This summer night began like so many before. Supper was over, and my mother said it was time for all of us to move to the living room so she could finish washing the dishes. I wanted to stay behind to help clean the kitchen and to be with my Mom, but I was just 5 years old and wouldn’t have been much help. So I followed my five older brothers and father into the living room as expected. I can’t remember what we were watching that night but imagine it was one of my father’s favorite cop shows. The younger kids got a seat on the hardwood floors, the older boys fought over a space on the couch, and my father collapsed into his chair in a way that signaled he was not getting up again.
On my favorite nights in our apartment, which this one was not, I could gaze through the open window from my seat on the floor and see the setting moon competing for attention with the Empire State Building. I could not seriously consider which would win such a competition because I felt their magic equally. I’d often find myself listening to the conversations of people walking on Third Avenue as their words and laughter made it through the thick summer air to our second-floor apartment. Groups of men loudly talking about the game they just watched at the corner bar and women considering where to go while hailing taxis – these types of conversations kept me listening for what might come next. I saw myself wearing shimmering high heels and a long, dramatic black coat and wondered where I would go when I was old enough to hail taxis on my own. Listening in on real people’s lives and creating imaginary ones for myself always won over TV storylines.
Sometimes, bad weather obstructed my view and street conversations leaned more toward conflict than celebration. Still, there was comfort in the routine hum. Ambulances often raced by, rousing me from daydreaming. One brother would mention, probably for the hundredth time, that it’s an emergency block for Bellevue Hospital, so you have to put up with the noise. But my oldest brother, who didn’t much like the high pitch sounds, almost always got up to close the window and shut out the sirens.
The sounds reminded me of the first time I saw a woman being taken away in an ambulance. She had her hand on the mailbox handle and was about to drop in an envelope. A driver, turning onto the avenue, lost control of his car and struck the woman head-on. The crash sent the mailbox and the woman flying into the air, landing just feet apart in the street. People were shouting, and the driver was crying for help. I thought about that woman almost every time I heard sirens and hoped the doctors were able to put all her broken pieces back together. Still, despite the occasional gruesome thoughts, I found comfort in the predictability of this life, in letting my mind wander to all things inside and outside of our apartment. Until that night anyway, when I heard my father scream.
I looked up to see my brothers grabbing onto him. One took an arm, the other a leg, and the rest shouted about how my father had to leave. They pulled my father from his chair and told him he had to get out, that he couldn’t live with us anymore. The words, “You don’t belong here,” pulsed inside my head. My five brothers were all pushing and pulling toward the apartment door, with my father trying to take hold of something to slow the progress. The only thing between where he was and the door was a flat wall with nothing to grab onto. My heart ached watching him flailing and seeming so desperate to regain control.
The only sound louder than my father’s screams at this point was my own. I threw wild swings at my brothers to get them to stop, but they landed with a force as if a butterfly was flapping its wings to move an oak tree. Pointless. My oldest brother said, “This has to be done. Just go back and watch television until it’s over.” I understood the way he was saying this to me. As the youngest, I’d become familiar with the tone, suggesting I was too young to understand all of the happenings in our house and that it was important for me to go along. Usually, that is what I did. But I couldn’t this time. I had never seen my brothers behave this way before. While they had the usual arguments that brothers often have, they would never throw anyone out of the house and wouldn’t do something like this to our father. And I was sure that no one in my family would break my heart even though my heart was breaking.
I listened to my father plead that he didn’t want to leave. He begged them to explain what he had done. My brothers offered him no explanation, and the chaos continued. My father could lift any one of my brothers and toss him across the room. But he was outnumbered now, and as unbelievable as it seemed to me, I knew he would lose this battle, and then he’d be out of my life forever.
I ran to the kitchen, where my mother was putting away the supper dishes. I begged her to make them stop. She looked down at me and let out a long sigh, a sound I had come to know as well as the oncoming ambulance sirens. “Everything is fine,” she assured me. “Stop crying now. It’s fine.” She ran a finger across each side of my face to wipe the tears away. But as she wiped, more tears followed. I couldn’t stop crying because I knew I was about to lose my dad. She continued telling me that everything would be okay and called to my brothers to stop. They continued the scuffle toward the door. Again, she called to my brothers with a familiar tone that said, “I am done with this.” The house fell silent, except for my sobs that I tried to control without much success.
When my tears finally slowed enough to see more clearly, I looked up to see all my brothers and father standing in front of me. Were they laughing? Why were they laughing? My mind raced, trying to figure out what was happening. They said that my father could stay, and no one was upset. I couldn’t understand how I could watch all that shoving, listen to all the screaming, and still believe that no one was upset.
They explained that it was all just a joke. “A joke, a joke,” I said silently several times. But it didn’t seem like any of the jokes I had heard before. I struggled to process their faces and words, each assuring me in their own way that none of what happened was real. They explained that it was an act, something to do for fun on that hot summer night. My father beamed with pride when he saw how crushed I was by the thought he would have to leave. I wondered now who my father was.
The events of that summer night became one of those go-to stories on many holidays. Retelling how the father fooled the 5 year old girl. The joke was on me; I could see that. The comfort of home and the feeling that my dad would always protect me were gone in a single evening. That is how quickly things can be erased, enriching emotions replaced with darker ones. This lesson would be reinforced in the years that followed.
I could see less of the Empire State Building each year, with new towers erected between my eyes and its magic. But there was always the moon. Some nights, I’d imagine being close enough to rest my cheek against its surface and give it a hug. I felt its embrace in return. In the future I might be one of those women hailing a taxi to someplace better. For now, I had window views and the street chatter that floated through the air revealing messages about how someday there could be a different kind of life.
***
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Women, the exhilarating novella by Chloe Caldwell, is being reissued just in time to become your steamy summer read. The Los Angeles Review of books calls Caldwell “One of the most endearing and exciting writers of a generation.” Cheryl Strayed says ‘Her prose has a reckless beauty that feels to me like magic.” With a new afterward by the author, this reissue is one not to be missed.
Heart stopping.