Happy’s been waiting fifteen years.
Not with ultimatums. She just waits. While I figure out that nodding at your phone isn’t the same as listening.
I don’t think that’s what she meant to do.
Arash is eleven. Nine of those years he’s been saying “Baba, look at this.”
Last month I looked. A beetle. Nothing special.
The way his face changed when I crouched down—
Lost my job in 2019. The business after that died in eight months. Destroyed a friendship because I wouldn’t say sorry for something that was my fault.
Still thinking about that.
At the hospital yesterday. Routine tests I’d been avoiding.
The nurse drawing my blood had badly swollen knuckles. But her hands were steady.
“Does that hurt?”
“Every day.” Small smile. “But people need their blood drawn.”
Thirty-seven years. Could retire.
I sat there with the cotton ball pressed to my arm for a while after she left.
There’s a janitor at Arash’s school. Sumon. Cleans at night, studies law during the day.
Eight years like this.
I asked him once, too casual, “How do you manage?”
He looked at me. “I want better for my children. So I do it.”
That was it.
My wifi was slow this morning. I complained to Happy about it for ten minutes.
Grocery store near our house. Rehana Apu works there.
She remembers names. Not the customer service kind. The real kind. Asks about your kids.
Business schools teach something they call engagement strategies.
Rehana Apu just knows your mother’s name.
My father retired five years ago. Started teaching evening classes for adults who never learned to read properly.
Never talks about it. Just shows up three nights a week.
I don’t show up like that.
The relationship before Happy ended badly.
I’m defensive. I shut down. I expect people to know what I’m thinking and then get angry when they don’t.
The textbooks have words for these things.
Having someone leave you makes them real.
When Amma was dying, I sat in the chair next to her bed.
Can’t think about death abstractly when it’s right there.
Been three years. Still don’t know what to do with what I saw.
Rahim showed up when I lost my job. Just arrived at my house with biryani. Sat there while I fell apart.
Didn’t say anything about what friends do.
Same thing when Amma died. And that patch with Happy where I couldn’t be around.
He just comes.
Mr. Kamal is seventy-eight. Gardens every morning. Same time, every day.
I used to think that was sad.
Maybe he knows something.
Last month I overpaid a rickshaw puller. Hundred taka. Wasn’t paying attention.
He came back. Returned it.
I was surprised. That says something about me.
He shrugged. “It’s not mine.”
I kept the hundred taka in my wallet for a week before spending it.
Happy’s mother left at fifty-two. New city. Started over.
I thought she was crazy. I was twenty-five then.
Now when I’m scared—which is often—I think about her.
Last week I saw Arash help a kid who fell at the park. Didn’t make noise about it. Just helped him up, checked, left.
Don’t think he learned that from my lectures.
This morning I was tired. Snapped at Happy over nothing. Arash was watching from the doorway.
Didn’t know he was there.
There’s a tea stall. Kashem Chacha runs it. Makes tea the same way for twenty years.
Never rushes.
Never heard him talk about taking pride in anything.
Grateful for school. University. All that.
But that nurse’s steady hands. Sumon’s eight years. The rickshaw puller coming back. Amma in that chair. Rahim bringing biryani without being asked.
Happy waiting.
Sometimes at night I lie awake thinking about what Arash is learning from me when I don’t know he’s watching.
Not the things I tell him.
The other things.
This morning he asked, “Baba, are you happy?”
I said I don’t know.
He went back to his cereal.
Maybe that was the right answer. Maybe not.
The tea’s getting cold.
