New York

New York is both a place where members of Yolandi’s family build separate lives and a destination that briefly gathers them together. The city appears through specific addresses and encounters: Will’s studies and work, Barry’s life in Manhattan, and visits to see Will and Zoe in Brooklyn. These details give New York a practical place in the family’s geography, while the trips there make it a setting for shared experiences across generations.

Family Geography

New York enters the family story through Will’s move into adult life. He is in his first year at NYU when Yolandi is in Toronto, and she has arranged for him to stay there with Nora for a few days while she is back in Winnipeg. His studies place him in New York, but the arrangement also shows how family life stretches across cities: Will can be away at university and still be enlisted to keep an eye on his younger sister during his mother’s absence.

His father Barry is another link to the city. Julie asks whether Barry is paying for Will’s university education in New York. Yolandi explains that Barry works for a bank creating stochastic local volatility models, has a mysterious manner, and is someone she and Barry hardly speak to. The financial support connects Barry to Will’s education even as the two parents remain distant from one another; New York is where that support becomes visible in the practical matter of university.

The city’s geography is more specific when Yolandi needs to contact Barry after a family crisis. She phones him in Manhattan and asks him to reach Will and buy him a ticket to Winnipeg immediately, offering to pay him back. Barry says he will pay for the ticket, leave work, and look for Will, who is probably at his landscaping job in Queens. Manhattan and Queens are not interchangeable labels here: they mark the separate points from which father and son must be brought into contact. Barry and Yolandi have not really spoken in years, but the urgent request reopens communication, and Barry responds with help.

Will’s Life in the City

Will’s New York life is shown through both university and work. His first-year status at NYU makes the city a place of study, while his landscaping job in Queens offers a different, working setting. The evidence does not elaborate on either routine, but placing these details side by side makes his life there more than a distant reference to college: he is also earning money through work, and his family must locate him through the ordinary details of where he might be.

A later letter from Yolandi reports that Will has gone back to New York and cannot wait to see Elfrieda and Nic in the summer. The note situates his return within ongoing family ties rather than presenting it as a clean departure. New York is where he goes back to after time away, while the anticipated summer visit links that life to relatives elsewhere. In the same letter, Yolandi describes Nora’s new boyfriend, a Swedish scholarship student in one of her classes; that detail belongs to the household in Toronto, and helps distinguish the lives and relationships unfolding in the two cities.

Visits and Shared Experiences

New York also becomes a meeting place when Lottie, Nora, and Yolandi travel there to see Will and Zoe. They go to the Museum of Modern Art, where they encounter a Marina Abramović exhibition. The show brings the group into a public cultural space with a challenging installation and a narrow doorway through which visitors have to pass. They hesitate as other gallery-goers cluster and grow restless. Meanwhile, Lottie wanders off to look at the exhibits, and the others lose track of her. The scene gives the visit its own small uncertainty: the family arrives together, but even in the museum they do not remain in one group or share exactly the same attention.

Nora recognizes celebrities among the visitors, identifying fashion designers and actors whom the rest of the group does not know. Her knowledge marks a difference in perspective within the family without separating her from the shared outing. The museum visit brings public spectacle, crowd behavior, and family distraction into the same episode; New York is not simply a backdrop for seeing Will, but also a place where the group encounters experiences unfamiliar to some of its members.

The trip ends in Brooklyn, close to where Will and Zoe live. On their last day, Lottie takes everyone out for a large steak dinner. Afterward, the group walks through the streets late at night, singing and trying to remember the things a mother promises her crying baby in a mockingbird song. Lottie, Nora, and Yolandi link arms while Nora sings a Weepies song. Will carries Zoe on his back, and when she loses a flip-flop, they retrace their steps in the dark to find it. These small actions make the visit a family memory built out of meals, songs, walking, and looking after one another.

Narrative Significance

The New York episodes place family relationships alongside the distances that complicate them. Will’s education and work locate him away from Yolandi and Nora; Barry’s residence in Manhattan links him to Will while underscoring his estrangement from Yolandi. The urgent ticket request shows that even a long silence between former partners can give way to practical cooperation when a family member needs help.

The visit with Lottie and Nora offers a different view of distance. Rather than organizing the city around crisis or logistics, the narrative gathers the family through a museum outing and an evening walk in Brooklyn. The group’s attention divides and reunites: Lottie wanders, Nora recognizes people, everyone hesitates at the exhibition doorway, and later they sing and retrace their steps together. Across these distinct appearances, New York functions as both a place of independent lives and a temporary common ground, where separation is acknowledged but family connection continues through calls, plans, visits, and shared routines.