She was almost casual in the way she said this. She reached and put down her glass on the bed table.

‘He got on a bus,’ I said.

‘Just like a school-boy,’ she said. She looked at her glass of beer.

‘He told me he hadn’t intended to cause any trouble.’

‘I’m sure it’s true,’ my mother said. ‘He has very beautiful intentions. What’s your opinion?’

‘I think it’s all right,’ I said.

My mother reached for her glass and took a drink out of it and shook her head while she swallowed. ‘What about me?’ she said, and rested her glass on her stomach. People on the television were laughing. A fat man was running around a small man and being chased by a dog. I didn’t feel comfortable being in the room at that moment. ‘Maybe he’s going to leave me. Maybe we’re on our own right now.’

‘I don’t think he’s going to do that,’ I said.

‘We haven’t been very intimate lately. You might as well hear that.’

I did not say anything.

‘You probably think I’m making too big a deal out of this, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re thinking,’ I said.

‘Nobody really wants to please you, that’s all.’ She shook her head as if it was almost a joke. ‘That’s all. They want to please themselves. If you’re happy with that, then everything’s great. If you aren’t, too bad. That’s important,’ my mother said. ‘It’s the key to everything.’ She put her head back on the pillow and stared up at the light globe in the ceiling. ‘Happiness. Sadness. The works. You’re happy if–’

Just at that moment the phone started to ring in the kitchen. I turned to go answer it, but my mother said, ‘Let’s don’t answer that.’ The phone kept ringing, loud and with a hard metal sound where it sat on the table, as if something urgent was waiting to be said by whoever was calling. But we were not going to hear it. I must’ve looked nervous because my mother smiled at me, a smile she had smiled at me all my life. ‘Who do you think it is?’ she said. The phone quit ringing and the house was completely silent except for the TV.

‘Maybe it was Dad,’ I said.

‘Maybe it was,’ she said.

‘It could’ve been a wrong number, too,’ I said, though I thought the phone call was my father and I felt afraid because I hadn’t answered it.

‘We’ll never know now,’ my mother said. ‘But. What I was saying.’ She took a last drink of her beer. ‘You’re happy if the thing you naturally want makes the other person happy.