But he was. That was exactly what he’d been about to say. And he was only able to claim the high road now because she talked faster than he did and hadn’t allowed him to put his foot in his mouth.

Why did he do this? he wondered. What compelled him to attack her, to disparage her abilities, to mock her accomplishments, to denigrate everything she did? It wasn’t that he thought himself superior, as she often suggested. It wasn’t that he felt inferior and belittled others in an attempt to make up for it, either. No, it was simpler than that. Simpler, and at the same time, more complex.

He liked to hurt people.

The ants.

He took a deep breath, stared down at his mashed potatoes. It was a hard admission to make, a clear-eyed yet withering self-assessment, an understanding of himself that he’d rather not possess. Not many people could recognize or acknowledge such a base and reprehensible motive—

Jesus, he thought. He was even using this as fodder for self-congratulation, complimenting himself for recognizing that he was a bastard.

What the hell was wrong with him?

It had all started with those damn ants.

He looked across the table at Carole. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m… I’ve just had a bad day.”

“It’s not only today,” she told him.

“I know, I know—”

“No. You don’t know.”

“What do you want me to do, Carole? I said I’m sorry.”

“You’re an arrogant, self-centered jerk sometimes.”

“I—”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now, Nort. Just shut up and eat your dinner.”

They finished the rest of the meal in silence, and afterward he went out into the living room to watch a documentary on the Civil War on A&E while she retreated into the kitchen.

He finished grading the last test paper and put it on the pile, shaking his head. He hadn’t had high expectations to begin with, but the scores were even worse than he thought they’d be.

Kids seemed to be getting dumber and dumber each year.

He sighed, grabbed his cup, finished off the last lukewarm swallow of coffee. They weren’t really stupid, these students, but they weren’t educated and had no desire to be so. They had no intellectual guidance, no one to tell them what they should know and why they should know it. “The post-literate generation,” he’d heard them called, and that was as good a description as any. They did not read, were not conversant with the essential facts and ideas at the core of Western culture, were not even up on current events, but they had an encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-year-old television shows and bad popular music. Even his best students were smart in the wrong way: media-savvy kids who dealt in trivia, the intellectual currency of their time.

It was a sad state of affairs.