Page 89 of Woman on the Verge

We get to Daly City just after seven o’clock. They are both beginning to melt down because they are tired. Grace says she has to pee. Liv’s pull-up is probably about to leak. I am starving because all I’ve eaten is cold french fries, the rejected remains of their meals.

Merry is standing on the front porch. She looks thrilled to see us, and Merry is not normally someone who looks thrilled. We are a reprieve, I’m guessing. We will enable her to deny her current reality for a short, necessary while.

All I’ve told the girls is that Papa is sick, and Grace said, “Like Daddy?” I told her that he was sicker than Daddy and had to be in bed during the day, but that he was excited to see them. I hope that’s true. I hope he remembers their little faces.

“Oh my goodness, look at you big girls,” Merry says when we emerge from the car. She goes to Grace and Liv, hugs them with more force than she’s ever hugged me with. They are unusually shy until Merry says, “I have cookies!”

Grace says, “Yay!” and both girls follow her inside.

The moment I step into the house, it feels different. There’s a noticeably different smell—not bad, necessarily, but nursing-home-ish. Stale, maybe. There are boxes of supplies lining the hallway—rubber gloves (extra large), adult diapers, wipes. As I’m taking stock, Merry is presenting a plate of chocolate chip cookies to the girls, and a voice behind me booms:

“You must be Nicole!”

I turn. Frank, in the flesh. He is shorter than I imagined, a couple of inches shorter than me.

“Frank, hi.”

I reach out my hand to shake his, but he gives me a hug instead.

“And you brought the little ones,” he says, peeking around me to see the girls shoving cookies into their mouths.

“I did,” I say. “Quite the drive.”

“I bet! Well, go on in and say hi to your dad. He’ll love to see you.”

I do as he says, approaching my dad’s bedroom with a sense of dread, as if my body knows before my mind that it will be difficult to see what I see.

The king bed has been moved out (to where, I don’t know) to make room for a hospital bed, something the hospice team brought a few days ago. My dad is sitting upright in it. His feet are in what look like cushioned booties. It takes me a second to realize that these are to help prevent bedsores on his heels. It takes me another second to realize that he must not be getting out of bed much at all.

“Hey, Dad.”

His bed is facing the TV on the opposite wall, so he doesn’t see me when I first come in.

“Who’s that?” he asks. His voice is quieter than usual, just above a whisper. It’s as if whatever is siphoning the strength from his body is also siphoning strength from his vocal cords.

“It’s me, Nikki,” I say, bracing myself for his confusion.

He turns his head to the side, and I come into his line of sight.

“Nikki! What are you doing here?”

“I came up with the girls, Grace and Liv. Your granddaughters.” I have decided I will give him more information than he may need because I cannot handle the pain of his obliviousness.

“Wow,” he says.

There is a commode next to his bed. I move it out of the way so I can sit next to him in bed. He smells strange—likely a combination of sweat and pee. Someone comes to bathe him a couple of times a week,and he’s in diapers full time now. Smells are inevitable. This must be the source of the nursing-home-ish scent permeating the house.

“What are you watching?” I ask.

The TV is on, but the sound is off. It appears to be some kind of zombie-apocalypse movie.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to watch golf?”

My dad has always liked to watch golf, something that has perplexed Merry and me for years.

“Sure!”

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