Neighbors
For decades, it was that shade of institutional green with a hint of bilious yellow until three days ago they painted the whole house crayon sky blue in one day.Two men covered the windows with butcher paper. The compressor billowed gas fumes into the house where I grew up and the view from my childhood windows was gone in an afternoon.
Now the neighbor lady gasps not talking, barely breathing bone thin in an easy chair in the Cherwatenko’s small carpeted living room, her closest companion a disease that she cannot pronounce.
A nurse, her husband, two sons long gone come back. The aluminium screen door slams with repeated finality as the boys, grown men, visit the house that used to be green for the very last time.
The clap of metal against their doorstop whaps through our open spring window barely nine feet away. My mother glances up from the dishpan and leans over the sink on tiptoe, her own aging wet hand on the counter to see who might be coming or going.