Mother-in-Law's Private Lessons

His mother-in-law offers lessons and closes the door before she names the subject. She is a married woman in the city, precise and impossible to rush, and the privacy of the hour is the point she insists on. Nothing in the arrangement belongs to a sister, a rumor, or a second household. If the word pupil fits anyone here, it fits a grown man: him. / Each lesson moves the line of what a family visit is allowed to be. She corrects him. He comes back. The next class is on the calendar, and the homework is not his to tell.