What does your brother do? she asks Eddy on the way home, and Eddy says he has three paper routes. Paper routes? A grown man? Isn't he twenty? Says he doesn't need much to live on. And we both got something when the old man died. He lives on that? No, he bought a Bugatti. Shit, where's he keep a Bugatti? Oh, he crashed it or gave it away, I forget. So he stays with your mom? Trailer out back. Where I saw the chickens? Mom would rather he didn't keep chickens. Did you all eat supper together all the time growing up? Yes, he says. She likes the idea of her and Eddy learning about each other's childhood. She starts to tell him about her mother's voice crackling from the intercom every night at six, the meal laid out on plates on the kitchen counter, all of them shuffling off to their rooms with their plates to eat alone. He glances at her vaguely and speeds up to take the ramp onto the highway. They are driving through early-spring croplands. She stares out. The fields look shaved. We had chewing and long silences, he says. It's not much better.
この記事は The New Yorker の January 29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The New Yorker の January 29, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
QUARTET ISLAND
Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.
FIX YOU
The self-help positivity of Coldplay.
ILLUMINATIONS
Suzanne Jackson captures the transformative power of light.
RAT PACK
The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future.
ROYAL TREATMENT
The unrivalled omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth IL.
WELL, WELL, WELL
Eating—and not-in the epicenter of hype diets.
NEWARK STATE OF MIND
Mayor Ras Baraka's reasonable radicalism.
DOOM SCROLLING
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
THE WORKER REVOLT
Harris and Walz try to stop blue-collar Americans from drifting to Trump.
THE CHIT-CHATBOT
Is talking with a machine a conversation?