Page 28

“Rob, she hasn’t lived in Rhode Island in years,” Merry snaps. It’s irrational to snap. We both know he’s not trying to be difficult. She’s just had it.

“I drove up from Orange County, where I live with Kyle and the girls.”

“Yes! Right!” He says it as if we are playing charades and he has just guessed what I’ve been miming.

“How’s your car running?” he asks, which is his way of inquiring about my general well-being.

“Good, Dad, good.”

He eats a few more bites of oatmeal and then sits back in his wheelchair with a satisfied sigh.

“That sun feels good, doesn’t it?” he says, closing his eyes as beams of light come through the window, streaking his face.

Merry starts clearing the table.

“He’s been sleeping a lot more,” she says. “He’s really only awake for about an hour for meals, then back to bed.”

Sure enough, a few seconds later, his head is hanging, lolling about above his chest.

Merry starts cleaning the dishes. I hold a towel, ready to dry.

“Sometimes I just let him sleep right there like that. I don’t know how I can keep helping him in and out of bed, in and out of the wheelchair.”

She puts a hand to her lower back, rubs.

I say, “I can help, for today at least.”

“And then there’s tomorrow and the next day and the next,” she says with a sigh.

I keep wondering if I should bring the girls up with me and just stay indefinitely, compromise my own sanity for the good of the group. It’s that or convince Merry to get daily professional help, soon.

I wheel Dad to the downstairs bedroom as he sleeps with his chin on his chest. I park the wheelchair at the side of his bed and rub his shoulders in an attempt to rouse him. I massage his bald head, as if a genie will appear to grant me my wish to make all of this not real.

“Okay, Dad, time to get into bed.”

Merry sighs. “He won’t be able to help much.”

“Is it nighttime?” Dad asks.

“No, Dad. Just time for a nap.”

He doesn’t protest. He puts his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair to push himself up. But once again, Merry is right—he can’t help much.

“Alice said there’s some kind of belt we can get to help pull him up,” Merry says. “I need to ask the hospice people about that.”

“A belt?” Dad says. “I have lots of belts.”

“Not that kind of belt, Rob,” Merry says.

I put both arms around his middle, help him stand. He is wobbly, but he is upright. Merry stands back, supervises, looking slightly nervous. I have no idea how she’s been doing this by herself, even if just for a few days.

“Okay, Dad, the bed is just right here.”

All he has to do is turn his body ninety degrees and fall back. But shuffling his feet to turn that ninety degrees takes a painfully long time.

“All right, now fall back,” I tell him when he’s aligned properly with the bed.

He looks at me like Grace and Liv look at me, his eyes saying, Am I going to be okay? Am I doing this right?

“You’re okay, Dad,” I tell him.

He falls back onto the bed. I help him swing his legs up and pull the comforter over his body so just his head is showing.

“You comfy?” I ask him.

“I am.”

His eyes start to glaze over with fatigue.

“Can I get in next to you?” I ask him.

He’s already asleep. I get in anyway, my body curled up next to his.

“I’ll leave you two,” Merry whispers and closes the door behind her.

I listen to my dad’s breaths, feel the warmth and solidity of his body. Tears come when I remember the impermanence of these things. I dry my cheeks with the edge of the pillowcase.

“I’m going to miss you,” I whisper.

He doesn’t respond, but I like to think he hears me anyway.

I nod off for a bit and am awakened by my phone buzzing with a text message.

Can’t wait to see you

Elijah. If I didn’t have him to look forward to, I would likely wither away alongside my dad.

I can’t wait to see you too. Will be there around 5

He sends back a GIF of people cheering.

Merry is sitting on the couch in the living room, clipping her toenails, when I emerge. I sit next to her. She doesn’t look up from what she’s doing.

“I’ve been too busy to even clip my toenails,” she says.

I find this hard to believe, but am willing to indulge her misery. I know a thing or two about raging pity parties.

“I need to clip your father’s too. They’re getting so long.”

“I can do that,” I tell her. “When he wakes up.”

She keeps clipping.

“Can I book you a massage today? I can stay at the house with Dad.”

She looks up. “That’s sweet of you, Nic, but I can’t imagine how I’d be able to enjoy a massage .”

She says it like I’ve suggested she go skydiving.

“I just want to make sure you’re getting out, taking care of yourself,” I tell her.

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Can the hospice people come more often?”

As it is, a nurse comes by once a week for about a half hour to check his vitals.

And random aides drop off supplies that Merry complains she could get cheaper on Amazon.

Prisha had warned me that hospice isn’t really that involved until the very end, when death is imminent, which I like to think, childishly and foolishly, is far, far, far away.

“Maybe we need to look into a caregiver, someone who could stay here and help,” I say. “Jim and Alice seemed to think that was a good idea.”

Merry looks disgusted with this suggestion, as I thought she might be.

“I don’t want anyone in my home.”

Well, I don’t want my dad to die, I want to say.

We can’t always get what we want, I want to say.

“Okay” is what I actually say.

When my dad wakes up, I trim his toenails while he’s still lying in bed.

I’d never noticed it before, but his feet are somewhat feminine—long, lean, with nicely shaped nails.

The rest of him is, and always has been, decidedly masculine.

He is one of those people who are naturally muscular, even without working out—thighs like tree trunks, calves thick and sturdy.

I look at his legs now. Are they thinner, already wasting away?

“Dad, did you know you have lady feet?”

He lifts his head from his pillow, stares down. “What? I do?”

He says it with alarm, as if he’s just acquired these feet, as if they are part of whatever ails him.

I laugh. “I mean, you’ve always had them, I just never noticed.”

“I don’t have lady feet.”

“They’re very soft too. Do you use a pumice stone in the shower?”

“A what?”

“I’m teasing you.”

I gather all the nail clippings and dispose of them in the bathroom trash can.

“You ready for some lunch?” I ask him.

“It’s lunchtime?”

It’s just after eleven. “Close enough,” I say.

I am used to this, the structuring of days around mealtimes.

“Okay then.”

I help him sit, then turn so his legs are off the bed, feet touching the floor. The wheelchair is parked in position. I stand in front of him, grab onto his wrists. His hands clutch my wrists in return.

“One, two, three,” I say.

The effort is mostly mine. My lower back complains, but I try to smile. My dad would never want to burden me.

I have broken a sweat by the time he is upright.

I help him turn ninety degrees, his feet shuffling an inch at a time.

The whole process, a process I would perform myself within seconds, takes about five minutes.

It’s excruciating, reminiscent of watching Grace trying to put on a shirt herself and sticking her arm through the neck hole repeatedly, or watching Liv stab the same piece of elbow macaroni with a fork, unable to get it.

“Okay, Dad, now fall back.”

I think of the patience I’ve had to acquire as a mother, ushering the girls through the mundanity of this impossible life.

Perhaps I have been in training for exactly this moment with my dad as he prepares to leave that life.

I am grateful for my ability to do this, but devastated it needs to be done.

The three of us eat lunch at the kitchen table. Then the morning repeats itself—he falls asleep, Merry does the dishes, I wheel him to bed, I lie with him. I assume the same routine will repeat for dinner. I don’t know how Merry is going to stay sane through this. I, at least, have Elijah.

Dad sleeps until four o’clock in the afternoon.

I get dressed in a black skirt that I brought for the express purpose of Elijah pushing it up around my waist to fuck me.

I’m wearing a black lace bra and matching panties, which I had to retrieve from the farthest corner of my underwear drawer at home.

They must be a few years old, an impulse buy, a past attempt to bring back the elusive spark in my marriage.

The tags were still on. At the last minute, I decide to take off the panties.

I used to hear of women going commando and thought that was absurd.

I was convinced no woman did this, that it was a myth created by the porn industry.

But, I decide, Katrina is a woman who likes to feel free in every possible way.

I spritz myself with perfume, put earrings in my ears. It’s been so long since I’ve worn earrings that I basically have to repierce my lobes. I dab the blood with a square of toilet paper.

“Well, don’t you look nice,” Merry says when she sees me, her face lit up. We both need a reminder that life keeps going, that there is a world beyond the walls of this house, a world worth dressing up for.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You’re going out with Prisha again?”

I nod. “Yeah. I’ll stay at her place. She has the most amazing apartment downtown. Did I tell you about it? The views!”

I stop myself, knowing I’m doing what every liar does—saying too much, sharing extraneous details, speaking in exclamation marks.

“That sounds nice.”

“I’ll come back by noon or so tomorrow, hang with you guys for a little bit before I drive back home.”

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you. It means a lot to have you here.”

She looks like she might cry. I go to her, hug her. Her body is stiff in response, but she pats my back awkwardly.

“You need anything before I head out?”

She shakes her head.

“If you ever want to come with me, for a drink or something ...”