When Summer Fades

The carnival is over. The midway lights are gone and the giant Ferris wheel has been dismantled. This is the surest sign that summer really is finished. Our town is calm again.

On the third floor of a red brick building that is more than one hundred years old, my sister and I look out over empty streets connected by an empty bridge.

It’s too quiet, my sister says.

She is smoking by the open window, leaning on the sill. Ashes from her cigarette flutter down to the sidewalk below, like a flurry of little snowflakes spilling from the window ledge.

She squints into the afternoon sun, a curl of smoke drifting out from her lips. This time of year — when summer fades and autumn starts trickling in — always makes her nervous. The sunlight doesn’t stretch as far across the hours now and the mornings are growing darker. Before long, the rainy gray will settle in for the winter.

I am next to her, staring out at the bridge lined with streetlights, breathing in stray wisps of smoke floating up from her rapidly disappearing cigarette, its glowing orange embers burning too close to her fingertips.

We are here to visit my sister’s boyfriend. We are standing on his antique wooden floorboards and leaning out of his big windows that overlook one of the oldest neighborhoods in our town. He is sitting behind us, typing out some paperwork on his computer. I can hear his fingers tapping the keys. His room is full of vintage vinyl records and scattered with closed sketch books, open boxes, old fashioned storage trunks and paint.

I like him. He is very quiet.

He was a soldier in the war, but he hardly ever talks about it. He enlisted right after the attacks on 9-11 and was in the frontlines during some of the worst days of ground combat. His face is covered in a beard. He is still young, but his eyes are aged, carrying the burden of having seen too much. It’s hard for me to picture him in war. Fighting in all of that chaos and blood and dust. His voice is low and soft. He covers his mouth when he laughs.

Outside, clouds are coasting all along the horizon. My sister rests against the windowsill like it’s an old friend. She can’t stand to see her favorite season end. Surely, the window understands. It has witnessed nearly forty thousand sunsets, has endured over one hundred withering summers.

Below us, a woman walking through the roadside gutters lets out a short laugh. A lone car passes by her and drives toward the bridge, the sound of its engine gradually vanishing along with the woman’s footsteps clicking on the pavement. The faint tap-tap-tap of the computer keys stops and for a brief instant, all the noise around us seems to suddenly fragment and dissolve. Our feet are motionless on the dusty wooden floorboards scattered with scraps of paper and old records. We are standing completely still with the volume of the day falling lower and lower, until it's turned all the way down.

Our eyes are focused on the window. Our eyes, carrying our own separate wars, watch the daylight evaporate. Our eyes, heavy with the weight of ten thousand different days, converge through a single pane of glass and we are all fixed in this silent moment: when summer fades and pale golden sunlight drips over everything: the clouds, leaves on sidewalks, tree branches drooping over backyard patios, bridges spanning across expanses of emptiness.

But nothing can stand still forever. Car tires skidding to a stop on the asphalt fractures the silence, setting time in motion again. The day unfolds and moves forward like every other day that came before, as the sun continues its descent.

My sister flicks ashes from her cigarette. She exhales one last time.

A final wisp of smoke floats from her lips and drifts out into the once speechless city.