The English Teacher by Lily King

at the same time.
“They’ll be out of there soon, I promise,” Tom said. He was too soft with Caleb, as if he were a girl.
“You don’t know that.” Stuart glared down at his plate.
“Only druggies go into E. J.’s. Everyone knows that,” Fran said.
“Who said that?” It was exhausting to watch Stuart fighting on two fronts.
“Mom did. One time we were walking past it and I asked her what was in there and that’s what she said. Drugs.”
“She did not.”
“Yes she did.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Stuart,” Tom said.
Vida got up to make herself another drink. Usually she only had one on weeknights, but there was the problem of that promise. She mixed the soda with the bourbon slowly.
“Why can’t we just give them a bunch of money?” Caleb asked.
“They don’t want our money. They want the Shah and their money,” Stuart told him.
“The what?”
“The American pawn who used to rule their country until the revolution.”
“Where is he?”
“In New York.”
“Why?”
“He’s at some hospital.”
“Cornell. In the city,” Tom said. “He’s got cancer.”
“What kind?” all three of his children asked at once.
He didn’t know.
“Is he having an operation there?” Caleb asked.
“I think so.”
Caleb looked at his father until he explained. “Hers was inoperable. They couldn’t operate.”
“According to one American doctor.”
“Stuart, please.”
You could see around Tom’s mouth the effects of the pain of the last three years. She had found that pain reassuring at first; it had filled her with a sense of security to know that he had been through loss and survived, that he was the type of person who would survive. And wasn’t there a sort of lucky protective coating around people after such a calamity? She had believed that by attaching herself to him she would be protected as well. But now, in his house, perched on a hard chair in his kitchen, she felt like she was back in her parents’ house with all its claustrophobia, all the old inexplicable resentments pressing down on them. She took a long sip of her drink. It kept her from screaming at the top of her lungs.
Stuart scraped back his chair and stood.
“Dinner isn’t over,” Tom said.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” Stuart said, halfway there.
Peter doodled with his fork in the gravy. He’d said nothing since they’d sat down. She had done this to his life, bound him to this seat at this table with these strangers. She glanced at Tom again for a memory of why, of how, but he was intent on cutting through a piece of meat.
Stuart returned, not from the bathroom, Vida guessed, but from a little toke beside an open window. His eyes weren’t red but his lashes glistened, from Visine no doubt, and he slipped into his chair with the catlike movements she recognized from the students she busted at school dances.
Finally it was over. Fran helped her clear without having to be asked.
“What’s for dessert?” Caleb asked.
Thank God she hadn’t gotten any. Another course at this table would do her in. “It’s probably not a great idea to have sugar so close to bedtime,” she said. The clock on the stove confirmed that it was nearly nine.
“We’ve always had dessert,” Caleb said to his father, tears already slipping beneath the round glasses he wore.
Fran, scraping dishes into the trash, said, “I can’t believe you just chucked all those sandwiches. What a waste.”
“I have a candy bar in my bag,” Peter said to Caleb. “You want that?”
Vida opened her mouth to protest, but Tom covered her hand with a squeeze.
Caleb nodded, and wiped his face. Peter got up and came back with a mangled package of Reese’s Cups.
“May I please be excused?” Stuart asked Vida, perfectly politely, the contempt well hidden. It was the first time he’d looked directly at her. His eyes were a pale brown set below soft swollen lids. They were the only part of his body he was unable to make hard and angry. She’d had several