The Summer We Fell Apart

by Robin Antalek

  After all my parents had done to each other over the years, I couldn’t believe that this simple utterance would have made tears come to my eyes, but it did. They’d had four children together. They had, at one time, or so I liked to pretend, an inspiring artistic connection. They married so young that they’d practically raised each other as they raised the four of us. Of course I see that now as part of their problem, but still. I kept my eyes on the road. I didn’t want to look over at George to see his reaction. Especially when our mother followed that up with, “I should probably stop smoking.”

  “Why stop now, Ma?” George joked and I swatted him on the thigh, which prompted him to squeal like a baby and our mother to ask, “Is Amy with you? Did you call the others?”

  George raised his eyebrows at me. “Amy’s here. We’re going to make the calls.”

  I could hear my mother say again, “Oh, poor man.”

  George looked at me in disbelief. I shrugged. He rushed off the phone promising to call her with the details and hung up. “Can you believe she feels sorry for him?” he spat out. “Hell, I feel sorry for us. We still have to bury him.”

  I pulled up in front of the video store next to our father’s apartment and parked. The neon was blown in the N so the window advertised EW RELEASES. I looked up at his darkened windows. He’d moved in four years ago but I’d never visited. When he’d called me from the hospital, he claimed that he was reaching out to each of his children to make amends and I was the only one who picked up the phone. Little did I know that all my siblings had caller ID.

  “Hey look…” George pointed to the sign and whined, “Ewwww releases.” He made a face and continued his shtick. “Disgusting, ewwww releases, I don’t want any of those.” He held his stomach and made gagging sounds.

  I opened my door. “Come on, George—out of the car.”

  “Do I have to?” he asked with his hand on the door handle.

  I got out and slammed my door and walked over to the narrow door sandwiched between an alley and the entrance to the video store. I reached into the plastic bag from the hospital that said PATIENT’S BELONGINGS and retrieved my father’s key ring. The only other item in the bag was his wallet with five dollars and a credit card. He hadn’t even filled in the “in case of emergency” card. There were three keys on the ring, two large: possibly a car key and a house key, and one small, like it belonged to a lock box. I heard George walk up behind me and I turned around and dangled the keys in front of his face.

  “Did Dad have a car?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

  “Maybe we should have asked him a few questions before he, uh, died,” I wondered aloud as I tried the first key in the lock. I turned it upside down thinking I’d put it in the wrong way but it still wouldn’t fit so I tried the other key. It slipped right in and I turned it to the left. “We’re in,” I said to George.

  The hallway was dark and smelled like cat piss. I ran my hand lightly along the wall until I located a light switch. A pale yellow bulb illuminated dark-brown-paneled walls and a staircase directly in front of me with carpeting in the same shade, which led upstairs. George was still lingering behind me on the sidewalk. “Come on!” I yelled out to him, annoyed that I had to coax.

  I got tired of waiting for George and started up the narrow stairs without him. At the top was a sliver of landing and a door that looked like it was made out of cardboard. I jiggled the knob and the door opened without effort. The stairs were so steep that when I turned to see if George had caught up to me I felt a little dizzy. Then I remembered the only thing I’d had in hours was a sour coffee. “George?” I yelled when I didn’t see him.

  He poked his head around the doorway. “I was looking for a mailbox,” he claimed as he started up the stairs.

  “Did you find one?”

  “Nope.” He shoved his hands deep inside of his coat and took the stairs two at a time. The building felt so fragile I thought for sure the stairs swayed as George ran. “What are you waiting for?” he asked as he reached around me and pushed the door open farther so we could step inside. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I paused on the threshold while George went ahead and looked for a lamp. The streetlight illuminated the room through the curtainless front windows enough for George to locate a switch and turn on a light, but when I could finally look around I said, “We should have left the lights off.”

  The room was dominated by a brown plaid couch that sagged so much in the middle it looked like someone had tried to fold it in half; a pillow and blanket were balled up at one end and the coffee table in front of the couch was littered with saucers overflowing with cigarette butts. On top of a dresser with one missing drawer was a black-and-white television with the old rabbit-ear antennas perched on top.

  George walked into the other room but turned around and came right out. “I think Dad’s pet died…”

  Involuntarily my hand flew to my mouth and I said, “Oh my God.”

  George shrugged. “Relax, I think it’s a mouse.” He thought about it for a second and then emended, “Maybe a mouse family. Just take my word for it and skip the kitchen.”

  I nodded, suppressing the urge to scream and flee. “So that’s it then?” I gestured toward the kitchen. “There isn’t another room?”

  He grimaced. “A bathroom. I’ve seen better down on the Bowery.”

  I looked at the couch. “So he slept there?”

  “Looks like it.”

  George looked past me and pointed. “What’s that?”

  I turned around. “A closet?”

  “Open it,” George dared me.

  “No, you open it.”

  “No, you.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, George,” I said with a sigh. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I’m bitchy.”

  George pretended he was shivering. “I’m scared.”

  I yanked on the knob and pulled the door back quickly. Hanging on the bar was a black leather biker jacket I remember Dad wearing years ago. The edges of the sleeves were so worn that the leather had gone white in places. Next to that on a few hangers was what could only be termed a very minimal wardrobe.

  George pushed the clothes to one side and looked in the back of the closet. “Nothing,” he called over his shoulder.

  I walked back toward the couch but did not sit down. It was odd to think that my father lived somewhere with no desk, no papers, no books. There wasn’t a single personal effect. Not even a pad of paper with a scribbled phone number, no photographs, nothing.

  I thought about the garage sale my mother had after my parents divorced. Someone out there right now could be using my father’s Tony Award as a paperweight. My father arrived back in the States a year later with the clothes on his back and whatever was in his suitcase. From what I’d seen here, there wasn’t much.

  I looked around one more time. “Where’s his phone?”

  “There’s nothing we can bury him in, in here.” George closed the closet door. I thought he hadn’t heard me ask about the phone when he said, “In the kitchen on the wall. Why?” He made a face. “You want to use it? You have a cell.”

  I shrugged, and felt close to tears. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be when my dad died. We weren’t supposed to be standing in some horrible little apartment talking about how there was nothing to bury him in. I felt an indescribable ache for the childhood I never had, for the father who was now, forever, lost to me. But even more, I was angry with myself for never working up enough nerve these last few weeks to tell him how I felt, to ask him if he really loved any of us.

  “No. Just wondering.” I rubbed at my eyes.

  “Ah, Ames.” George stepped close to me and fiddled with the collar of my raincoat before he said quietly, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  George stepped aside so I could get out of our father’s apartment. I didn’t wait for him to turn off the lights and shut the door. I ran downstairs and onto the sidewalk and missed the botto
m step, twisting my ankle inside my boot. I stumbled toward the car and took huge gulps of fresh air. I doubted I would wear this coat again without washing it first.

  I was in the car with the engine running when George came downstairs. I rolled down the passenger window and tossed the key ring at him so he could lock the door—although really, what did it matter?

  When he got into the car he had a brown paper grocery bag in his hands, which he wedged down by his feet.

  “What’s that?” I asked as I pulled the car away from the curb.

  “Don’t ask me why, but at the last minute I thought to check under the cushions on the couch. I found this.” He kicked the bag.

  “George!” I thought of the dead mouse family and made a gagging sound. “Did you look in it first?”

  He smirked. “Duh, Sherlock. It’s apparently Dad’s idea of a filing system. Bank statements, telephone bill, and a bunch of other stuff I haven’t gone through yet.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I thought we might need to prove he existed…just in case.”

  I turned down our old street. I doubted George was even paying attention to where we were. “Why do we need proof? He’s dead.”

  He shrugged and looked out the window. “Hey.” He pointed at the Carlyles’ house as it dawned on him that we were on the street where, for better or worse, we’d grown up. The Carlyles had been our closest neighbors and that made them privy to more of my family secrets than I was.

  I slowed the car to a crawl so George and I could take a good long look at our old house. I hoped the new owners had a lot of lights on with no curtains on the windows so we could peek inside. The house was on George’s side of the car and I had to crane around and look past his suddenly indifferent posture so it took me a moment to realize that our house was no longer there. In its place was a stone-and-glass monstrosity whose architectural style could only be described as “we’ve got more money than God and we intend to use it.” The big, beautiful oak trees were gone, as well as all the tall pines and of course the ancient pom-pom hydrangeas that had circled the wraparound porch along the foundation. Now, devoid of any greenery, the house had the appearance of an iceberg surrounded by a perfectly manicured, chemically enhanced green lawn.

  “What the fuck?” George said, enunciating each word slowly and carefully as he said it again. “What the fuck?”

  I was so shaken by the sight of our vanished house that I hit the brakes too hard and the tires squealed angrily against the pavement. George and I jumped at the loud sound on the quiet street and he looked at me quickly before turning back to the house that once was.

  George recovered his voice before I did. “I bet we can see all the way down to the swimming hole from here. They probably raped that land as well.” He shook his head. “Jesus. This. Sucks.”

  I cleared my throat but couldn’t say anything. The tears that I had been only partly successful at holding back were so very close that I was afraid if I tried to speak I’d never stop crying. And the funny thing was I knew I wouldn’t be crying out of nostalgia or even sadness that our father had just died. It was for all the things that now would never be. Things that maybe all of my siblings—and even my mother—had let go of a long time ago. But I obviously hadn’t. My inability to articulate any of them, let alone name them, was so frustrating. It was like trying to describe air.

  I took my foot off the brake and rolled forward until we were well past the house and we could see around the stone columns at the end of the drive. George was probably right about the woods behind the house being cleared. The path we’d worn trudging back and forth to the water all those years of unending summer days most likely was gone. I squinted into the darkness but couldn’t see the water, although I guessed if you stood on the massive back deck that extended off the rear of the house you would probably see the rocky ledges where George perfected his high dive.

  “Oh,” George moaned with his head cradled in his hands as he slumped in his seat, now refusing to look out the window.

  “Stop whining and help me, please. I can’t see to turn around,” I muttered as I backed up into the spanking-new driveway and turned the car around. The car was so long I misjudged the area I had to navigate. When I did turn, my tire caught the edge of the sod and as I hit the gas and accelerated I could feel the earth churn beneath the wheels. “Shit.”

  “Floor it,” George called from his seat as he pounded the dashboard like we were drag-racing. “Fucking floor it. Let’s tear up the yard.”

  I gave him a look that said he was nuts and turned the wheel slightly so I could get all four tires back on the road. Now the house was on my side as I drove slowly past. I had been wishing for light before so that I could see in, but now I was glad the house, with the exception of a security spot over the garage, was dark.

  George’s sigh was long, ragged, and painful to hear. When we got to the end of our street he sputtered dramatically, “Now that I’ve seen that thing I can’t remember what the old house looked like!”

  We were silent as I drove back through town. It wasn’t until I got on the highway headed south that George gave the brown bag he’d taken from our father’s apartment another kick and said, “The proof of the existence of our childhood is gone.”

  “Do you think Mom knows about the house?” I wondered out loud. George couldn’t possibly believe that just because the proof of our existence on this street had been eradicated everything else had disappeared as well. I wanted to ask him but I was too overwhelmed to go there now.

  “Do you think she cares?” George snapped. “I’d think she’d prefer the house was gone, actually.”

  I pictured a yawning, cavernous hole that opened up beneath our old house sucking it all in and then magically a newer, better version appeared in its place. I took a hand off of the steering wheel and placed it palm-up on the seat between us. George slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. As much as he would like to think that our childhood no longer existed, I knew he didn’t believe it as much as he just wanted it to be true.

  George and I did not make a conscious choice to have our father’s service at the funeral home; it just seemed easier. The funeral home had collected the body and they had a fill-in-the-blanks kind of service for people just like us, who didn’t realize that organized religion was meant for situations like this. But it turned out that our siblings thought the one-size-fits-all funeral that we’d planned was not right. Since his death, Kate seemed to take on the position of literary executress and pointed out that the patriarch of Dad’s Tony Award–winning play, who was dying of a (pickled) liver disease, was very insistent on a proper burial, so that must have been Dad’s true wish as well.

  Then it was my turn to point out to Kate that our father had written that play when he was twenty-five and healthy and probably not thinking of his own demise, but I knew it was too late. Kate had already orchestrated a funeral befitting a minor head of state and convinced Finn to go along with her. Our mother offered no opinion on Kate’s funeral plans when Kate called with the details and said instead that we would all understand if she didn’t attend. I guessed her cries of sympathy when George had called her were to be the extent of her grieving. With our mother on neutral ground, we were deadlocked two against two for a proper church funeral and so we caved. George and I truthfully were just as glad not to have to make the decisions so we let Kate believe that she’d won. Winning had always been important to Kate. The first game I ever remembered playing with her was Candy Land and she’d hidden the Queen Frostine card under the board so I couldn’t beat her. Some things never changed.

  While Finn was given the task of finding a church that didn’t mind not knowing the deceased, Kate actually used an old friend who was a fact checker at the Times to get Dad a proper obit, and George and I went to Brooks Brothers where Jules provided us with a discounted suit, shirt, and tie. I seriously doubted my father had ever worn clothes that fit him as well as those. Our father had been tall his entire life. Even in pictures we had
seen of him as a teenager, he had been tall and thin, perennially stooped over. It was as if, at a few inches past six feet, he lived in fear of catching the top of his head on the doorway. Or maybe the stoop in his posture had to do with the head of gray hair he’d had since he was thirty. Either way he always had the air of someone slightly distracted and his manner of dress veered just on the safe side of disheveled, which always lent him an air of charm, even, most disturbingly, in all his Brooks Brothers finery post-death.

  The thought that all that money and clothing were literally going up in smoke immediately after the church service at the crematorium seemed outrageous to me. Just this morning I’d been scrounging through the change jar on Owen’s dresser for enough money for a MetroCard. But Kate was adamant. She refused to bury him in the ground. And even went so far as to purchase a four-pack of tiny urns so each of us could have a piece of Dad forever. Kate gave many reasons for this, which really, in my eyes, amounted to the same thing: Kate wanted to hold on to Dad. Maybe it was a reminder that she was human. The original idea touted to us was that we could scatter Dad’s ashes wherever we wanted, wherever we had a special memory of him. I could not come up with a single memory unless I included his final days in the hospital, which I didn’t. For all I knew my conception might have been his last attempt at parenting.

  With Owen out of town Kate stayed with me in Brooklyn. She could have put herself up in a sleek hotel with room service and ironed sheets and chocolates on her pillow or she could even have stayed at our mother’s place on West 91st Street. Maybe she thought being with our mother on the occasion of our father’s funeral was sacrilege—if there was an afterlife and he was watching she might forever lose her chance at favored-daughter status. Whatever the reason, she chose to be with me, and though I didn’t really understand why, I also didn’t expect an explanation. Kate and I had no sister shorthand. As the oldest, Kate had always acted more like a mother than a sister. And there was this thing that she did with her upper lip that drove me crazy—it stopped just short of outright sneering, but it was there. It was definitely there.