Maybe it’s because I grew up in shitty small towns filled with falling apart single-wides, but the rich pigment of the brownstones, the slate gray of the sidewalks, the brick and concrete and flora that thrives in the minutest speck of dirt . . . of course I went along with moving to this place.
Our house feels like a prison, but our neighborhood is like something out of a movie. When I walk around Gifford Place, or even just watch from my window, I don’t feel crushed by the multi-car pileup of stupid decisions I’ve made. I feel like maybe this is a place I can belong, eventually. If I’m honest, that’s why I’m walking with Kim to the store, why I’m even trying—I don’t want to move. I guess the fact that I love our house more than I love her at the moment makes me kind of an asshole.
I look over at her; her fingers are tapping at the screen of her huge smartphone as she texts someone. I see the words roach-infested corner store and look away, my gaze landing on a high-end Range Rover I haven’t seen in the neighborhood before.
Mr. Perkins and his dog stroll in our direction, both looking this way and that for a neighbor to greet or for anything that’s amiss.
“Hey there,” Mr. Perkins says as our paths cross. “Having a good weekend?”
“So far, so good.” I lean down to pat the old dog’s side, sure my hand will come away smelling of corn chips. “Who’s a good boy?”
“Not this dog,” Mr. Perkins says affectionately, mock-glaring down at the hound. “Count stole the pork chop I was marinating last night when I nodded off in front of the TV.”
The dog drops his gaze to the ground, as if he knows we’re discussing his misdeeds, and we both laugh.
“Oooh,” Kim coos at the dog from next to me. “You’re going to get trichinosis because your owner was irresponsible!”
“Kim.” I knew she was an asshole to me, but this is different.
“I’m just joking,” she says.
“Right,” Mr. Perkins says, his usually friendly gaze wary. “I just wanted to tell you in case you didn’t see on OurHood, we’ll be having our annual Labor Day block party next Sunday. The final planning committee meeting is tomorrow night at my house at seven or so.”
“Sure,” I say. “We’ll come around—” I turn and realize that Kim has already walked away. I make a face of contrition, something I’ve mastered over the last year. “I’ll be there,” I finish, and when he nods and waves me off, I jog to catch up to her.
“What was that about?” I try to keep my tone light, but the fact that we can’t even walk a few yards without drama is pissing me off.
“I thought you were hungry.” I feel any semblance of goodwill she’d extended make a decisive retreat. I immediately regret saying anything. Now she’ll ice me out even harder, and the tiny step forward this walk was supposed to symbolize has taken us ten steps back. One day, one of those steps back is going to be right over the edge of a cliff.
“Yerrr, Preston!” a young man’s voice calls out.
The clicking spokes of bike wheels behind us follow the shout, and Kim turns with wide eyes, startled.
I glance back and see a familiar teen—husky, dark skinned, sporting that Gumby-type haircut that’s popular again—pull up on his bike in front of one of the houses. The door opens and the kid I usually see at his side, this one lighter skinned and skinnier, steps out.
“I told you, Len, Moms don’t like it when you yell in front of the house,” the boy named Preston says in a quelling tone.
“Sorry, Mrs. Jones!” Len calls out with typical teenage obnoxiousness, and Preston lets out a long-suffering sigh.
I like this aspect of the neighborhood: families and friends. Normal families who know each other and catch up at night after work, look out for each other’s kids, not just neighbors you hear arguing through your thin condominium walls.
It reminds me of one of my favorite parts of my own youth, when I spent a summer with my grandparents in Michigan. They asked if I wanted to stay with them and signed me up for the local high school in the fall. There were kids my age who didn’t hear my mom getting knocked around at night, who hadn’t seen her bad makeup and so couldn’t single me out as either too different or too similar and thus someone they couldn’t be friends with. The group of boys in the neighborhood had loaned me a bike and we’d ridden around backwoods roads, laughing and joking.
Just before school started, my mom got dumped again and decided I need to come “home” to be with her, promising I could go back to my grandparents the following summer. I looked forward to it all year, but Mom got into another situation and my summer was lost in the fallout.
Most of my childhood was spent floundering in the wake of my mother’s turbulent decisions. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.
Falls there and rots.
Kim starts walking faster. “They’re so fucking loud. Jesus.”
She still has her phone, cradled in her other hand, open to the OurHood app and begins tapping awkwardly with her thumb.
I pull open the door to the corner store and a blast of ice-cold air slaps into me, and Middle Eastern music drifts out. The place was still a little shady, but they were slowly trying to adapt by getting a better beer selection and offering vegan sandwich options and stuff. They don’t have a bulletproof plastic screen with a little merry-go-round for you to put your money on and get your food from, like the liquor store and the Chinese restaurant two blocks over.
Frito, the spotted white store cat, trots over and twines his round body around Kim’s feet.
“This has to be a violation of the health code,” she mutters as she toes him away.
I ignore that and walk over to the grill portion of the store.
“One tofu scramble on a roll with vegan cheddar and veggie bacon, and one ham, egg, and cheese, American, with salt, pepper, ketchup on a hoagie,” I say when the guy working the grill turns to me.
He doesn’t smile, just nods and gets to work.
The dude behind the register is the people person, chatting with customers, wishing people luck as they buy their lottery tickets while likely talking shit about them to his coworker in their own language.
There are a few people milling around the store, and I move past them as I head to the refrigerators in the back, grabbing a six-pack. I need to cut back on the booze, but sometimes it’s like I can feel Kim’s disdain seeping up through the floorboards of the house, even though she spends most of her time ignoring me. When I’m not out of the house trying to make quick cash, a beer and a video game help create a force field of apathy. I’m focused on choosing between an IPA and a refreshing amber ale, something I used to make fun of people for before I met Kim, when the conversation at the front of the store gets louder.
“Are you really gonna pull the tears out? Over this?” A woman’s voice. I recognize it—smooth, controlled, even in her annoyance.
I hustle down the aisle and find Kim staring up at the woman from across the street, a familiar anger etched into her expression. “I told you I didn’t see you standing in line and—”
“—and I pointed out that I am wearing bright yellow and I’m pretty hard to miss.”
I should side with Kim, but the other woman is right. There’s no missing her, even without the yellow bandanna around her hair, yellow T-shirt, and denim overall cutoffs that should have looked like a ridiculous farmer costume but really, really didn’t.