He’d said he would be leaving it to an organization that offered sanctuary to abandoned German shepherds, but that had to be a joke, right? The German shepherds wouldn’t be quartered in the beach house; rather, the shabby but invaluable property would be sold, the proceeds going to an organization that had to be fraudulent, unlicensed, a figment of her father’s imagination. Her father said that he loved her—he just wasn’t going to leave her the beach house, which to him had become not the beach house at all but, in truth, something else entirely. He believed he was going to pass soon, and he had been thinking about mighty matters. There was much to learn. He was exploring many teachings, and one avenue of thought had somehow led him to disinherit his only child—Amber, her name was, a name she quite reasonably detested.
“I grew up there,” she said. “I have memories.”
“You collected conchs, put them in boiling water, gouged them out with a fork and spoon, then displayed their empty homes on a shelf in your room,” her father said.
“Not all the time,” she protested. “You always mention that. It’s mean.”
Her father was sipping something green from a scratched plastic glass, which must have negated much of the good the beverage might have to offer. It had been prescribed for his blood. There was something not right about his blood. Or was it that something that had to move through his blood wasn’t the right shape?
“We’ve never even known a German shepherd,” Amber said.
“I had one as a young man. I brought him into marriage with your mother. You were around, but I guess you can’t remember him. Titus.”
“I was around?”
“Well, you were. It pains me that you don’t recall him.”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 15, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der January 15, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Thataway Thomas McGuane
The two sisters were growing old now, but they went on gazing toward Palm Springs from this windblown prairie town as though to Mecca.
THE CURRENT CINEMA APOCALYPSE WHEN
“Megalopolis.”
THE THEATRE - PHOTO REALISM
Moisés Kaufman's Here There Are Blueberries.”
AGE OF ANXIETY
The love songs of Billie Eilish.
FAMILY PORTRAIT
In his latest novel, Garth Risk Hallberg shrinks his frame.
EYES UP HERE
The perils and pleasures of a nice rack.
A CRITIC AT LARGE SAY THE WORD
Why liberals struggle to defend liberalism.
A REPORTER AT LARGE YOU MAKE ME SICK
How corporate scientists discovered—and then helped to conceal—the dangers of forever chemicals.
THE WORLD OF TELEVISION CASTOFFS
REALITY-TV CONTESTANTS ARE BARELY PAID, AND THE EXPERIENCE CAN FEEL LIKE ABUSE. SHOULD THEY UNIONIZE?
SHOUTS & MURMURS IDENTIFIED
A panel of scientific experts commissioned by NASA to study unidentified anomalous phenomena,” more widely known as UFOs, said Thursday that it found no evidence that any of the reported objects were extraterrestrial in origin.