living? Move into the condo with Lily and Eric? Tim created a lovely space, like an HGTV tiny house, with a bay window and a front porch. I’m jealous as hell, to be honest. Some days, when the chaos of having a newly retired husband at loose ends, two grown children back in their childhood bedrooms, and a piece of work mother with a list of daily demands, I’d trade places with her in a heartbeat.

“Well, Mom’s going to be in this kitchen bright and early. If you don’t want her two cents, either get up and out before six, or put on a good show until Annie drives her to water aerobics. You choose.”

After tucking my sister in, I go back to bed and stare at the ceiling. I listen to Tim’s uneven breathing and try to recall, scene by scene, the last television show I watched—the trick I play with myself to quiet my mind long enough to fall asleep. Unfortunately, the biscuit episode ofThe Great British Baking Showis interrupted time and again by my sister’s face as she realizes her marriage and her dreams for the life she always wanted—my life, to put it plainly—are dashed.

When the kids were four and six, Annie picked up a vicious stomach bug at preschool and brought it home to her brother. They spent the next twenty-four hours alternating between vomiting into the bowls I placed in their laps and running to the bathroom like an Olympic relay team. I was exhausted from laundry, toast making, scrubbing the orange Pedialyte that kept coming right back up out of the carpet, and the fear that my kids would die ofdehydration while I took some precious time alone and sat on the toilet with my head resting on the sink, promising myself I’d only stay in there for another few seconds and then I’d slice up more bananas and try to sweet-talk Cam and Annie into sipping some ginger tea by dumping three tablespoons of sugar into their mugs.

By the time Auntie Lily came for a cheer-up visit, they were wrapped in fresh bedding on the couch, the color back to their cheeks, although their eyes were glassy from the twelfth hour of the Disney Channel. Lily brought Annie a new Polly Pocket Happenin’ Pet Pals set and Cameron aReturn of the JediBoba Fett action figure and sat far enough away not to catch any cooties but close enough to rile them both up after I had a moment to sit at the kitchen table with the cup of coffee I’d made that morning and reheated in the microwave six times.