flâneur

“From, To,” by David Bezmozgis | The New Yorker

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At ten o’clock on a Wednesday night, he gets a call from his aunt’s number. It’s late to get a call from his aunt, but his mother is often with his aunt, and it’s not unusual for her to call at that hour. But it’s his aunt on the line, her voice pained, then disintegrating. And that’s it; he feels a plummet and a deletion commensurate with the space his mother occupied in his life. Nothing will fill it. He knows this from his father’s death. He’ll go around with another amorphous blank, until he himself becomes one in the consciousnesses of his children. There are immediate tangible demands that require a clarity of mind that eludes him. Normally, he prides himself on precisely this kind of ability. His work, in real-estate law, consists almost entirely of accurately doing things in the proper sequence. But at first he can’t even make sense of what his aunt tells him. His mother has died but his aunt is not with her. His mother is on the roof of her condominium. She was playing Rummiku

Save this story Save this story At ten o’clock on a Wednesday night, he gets a call from his aunt’s number. It’s late to get a call from his aunt, but his mother is often with his aunt, and it’s not unusual for her to call at that hour. But it’s his aunt on the line, her voice pained, then disintegrating. And that’s it; he feels a plummet and a deletion commensurate with the space his mother occupied in his life. Nothing will fill it. He knows this from his father’s death. He’ll go around with another amorphous blank, until he himself becomes one in the consciousnesses of his children. There a

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