Our house was number ten, between the Spades and the Smiths. The Smiths were next door to us, at eight. Unlike other families on Lamont, the Smith family did not attend Corpus Christi, and drove instead to St. Bridget’s on the other side of town. Only their youngest daughter attended the neighborhood church. She was called Happy, and the name was something like cruelty, considering that her family was the craziest on the street. They could have been hillbillies, for all the banged-up appliances piled into their front yard, all the babies running around without shoes. All of them were speech-disordered, to a greater or lesser degree, so that their talk was neither pretty nor a resource they relied upon much.
Fighting was what the Smiths did best.
Not that fighting was foreign to the street. People fought all the time. Mothers smacked kids upside the head for spending bread money on candy or soda. Women let loose on the men in their lives, accused them of drunkenness and cheating. Men raised their voices at women, told them to stay put, pulling them back into houses by their hair when they tried to leave.
Still, the fights between the Smiths and whatever target they chose were different somehow. More hateful and regular. They resulted in bloodied faces and ambulances. Their fighting was ugly. But compelling. It glued us to windows, hands clenched—hating what we saw, but unable to pull ourselves away.
The Spades were on the other side of our house. Unlike the Smiths, they spoke well and often. Their car was parked just below our bedroom window and Steph and I pushed our noses into the wire mesh of the screen and looked onto their driveway. We were riveted by Mr. Spade, in particular. We loved the way he stripped off his shirt to wash the family car, the way suds and water pushed the hairs on his legs into dark swirls against his skin. That his name was Dick only made things juicier.
His wife wore stylish clothes and their children had the best toys around, including two fully functional swing sets and an entire collection of Star Wars action figures. Still, things were deteriorating on the street, and they were a young couple with options, so they decided to leave. Other families followed suit. The O’Connells. The Aubreys. The Dinardos. Anyone with a car that started.