The Neighbors

I live with a crazy woman. She’s been analyzed and declared sane and competent, but she is without doubt batshit crazy. She firmly believes that her cat is the embodiment of the son she never had, she’s missing anywhere between a quarter and a third of her brain, and she recently signed three different contracts with three different companies to install brand new windows in the entire house and — as a result — has since lost almost $8,000 and is aiming to lose much, much more. Legally sane, yes, but ridiculously crazy.

My neighbors seem to blow her crazy out of the water. Three or four people, from what I gather — a mother, a son my age, a younger son, and a daughter that I’ve only recently seen — live in the older quasi-Victorian style white house.

The mother, forty-something, is tall, tan, and blonde. I don’t see her much unless she’s sitting in her van smoking or outside arguing with her eldest son. Her ex-husband lives a street over, and frequently drives by in his flashy BMW coupe to show off how great his life is now that he doesn’t have to worry about her or the kids. From the information I’ve gathered, she gets doped up on anti-depressants and pain meds constantly.

The son, the one my age, looks like he walked out of an Urban Outfitters catalog. I see him walking around the neighborhood in pastel chinos with a cigarette hanging from his mouth every now and then. Like his mother, he too takes medication, but he takes lithium for what I assume to be bipolar disorder. He doesn’t appear to interact with anyone except his mother, but even then they communicate through loudness. On occasion I see him sitting on his back patio smoking and staring out into the yard.

The youngest son is a nuisance, frequently leaving behind his skateboards and bicycles and toys strewn about both their yard and mine. He stares through their front door at anyone who passes by, and I firmly believe his only vocal setting is “loud”. Sometimes I see him beg his older brother to play with him — to go riding with him or kick the ball around, to do anything — but the older brother simply pushes him away and walks on by himself.

The daughter, who I have only recently started to see, is perhaps the only normal one in the house. She plays with her younger brother, takes him to his friend’s house, and walks their dog. She’s tall with a full head of sand colored curly hair. I think she recently graduated high school due to the fact that her mother’s van recently had “Congrats Grad!” written on the back of it, but I’m not totally certain. Honestly, the daughter is the only person in the family I’ve ever seen smile. She’s the only one that talks instead of shouts.

The crack in the otherwise perfect face of suburbia starts with this family. Perfect house, perfect lawn, and an outwardly picturesque family to anyone that might drive by on any given day. Like any family, however, they are far from perfect. Love affairs, mental instability, and foundation shaking arguments that dot the week shed light on their otherwise quiet and somewhat eerie existence.

The Little Sh*t

He’s here more often than I am, and the people here like him less than the freebie skater boy. Sure he’s only a kid, but there’s something about him that just doesn’t sit right with the people around him.

His height is basically non-existent. He is, at best, four-foot-something. Shaved head, big teeth, and he’s always “dancing”. I’m sure to him it looks like he’s the next Justin Timberlake or Michael Jackson or some other smooth pop-star, but in his outward appearance he looks awkward and corny. Of course there’s nothing wrong with awkward and corny — I myself was an utterly terrible mixture of those two when I was his age. The difference, however, is that I wasn’t so outwardly and inexplicably rude to the people around me.

He comes in every night with a man that appears to be his grandfather — though it could be his dad, I won’t pretend to know. They don’t really talk to one another even when they leave the store and sit for a couple of hours at a table outside. The man he comes in with orders a tall coffee, as plain and bold and black as tar. He used to order the kid a cup of water but has since stopped that because they started charging for it. While the older man waits for his drink, the kid runs or walks or dances around the store as if it were his home. He bumps into people and doesn’t say “excuse me” or apologize, he’ll — no, look, one time he came up to me and stared at my laptop screen for a solid minute before looking at me and saying “‘Sup?”

‘Sup? ‘Sup? Who the hell does this shortstack think he is?

Like the freebie boy, this one has a reputation as well. Where the other kid asks for free stuff, this one is known for his rudeness and inability to stop doing things when people ask him to stop. He’s known for his sense of entitlement.

“Is he in school?” asks one of the baristas.
“No, I don’t think so,” starts another, “I asked him if he was and he told me he wasn’t allowed to go to school.”

They laugh in disbelief. Not allowed to go to school? That’s crazy talk.

“One time I caught him with his hand in the tip jar!” says an employee.
“Oh my god! What did you do?”
“I yelled at him! I told him to get his hand out of it and told him to leave before I called the cops!”
“That’s crazy. He’s so rude!”

They laugh again, this time in agreement. They discuss a time when he purposely knocked over a container of half & half and ran out before they could get to him. Why they even let him back inside is beyond me, why they haven’t talked to the man that brings the boy in is even further beyond me.

Behind me sits another man on a MacBook, and through the sounds of spitting espresso machines and laughing baristas I hear four simple words roll off his tongue…

What a little shit.

‘Round They Go

A mother and a father begin their day by jogging around the neighborhood with a stroller that contains their infant. It’s early in the morning and already the swampy heat is drowning out any possibility of a cool breeze.

The two of them are probably in their early forties, late thirties perhaps.

He’s tall, 6′-even at least, with a head full of grey that seems to be fighting a losing battle against its own hairline. He wears black frame glasses — not thick ones though, they’re sleek and stylish. His feet run their pace in white and blue running shoes and low cut white socks. Tan legs that mismatch his paper white arms are themselves covered in navy blue basketball shorts.

She’s shorter than him by a longshot, she jogs along pushing the stroller in front of her. Her hair, long and dark, is held up in a ponytail and capped off by a purple visor. She is neither morbidly pale nor overly tan, rather a fair medium on the spectrum. She’s wearing a grey sleeveless shirt, black leggings, and hot pink Nike running shoes. She wears an armband containing her iPhone, which has sprouted two long white wires that lead up to her ears.

He runs ahead of her with a short stride, his hands curl into fists and his arms bounce up and down as he goes. He struggles to maintain a steady pace while his partner flows. She’s fluid in her stride; arms extended in front of her, pushing the stroller along, her ponytail bobbing up and down, left to right. I think they’re running to get back into shape — moreover, I think she’s running to get back into shape and he’s running with her. He’s supportive, though if anyone in this relationship needs exercise it’s him.

But if we’re talking about all parties involved, perhaps it is myself that needs the exercise…I could definitely use some as well.

The run laps around the block. Two times, three times, four — I think I end up counting at least six before they disappear. On their final lap he seems to struggle even more. His right hand clutches the left side of his abdomen, so I assume he’s cramping up. Even from my location, I can see beads of sweat drip from his forehead. He breaks, taking a moment to gather his breath and clear off his lenses with his t-shirt. His pale face turned red from utter exhaustion.

His wife jogs by, bending down by the stroller to point and wave at her husband. She continues on while he gets relief, but she turns her head back to say something and I see him laugh. In my head I play off a quip she makes about her giving birth and still being able to outrun him.

He regains his balance, standing back up and starting a slow, sloppy jog. That’s the last I see of the pair.

The Ginger & His Mom

Thousands of little orange wires sprout from his scalp, where bulks of curls collapse onto one another. Freckles by the masses dot the kid’s face, which surround two murky green eyes. He’s young, though I’m not sure how young – ten, maybe, let’s go with ten years old. It seems like kids always look younger than they actually are, especially now that I’m in college.

He walks back and forth a lot, waiting for his mother – here with him – to get off the computer. “When are you going to be done?” he asks every few minutes, only to be met with rolling eyes and responses like “Soon” and “Be quiet.”

He’s wearing camouflage pants (the kind that zip off at the knees to turn into shorts) and a bright orange t-shirt – brighter than his hair – with light up shoes that flash red and blue with every step he takes, pacing and pacing some more. He leans in over his mother’s shoulder, staring at what she’s doing until she rubs her head into her shoulder as if to tell him to go away – leave her alone.

His hands touch everything; every surface of every table and door and trashcan, and then they touch his face. I shudder every time he does it.

Unlike her son, she is not a redhead. Her hair is wiry and sandy brown with streaks of grey riding through it. Early forties, probably, as I can see some wrinkles starting to line her face. She’s working on her laptop, an older silver Dell model – I don’t know what she’s working on, but I know it runs Windows XP. She has headphones plugged into her ears, but I’m not sure if she’s actually listening to anything because she can hear her son just fine.

I’m guessing she has them in so no one bothers her, a fact that doesn’t deter her son from constantly prodding her with questions like “When are we leaving?” and “What are you doing?”

She’s wearing a purple sweater – which is ridiculous given how warm it is outside – and green khaki pants with brown moccasins. With those shoes, I might add, she’s wearing bright pink socks. A clear, half-empty cup of iced coffee is sweating, leaving a nice sized puddle of water around itself.

Her son walks outside after another failed attempt to get her to go home, looks at me and asks, “What’s up?”

I nod and say “Not much.”

He’s resting against the window with his hands behind his back, pushing himself away from the window and falling back into it over and over again – something I too do when I’m bored and leaning. He sighs a deep, exaggerated sigh and kicks his toes against the concrete. Inside, I see his mom close her laptop and shovel it into a briefcase before standing up, stretching, and downing the remainder of her iced coffee.

Excited to finally be leaving, the ginger boy runs back inside and stands next to his mother while she checks her phone. It’s like she’s making him wait on purpose, just because he kept annoying her with questions. Eventually they begin to walk towards the door, before she changes direction and, instead, walks into the bathroom – the one place he cannot follow her.

In a final moment of despair and disbelief – an act of surrender – he throws his hands into the air and once more leans his back into the wall.