Short story writing and creative fiction, essays and non-fiction stories.

The third house from the corner on Maple Street was like every other in the neighborhood. It was built with a two car garage and white paneled sideboards atop a red brick structure. Occasionally people painted their shutters a hunter green or deep red as if this ostentatious display was their own personal creative preference. The lawns were manicured, the flowers watered and passing through you couldn’t even remember what you saw, so dull was its sameness. You could have hoped that although the homes were patterned alike, the people might have been more colorful and varied. But it seemed the contrary. They found the conformity comfortable.

Monday mornings, the coffee brewed and poured, they were out the door and with a wave or a nod and off to work. Weekends they mowed the grass, so careful only to cut exactly to the invisible, unspeakable line that divided their lives. Rules were obeyed; they were law abiding citizens, some of whom even attended the meetings in the library. They all voted; true some wanted the troops home but those who did wore their hair and jeans right so it seemed to bother no one. It was an All-American city. It was white sprinkled with a tinge of color proving their acceptance and tolerance of others.

Dogs barked while the children played in park, were pushed on the swings and caught at the end of the slide. The neighborhood paved its streets with carpet. Parents were concerned about safety and cautious in their choices. Evenings were quiet. A few men sat on their back porches and smoked while the blue lights of their TVs stuttered and flashed through their windows. True, the world was complicated and there were those who even glanced through the New York Times on Sunday mornings. They read of the choking atrocities and rampant decadence but it was all philosophy to this place that ran on pragmatics.

In this neighborhood people spoke in confident streams, re-running conversations. They knew what to talk about — mothers and children, the sheds and light bulbs, the bills and the weather — how long to talk about it and how to end it differently than they had the previous time. They knew it all. Everything here was understood. You worked hard, treated your wife well and your neighbors better. You provided for your kids; ample yard space to practice baseball and learn to ride a two wheeler. Wives cooked, men ate and children were born. It was all that simple.

Nothing peculiar happened when the Woods moved in to the third house on the corner on Maple street. The cakes were baked and hands shook in welcome as the Colgate smiles glistened in the sunny August day.

Mrs. Wood bobbed her head in appreciation; her wild curly hair sprang up with the summer heat and framed her face in a lively fashion. She was too pretty to live on such an ordinary block and the women greeting her felt a subtle intimidation with her open expression and were slightly jealous of her interested eyes and cocky smile. They looked nervously at their husbands, hoping that she wouldn’t cast a shadow with her brightness on their ordinary and expected expressions. Mr. Wood was candid and frank like his wife but stood awkwardly amongst the neighborly huddle. He was more hesitant and felt out of place, like a chess piece on a monopoly board.

When the moving truck pulled away, the neighborhood heaved a collective sigh of relief. Life was getting back to normal and the Woods would be good neighbors.

August turned quickly into September. The year started and the children’s backpacks were heavy, loaded with expensive paraphernalia that was never needed but intensely desired. It was if their parents went off to school. The leaves took turns coloring themselves and then making a mess on the lawns. Weekend came and out the rakes came out and gone went the littering leaves. They were quickly and neatly bagged and put out on the curb.

It was disturbing to see that the third house on Maple Street was left neglected, untidy as a child with crumbs pasted on their face. The blushing pink, raspberry orange and crispy yellow, like wildflowers danced in unbridled and boisterous freedom on the Wood’s front lawn. A week or two, the neighbors could understand, but more?

It was the gusty wind that stirred the neighborhood up from sinking too deeply in their couches. The Woods lived between the Smiths and the McConnells, two very ordinary families. They drove the same cars, drank the same beer and even bought the same brand of toilet paper. Picture perfect it really was. So when the wind blew the leaves that fell from the Woods trees onto their tip top lawns; eyebrows were raised.

The next morning when the Woods went off to work the Smiths, and the McConnells, expected a quick apology or at least a mention of the incident. But there was nothing.

And this nothing, really brewed up the neighborhood. So from the eyebrows came the stares which then turned into murmur and then soon needed to be framed as a Norman Rockwell painting; each one telling the next.

The Woods didn’t seem to take notice. Mrs. Wood didn’t even seem embarrassed to paint her lips a brazen red and Mr. Wood was unabashed in saying good morning and all.

Didn’t they know?

People in the neighborhood began to feel uncomfortable. This was their haven; the Garden of Eden a crossroad of streets as straight as graph paper with clear lines of what is acceptable and what is not. It all headed to an abrupt halt one morning (long awaited in its coming) when the Wood’s were seen taking out their rakes and packing up their leaves. It was a chilly autumn classic afternoon; the type when your nose nipped up all pink and the air was as smelly as a cinnamon, cider and clove spice box.

Mournfully, the leaves that had done their turn, as a ballerina in her final performance exits the stage, were gathered in heaping mounds. The neighbors were impulsed to look as one has the urge to look when they should not, as they waited impatiently for normalcy to take up its habitual position again. All seemed that it was going well until the Woods took their rakes in hand and headed indoors. Indeed they had removed the overflowing mountains of leaves that spilled from their canopy of branches above but they had left a considerable amount of scattered leaves as crayons spilled on the floor.

Mr. Wood was on the fourth step of his house when his neighbor called out.

“Mr. Wood- need help finishing?”

Mr. Wood turned “No I’m done. I like some color.”

And with that Mr. Wood turned the doorknob, the same one that everyone on the surrounding blocks turned each morning and night and entered his home on Maple Street, the third one from the corner.

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Tags: color, fall, Fiction, flash fiction, individuality, surbubia