Snow to Rain
by Evan Morgan Williams
Author's Note: What's the connection? In my story, a teacher and a former student, both on the skids, spar over the gift of a journal, a manual for life, so to speak. In the end, they utilize a different kind of writing. Content warning: self-harm.
The message from Tuyet said, “Mr. Johnson, let’s have coffee.”
Kyle messaged back, “Is something wrong?”
Then he felt bad about assuming the worst, so he added, “Always glad to see an old student,” and he remembered Tuyet and her sister—he’d taught her too—and he remembered their mom from all those conferences, and the phone calls to CPS, and he remembered hearing about the year at community college that didn’t pan out, and the beauty salon in the strip mall where Tuyet and her sister rented a chair, and as he remembered these things and knew he was right to assume the worst, Tuyet messaged back, “Name a place.”
Kyle replied, “Wherever you want.”
Tuyet messaged, “I don’t want anything.”
Kyle named a place. Close enough to walk, even in the snow, because he wasn’t sure Tuyet had a car. And it would be dark. Tuyet would be walking. Kyle was walking too.
Six months earlier, Tuyet had joined Facebook. Kyle was already there. Tuyet seemed to like the person she could become on Facebook. All those settings to customize, that profile to compose. She had friended so many people: classmates, friends, relatives, boys. She posted pictures from the beauty shop, a glossy manicure on dark skin, a shiny black bob, a woman’s face hidden behind her hair. Maybe it was Tuyet’s own face. Kyle couldn’t tell. She friended all her old teachers, including Kyle. Hadn’t she gotten over those times? Nostalgia, sentiment, regret: maybe those were feelings she needed to control. But she had been vulnerable to reach out, and Kyle’s classroom was the last place things had been good in her life. Happiness was simpler then. Kyle understood that. He was her teacher. He had read her journals. And let’s face it: he was on Facebook too.
Kyle was seated in a booth, downing a ruby port, watching the last daylight through the bottom of his glass, when Tuyet came in. Heavy snow had turned to heavy rain, and Tuyet brought the rain in with her, and it puddled on the floor. She hung her coat on a hook and headed for the bar. She ordered a glass of wine. She looked nice. Her black hair was smooth and shiny and flipped at the ends. She wore a maroon cashmere turtleneck. Nails to match. Black leather boots. Did her sister do all that? Was the sweater going back to Nordstrom tomorrow?
The bartender, Jesse, was a former student too. He had already caught up Kyle on his sad life. Said he was doing all right, but Kyle knew better. Tending bar? After so many years, Jesse had only made it five miles from home. Now Jesse was asking to see Tuyet’s ID. He held it to her face. Was she really twenty-one? Kyle had lost track of the years. Jesse handed back her ID and poured the wine. Tuyet straightened her necklace against her sweater. She smoothed the flip of her hair. Maybe she watched the rain reflected in the shiny mirror behind the bar. Maybe she watched herself. Jesse slid the glass of dark red wine to her. Tuyet leaned in to say something to Jesse and pointed at Kyle. Guess he was paying for that glass of wine.
Tuyet came over. She touched Kyle’s shoulder and sat across from him. Kyle said, “Just to be clear, it was nice of you to dress up, but as your teacher, I’m not going to say how beautiful you are. You cannot fathom the importance of that. Fathom?”
“Fathom. To get at something deep, to really understand.”
“Good. Good enough. Because beauty is unutterable. Unutterable...”
“Jesus Christ, Mr. Johnson.” And it was like old times.
Except it wasn’t. Because the next thing Tuyet said was his name. His first name.
“Kyle...”
And he let his name be a thing for her, and daylight giving way to darkness, and snow to rain, and the glass of wine that Tuyet put on his tab. All of this was for her. The teacher’s way.
Tuyet stared at the glass of dark red wine she was about to drink in front of her old teacher. Her fingernails around the stem of the glass were dark and slick like that wine, and that’s when a single stray raindrop rolled down her shiny hair and hit the metal surface of the table and broke apart. Tuyet tucked back her hair. She stared at her wine.
Kyle said, “So, Miss Tran, what do you—”
Her cellphone buzzed. She took her phone from her purse and flipped it open. “My sister. Sorry.” She began texting, her dark lips quivering with words, the way they always did when she was writing. Maybe she was saying, “Please don’t text me again.” She was polite like that. Her nails were shiny and dark, and they clicked on the flip phone’s tiny buttons. Bet her sister had done those nails at the salon. Picked out the color. Merlot, Kyle bet it was. Bet she set the flip in Tuyet’s hair. Picked out the cashmere sweater to match. She would take it back to Nordstrom the next day. She had a car...
Tuyet set down her phone. She spun the stem of her glass.
Kyle said, “How is Ashley, anyway?
“She’s fine. She’s waiting back at the apartment.”
“Is she okay?” Kyle turned to the window, like he could see all the way to the apartments through the dark and the rain.
“Don’t worry. She thinks she has to keep an eye on me. It’s a story she tells herself. But the truth is I’m the one keeping an eye on her.” Tuyet sipped her wine slow, as though she had to learn to like the stuff. “Anyway, she won’t kill herself tonight.”
“Well, you tell Ashley that Mr. Johnson says hello. I still remember—”
She tapped his arm. “Kyle, let’s get some food.”
So much for Ashley. Tuyet and Kyle ordered food. They started with the hot wings with the creamy dip. Kyle said he was buying, and Tuyet said I know you are, and since the bar had a clay oven, they ordered a small pizza too. They drank their wine and port. They used first names. They talked about old times because they didn’t have new times. They stared out the window and watched the dark rain battering a world that was white with snow and going gray.
What was Tuyet thinking? Kyle didn’t know. Something had to be wrong. Her message had come out of the blue, Let’s have coffee. Kyle was her teacher, so whatever was wrong with her was wrong with him. He had to know what it was.
He said, “How much am I buying?”
Tuyet’s mouth was getting used to the wine. Bigger sips now. She dragged the plate of wings and the pizza to her side of the table. “As much as I want?”
Which was good because she had said she didn’t want anything.
They watched the rain.
Tuyet said, “So much for snow.”
Kyle said, “Blame global warming.”
“You’re supposed to call it ‘climate change.’ It’s more inclusive of the range of effects.”
“More palatable to the public, that’s all. No one has to feel like it’s our fault.”
“Oh.”
They ordered sweet-potato fries, and Tuyet ate, and they watched the rain. It whipped against the window. It turned the snow to slush. Kyle asked Tuyet about the only thing they had together. And in a classroom, what did a teacher and a student have? He asked about her journals.
Tuyet said, “Kyle, maybe I used to write, but now—”
“I still remember your Howl for a New Generation. How did you even know about the original? It was so far before your time. Before mine too. I might be old, but not that old.”
“I heard it from my sister.”
“And where did she hear it?”
“Her dad.”
“You found it at his apartment, figured it out on your own, one of those nights while you were staying up late, keeping each other alive.”
“Fuck you, Kyle. I can talk about that, but you can’t.”
He said, “Sorry.” But he wasn’t sorry. He said, “You wrote those poems, the measure of yourself, of Ashley, your mom, the love among the destruction. There was another sister too, right? Much older? Was. You wrote about her. Of course, you never mentioned any of the dads.”
Tuyet said, “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“But that’s exactly how you wrote it down. What to say, what to omit. You were careful and in control, even as you emptied your soul. You pressed so hard, the pages felt rough like braille. When I read them.”
“Kyle, you don’t know the real me.”
Tuyet ate the buffalo wings and most of the slices of pizza, and they waited on those sweet potato fries, and more wine, and more rain, so much rain that the seal around the windows began to leak. Long streaks of rain dragged down the inside of the glass. And maybe there was a fleeting glance when Tuyet caught her face in the window, a face to love and heal and move past, but the rain streaked it away. Kyle knew because he was looking too.
Jesse brought more port and wine. Kyle pointed out the water streaking down the windows. Jesse didn’t say anything. He brought the sweet potato fries. They came with dipping sauces of ranch and ketchup. Tuyet dug in. Kyle watched her eat the fries, her head tilted, her hair sliding over one cheek, her fingers, pale, and the shiny nail polish, dipping a sweet potato fry into the ketchup, dripping. A single drop of ketchup dropped onto the table.
She looked up from the food. “What? Kyle, what the fuck?”
She followed his gaze to her hands.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re still around.”
“Okay...”
“Because there was some question about that. Anyway, your hands are perfect.”
“Fuck you.” She licked ketchup off her fingertips.
Halfway through his third glass of port, Kyle decided to stop being an asshole. A teacher needed to protect his student, right? And Tuyet knew it too. Kyle had been silent and sipping his port when Tuyet said, “That’s better.” She patted his wrist, her fingers sticky from the food. “Kyle, I saw what you posted on Facebook. I know those songs. I hurt myself today. Let’s go out tonight. Bleed like me. Okay, Kyle, you got me. I’m listening.”
So, she knew them all. Kyle said, “Maybe I just like those songs. You heard them as a cry for help, but whatever you heard, that says more about you than me.”
She laughed at that, a squint creasing the corners of her eyes. “Your text message asked if something was wrong with me, but I think you’re the one with something wrong. Look, you’re still wearing your wedding ring, and how many years ago did that dumpster fire go out? Are you happy, Kyle? No! You’re miserable enough to be an asshole, but are you sad enough to do something about it? Would you hurt others by hurting yourself?”
She was getting in. Kyle wanted to reach for some of her food, just to have something to occupy his hands. Kyle never let anyone in, but Tuyet was already inside, roaming the dark, bumping into things Kyle didn’t know were there. He looked at his reflection in the window, and if he saw nothing but streaks of rain, he was fine with that.
She said, “If you really want to hurt yourself, there is a private way.” But her own words seemed to make Tuyet nervous, and she dripped wine on her sweater. “Shit!”
Kyle dug out his fifty-dollar bill and slid it across to her. That was supposed to be for the meal, but now it was for Nordstrom. He had two more. No one else in his life to spend his money on. He said, “Sorry for being an ass. Your happiness matters to me. Not my own.”
Tuyet dabbed at her sweater. “God damn it.” She signaled Jesse for another glass of wine, another port for Kyle. She said, “Am I happy? Am I sad? Why do you need to know this? Your approval was important to me, but that was years ago. I was a kid. Please don’t be hurt, but I don’t think about the old times.”
Kyle said, “If my approval doesn’t matter anymore, you wouldn’t have texted.”
Tuyet gave him an eye roll. He was ready for that. It was time. The water from the windows was puddling on the floor, and the puddle was spreading like a bad thought he couldn’t think away. Jesse the bartender was chasing the puddle with a mop. And this is when Kyle reached in his jacket and set out a new Midori journal and a gleaming Cross pen. He pushed them across the table to Tuyet.
“Mr. Johnson!”
“It’s Kyle. You said so yourself. Take it, Tuyet. Because I bet you’re all out of space on your arms. Oh, don’t look so hurt! I knew about it all along. It was my job to know. But I’m not your teacher anymore.” He flipped open the journal and pushed it closer. “So from now on, the words you write will be yours. Something hopeful, maybe? The point of the journal is that you have choices about what to say. You choose how to live your life. Choose to be happy.”
Tuyet looked confused at choices. Confused at happiness? She looked scared at the blank white space there. Her maroon lips parted for words that would not come.
“What do I write?”
“Write anything you want.” Kyle meant to say that you don’t write to record desires, you write to create new ones that didn’t exist before the writing of them, but he knew she would say, “I know, I know,” and that would be the end of everything. So he said nothing. Let that awesome white space take up her thoughts alone.
The rain was leaking under the baseboard. Jesse swung that mop like he was bailing a sinking rowboat. Every sweep of the mop sent a ripple down the restaurant’s floor.
Tuyet shook her head, “Oh, Kyle, I just don’t know. And neither do you.”
Kyle said, “My own life is all wrong, but I need to know that I did right by yours.”
“Well, by meeting me here, you’re kind of interfering with the natural experiment. Besides, you should care about your own happiness more than mine.”
“Can’t this be both?”
“That’s codependent. One of your fancy words.”
“Do you want the journal or not?”
The puddle had reached their booth. Tuyet poked at the water with her pointy black boot. She said, “A long time ago, I took a chance, and I changed into what my teachers wanted. I was a good girl. Maybe I only wrote what I thought you wanted to hear. Anyway, you misread my meaning.”
That hurt. But his feelings didn’t matter, right? This was all about her. He said, “Don’t revise the past. I saw how you always pressed the pen so hard. You were saying what you needed to say. You found what you needed to feel.”
“And just the other day, you knew what to post online.”
“And you’re telling me not to say things to wound.”
She leaned close. “Sorry. We’re two people trying their best!”
“On this we agree. Okay, I shouldn’t have posted anything, but sometimes one has to test the world. To prove what? That no one cares?” Kyle sat back. He was done. Hope had skittered sideways. Hope was the snow washed away by the rain. Hope was—forget the god-damned metaphor. He said, “What is this so-called private way to feel sad?”
“Well, it is rather a way to feel nothing at all.”
There they god-damned were, sitting in a booth in a restaurant wet with rain, where the inside had become the outside. Kyle stared at Tuyet staring at the journal. Would she take it?
He said, “120 kids, a new crop, every year. I inherit all their pain and—”
“Nah you don’t.”
Kyle watched Tuyet, the symmetry of her face, the emptiness upon it, plain.
“Kyle.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying out your name in my mouth. Mr. Kyle Johnson.”
“How does it feel?” God damn it. He had come this close, this tantalizingly close, to asking her the right questions, and her to answering them. God damn, he got it wrong. He was always wrong. I hurt myself today...
Tuyet said, “Mr. Johnson, and I’m being completely serious and clear about myself, I don’t want to feel anything. And maybe that’s what you want too?”
Tuyet drank her wine, and Kyle drank his port, which was only a harder, darker wine.
Jesse sloshed through the water and turned off the neon Open sign. He was talking on a cordless phone. Maybe he was calling the owner. The water welled from a drain in the concrete floor. It smelled like stale beer. Meanwhile, Ashley was back at an apartment, worrying about her little sister. If anyone needed help, it was Ashley. But Tuyet had said there was nothing to worry about. Rain dripped from the ceiling now. Droplets struck with splatters. Kyle thought, they mustn’t strike my precious student, my former student, my—person that I knew.
Tuyet took Kyle’s hand. She turned it over. She gripped his wrist. “I’ll show you the private way.” She rolled up the cuff of his shirt. “You get out by going in.” Kyle felt the cold smoothness of her fingers. He felt tenderness. Concern. But he remembered that she took the hands of strangers every day, did it for a living, at a nail salon, so maybe this was routine for her. He wanted to pull back. She must have felt this pull, because she leaned closer across the table. Kyle could smell her shampoo. He smelled damp cashmere. She looked at his eyes. Measuring something inside? Waiting for his words?
She said, “Close your eyes. I always do. I always did, I mean. What do you feel?”
Tuyet dragged her cool fingernails across his wrist.
“It’s cold.”
“At first. We’ll drink more wine. We’ll write words and tear the pages away.”
She dragged again.
“Mr. Johnson. Kyle. Tell me when you feel nothing. And don’t think about the world’s problems. Don’t even think about your own. Stay right here, right now.”
Her fingernails felt smooth and pale and cool and painful.
Kyle said, “I never told you, but I’m the one who called CPS on your mom. Both times.”
“Hush.” Tuyet took back control. Not of Kyle, that was beyond her reach, but of herself, because that’s what they both wanted to control anyway.
He said, “It only hurts a little.”
“Almost there.” She dragged her nails harder. Her nails caught on his skin, she pressed so hard, the way she pressed her journal pages hard, breaking the tips of pencils, hard.
“Close your eyes. Just do that. What do you feel?”
“Merlot brown.”
“See? You can actually feel color.”
“Synesthesia, when one sense—”
“Shut up, Mr. Johnson. No one cares about your fancy words.”
Kyle never did close his eyes. Tuyet never did close hers. She pulled across his skin, row after tiny row, searing red lines as tight as matches in a box. Her eyes, glossing almost to tears, became black stones.
He said, “I wanted to help you. To know you were alive. To know that you got out.”
She said, “Oh, I’m alive. But I never got out. And I never asked for your help.”
“The Howl was remarkable. I hope you knew how I felt about it.”
“The real me didn’t hear you say it.”
She blew on his wrist. Her merlot lips grazed his skin. He couldn’t feel them.
He tried again. “The writing doesn’t move you; it becomes you…”
“Kyle, I’m done writing right now.”
She released her grip. She tapped the journal and nudged it an inch closer to his side. “Anyway, you’re the one with things you have to say.”
“No.” Kyle pushed it back to her. “Why did you quit the college, Tuyet?”
“I ran out of money. My mom ran out of money. My sister’s bills...”
The puddle of water had become still. The dripping from the ceiling had slowed. The storm was moving on. You could only rage for so long. Tuyet sat back. She smoothed her sweater over her arms.
“Now you’re a freak like me.”
“But not a complete one. Apparently, I have more to say.”
She tapped her nails on the table.
Kyle rolled down his sleeve. “Not tonight, though.”
Tuyet said, “Kyle, why are you so sad these days? Why were you sad back then?”
He didn’t like the answer. He didn’t like being tasked with answers. That was her role. The student’s role. Supposed to be.
Tuyet’s eyes slid to the dark window and then back to Kyle. “Why were you saving us instead of saving yourself? Don’t make this about me. What went wrong in your life that you had to make right in mine?”
He said, “That is unutterable.”
“But you said writing is to find the answer, not to record a known thing. The journal—”
His mind was too swollen to feel. “Unutterable. Incapable of being put to words.”
Tuyet, in a calm quiet voice that could only come from someone who felt nothing at all, said, “Mr. Johnson, tonight, why did you not call me beautiful?”
Kyle’s voice was just as calm, and he said, “It’s not a teacher’s role to say such a thing, such a simple, true thing.”
“That’s the easy answer. What’s the real answer?”
“Because it isn’t actually true?”
“We both know that’s wrong.”
“Because there will come a day when I say nothing—”
“There it is.”
The water was a quiet pool, one inch deep, plenty of concrete floor to spread itself wall to wall. Tuyet and Kyle sat the long way, slumped, relaxed, their feet extended on the cushioned seats. But the rain had moved on, and the snow had melted, and Jesse was chasing the water down the drain. And the water drizzling down the windows became a crawl, long slow streaks that dried before they made it all the way. Tuyet’s sister texted again, and Tuyet flipped open her cellphone, setting free a blue glow like opening a jar of fireflies. Kyle watched amazed, Tuyet’s mouth trembling with her words, her private words, and in that same soft voice he mouthed, “The light of the world.” She was the alone in the light of the world. Kyle was drunk. And the rain was drunk too. He wondered, how much skin did she have left to give to her inclinations? Any smooth places left on her dark arms? If she was running out of space, she was running out of time.
Tuyet put her phone in her purse. “I can’t light your darkness, Kyle. There’s something incomplete inside you… Not lost, just incomplete. Unilluminated. There’s something you don’t want to feel.”
“I don’t need any help now.”
The snowy world was rain.
Jesse finally had a free moment. He came for the plates. Tuyet nudged the journal toward the stack of plates. She said, “Some storm. How are you doing, dude?”
Jesse said, “I hate this job. I hate it here. I hate myself. It’s more than I can take.”
Kyle said, “Jesse, do you know Tuyet Tran? She’s Ashley Nguyen’s little sister. Half-sister, anyway. You remember Ashley...”
He said, “I don’t remember the old times. The sooner I get out of here, the better.”
Tuyet tossed the pen and journal on top of the dirty plates. Kyle was okay watching them go. He said to Tuyet, “What did Ashley want?”
“She’ll be all right.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s all for attention. You’re walking me home, by the way. It’s a lot farther than you said it would be. You can say hi to her yourself.”
“After I sober up. First, we’ll sit awhile. What am I coming down from, exactly? How long will it take?”
“Forever.”
“That’s too late for me.”
Tuyet crossed her arms. She held her cashmere close.
Kyle was still in a daze, thinking about, not feeling, the perfect lines on his wrist, when Tuyet said, “So, next time?”
“Next time? Are you asking for me or for yourself? Can it be both?”
Tuyet smiled, the corners of her eyes tightening, which made the smile real. “What will we order?”
“Anything you want.”
“I already told you—”
“You don’t want anything.”
The storm drizzled, and Tuyet had not brought an umbrella, just the little hood on her raincoat, and Kyle said they would share his umbrella, and she said there wouldn’t be room, one of them would be in the rain, and Kyle said that wouldn’t matter to him, and she said now you understand. Tuyet stood. Kyle stood. He felt the water through his tired old boots. He helped Tuyet pull her raincoat over her arms. She pulled her hood over her shiny black hair. She covered every part of her story.
Kyle said, “Your name, Tuyet, I remember, it means snow, pale skin, a life unwritten.”
She looked down, and her hair slid around her face, hiding away the last of her. She said, “I don’t speak Vietnamese anymore. Kyle, can we not?”
“But the difference of it. There was Sally and Ashley and then Tuyet. Think about it.”
“I don’t think about it. I feel about it. And the point is not to feel.” She took his wrist. “Someday, you might write again. If you do, don’t write me the way you want me to be. Just please say that I did what I could with what I had.”
Kyle put on his coat. Dropped two fifties on the table for Jesse. It wasn’t enough, but it was all he had. Jesse wouldn’t be here next time they came. Kyle felt clear of thought. He would walk Tuyet home and say not a single word, feel not a single thing, and this would be farther and darker than he had ever gone in the rain, but it would always be rain now, and never be snow again.
Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of short stories, including "The Divide," forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. In addition to a prior story in Cowboy Jamboree, his stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Witness, Zyzzyva, and Alaska Quarterly Review. A proud member of the deaf/HOH community, he is retired after 29 years of teaching in a distressed public school.
by Evan Morgan Williams
Author's Note: What's the connection? In my story, a teacher and a former student, both on the skids, spar over the gift of a journal, a manual for life, so to speak. In the end, they utilize a different kind of writing. Content warning: self-harm.
The message from Tuyet said, “Mr. Johnson, let’s have coffee.”
Kyle messaged back, “Is something wrong?”
Then he felt bad about assuming the worst, so he added, “Always glad to see an old student,” and he remembered Tuyet and her sister—he’d taught her too—and he remembered their mom from all those conferences, and the phone calls to CPS, and he remembered hearing about the year at community college that didn’t pan out, and the beauty salon in the strip mall where Tuyet and her sister rented a chair, and as he remembered these things and knew he was right to assume the worst, Tuyet messaged back, “Name a place.”
Kyle replied, “Wherever you want.”
Tuyet messaged, “I don’t want anything.”
Kyle named a place. Close enough to walk, even in the snow, because he wasn’t sure Tuyet had a car. And it would be dark. Tuyet would be walking. Kyle was walking too.
Six months earlier, Tuyet had joined Facebook. Kyle was already there. Tuyet seemed to like the person she could become on Facebook. All those settings to customize, that profile to compose. She had friended so many people: classmates, friends, relatives, boys. She posted pictures from the beauty shop, a glossy manicure on dark skin, a shiny black bob, a woman’s face hidden behind her hair. Maybe it was Tuyet’s own face. Kyle couldn’t tell. She friended all her old teachers, including Kyle. Hadn’t she gotten over those times? Nostalgia, sentiment, regret: maybe those were feelings she needed to control. But she had been vulnerable to reach out, and Kyle’s classroom was the last place things had been good in her life. Happiness was simpler then. Kyle understood that. He was her teacher. He had read her journals. And let’s face it: he was on Facebook too.
Kyle was seated in a booth, downing a ruby port, watching the last daylight through the bottom of his glass, when Tuyet came in. Heavy snow had turned to heavy rain, and Tuyet brought the rain in with her, and it puddled on the floor. She hung her coat on a hook and headed for the bar. She ordered a glass of wine. She looked nice. Her black hair was smooth and shiny and flipped at the ends. She wore a maroon cashmere turtleneck. Nails to match. Black leather boots. Did her sister do all that? Was the sweater going back to Nordstrom tomorrow?
The bartender, Jesse, was a former student too. He had already caught up Kyle on his sad life. Said he was doing all right, but Kyle knew better. Tending bar? After so many years, Jesse had only made it five miles from home. Now Jesse was asking to see Tuyet’s ID. He held it to her face. Was she really twenty-one? Kyle had lost track of the years. Jesse handed back her ID and poured the wine. Tuyet straightened her necklace against her sweater. She smoothed the flip of her hair. Maybe she watched the rain reflected in the shiny mirror behind the bar. Maybe she watched herself. Jesse slid the glass of dark red wine to her. Tuyet leaned in to say something to Jesse and pointed at Kyle. Guess he was paying for that glass of wine.
Tuyet came over. She touched Kyle’s shoulder and sat across from him. Kyle said, “Just to be clear, it was nice of you to dress up, but as your teacher, I’m not going to say how beautiful you are. You cannot fathom the importance of that. Fathom?”
“Fathom. To get at something deep, to really understand.”
“Good. Good enough. Because beauty is unutterable. Unutterable...”
“Jesus Christ, Mr. Johnson.” And it was like old times.
Except it wasn’t. Because the next thing Tuyet said was his name. His first name.
“Kyle...”
And he let his name be a thing for her, and daylight giving way to darkness, and snow to rain, and the glass of wine that Tuyet put on his tab. All of this was for her. The teacher’s way.
Tuyet stared at the glass of dark red wine she was about to drink in front of her old teacher. Her fingernails around the stem of the glass were dark and slick like that wine, and that’s when a single stray raindrop rolled down her shiny hair and hit the metal surface of the table and broke apart. Tuyet tucked back her hair. She stared at her wine.
Kyle said, “So, Miss Tran, what do you—”
Her cellphone buzzed. She took her phone from her purse and flipped it open. “My sister. Sorry.” She began texting, her dark lips quivering with words, the way they always did when she was writing. Maybe she was saying, “Please don’t text me again.” She was polite like that. Her nails were shiny and dark, and they clicked on the flip phone’s tiny buttons. Bet her sister had done those nails at the salon. Picked out the color. Merlot, Kyle bet it was. Bet she set the flip in Tuyet’s hair. Picked out the cashmere sweater to match. She would take it back to Nordstrom the next day. She had a car...
Tuyet set down her phone. She spun the stem of her glass.
Kyle said, “How is Ashley, anyway?
“She’s fine. She’s waiting back at the apartment.”
“Is she okay?” Kyle turned to the window, like he could see all the way to the apartments through the dark and the rain.
“Don’t worry. She thinks she has to keep an eye on me. It’s a story she tells herself. But the truth is I’m the one keeping an eye on her.” Tuyet sipped her wine slow, as though she had to learn to like the stuff. “Anyway, she won’t kill herself tonight.”
“Well, you tell Ashley that Mr. Johnson says hello. I still remember—”
She tapped his arm. “Kyle, let’s get some food.”
So much for Ashley. Tuyet and Kyle ordered food. They started with the hot wings with the creamy dip. Kyle said he was buying, and Tuyet said I know you are, and since the bar had a clay oven, they ordered a small pizza too. They drank their wine and port. They used first names. They talked about old times because they didn’t have new times. They stared out the window and watched the dark rain battering a world that was white with snow and going gray.
What was Tuyet thinking? Kyle didn’t know. Something had to be wrong. Her message had come out of the blue, Let’s have coffee. Kyle was her teacher, so whatever was wrong with her was wrong with him. He had to know what it was.
He said, “How much am I buying?”
Tuyet’s mouth was getting used to the wine. Bigger sips now. She dragged the plate of wings and the pizza to her side of the table. “As much as I want?”
Which was good because she had said she didn’t want anything.
They watched the rain.
Tuyet said, “So much for snow.”
Kyle said, “Blame global warming.”
“You’re supposed to call it ‘climate change.’ It’s more inclusive of the range of effects.”
“More palatable to the public, that’s all. No one has to feel like it’s our fault.”
“Oh.”
They ordered sweet-potato fries, and Tuyet ate, and they watched the rain. It whipped against the window. It turned the snow to slush. Kyle asked Tuyet about the only thing they had together. And in a classroom, what did a teacher and a student have? He asked about her journals.
Tuyet said, “Kyle, maybe I used to write, but now—”
“I still remember your Howl for a New Generation. How did you even know about the original? It was so far before your time. Before mine too. I might be old, but not that old.”
“I heard it from my sister.”
“And where did she hear it?”
“Her dad.”
“You found it at his apartment, figured it out on your own, one of those nights while you were staying up late, keeping each other alive.”
“Fuck you, Kyle. I can talk about that, but you can’t.”
He said, “Sorry.” But he wasn’t sorry. He said, “You wrote those poems, the measure of yourself, of Ashley, your mom, the love among the destruction. There was another sister too, right? Much older? Was. You wrote about her. Of course, you never mentioned any of the dads.”
Tuyet said, “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“But that’s exactly how you wrote it down. What to say, what to omit. You were careful and in control, even as you emptied your soul. You pressed so hard, the pages felt rough like braille. When I read them.”
“Kyle, you don’t know the real me.”
Tuyet ate the buffalo wings and most of the slices of pizza, and they waited on those sweet potato fries, and more wine, and more rain, so much rain that the seal around the windows began to leak. Long streaks of rain dragged down the inside of the glass. And maybe there was a fleeting glance when Tuyet caught her face in the window, a face to love and heal and move past, but the rain streaked it away. Kyle knew because he was looking too.
Jesse brought more port and wine. Kyle pointed out the water streaking down the windows. Jesse didn’t say anything. He brought the sweet potato fries. They came with dipping sauces of ranch and ketchup. Tuyet dug in. Kyle watched her eat the fries, her head tilted, her hair sliding over one cheek, her fingers, pale, and the shiny nail polish, dipping a sweet potato fry into the ketchup, dripping. A single drop of ketchup dropped onto the table.
She looked up from the food. “What? Kyle, what the fuck?”
She followed his gaze to her hands.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re still around.”
“Okay...”
“Because there was some question about that. Anyway, your hands are perfect.”
“Fuck you.” She licked ketchup off her fingertips.
Halfway through his third glass of port, Kyle decided to stop being an asshole. A teacher needed to protect his student, right? And Tuyet knew it too. Kyle had been silent and sipping his port when Tuyet said, “That’s better.” She patted his wrist, her fingers sticky from the food. “Kyle, I saw what you posted on Facebook. I know those songs. I hurt myself today. Let’s go out tonight. Bleed like me. Okay, Kyle, you got me. I’m listening.”
So, she knew them all. Kyle said, “Maybe I just like those songs. You heard them as a cry for help, but whatever you heard, that says more about you than me.”
She laughed at that, a squint creasing the corners of her eyes. “Your text message asked if something was wrong with me, but I think you’re the one with something wrong. Look, you’re still wearing your wedding ring, and how many years ago did that dumpster fire go out? Are you happy, Kyle? No! You’re miserable enough to be an asshole, but are you sad enough to do something about it? Would you hurt others by hurting yourself?”
She was getting in. Kyle wanted to reach for some of her food, just to have something to occupy his hands. Kyle never let anyone in, but Tuyet was already inside, roaming the dark, bumping into things Kyle didn’t know were there. He looked at his reflection in the window, and if he saw nothing but streaks of rain, he was fine with that.
She said, “If you really want to hurt yourself, there is a private way.” But her own words seemed to make Tuyet nervous, and she dripped wine on her sweater. “Shit!”
Kyle dug out his fifty-dollar bill and slid it across to her. That was supposed to be for the meal, but now it was for Nordstrom. He had two more. No one else in his life to spend his money on. He said, “Sorry for being an ass. Your happiness matters to me. Not my own.”
Tuyet dabbed at her sweater. “God damn it.” She signaled Jesse for another glass of wine, another port for Kyle. She said, “Am I happy? Am I sad? Why do you need to know this? Your approval was important to me, but that was years ago. I was a kid. Please don’t be hurt, but I don’t think about the old times.”
Kyle said, “If my approval doesn’t matter anymore, you wouldn’t have texted.”
Tuyet gave him an eye roll. He was ready for that. It was time. The water from the windows was puddling on the floor, and the puddle was spreading like a bad thought he couldn’t think away. Jesse the bartender was chasing the puddle with a mop. And this is when Kyle reached in his jacket and set out a new Midori journal and a gleaming Cross pen. He pushed them across the table to Tuyet.
“Mr. Johnson!”
“It’s Kyle. You said so yourself. Take it, Tuyet. Because I bet you’re all out of space on your arms. Oh, don’t look so hurt! I knew about it all along. It was my job to know. But I’m not your teacher anymore.” He flipped open the journal and pushed it closer. “So from now on, the words you write will be yours. Something hopeful, maybe? The point of the journal is that you have choices about what to say. You choose how to live your life. Choose to be happy.”
Tuyet looked confused at choices. Confused at happiness? She looked scared at the blank white space there. Her maroon lips parted for words that would not come.
“What do I write?”
“Write anything you want.” Kyle meant to say that you don’t write to record desires, you write to create new ones that didn’t exist before the writing of them, but he knew she would say, “I know, I know,” and that would be the end of everything. So he said nothing. Let that awesome white space take up her thoughts alone.
The rain was leaking under the baseboard. Jesse swung that mop like he was bailing a sinking rowboat. Every sweep of the mop sent a ripple down the restaurant’s floor.
Tuyet shook her head, “Oh, Kyle, I just don’t know. And neither do you.”
Kyle said, “My own life is all wrong, but I need to know that I did right by yours.”
“Well, by meeting me here, you’re kind of interfering with the natural experiment. Besides, you should care about your own happiness more than mine.”
“Can’t this be both?”
“That’s codependent. One of your fancy words.”
“Do you want the journal or not?”
The puddle had reached their booth. Tuyet poked at the water with her pointy black boot. She said, “A long time ago, I took a chance, and I changed into what my teachers wanted. I was a good girl. Maybe I only wrote what I thought you wanted to hear. Anyway, you misread my meaning.”
That hurt. But his feelings didn’t matter, right? This was all about her. He said, “Don’t revise the past. I saw how you always pressed the pen so hard. You were saying what you needed to say. You found what you needed to feel.”
“And just the other day, you knew what to post online.”
“And you’re telling me not to say things to wound.”
She leaned close. “Sorry. We’re two people trying their best!”
“On this we agree. Okay, I shouldn’t have posted anything, but sometimes one has to test the world. To prove what? That no one cares?” Kyle sat back. He was done. Hope had skittered sideways. Hope was the snow washed away by the rain. Hope was—forget the god-damned metaphor. He said, “What is this so-called private way to feel sad?”
“Well, it is rather a way to feel nothing at all.”
There they god-damned were, sitting in a booth in a restaurant wet with rain, where the inside had become the outside. Kyle stared at Tuyet staring at the journal. Would she take it?
He said, “120 kids, a new crop, every year. I inherit all their pain and—”
“Nah you don’t.”
Kyle watched Tuyet, the symmetry of her face, the emptiness upon it, plain.
“Kyle.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying out your name in my mouth. Mr. Kyle Johnson.”
“How does it feel?” God damn it. He had come this close, this tantalizingly close, to asking her the right questions, and her to answering them. God damn, he got it wrong. He was always wrong. I hurt myself today...
Tuyet said, “Mr. Johnson, and I’m being completely serious and clear about myself, I don’t want to feel anything. And maybe that’s what you want too?”
Tuyet drank her wine, and Kyle drank his port, which was only a harder, darker wine.
Jesse sloshed through the water and turned off the neon Open sign. He was talking on a cordless phone. Maybe he was calling the owner. The water welled from a drain in the concrete floor. It smelled like stale beer. Meanwhile, Ashley was back at an apartment, worrying about her little sister. If anyone needed help, it was Ashley. But Tuyet had said there was nothing to worry about. Rain dripped from the ceiling now. Droplets struck with splatters. Kyle thought, they mustn’t strike my precious student, my former student, my—person that I knew.
Tuyet took Kyle’s hand. She turned it over. She gripped his wrist. “I’ll show you the private way.” She rolled up the cuff of his shirt. “You get out by going in.” Kyle felt the cold smoothness of her fingers. He felt tenderness. Concern. But he remembered that she took the hands of strangers every day, did it for a living, at a nail salon, so maybe this was routine for her. He wanted to pull back. She must have felt this pull, because she leaned closer across the table. Kyle could smell her shampoo. He smelled damp cashmere. She looked at his eyes. Measuring something inside? Waiting for his words?
She said, “Close your eyes. I always do. I always did, I mean. What do you feel?”
Tuyet dragged her cool fingernails across his wrist.
“It’s cold.”
“At first. We’ll drink more wine. We’ll write words and tear the pages away.”
She dragged again.
“Mr. Johnson. Kyle. Tell me when you feel nothing. And don’t think about the world’s problems. Don’t even think about your own. Stay right here, right now.”
Her fingernails felt smooth and pale and cool and painful.
Kyle said, “I never told you, but I’m the one who called CPS on your mom. Both times.”
“Hush.” Tuyet took back control. Not of Kyle, that was beyond her reach, but of herself, because that’s what they both wanted to control anyway.
He said, “It only hurts a little.”
“Almost there.” She dragged her nails harder. Her nails caught on his skin, she pressed so hard, the way she pressed her journal pages hard, breaking the tips of pencils, hard.
“Close your eyes. Just do that. What do you feel?”
“Merlot brown.”
“See? You can actually feel color.”
“Synesthesia, when one sense—”
“Shut up, Mr. Johnson. No one cares about your fancy words.”
Kyle never did close his eyes. Tuyet never did close hers. She pulled across his skin, row after tiny row, searing red lines as tight as matches in a box. Her eyes, glossing almost to tears, became black stones.
He said, “I wanted to help you. To know you were alive. To know that you got out.”
She said, “Oh, I’m alive. But I never got out. And I never asked for your help.”
“The Howl was remarkable. I hope you knew how I felt about it.”
“The real me didn’t hear you say it.”
She blew on his wrist. Her merlot lips grazed his skin. He couldn’t feel them.
He tried again. “The writing doesn’t move you; it becomes you…”
“Kyle, I’m done writing right now.”
She released her grip. She tapped the journal and nudged it an inch closer to his side. “Anyway, you’re the one with things you have to say.”
“No.” Kyle pushed it back to her. “Why did you quit the college, Tuyet?”
“I ran out of money. My mom ran out of money. My sister’s bills...”
The puddle of water had become still. The dripping from the ceiling had slowed. The storm was moving on. You could only rage for so long. Tuyet sat back. She smoothed her sweater over her arms.
“Now you’re a freak like me.”
“But not a complete one. Apparently, I have more to say.”
She tapped her nails on the table.
Kyle rolled down his sleeve. “Not tonight, though.”
Tuyet said, “Kyle, why are you so sad these days? Why were you sad back then?”
He didn’t like the answer. He didn’t like being tasked with answers. That was her role. The student’s role. Supposed to be.
Tuyet’s eyes slid to the dark window and then back to Kyle. “Why were you saving us instead of saving yourself? Don’t make this about me. What went wrong in your life that you had to make right in mine?”
He said, “That is unutterable.”
“But you said writing is to find the answer, not to record a known thing. The journal—”
His mind was too swollen to feel. “Unutterable. Incapable of being put to words.”
Tuyet, in a calm quiet voice that could only come from someone who felt nothing at all, said, “Mr. Johnson, tonight, why did you not call me beautiful?”
Kyle’s voice was just as calm, and he said, “It’s not a teacher’s role to say such a thing, such a simple, true thing.”
“That’s the easy answer. What’s the real answer?”
“Because it isn’t actually true?”
“We both know that’s wrong.”
“Because there will come a day when I say nothing—”
“There it is.”
The water was a quiet pool, one inch deep, plenty of concrete floor to spread itself wall to wall. Tuyet and Kyle sat the long way, slumped, relaxed, their feet extended on the cushioned seats. But the rain had moved on, and the snow had melted, and Jesse was chasing the water down the drain. And the water drizzling down the windows became a crawl, long slow streaks that dried before they made it all the way. Tuyet’s sister texted again, and Tuyet flipped open her cellphone, setting free a blue glow like opening a jar of fireflies. Kyle watched amazed, Tuyet’s mouth trembling with her words, her private words, and in that same soft voice he mouthed, “The light of the world.” She was the alone in the light of the world. Kyle was drunk. And the rain was drunk too. He wondered, how much skin did she have left to give to her inclinations? Any smooth places left on her dark arms? If she was running out of space, she was running out of time.
Tuyet put her phone in her purse. “I can’t light your darkness, Kyle. There’s something incomplete inside you… Not lost, just incomplete. Unilluminated. There’s something you don’t want to feel.”
“I don’t need any help now.”
The snowy world was rain.
Jesse finally had a free moment. He came for the plates. Tuyet nudged the journal toward the stack of plates. She said, “Some storm. How are you doing, dude?”
Jesse said, “I hate this job. I hate it here. I hate myself. It’s more than I can take.”
Kyle said, “Jesse, do you know Tuyet Tran? She’s Ashley Nguyen’s little sister. Half-sister, anyway. You remember Ashley...”
He said, “I don’t remember the old times. The sooner I get out of here, the better.”
Tuyet tossed the pen and journal on top of the dirty plates. Kyle was okay watching them go. He said to Tuyet, “What did Ashley want?”
“She’ll be all right.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s all for attention. You’re walking me home, by the way. It’s a lot farther than you said it would be. You can say hi to her yourself.”
“After I sober up. First, we’ll sit awhile. What am I coming down from, exactly? How long will it take?”
“Forever.”
“That’s too late for me.”
Tuyet crossed her arms. She held her cashmere close.
Kyle was still in a daze, thinking about, not feeling, the perfect lines on his wrist, when Tuyet said, “So, next time?”
“Next time? Are you asking for me or for yourself? Can it be both?”
Tuyet smiled, the corners of her eyes tightening, which made the smile real. “What will we order?”
“Anything you want.”
“I already told you—”
“You don’t want anything.”
The storm drizzled, and Tuyet had not brought an umbrella, just the little hood on her raincoat, and Kyle said they would share his umbrella, and she said there wouldn’t be room, one of them would be in the rain, and Kyle said that wouldn’t matter to him, and she said now you understand. Tuyet stood. Kyle stood. He felt the water through his tired old boots. He helped Tuyet pull her raincoat over her arms. She pulled her hood over her shiny black hair. She covered every part of her story.
Kyle said, “Your name, Tuyet, I remember, it means snow, pale skin, a life unwritten.”
She looked down, and her hair slid around her face, hiding away the last of her. She said, “I don’t speak Vietnamese anymore. Kyle, can we not?”
“But the difference of it. There was Sally and Ashley and then Tuyet. Think about it.”
“I don’t think about it. I feel about it. And the point is not to feel.” She took his wrist. “Someday, you might write again. If you do, don’t write me the way you want me to be. Just please say that I did what I could with what I had.”
Kyle put on his coat. Dropped two fifties on the table for Jesse. It wasn’t enough, but it was all he had. Jesse wouldn’t be here next time they came. Kyle felt clear of thought. He would walk Tuyet home and say not a single word, feel not a single thing, and this would be farther and darker than he had ever gone in the rain, but it would always be rain now, and never be snow again.
Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of short stories, including "The Divide," forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. In addition to a prior story in Cowboy Jamboree, his stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Witness, Zyzzyva, and Alaska Quarterly Review. A proud member of the deaf/HOH community, he is retired after 29 years of teaching in a distressed public school.