Relief washes over her face, and she sets it down quickly on the tablecloth. A tomato gets jostled around, but otherwise order is restored. She’s placing her plaid napkin on her lap when my dad clears his throat.

“Please pass me the salad, then.” His hands are shaking more the longer he holds them out.

As my mom extends the bowl to him, I keep thinking about that elephant in the room. Either we are hunting it, or it is hunting us, and I don’t know how long we can coexist.

“Thank you,” he says when the bowl finishes its journey across the table. His knuckles are white and it wobbles a bit. Just when I realize I haven’t been breathing, it settles into his palms. “There,” he says. “Now, did you want this, Cham?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say carefully. “Maybe if I just—”

The bowl slips from his fingers and falls onto the ceramic dish, sending salad and glass and blue pieces over the table and floor.

“Dammit!” he yells, pushing back from the table. “Dammit,” he says again, and his voice breaks. I bite my lip until I taste blood, and the iron nauseates me. He throws his napkin at the table and it catches the edge, then falls to the floor.

“Get me out of this chair, get me out of this sweater.” He rocks back and forth, but the wheelchair is locked and doesn’t budge. “I want to get out of everything. I’m sick of being sick and what it does to you girls, I can’t take care of you, I’m useless and a burden and—”

He’s crying. I’ve never seen my dad cry. His face has new formations. It loosens a rock and triggers an avalanche of sadness in me. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. My mom jumps up to help him with his sweater and knocks her chair over. Her face freezes in a wince.

“Don’t help me!” my dad hollers, squirming away from her hands, which are reaching toward his shoulders. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just let me get to my room.”

He struggles to undo the brakes on the wheelchair, then pushes back, but nothing happens. “It’s caught on the rug,” he says, looking down at the red and navy-blue designs. “Dammit, will you help me with this—”

My mom is already kneeling on the ground as he rocks back and forth in the chair, never finishing his sentence. Maybe he was going to end it with rug or chair, or maybe he didn’t intend to finish it at all. Maybe the things we need the most help with can’t be articulated, because to say them would give them more power than they already have over us.

“Can I do something, Dad?” I push my chair back and walk toward him tentatively as my mom pushes his chair from behind.

He shakes his head and looks down at his shoes. They’re brown with Velcro straps because last year was the last year of shoelaces. “I’m fine, I’m sorry to—I mean, I’m sorry, I’m just sorry.”