The delight on my dad’s face rubs me the wrong way—but I made the offer. So I get my school tablet, load my textbook and review sheet, and come back into the living room, where Dad is waiting for me.

It’s awkward at first. After months of doing everything on my own, I’m defensive when I hand Dad my tablet. But he finds a bunch of ways to compliment me on things that I understand and finally gets around to talking about the stuff I’m struggling with.

After we get through a few problems, I find myself leaning closer as he scribbles on his tablet. The jokes he makes about congruency and tangents and chords are lame but still make me laugh. By the time we get through all the review questions, I’m feeling more confident about getting a decent grade on tomorrow’s exam and Dad is smiling in a way I haven’t seen in months. Instead of being colored by dull blues and grays, he’s now shining with vibrant yellow. He’s not pretending to be happy. He really is.

“So is there anything else you need your old man’s help with?” he asks, picking up my tablet. His finger punches one of the icons and suddenly the image on the screen changes from mathematical problems to my mother’s half-finished painting.

I watch it happen—like rain falling on a chalk sidewalk drawing. The melting of beauty into nothingness. The teasing glint in his eye disappears, and he leans back as if worried the image will jump out and bite him for real instead of just nipping at his heart. “Are you still thinking about that picture?” he asks.

“Not really,” I lie. I take the tablet from him and tap the screen so the math book replaces Mom’s painting. “Do you think we can go over one other thing?” I ask, trying to bring the brightness back into the room. “The cone problems are still giving me trouble.”

He sighs and shrugs. “Sure, honey.” And for the next ten minutes he tries. I can tell he tries. But the brief period of light we found blinks out.

Dad gives me another pat on the shoulder, tells me, “Just focus on the numbers the problem tells you to concentrate on. Don’t get distracted by anything that doesn’t apply. That’s the trick. Follow those steps and you’ll be fine.” Then he leaves the room. A few minutes later I hear the back door in the kitchen close and I head upstairs.

I put on my headset and study for the rest of my finals. The volume is cranked up high. If the car engine revs to life and my father drives away, I can’t hear it. I also won’t be able to hear the sound of his return or his unsteady footsteps pacing the floor of his bedroom, although I can imagine them as I compose an essay on the National Communication Initiative. My stylus glides along the surface of the tablet as I write my conclusion: “Scaling back the number of television channels and publications helped heal an angry and divided country by reducing vitriol, and providing more points of commonality.”