My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Garrett would make an effort to plant something seasonal, chrysanthemums in September, impatiens in June, only to leave it to gasp and wither away as she tended to something more important, like her five children. Their backyard was a hodgepodge of an in-ground pool and a trampoline and a swing set and monkey bars. Their Christmas lights stayed hung till Easter. Their lawn got mowed sporadically at best. Our dad had walked away without even a good-bye, leaving Mom with a one-year-old, a baby on the way, a lot of disillusionment, and, luckily, her trust fund from her parents.Īs the years proved, our new neighbors, the Garretts, were exactly what Mom predicted. I looked over to see an older boy unfold himself from the back of the car, baseball mitt in hand, reaching back to haul out a cardboard box full of sports gear.Įven then, Tracy liked to deflect, to forget how hard our mother found being a parent. “ He’s cute,” she said, squinting over the fence again. My sister looked at me with the same warning face she used when she was watching TV and I walked up to ask her a question. I moved closer to Tracy and edged a fleck of white paint off the fence with my thumbnail. Insanity.” She shook her head again, rolling her eyes heavenward. She was shaking her head at me, a strange expression on her face. I remember there was a silence then, and I looked up at my mother. I switched the bulb around, scooting my knees in the dirt to get closer to the fence, my eyes never leaving the father as he swung a baby from a car seat while a curly-haired toddler climbed his back. You’ve got that bulb wrong side up, Samantha.” The messy family who lowers real estate values. The ones who never plant flowers, or do and let them die. “This kind of thing.” Mom gestured toward the car with the trowel, twisting her silvery blond hair into a coil with the other hand.

I pressed my face to the gap in the slats, watching in amazement as two parents and five children spilled from the sedan, like a clown car at the circus. Walking quickly to the picket fence that divided our house from the one next door, she perched on her tiptoes to peer at the new neighbors. She was eight and already restless with Mom’s chore of the day, planting jonquil bulbs in our front garden. “This-what?” my big sister called from down the driveway. “Oh no,” Mom sighed, arms falling to her sides.

We were standing in our yard that day ten years ago when their battered sedan pulled up to the low-slung shingled house next door, close behind the moving van. The Garretts were forbidden from the start.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick