“Okay, but do you have a passport?” I asked my grandmother again.
“What do I need a passport for?”
My phone dinged back. It’s upstairs, in her top right dresser drawer. I took her to get it renewed myself.
“Mom said it’s in your top dresser drawer. Do you want me to go get it?”
“It’s already in my purse. Why are you being so dramatic, Joan?”
I bit the inside of my bottom lip. I was being underpaid, apparently. But the abundance of free booze once we got there would be a welcome reprieve.
“Great,” I said with false cheerfulness. “I’ll just put your suitcase in the car and we’ll be on our way.”
I figured an Uber would be the best way to get to the airport because the driver could drop us right at the terminal and I could put my grandmother directly into a wheelchair, so that was how I had gotten to her house as well.
“Where’s your car? Who’s driving?”
“This is an Uber. It’s like a taxi.”
“Oh. But we can’t leave yet.”
“Why not?”
“Ken and Louise are coming with us.” Louise had been my grandmother’s best friend since my mother was a baby. Ken was her second husband, and he had been pals with my grandfather before he passed. While I had known them my whole life, I hadn’t realized they were invited to the wedding, let alone coming with us.
“Since when?”
“I told them we could give them a ride to the airport.”
I looked at the Uber, which was a CR-V. It would probably hold all of the luggage, but we would be extremely squished in the backseat. “Did you think maybe you should have let me know that?”
She shrugged. My Uber rating is about to drop off the charts, I thought despairingly. I went to the driver’s window and tried to explain the situation. She couldn’t have been nicer, but she also didn’t fully understand what kind of craziness was about to occur in her car.
Ken’s Cadillac careened into view and came to a crooked stop on the street outside my grandmother’s house. “Hello, Lily,” Louise waved cheerfully. “Who’s ready to go to Mexico?” She pulled a rainbow-colored sombrero out of the backseat and put it on her head.
My eyes widened. Holy hell. My blog readers are never, ever going to believe this is real.
We crammed the luggage into the trunk and Ken sat in the front seat. As the youngest member of our traveling party, I was wedged into the backseat between my grandmother and Louise, who proceeded to grill our Uber driver about her family, education, marital status, and why she didn’t yet have children. We would have to take a taxi back home because there was no chance any Uber driver would ever pick me up again.
I texted my father this time. In the Uber on the way to the airport. She told Ken and Louise they could come with us.
My father sent back a face-palm emoji. At least they’ll keep her distracted on the plane. I’ll have a drink waiting for you when you get here.
My phone dinged again. Have a great trip, Alex wrote.
I am in hell. I know I deserve it, but oh dear God.
What’s wrong?
I explained the situation and he replied with crying-laughing emojis. Please get a picture of the sombrero. Will she let you take a selfie in it? It was on Louise’s lap, which meant it was half on mine, so I snapped a surreptitious picture of it. Not that it mattered. Louise was deep in conversation with the Uber driver about her hysterectomy.
When we eventually arrived at the airport, I helped everyone get their bags out of the car and then went back to the Uber driver. “I am so, so sorry about this.”
“You’re lucky you still have your grandma,” she said. “She was nice.”
I wasn’t sure she meant the same woman that I knew, but I thanked her anyway.
We got my grandmother to her pre-reserved wheelchair inside the terminal, and I was pleased to find that it came with a porter to push her. “This is silly,” she told the porter. “I can walk just fine.”
“Happy to do it, ma’am,” he said.
“Here, Evelyn, will you hold my sombrero since you’re in the chair?”
“Why don’t you just wear it?” my grandmother asked Louise.
“Inside?”
“It’s vacation!”
“True,” she said, putting it on. “We’ll have to get you one down there too.”
“Where’s Ken’s?”
“He’s so vain about his hair, he won’t wear it.”
I looked at Ken’s thin, gray hair. But at least he still had hair, which was worth showing off at his age.