Neighbours

I had these neighbours growing up. I never really noticed them until I was in my teens. Their place was so cool. I had my first road trips to the beach with them. My first shopping expeditions where we’d try to hide what we’d bought for fear of getting caught out spending too much money. Everything that happened at their house seemed interesting. It just made me want to be part of the family. And I wasn’t the only one. It seems my whole twenties, someone was trying to find a way to be part of the family — pretending to have some skill no one in the family had so they could stick around or just hanging out at the house and hoping that no one would notice and send us home. 

Everyone wanted to be there. They were so open. Live and let live and all that. The stuff we saw in that house! They seemed to catch on to all the new trends before the rest of us. And the family was so big that there was always something fun going on, something new. The food was copious and different. Everything they did just seemed cooler, and it made what we had at home pale in comparison.

And then suddenly it all changed. The dad left. And no one realized how much it would impact the family. Then a new stepdad was on the scene. He was kind of famous, so the neighbours were kind of wowed, but it turned out he was sort of creepy. In fact, he was super creepy. None of the neighbourhood girls wanted to go over there anymore because of the way he looked at us and the way he talked to us. Nothing he said made any sense. It was a bit scary thinking you might get caught alone in the pantry with him, so we stopped going over. 

We’d hear him spouting from his backyard after a few beers, ranting about immigrants and intellectuals and gays — anyone who wasn’t like him. We kept thinking our friends’ mom would wake up and kick him out, but she put up with it. And the kids didn’t seem to want to rock the boat or they were afraid of him, so they just let him spout. Some of the siblings grumbled, but some of them also seemed to secretly admire his arrogance. And it brought out the worst in all of them. Why don’t they kick him out, we wondered? He’s ruining everything, we thought. Then we all just kept away, worried we’d get caught up in his sticky net of conspiracy theories, in his web of hate. 

To be honest, it kind of poisoned the whole block. It had been such a hub of hip and now it was the laughingstock of the neighbourhood. We all avoided it like the plague. And it bummed us out. It had been the place everyone wanted to be, and now we were all figuring out how we could get to where we wanted to go without even having to walk by it, because it made us sad and it made us mad, and we felt for our friends with their crazy stepdad and hoped that he’d be gone soon and we could go back to loving their family and loving their house and loving our neighbourhood.

I miss you, USA.

Sarah Cobb