The English Teacher Read Online Free PDF

important question. Peter waited, his hand hot and buried, but nothing came.
When he was released, he turned to his mother. “Congrats, Mom.” He felt, in the presence of the Belous, that he should hug her. They had gotten into a bizarre habit of performing in front of them, pretending they were another breed of mother and son. At their first dinner all together his mother, in the middle of the meal, had stroked the top of his head while bragging about his interest in writing. She’d exaggerated completely—he’d won a stupid poetry contest in seventh grade, that was all.
He stepped toward her and they raised their arms. It was a show; they hugged without pressing. He remembered this from childhood, this weak hug, as if he were made of paper.
“What the hell?” Tom said, stepping toward the TV. “Oh, no.”
Peter tried to make sense of what he saw: fires, screaming,mayhem. Every few seconds the TV camera itself seemed to be struck by a passerby. The jolted footage made him slightly nauseated. Then it rested on one image, a long lean Uncle Sam, his striped pants in flames, surrounded by dancing, chanting men whose robes flipped in and out of the fire.
“Those lunatics are going to burn themselves up, too, while they’re at it,” his mother said.
“They’ve seized our embassy,” Tom said gravely. “Goddammit they’ve taken our embassy.”
Peter didn’t know who they were. He glanced at his mother for an explanation but he could tell she didn’t know either. She didn’t follow the news very carefully. All on-campus teachers got a paper delivered to their door every morning but theirs usually ended up in the trash can, the rubber band still fastened around it.
“Why did they agree to let him in?” Stuart said. “He could have had that operation in Mexico. They knew it would stir up trouble.”
“He’s been our ally for many years. We owed him.”
“Ally? He’s been our stooge. Our oil guy.”
“What are you talking about?” Fran asked.
Tom began explaining about the Shah of Iran. Peter tried to focus on what he was saying but a man on TV came up to the camera shouting angrily through brown teeth, then spat at the lens. The spit was thick and green. A hand reached around quickly with a cloth and wiped it off. It was eerie to Peter, the hand and the cloth, like a taboo had been broken. He’d missed Tom’s explanation.
“Is President Carter in there?” Caleb asked from his chair. Peter was certain that when he was seven he’d had no clue who was president.
“I doubt it,” his mother said, though what did she know. “It’s probably just a bunch of functionaries.”
“What’s that?”
“Good decent hardworking diplomats who were brave enough to remain in the country during a revolution.” He’d never heard Tom use that tone of voice before.
“Mom?” he said quietly. “Do you know where my room is?”
“I don’t even know where mine is.”
“I’ll show it to you, Peter.” Caleb slid dramatically off his chair.
Peter followed him out of the room and down a corridor to the first room on the left.
“We dragged your boxes in this morning.”
“Thanks.”
Caleb slipped his hand behind a bookshelf. “The switch is a little tricky to find.”
Peter waited, surprised by his desire to be alone, when just this morning being alone was what he’d hoped to renounce for good.
“There.” A single bulb, painted green, cast the small room in lime-colored light. At first glance, it looked like a decorated storage room. The walls were covered with pen-and-ink drawings of body parts: ears, fingertips, knees. Some had Chinese characters beside them; others had typed-out English quotations Peter couldn’t decipher. There was only one full-size poster, also handmade, of a pair of closed eyes and below it the words
What is one is not one
And what is not one
Is also one.
There was nothing in the room immediately identifiable as furniture. It simply looked like a huge mound of junk—notebooks, winter