Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,39
both hands on her high-chair tray.
“Very funny. Your aunt Phiz should go into comedy full-time, don’t you think, Tessa?”
“I’ll do that when your mama goes into the travel business.”
“Travel?”
“Why not? You’ve become a whiz at herding those little ones into new and more exotic places every Sunday, all the while smiling and asking sweetly when the cruise directors on the good ship Follypop think the decorating will be done.”
“When you put it that way, it does sound like a takeover.”
“Does it?” She hummed lightly while she dunked her tea bag in her favorite cup, one hand still holding the bulging bag of curlers.
“You know it does but…wait a minute! You sidetracked me. The subject was you sitting with Tessa, not the sisters walking all over me.”
“Of course I’ll sit with Tessa, dear.”
“Terrific. I won’t take more than two hours. Three if they don’t want me there.”
Aunt Phiz laughed and gave Hannah a quick hug in passing. “How could anyone not want my Hannah Banana? Just let me finish doing up my hair.”
“Now?”
“Well, yes. Now. What did you think I was up to with all this?” She held the grocery bag aloft and shook it like a cheap maraca.
“Aunt Phiz, I almost never know what you’re up to. Or when. Why do you have to do your hair now? Can’t it wait until I get back?”
“Hair waits for no woman, my dear.” She jumbled the frayed mass of red sticking every which way on her head. “I’d love to oblige you, but the lady from across the street has kindly agreed to come over and help out.”
“I thought you could do it blindfolded.”
“Not the back anymore. Can’t keep the old arms up like I used to.” She yanked back the delicately decorated kimono sleeve to reveal a pale, aged arm. “Perhaps I should take up weight lifting?”
“Maybe you could start with lifting some of my load.” She shouldn’t have snapped, but with Sam in school and Tessa getting her eating and sleeping habits sorted out for the first time in weeks, Hannah had actually looked forward to getting out by herself. “It’s not like I ask you to pitch in very often.”
“I know, dear. And that’s precisely why I’m unavailable to you so often.”
“There’s some logic swimming around in that murky pond of your reasoning. I just know it.”
“Yep.” Aunt Phiz tipped the bag up and sent a cascade of colorful plastic curlers clattering over the tabletop.
“You going to share it with me, or do I have to go fishing for it?”
“Always the first to take action.” The older woman began sorting the curlers by color. “You never could wait for something to come to you—you had to go and get it.”
“This is no mere pond of confusion. It’s a whirlpool. Round and round.” Hannah swirled her wrist, and rotated her head to illustrate her point. “You’re trying to make me so dizzy I can’t remember the favor I asked you. Is that your plan?”
“The only twirling round I plan includes these and this.” She held a pink perm rod up to a strand of hair to demonstrate. “I planned to do this days ago. I had time to make these plans because despite my having come here to lighten your load around the house, you never ask me to do anything.”
“Now. I asked you now.”
“And when I offer to do anything, you refuse to let me.”
“When?”
“When I asked you to let me get up with Tessa sometimes at night.”
“She’s my first baby. Her crying wakes me up anyway. Why should I put you out?”
“Fine. Then how about when I made those cookies for Sam’s team and suddenly you’re there sticking raisins and apples on them and taking over the whole project?”
“Just trying to live up to my title of Snack Mom.” She held her hands up to frame her face.
Aunt Phiz tsked.
Hannah dropped her hands into her lap. “It’s not like that worked out to make me look good. They ate your cookies and left my finishing touches…untouched.”
“You wouldn’t even let me clean up the raisins.”
“My mistake. My responsibility.”
“Mine, mine, mine. I think that might have been your first word.”
“Doesn’t anyone in my family have something nice to say about me?”
“Everyone in your family has wonderful things to say by you.” She pursed her lips as she spoke, the same way they talked to Tessa when she pitched a fit over a dropped toy or fought off an onslaught of strained peas. “But none of that would mean a thing