Page 39 of Woman on the Verge

I didn’t really care if he’d won, but it was a question asked out of habit. Before we had kids, I cared if his team won—or, I cared that he cared. Just like he cared to take off his cleats before clomping around on the wood floor. We have devolved, mutually.

“We won,” he said, sitting on the bed to take off his cleats.

His hair was slick with sweat, his shirt damp from exertion. There was a time I would have considered this manly and sexy; now it’s just gross.

“You get any hits?” I asked, again out of habit.

“Not tonight.”

He stood and went to the bathroom to shower—thank god.

When he came back, wearing his boxers and nothing else, he got into bed next to me and put his arm around me.

“You tired?” he asked. This was code for “Can we have sex?”

“Yeah,” I said, which was code for “No.”

He removed his arm from me and lay flat, staring at the ceiling. I did the same.

“I think my dad is going to die,” I said.

There were so many things he could have said to make me feel loved:

God, honey, I’m so sorry.

You must be so scared.

Let’s talk about what the doctors told you.

Instead, he sighed in the defeated-yet-annoyed way Merry sighs, and said, “You don’t know that.”

A hot flash took over my body, sweat coating my chest and back in a matter of seconds. I threw the covers off.

“It would be nice if you didn’t seem irritated by my concerns,” I said.

I always speak more freely in the midst of the hot flashes. It’s like I’m too agitated to contain myself.

“I’m not irritated,” he said, again with a sigh.

I tried to take a deep breath because everything on social media talks about how deep breathing is the way to inner peace. I wasn’t successful. It felt like my lungs were the size of hummingbird eggs.

“Have the doctors given you answers yet?”

His tone was careful, similar to the tone I use with the girls when they are on the verge of a tantrum.

“No,” I said.

“So see, there’s no reason to think he’s going to die.”

“Okay, but he might. Can you just go with me on this for half a second?”

“I just don’t want you getting carried away again.”

“Again?”

“Huh?”

“You said carried away ‘again.’ Do you see me as someone who is often getting carried away?”