Empty Nest by Liz Rosen

When the mothers stepped outside their houses—to go to work, to the grocery, to deliver a child, or several, to the bus stop—a lightness overcame them. Their feet suddenly came loose from the ground. At first, it was just their heels that detached from the earth and only their toes anchored them. As gravity abdicated its responsibility, some mothers dropped their dry-cleaning or water bottles or the birthday letter they were bringing to the post office to mail overseas, a nice surprise for Aunt Kathy in Columbus instead of sending an e-mail.

The wide-eyed toddlers giggled at their mamas’ silliness as their mothers’ fingers slipped free of their little grips, and the teenagers rolled their eyes as their mothers’ feet lifted completely free of the ground. Really, mom, do you have to make a scene? Which was just enough self-absorption that some mothers turned their eyes from their children toward the sky in curiosity instead, letting go of the lunch boxes, the permission slips for field trips, the worries about bullies and Rohypnol and too much time on social media. 

While the children shouted for their fathers to come see, the mothers rose up off their walkways, driveways, front stoops until they could see over the hedges and car tops into their neighbors’ yards, into the street beyond, into the windows of the people who lived above the bodega in the building across from theirs. Some of the mothers yelled for help, some in delight. A few who managed to hold onto their cell phones texted friends Are you seeing this? Got back answers Yes!! or Let’s go!

The husbands, boyfriends, bosses, lovers came to the doors and windows and tried to take in how physics had ceased to work on their wives, girlfriends, co-parents, amours. Some yelled to get back down here, Sarah, or asked what on earth are you doing, Julia? Some called after the rising women about impending dentist appointments, play dates that had been a real pain to set up in the first place, dinners with in-laws that they just couldn’t put off again. Some men stared agog, their brows folding into worried wrinkles. Some of the more heroic ones ran out to grab hold of Lulumon-clad legs, swollen ankles, feet in sensible work heels, trying to loan their own gravity and weight to hold the women down, get them back into place. Some grabbed fearfully for their children, pulling them back into doorways, onto porches, into the lobbies of apartment buildings, not knowing whether gravity would come loose for the children, too. But it didn’t. It was only the mothers who were rising.

Some of the more anxious mothers grabbed for the eaves of their houses, the curve of a street light, or the branches of nearby trees, but many tested out their new weightlessness, tried doing the breaststroke through the air, flapped their arms and made shrooooom noises through their lips as they zipped this way and that across the sky. They encouraged the ones holding on to let go and join them as they rose on the warm thermals, offered to hold their hands on the way up to calm their nerves, told them to look to the sky, every way but back down again to where their children jumped up and down and waved and blew kisses. Goodbye, Mama! Goodbye! the fathers crouching next to their children, following the ascent with their eyes. Was I not enough? some of the fathers wondered. Is this a phase? Are they coming back?

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LIZ ROSEN — Liz is a former Nickelodeon TV writer and a current short story writer with a love of YouTube ghost-hunting shows. Color-wise, she’s an Autumn. Music-wise, she’s an MTV-baby. She is a native New Orleanian, and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses her Gulf oysters and etouffee, but is appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Her stories have appeared in or are forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Ascent, Atticus Review, Pithead Chapel, Writer’s Digest, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and numerous others. Learn more at www.thewritelifeliz.com. 

Art by GOGOLE MUKHOPADHYAY — Gogole is a polymath who believes the universe is truly alive and that art allows us to have a conversation with it. Self-taught in multiple disciplines, Gogole has been creating poetry, visual art, and music from a young age, always seeking to merge creativity with a deeper understanding of the world.