A Walk Around the Neighborhood

Can I tell you about my three favorite houses in our neighborhood?

The Gingerbread House

In my dreams, the ancient woman occupying this delectable gingerbread house spends her days writing letters. Lengthy scripts, always in the cursive she learned in primary school, to everyone. To her grandchildren, to the New York Times, to the coffee shop owner down the street, to her Portuguese pen pal, to the manager of her favorite humane society, to the mailman himself. When she completes this task, usually around 4 p.m., she carefully lights her fireplace with those shaky, melanocyted hands. The puffs of smoke rise up the bricked chimney, which curiously wraps around the front of the house in a snaked pattern. Flowers overflowing from their tiered window boxes fall when the disparate particles reach them, and rise again when the old woman extinguishes her fire at 8 p.m. and the sun sets.

The Sculpurist’s House

He stares at you, the face, in a disagreeable manner. His face is blocked in two shades of brown, one a deep chocolate and the other a canvas. His eyes, though, are blue as the sky and wide as a child’s. But the most unsettling part of this sculpture, which resides at the front of the sculpturist’s lawn, staring at the house across the street (would you be able to sleep at night, with its eyes on you?), is the hand. The hand, perfectly human-sized compared to the behemoth of the face, reaches down from the forehead and to the right eyeball. It splits part of the forehead, in fact, in its reach. So what is behind the face? Is there a human attached to that hand, its fleshy pale surface so unnerving?

The Mechanic’s House

Twelve, last I counted. Pick-ups, sedans, convertibles. Run-down with the slightest—slightest—possibility of ever running again. But hope remains. The mechanic’s work is never finished, and he’s not sure what he would do with his time, his life, if he did not have a new car every day to work on. Never the same car two days in a row. If he worked on the blue Toyota yesterday, he probably won’t touch it again until next Tuesday. It only cost him $300 from his Social Security check last month and the joy it gave him was worth so much more. Perhaps not joy; that could be the wrong word. Fulfillment. That’s it.