Stanley tracks down Iris waiting for a bus, and asks her 'teach me to read'. There is a deeply pained look on Stanley's face as he receives his father's few personal belongings. He is devastated that he couldn't take care of his father during his final years. After a few weeks his father dies at the home and the management for several days couldn't contact Stanley, who has no phone, place of work, nor any real address. He will visit every Sunday and his father food to supplement that offered the boarding house. His father is not ill, has never taken any medications and still in control of his faculties, but now must share a small dorm room with three other old men. Stanley's loss of a job is troubling, he now has to move, put his elderly father in a shabby boarding home, and live in a garage while taking odd jobs as a toilet attendant and day laborer. The next day, Stanley gets fired, his illiteracy makes him a safety threat to others even though he is a good cook and makes great soups. Iris hears this exchange from the threatening manager, innocently tells the boss that Stanley couldn't be the culprit because can't read or write. In the midst of this encounter, the manager storms in yelling about some $2000 worth of supposedly stolen food supplies, however Stanley hasn't a clue about the shipping orders being waved in his face. Iris asks Stanley for some pain medication in the cafeteria lunch line, but Stanley offers her every small bottle, but never the requested one. It slowly dawns on Iris that Stanley is illiterate. It is revealed that he cannot sign his name, does not drive, rides a bicycle and still lives with his elderly father. While retrieving a pair of repaired shoes, and without the claim stub, he is asked to sign his name, but instead just jumps the counter, grabs the shoes and hurries from the shop. As their friendship develops, Iris starts noticing a few odd things about Stanley. Stanley works in the bakery's staff cafeteria, and he comforts her after she is roughed up by the thug. One of the few bright spots in her life is her blossoming friendship with Stanley Cox, a nice guy whom she first meets when he comes to her aid after her purse is stolen by a street thug on a public bus. Eventually, Kelly becomes pregnant and adds more fuel to the family fires.
Iris and her family live in a high crime area. Also visiting at times are her unemployed sister Sharon and Sharon's abusive husband Joe. Still getting over the death of her husband, she lives from paycheck to paycheck as she raises her two children, Kelly and Richard. Iris King is a working-class mother and widow in Connecticut with a job at a large commercial bakery.
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