Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,62

corner by the closet. Mom unzipped it and started pulling out clothes.

Sure enough, they were all jumbled up, and mixed in with Dad’s shoes, which weren’t even in the drawstring cloth pouches he normally used.

Mom let out a sigh so quiet I might have imagined it.

I thought about her living through Stephen Kellner’s depressive episodes before.

I thought about her living through mine.

I thought about how she had to grieve her father on top of all of that.

“Um,” I said. “Do you want some tea?”

“Yes please.”

“Okay.”

* * *

While Dad ate his kabob, Grandma and Oma came downstairs. They had changed out of their Persian Casual clothes too, into comfy sweatpants, though Oma still had her hair up.

“Don’t get up,” Grandma said, but Dad did anyway. He gave them each a kiss on the cheek.

“You need a shave,” Oma said.

Dad just shrugged and went back to his dinner.

Everyone was quiet for a second, the kind of quiet you could snap like a twig.

I said, “How was California?”

“Busy,” Dad said.

“When do you have to go back?”

He sighed. “Monday.”

“At least it’s warm there,” Grandma said.

Oma nodded but didn’t add anything. She was studying Dad with pursed lips.

The silence came back.

That’s the thing about silences. Sometimes they keep coming back.

“Anyone else want tea?”

“Sure.” Oma glanced at Grandma and then back at Dad. “You sure you’re doing okay, Stephen?”

“I’m sure.”

“All right.”

Grandma rested her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “You look tired.”

“Really. I’m fine, Mom.” Dad smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

What was happening?

There was some shrouded tension lurking in the kitchen, but I couldn’t figure out why, so I did what I always did and poured some tea.

“What’s this?”

“Dragonwell.” I handed Dad the mesh strainer of steeped leaves so he could smell. “Pan-roasted green tea. From China.”

Dad gave the leaves a long sniff. “It smells good.”

“Yeah.”

“Does it have much caffeine?”

“Not really.”

“Hmm. Better make something stronger next, so we can stay awake for Star Trek.”

“Really?”

Dad smiled, this time for real. He had dark bags under his eyes, and his hair was a mess, but for the first time since he’d been home, he looked like my dad again.

“Really.”

THE VISITOR

For as long as I could remember, Dad always had a rule: one episode a night, unless it’s a two-parter, and then we get to watch both parts. (Three-parters still get split up into three separate nights, for some inexplicable reason Dad refuses to disclose.)

But when we finished “The Way of the Warrior, Parts I & II”—where Worf from The Next Generation joins the crew of Deep Space Nine—Dad didn’t turn the TV off, or even stop the next episode from cuing up.

“We’ve got to make up for lost time.” Dad’s voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat as he scooted closer to me. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “I’ve missed this.”

I cleared my own throat. “Me too.”

We were quiet for a second. Not the brittle silence from the kitchen, but a comfortable sort of silence. Dad breathed, and I breathed, and I sank into the couch under the weight of his arm.

“Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you really doing okay?”

Dad hit pause (the teaser for “The Visitor” had just started) and looked at me. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just, last time you were home, you said you were depressed.”

Dad’s mouth twisted to the side.

“And you seem . . .”

“What?”

Rumpled was the first word that came to mind.

But I couldn’t say that.

I couldn’t.

“Tired,” I said instead.

And then I said, “Sad.”

And then, because I didn’t know when to shut up, I said, “Lonely.”

Dad sighed. He stared at the screen and ran the back of his index finger under his lip, tracing the gaps in his beard.

I wanted Dad to say something. To answer me.

But instead, he wrapped his arm around me again, grabbed the remote, and hit play.

“The Visitor” is one of the best episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It’s about Captain Sisko’s son, Jake, trying to bring his dad home after he gets lost in time.

It was just my luck, watching an episode like that, when my own grandfather was lost to me forever.

When I was afraid I was losing my dad to depression.

The last time Dad’s depression got really bad, we lost each other for almost seven years.

I didn’t think I could take it if he drifted away from me again.

Next to me, Dad was crying. Not just a single tear, like he usually had, but full-on crying. He sniffed and wiped his eyes and then he made this sound, like a groan or a whimper,