First Comes Like #Wattys2020

1

People should fall in love with their eyes closed.
—Andy Warhol

ONE

The coffee from Dad's, #1 Dad mug spills onto the table as he slams it down in anger. I lower the spoon of cereal I was about to shovel into my mouth and look at him. Dad flings his newspaper to the ground and makes an inhumane noise with his throat.

"George." Mom warns from the kitchen sink. But Dad is already at the door, on the porch and moving too fast towards the source of the incessant sound of grass being cut.

The source: Mr. Pinkette's lawn mower.

This literally happens every weekend. Mr Pinkette insists on mowing his lawn on Sundays and my dad, who's like, 'Who the heck mows their lawn on a Sunday?', mows ours on Saturday. Apparently, neither of them can tolerate the noise of the other's lawn mower.

I swear this had been going on for literally centuries.

OK.

Not centuries. But I can't remember a time when things weren't the way they were.

This Saturday, something strange happens. Instead of Mr Pinkette ignoring Dad's yelling like he usually did, the lawn mower goes silent. Mom and I exchange a worried look, before running onto the porch.

Outside, Dad is yelling with his hands up and dangerously close to stepping on the Pinkette lawn. Mr Pinkette is dangerously close to exploding. He's actually turning red.

"Don't you dare come any closer, George!" Mr Pinkette yells, swinging his hands in front of him.

"Don't tell me what to do Marcus!" Dad retorts, but he backs away as Mr Pinkette makes a threatening gesture towards his lawn mower.

I wonder what he was going to do with it. If he was going to shave off my Dad's terrible mustache that everyone hates. He says it makes him look manlier but I feel sorry for Mom when she kisses him. Hopefully it's just another Dad phase he was going through.

They continue to argue and call each other things like 'imbecile' and 'nut'. It's ridiculous, just like my mom keeps saying. But if it counts, then I'm taking my dad's side. I mean, who the heck mows their lawn on a Sunday?

By now, the rest of the Pinkette household, that is Mrs Pinkette and her completely annoying son, Dean, have come out onto their own porch to watch. Dean stretches and yawns, then leans against the wall with his arms folded as he watches. My guess is that he's getting kinda bored of this. Then again, who wasn't?

Mom waves good morning to Mrs Pinkette. "Karen, when will this end?" she says with a sigh.

That's the question the whole neighborhood is asking. When. Will. This. End? The lawn mower feud is probably one of the most interesting things that ever happens in our sleepy little neighborhood. And that's saying a lot.

Mrs Pinkette shrugs exaggeratedly and laughs. "Who knows Jackie?" she says, then, "Come see the new curtains I bought."

My mom and Mrs Pinkette are on good terms. They've actually been good friends ever since the two of them got pregnant 17 years ago. But Dean and I, we've inherited the rivalry gene from our dads.

They hate each other.
We hate each other.

As Mom walks over to the Pinkette house I give Dean an icy stare from my own porch. He returns the look. He thinks that just because he's good looking and whatever, and because the just-woke-up-look works for him, he's some sort of big shot.

It didn't help that the girls at school were literally drooling (kinda) over him. My hands instantly go up in an attempt tame my curly mess of a bun. I probably had raccoon eyes from my eyeliner. That's what I got for sleeping with make up.

"Good morning neighbor." Dean calls out after a while, but his voice is sour and definitely intended to do the exact opposite of making my morning a good one.

"We don't talk Pinkette." I remind him.

I never called Dean by his first name to his face. He's always been Pinkette to me. He returns the favor by calling me anything from Blythe to Poof, because of my hair. He never calls me Valerie, far less Val and I won't let him anyway. It's reserved for friends, family and teachers even though they tended to refer to me as 'young lady'.

"Whatever." Dean says with a yawn as he steps back inside his house. I watch him bend his head a little to get through the door. It's unbelievable how tall he is now. I used to be able to shoot daggers at him with my eyes at his level. Now I have to tilt my head up.

Mr Pinkette turns his lawn mower back on and my Dad's yelling becomes background noise. I check 'listen to the weekend argument Sunday edition ' off my imaginary checklist. When I go back into the kitchen, I find Nina reading the cereal box. She's nine and literally the only one who doesn't care about the family feud. She has better things to do like sell cookies and lemonade and be cute.

"Hey Nina." I say as I walked toward the kitchen table.

"Hey Val." She says absent mindedly, with a mouth full of that sugary colorful junk she eats.

My cereal is soggy and disgusting, so I dump the rest of it in the bin. Then I go up to my room to sort out my things for the first day of school for the new year.

Beautiful light, the kind you can only get on Sunday mornings, illuminates my sea green room through the sliding glass door that leads out onto my bedroom balcony. With my curtains parted, I can see Dean flopped on his bed with his phone. I quickly close my curtains. I decide that I'd sacrifice the light just so I don't have to see Dean any longer.

Another bad thing about the whole Blythe-Pinkette feud is that our houses are identical. Not only are they both two-story blue and white, cape cod homes, but every window is aligned and, according to Mom, so is every room. For one, I know that Dean's room is directly opposite mine. We both have these cool balconies that face each other. Only problem: they face each other, so neither of us ever uses it.