Page 75 of Woman on the Verge

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 amassage.”

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?”