My mother calls every Sunday.
It is 10am her time which makes it 5pm mine, which is the specific hour when the work is done and the day hasn't decided what it wants to be yet. I am usually somewhere between the laptop and the first evening beer and she calls into that gap with the reliability of someone who has been doing this for two years and intends to keep doing it.
She asks if I'm eating properly.
I am eating the best food of my life.
This is not an exaggeration. I have eaten things in the last 10 years that I will think about for the rest of my life. A bowl of bún bò Huế at 7am from a woman older than my grandmother. Bánh xèo from a street cart that cost sixty cents and took four minutes to make and was gone in three. Mì Quảng in Da Nang in a place with four plastic tables and a menu written on a chalkboard that I couldn't fully read and it didn't matter. Khao soi in Chiang Mai on a rainy Tuesday that made me understand for the first time why people move countries for food.
I tell her yes.
She doesn't ask for details. She is asking something larger than the question — she is asking are you okay, are you eating, does someone know where you are, is someone taking care of you. The food is a proxy for all of it. I answer the proxy.
She asks when I'm coming home.
I say soon.
I have been saying soon for two years. In the beginning soon meant something — a vague intention, a genuine uncertainty about the timeline. Now soon is a word we use to get past the question without either of us having to be honest about what the honest answer would do to the call.
She knows this. I know this. We both know the other one knows. This is the specific grammar of the relationship — things understood on both sides, left unsaid on both sides, the silence around them treated as a kindness rather than a deception.
It is a kindness. I think.
We talk about the weather.
Her weather. Grey, November-specific grey, the kind that settles into cities in October and doesn't leave until April and which I have not missed once in two years. She tells me it rained on Thursday. She tells me the heating has been playing up. She tells me about the neighbours — something about a planning application, something about the new family at number fourteen, something about the dog at number eight that barks at 6am which is not new but remains worth mentioning.
I listen. I make the noises that mean I'm listening. Outside my window a motorbike passes trailing someone's music — something Vietnamese and fast, gone before I can hear it properly.
I tell her nothing about my life.
Not because there is nothing to tell. Because my life does not translate into the kind of sentences that fit a Sunday phone call. How do you explain the bún bò Huế at 7am to someone who is describing a planning application. How do you explain the specific freedom of 5pm on a Tuesday in a city that doesn't know your name. How do you explain soon when soon means something you don't have a word for yet.
You don't. You ask about the neighbours instead.
Before she hangs up she says be careful.
She has said this at the end of every call for two years. It has become a closing ritual — the thing said before the thing ends, the way some families say I love you and some families say be careful and both mean the same thing differently.
I say I will.
The city outside my window is loud and warm and completely indifferent to both of us. A street vendor is selling something. A dog is barking at nothing. Somewhere nearby someone is cooking something that smells extraordinary.
I mean it though. About being careful.
Mostly.
I will call her next Sunday.
She will ask if I'm eating properly. I will say yes, which will be true. She will ask when I'm coming home. I will say soon, which will mean what it means.
We will talk about the weather.
Before she hangs up she will say be careful.
I will say I will.
This is enough. It has to be enough. And it is.
Andrew — No Refunds •••