How do you feel, Dad?

Help me up. He didn’t look sick, was the thing. It was the hospital itself that seemed an illness—the beeping machines, the sterile sheets. The ugly faux-Impressionist flower paintings. Pages spilled as Valerie leapt from her chair. She grabbed Edith’s father under one arm and Edith grabbed the other. Good to see you, Mr. McAllister.

Valerie! When did you get here. Between them, he weighed almost nothing. They helped him to the bathroom.

Val and Edith gathered the scattered leaves of Edith’s astronaut book. What do you think so far? Edith hadn’t shared it with anyone but her thesis committee.

I have to see how it ends. Pages came together without order. He’s going to be fine, by the way.

What makes you say that?

Lifetime of observation. Last night she had told Edith about friends who died. Preventable deaths and freak accidents. They lay in the semi-dark living room under the same Cézanne print that hung in Edith’s apartment. A still point.

They helped her father back to his bed and he asked Edith about school. I’m done, Dad, I moved to Texas.

Lots of guns down there. Stay away from shopping malls. He pressed his hands to his stomach and groaned. And how are you, Valerie?

Good, Mr. McAllister, I’ve been traveling.

You still dancing?

All the time. Edith didn’t know if this was a metaphor, or if Valerie really was dancing in far-off places.

Where’s Teresa? her dad asked. How’s she doing?

Still in Boston, Valerie said.

Well tell her to come here. She reads Stoppard with all the voices.

She’s busy, Dad.

Too busy for a sick old man? More groaning.

There was history to unpack. There were harder things waiting to be told. Seeing him here, hurting in his bed, Edith almost found the words. Dad, I’m a girl. I’m your daughter. I need you to know—

Tell me about your travels, Valerie.

She described the views from the Pacific Coast Highway. Her pilgrimage to see the Spiral Jetty. Attending a pagan christening ceremony of sorts. Condensed to a paragraph, her life became only these things—a series of picture postcards that could be fixed to the fridge, read every morning over orange juice and cereal.

Lovely, her father said, all what’s in the world. Soon he was snoring, and the girls snuck out.

At the house, her mother pulled tablecloths from the hall closet and piled them on the floor. Had her parents always been this useless? So incapable of dealing with strife? Or did part of you break as you aged and realized this was it—it was only going to get harder from here.

Dad seems okay.

Do you smell that? Her mother sniffed dramatically. Help me take these to the porch.

Edith sighed, scooped up the patterned fabric. The nurses say it’s not his gallbladder, so they’re going to have to do more tests.

There’s so much shit in this house. Non-evaluative. A statement of fact. Live in a place half your life and suddenly your thirties are the dust in the corners. Tablecloths flapped from the porch rails. A series of white sails bordered with florals. Stained with chocolate, coffee, wine, blood.

Mom, why don’t you go see him? Val and I can take care of dinner.

Stay out of my kitchen.

Edith could only take so much of this before she erupted. Before she tried to force her mother to look at the possibility of life without her father. To look at her own face, see the girl she was becoming. If she could just do that, she thought, everything else might follow. The only question was time.