Cacophony, New York City, Three AM

The first time she heard the noise, it was 3:18 in the morning. She’d been awake, sweating under the too-warm duvet until around three, and had just sunk into the first few moments of heavy welcome sleep, when the sound came down from the ceiling and torpedoed the early stages of her REM cycle. 

Maureeeeeeen. 

A man’s voice, shaky and thin, yet piercingly loud.

Maureeeeen! Maureeeeeeeen! 

Who the hell was Maureen? She’d met their upstairs neighbor, an older woman named Barbara with a severe silver bob and a hairless cat. Barbara seemed to make a point of avoiding any friendly interactions with her neighbors. They’d only spoken once, when Barbara had knocked on their door with a stack of letters and bills that had been mistakenly put in her mailbox. “Your mail keeps getting delivered to me,” she had remarked crossly, as if this had been some type of conspiracy against her. “Don’t let it happen again.” Barbara lived alone, she thought. Had she moved? No, she had seen her that afternoon, taking out her trash with a grimace on her face like taking out the trash was a personal insult. Did she have a visitor over? Who was the man yelling in the middle of the night? Who was Maureen?

Come hereeee.

The voice came from directly above her head, but it had a strange faraway quality, like she was hearing it underwater. The walls of their Hell’s Kitchen converted two-bedroom were thin, they knew that upon moving in. They could hear footsteps in the halls and the pulsing bassline of music blasted by the college kids downstairs. But they had never heard clear voices, never been able to make out words or conversations or requests.

Come here!

They had moved for the baby, leaving their cramped (but undeniably cool) studio in South Brooklyn for a place with “more space to breathe.” Unfortunately, any space they thought they’d use for breathing was immediately filled with baby toys, baby crib, baby food, baby clothes. The second bedroom was more of a glorified closet they had shoehorned into a nursery, its single window directly facing into the back of another tall brick building, offering no view and no natural lighting. The items piled up on the floor and the rooms began to close in around her. When they had announced the pregnancy, her friends with kids had told her “You’ll never sleep again!,” their eyes twinkling with malicious joy. Was that some kind of sick joke? They’d been right. She couldn’t remember sleeping through the night, truly sleeping, a single time since the baby had been born. She must have, right? Just once? She couldn’t remember.

Maureeeeeen! 

Her husband could sleep through a bomb, and she was starting to resent him. Actually, she was starting to hate him. She would look over at him next to her in the bed, the silhouetted, snoring lump, and she’d let the hatred fill up her chest until it pounded against her ribs. She’d squint at him in the darkness, willing him to wake up by shooting her distilled, hardened anger at him like lasers out of her eyes. How dare he leave her to experience this alone? How dare he be able to sleep peacefully? How dare any man be able to sleep peacefully? 

When she complained to him in the morning, he’d said “If you were a real New Yorker, you would have banged on the ceiling with a broom until he shut up.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t a real New Yorker, so his advice was entirely unhelpful. She was a transplant, raised in a tiny Midwestern town founded upon steel manufacturing and mind-yer-beeswax etiquette.

Her family had worked in processing, shipping, and distributing large-scale farming equipment at the same steel plant for the last century. Her grandfather hadn’t complained when a faulty conveyor belt had trapped his left hand, leaving him down a pinky and half a ring finger, no sir, and she would absolutely not be complaining about her noisy upstairs neighbors.

And yet.

Maureeeeeeen!

Complaining made enemies, and making enemies went against her nature. Besides, who was she to make a noise complaint? She’d only just wrenched the baby out of a reverse-cycling hellscape of nightly scream-and-feed sessions. She (the baby, but by association she) had been the primary cause of her neighbor’s sleep deprivation for the past four months, she was sure of it; what right did she have to say a single word about anyone’s late-night shouting?

And yet.

And yet, that voice. An adult voice, a man, not a baby, shouting into the sticky 3am summer air. Who the hell does he think he is?

Maureen!

The second night, the voice was accompanied by a banging so loud and so precisely placed above her head she felt it must be targeted at her. 

Maureeeeeen. Bang! Maureeeeeen! Bang!

“He’s trying to keep me up,” she had told her husband after jostling him awake, having listened to the yelling and banging alone in the dark for half an hour. “He’s trying to keep me up and it’s creeping me out.” 

“It’s just someone sleep-talking,” he said.

“And the banging?”

“Sleep-walking and sleep-talking, I guess.”

“Can you do something about it?”

“Why would I do something about it? I didn’t even hear it until you woke me up. Jesus, hon, come on. I’m exhausted.” He rolled over to face the wall. 

Are you kidding me? She yelled internally at the back of his head, hoping he’d receive the message psychically. You’re exhausted? You sit in a chair in front of a computer all day. You had dinner cooked for you. Then you tapped at a word game on your phone for an hour. What could possibly be exhausting you? Huh? He didn’t get the message. He was already asleep. 

Maureeeen! Bang! 

She spent the days walking-dead style, staggering through her list of tasks with her eyes half-shut. She just wanted to take a nap, but she couldn’t nap unless the baby was also napping, and the baby wasn’t supposed to nap or else he wouldn’t sleep through the night. And if she was napping, she couldn’t be providing the baby with proper enrichment (whatever that meant). Most days, proper enrichment meant plopping the baby in front of a TV show about British pigs so she could fold laundry prep dinner send emails wash dishes chug coffee (she shouldn’t be drinking coffee) strip the beds take out the trash clean the drips of ketchup and mustard and dried spittle off her t-shirt.

Somehow, the baby now had boundless energy during the day. She was livid. For months, the baby had woken her up three, four, five times a night, leaving her to figure out if he was hungry or angry or hurt or maybe just needy, needy and helpless and requiring constant attention. 

Now, the baby slept peacefully through the night in his closet-turned-nursery while she lay awake in bed, listening to the man call out for Maureen to come here. She began to pray that the noise would wake the baby; at least then she would have an ally in her anger. Then she could confront the neighbors, march upstairs with a screaming, red-faced infant on her hip and let them have it. She couldn’t make an enemy on her own, definitely not, but she could certainly channel her rage through the bawling child.

Excuse me, sir, sorry to bother you, but it’s three in the morning and the yelling is waking up the baby. I wouldn’t usually say anything, really, but the baby needs his sleep. Look at his little face. He’s so tired. Will you kindly shut the hell up?

Without the baby, she’d be a difficult -nuisance - whiny - angry - pissy - bitch. With the baby, she was justified. She was just being a good mama bear.

But the baby didn’t seem to care about any of this. The baby didn’t care about how much sleep she got, because the baby was sleeping happily through the night, waking up refreshed, and so was her husband, and she felt all the energy slowly leaking out of her. 

The next night the yelling was accompanied by another voice, a woman, quieter, restrained, but almost stern. Barbara? Barbara the angry cat lady? She couldn’t make out the words, just the rhythm of the conversations, the hoarse, flustered shouts followed by the woman’s voice, serious and measured. 

Come on, she thought. Come on, m’am. Be the voice of reason. Reason with him until he shuts up. You seem practical. You seem level headed. I’m begging you. 

Maureen! Bang! Maureen! 

She would get no sleep that night. 

She would get no sleep for the next six nights. It always started right around three, the same exact way; just as she began to think maybe tonight, maybe tonight he’ll stay quiet, maybe tonight I’ll string together just a few hours of sleep, please.

Maureeeeeen! 

Sometimes she could make out the other voice, Barbara’s voice, louder than usual, snapping at the man. Stay there. I said stay there. Dad, you’re gonna fall.

No! No. Maureen!

Dad. Barbara’s father, frail and elderly and screaming through the night. Maybe he’ll die, she thought. Maybe he’ll get up and fall and die. I hope he dies. I hope he dies so I can go to sleep. She’d surprised herself. She’d never wished death upon someone, even in her worst moments, even inside her head. But once she’d thought it, she couldn’t stop.

Maureen! 

Die.

Maureen!

Die. I hope you die.

On the seventh night, she lay in bed, her skin prickling with sweat from the summer heat and sweat from her rage. She hated her baby and her husband for sleeping through the night. She hated Barbara and she hated Barbara’s father and she hated her bed and her apartment and its paper-thin walls and she was so, so tired. 

Maureen! Bang!

She bolted up, throwing the duvet on top of her sleeping husband who didn’t move a muscle, didn’t make a sound. She got out of bed and stomped down the hall, passing the nursery where the baby (somehow, miraculously, infuriatingly) slept soundly. She didn’t care if she woke him up, she didn’t care if she woke the whole apartment up as she threw her front door open. Feeling the cold hallway tiles on her bare feet, the buzz of the fluorescent bulb lighting the 3am darkness, trudging up the stairs as she thought of what she’d say, If you don’t tell your stupid father to shut his mouth, you’re going to regret it, lady, you’re going to regret ever moving into this building, you’re going to regret ever having a father, you’re going to regret being born. 

She landed in front of the apartment, raised her arm to bang on the door because she knew it would be louder than the bell. And she heard it again.

Maureen?

Clearer now, as if there wasn’t a door between them at all, as if he was right in front of her.

Maureen?

And Barbara’s voice, in response, softer now.

Dad, it’s okay.

Maureen?

Dad, please don’t get up. Mom’s not here. Look at me.

Maureen? Are you there?

No, Mom’s not here. Dad, it’s me. It’s Barbara. Come on, get back in bed, it’s gonna be okay. 

Maureen? 

A silence.

Yes?

Hold me.

She stood outside the door listening to the silence. All silent now. There was no more shouting, there was nothing more. 

After a few breathless moments, she went back downstairs, back through her door, stopping to kiss the baby on the head, to smell his warm, soft head. Her spot in the bed was gone. Her husband had rolled over in his sleep, his dense body now at the center of the mattress, arms outstretched, leaving only small cutouts of room. She’d done this many nights before, curled herself inward to fit into the negative spaces beside him. 

Tonight, she pulled the duvet off her husband and wrapped it around herself. He let out a single snore, then nothing. She exited the apartment wordlessly, she didn’t wake him up and she didn’t leave a note. She climbed the staircase, stopping in front of Barbara’s apartment, still sweet-silent, then continuing on, up, up, until she got to the door marked “No Entry,” the door that should be alarmed but she knew wasn’t. She’d been out that door before, during the daytime, when she needed room to breathe, real room to breathe, when she needed everything to still.

The rooftop was empty, a flat gray slab with walls of brick just high enough that she could peek her head over the top and look out onto the buildings around her. Tonight she didn’t need to look. Tonight she spread the duvet on the concrete and lay down, stretching out, taking up every corner, filling up the edges. She listened to the noises of the city below her. She listened to the rushing of late-night traffic on Tenth Avenue and the bursts of car horns, laughter, music. She listened to the rustling of leaves somewhere far away, the flaps of pigeons' wings and the whir of air conditioners set into windows. She listened to her own breath, slow, steady, deep underneath her ribs, the rushing of her blood, the pulsing of her heart.

And then the heavy, ecstatic quiet of sleep.