They came to the corner together as the grey came up, his mother a step ahead where the pavement narrowed, and took a place across from the barrier while the machine woke.
She stood as she had said she would, hands behind her back and chin level, her eyes on the wall.
The arm swung and the top floor gave. It came down by rooms, a near wall opening on paper still in its squares, and the dust crossed the street and settled on everything at the barrier, on the plane tree and the two of them. Something white went up in a gout of it and came down more slowly, turning, and settled at the curb.
They stayed to the end, until the arm cut out and there was a heap where the height had been.
Then she went still in another way, and looked at something near her feet.
He looked first at her, then to where she was looking.
A photograph, face up. A man on a step, a child at knee height beside him, and behind them the doorframe with its first pencil line.
The first of them.
The bag stayed on his shoulder.
There was dust on the new leaves.