No Good to Cry by Andrew Lanh

the woman who approached from behind. She lovingly touched his elbow as he moved aside.
    She introduced herself. “Soung Bach Pham. Call me Lucy. Everybody does.” She winked at her husband and grinned. “Minh ain’t used to company.”
    He clicked his tongue but looked relieved. They exchanged glances—companionable, warm, necessary.
    Lucy was as small as her husband, but slender, wispy almost, with a delicate oval face and a cupid’s-bow mouth that brightened her look. She blinked quickly, a nervous habit perhaps, but her eyes glistened. They looked—“happy” is the word that came to mind, but happy with wariness. We held eye contact for a second, but she broke the look.
    â€œ Chao mung ban! ” She bowed. Welcome! “It’s Sunday morning,” she sang out. “We have mi ga .”
    â€œ Cam on .” I thanked her.
    We were ushered into a small dining room that seemed even smaller with an oversized walnut table and chairs, a breakfront taking up one wall, and an illuminated cabinet filled with cardboard boxes—packages of rice noodles with brightly colored Chinese lettering, boxes of straws and napkins, a shelf of mismatched old dishes and glasses. The family storage bin. Chopsticks and bowls were already laid out on the table.
    When I glanced through the doorway into the kitchen, I spotted a teenage boy bent over a textbook at the table. Was this Simon? If so, my stereotyped judgment was challenged because the boy looked classically studious—goggle glasses, scrawny shoulders, a picked-at complexion. For a moment he looked up, distracted, probably bothered by my gaze, but there was no expression on his face. His face dipped back to his book. A pencil gripped in his hand scribbled something on a notepad.
    Lucy Pham saw me looking.
    â€œWilson, come say hello.”
    The boy didn’t move until his father stood up. “Now.” A loud command. “Now.”
    The skinny boy, pushing up the eyeglasses that kept slipping down his narrow nose, ambled into the doorway.
    He grumbled, “Hi.” A half-wave. A cellphone beeped in a baggy pocket of his khakis, and he turned away. “Sorry. I got homework.” He pointed back to the kitchen. “I don’t wanna be late with my paper.” He looked back at his mother. “I told you—call me Will.”
    â€œEat first.” His father’s voice was firm.
    â€œMom told me to eat before.” He glanced at Hank and me as though the presence of strangers would inhibit basic digestion.
    Lucy spoke up, apology in her tone. “Mike, he’s had his bowl already. I figured you want to talk…alone…”
    That didn’t make Mike happy. “You could’ve told me.”
    Lucy beamed. “Wilson is at Kingswood-Oxford. A scholar, my boy. A letter from Obama last year.”
    Wilson had already returned to the kitchen table. He let out an unhappy grunt, a teenager recoiling from a parent’s praise to strangers.
    Within seconds a young girl stepped into the doorway, but the look on her face suggested she’d been ordered to make an appearance.
    â€œThis is Hung. We call her Hazel.” Lucy draped her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “Wilson’s twin sister.”
    The young girl was beautiful, slender like her mother, with her mother’s delicate face. She didn’t look like Wilson, to be sure, but then his face was masked by the oversized black-rimmed eyeglasses. She wore a slight trace of pink lipstick, a hint of eye shadow, a bulky white cashmere sweater pulled down to reveal a bit of her left shoulder.
    Yes, I thought, a younger version of her mother with brilliant black hair, lazy eyes a little too close together so that she looked as though she were always in deep thought—and a creamy complexion that looked painted on. A far cry from her dark-skinned father. But she had her father’s blunt chin and wide nose, though