New York

New York is an actual destination in Futh’s life, but its strongest presence is bound to absence: it is where Futh’s mother goes when she leaves, the place he imagines reaching her, and the setting of an encounter that he cannot confirm is with her. Futh eventually visits the city with Angela, yet the journey resolves neither the unanswered question of his mother’s whereabouts nor his longing to recognize her. New York consequently functions as both a place on the map and a destination repeatedly approached through memory, anxiety, and missed connection.

The city as the destination of departure

Futh’s mother announces that she is going home, meaning New York, three thousand miles away. Only after she has gone does he discover that she left no address. He searches the kitchen pin board, but the handwriting there is only the beginning of a shopping list, too indistinct to tell him where she might be. Her departure gives New York an immediate emotional geography: the city is not simply far away, but beyond the reach of the information that would let Futh follow.

In the aftermath, Futh looks in the library for pictures of New York. He finds skyscrapers with the sun rising and setting in their mirrored windows, their lights reflected in the river at night. These images offer a view of a city he cannot use as a route to his mother. The reflective windows and river make New York visible at a distance, but the photographs provide no address, meeting place, or assurance that he could find her there. The city first enters his life as an imagined landscape formed around the fact that she has left.

That absence becomes part of the way Futh imagines his own movement. As a child, he often fantasizes about running away, changing his appearance and name so that he cannot be found. The possibility still appeals to him as an adult: he thinks he could start a new life in Germany or New York and never return. His imagined departure reverses his mother’s. Rather than being the one left behind, he pictures himself choosing to disappear, while wondering who would first notice that he was gone. New York therefore holds both the wound of being abandoned and the fantasy of escaping the life in which that wound persists.

A postponed journey

At twelve, Futh wants to go to New York as soon as he is old enough. In his twenties he travels to many cities and countries but avoids the destination that has occupied him since childhood. He explains the delay to himself through his dislike of flying, though he does fly to Tokyo and Montréal. He does not go to New York until he meets Angela, who wants to visit the city herself. The contrast makes his hesitation more than a simple lack of opportunity: New York remains exceptional even while other distant journeys become possible.

The journey brings his fear of confinement into the open. During take-off, Futh imagines a fire in the cabin or a terrorist among the passengers and dwells on being unable to escape. He tries a relaxation technique learned from a tape, directing his attention through his feet and legs, breathing slowly and deeply as he works upwards through his body. In the darkening cabin he becomes drowsy and falls asleep. The trip is not prevented by his anxiety, but the approach to New York is shaped by it: arrival requires him to endure the feeling that escape is impossible.

In his dream, his mother has written her new name and address so that he can find her. Yet however intently he looks, he cannot read the handwriting. He wakes with a desperate sense that something vital is slipping away, then rewinds his watch while Angela tells him the local time. The dream gives him the information missing from the actual departure, only to make that information unreadable. Even as the plane carries him toward the city, the possibility of locating his mother remains obstructed.

A possible recognition, then separation

During a tour on an open-top bus, Futh and Angela sit downstairs because the top deck is full. At traffic lights, he sees a striking woman with greying blond hair looking into a shop window; her face appears reflected in the glass. He gets off the bus and approaches her, touching her arm so that she turns. The action suggests a sudden attempt to close the distance that has separated New York from his childhood search, but what he can see does not allow him to know whether his recognition is right.

Her sunglasses conceal her eyes, and the high neckline of her dress hides whether she has the port-wine stain Futh associates with his mother. Before she speaks, a man interrupts and asks what Futh wants. When Futh does not answer, the man takes the woman by the elbow and steers her away. The pair pause outside another shop and look back; the woman removes her sunglasses, but by then she is too far away for him to see her clearly. Futh is left with a feeling that it was his mother, not confirmation.

He turns toward Angela, intending to gesture through the bus window and suggest that they abandon the tour to follow the woman along the shop fronts. Angela is no longer there. The bus picks up speed and disappears into the distance with her aboard. The moment thus joins the possible recognition of Futh’s mother to another separation: while attention is fixed on the woman who may be his mother, Angela moves away, and Futh does not manage to call her back or explain what he has seen.

Meaning and unresolved return

New York’s narrative significance lies in the gap between reaching a place and reaching a person. Futh gets to the city with Angela, but the mother he has imagined finding remains uncertain even when a woman seems to match his memory. The dream of an address and the real woman’s obscured face echo one another: both bring the possibility of reunion close, then withhold the knowledge needed to make it certain.

The city also remains available to Futh as an imagined route out of his present circumstances. When he thinks about not going home, New York is one of the places where he might begin again; the thought is part of a broader fantasy of vanishing, not evidence that he actually makes such a move. Across these different appearances, New York shifts from the faraway destination of his mother’s departure, to the long-delayed object of his own travel, to the setting of a fleeting and inconclusive encounter. Its promise is real enough to draw Futh there, but it does not undo the distance that made the journey matter.