To be happy

by Zoë Davis

Every morning my father dies a little. Not enough to be noticed or to cause concern. His faculties are all there. He is by no means diminished of intellect and stands as tall as he ever did. At breakfast he scans the newspaper with a magnifying glass to make the evils of the world a little clearer. I tell him he should get glasses, but he has tried them and he didn’t like them and that is that. With a carpenter’s finger he underlines a column of text I must read and stabs it awake, startling another murder into the kitchen. Another boat. Another gang. The radio smooths its skirts, pats him on the back and plays soft around him. It knows that duty is simply routine packaged prettily. The man who fed me aeroplanes of pureed swede lulls over his coffee, rustling back between the sports pages. He leaves the crossword for me. When I move, his dog-head jerks. Where are you going? he asks. Work, I say. He doesn’t know where that is, nor does he care, only that I am happy and that I carry my car keys between my second and third knuckles, just like he taught me to live, to be happy.

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