LOOKING AT THE mammoth spot-lit ads for chubby babies and running shoes, he feels very far from home. When he imagines talking to his son, the voice isn’t right. Too stern. Or too soft.

They haven’t spoken for three years – after their fight in a room hung with photos of the family younger and rosier. The boy had said, You have no nerves, and flung the full plate of his dinner against a wall. The father had said, You mean I don’t have the nerve, you idiot. But then anger sparked in his brain too and he said, Get out of here. His wife wiped her nose and laid out more food as if some bird had flown off with a child’s dinner. She had ruined him with adoration. They’d been arguing about money – son for, father against, mother inconsolable. And here he is now where the billboards are aglow with wealth.