Wednesday, April 3, 2019// The Statement
6B

L

isa nearly dropped the plate she 
was cleaning when she heard 
a large truck door slam shut. It 
was the new neighbors at last. She opened 
her curtains wide, allowing sunshine to 
burn the dark, dustless countertops, and 
peered out of her kitchen window. They 
were a typical young family: a husband, a 
pregnant wife and a toddler in a stroller. 
They looked nice enough, but she couldn’t 
tell much about them yet. She just hoped 
that they wouldn’t be anything like the last 
ones. The husband put his arm around the 
wife. He stood half a foot above her, just 
enough so that she could place her perfect, 
brown curls on his perfect, sturdy shoul-
der and look longingly at their new house 
together. They stared at the two-story 
house, and Lisa stared too. It was similar to 
Lisa’s house, just like all the houses in the 
neighborhood. The outsides looked differ-
ent of course: different colored brick, dif-
ferent shapes of windows and sometimes 
a different colored door. Yet, the insides 
were all the same. The staircase was on the 
right just as you got in, the living room on 
the left and the kitchen straightforward. 
All relatively the same size and structure, 
but you wouldn’t know from looking at 
just the outside. The husband and the wife 
turned back to facing each other. They 
stared longingly at each other, stared long-
ingly for their future together. Lisa stared, 
too.
When Jill and Todd, the old neighbors, 
moved out, she was so relieved. She could 
breathe the fresh, free-of-Jill-and-Todd-
air now when she stepped outside. The 
new “sold” sign in front of their house cre-

ated such an excitement in Lisa that she 
made cookies to welcome the new neigh-
bors. So far, she had made four batches. 
Batches one and three were too burnt, 
batch two had fallen to the ground and 
batch four was perfect but made prema-
turely. This fourth batch had been sitting 
in a Tupperware bowl waiting for the new 
neighbors for three weeks until they got 
stale and it was time for them to be thrown 
away. Now, after six weeks, the neighbors 
were here, but she had no cookies for them.
A new list of priorities instantly 
appeared in Lisa’s mind. Her unfinished 
dishes fell to the bottom of the list and a 
fifth batch of cookies for the new neigh-
bors rose urgently to the top. She gath-
ered the materials, followed her recipe, 
and mixed the ingredients together while 
looking outside her kitchen window.
Light from the outside could barely 
sneak past the thick curtains of Lisa’s 
window into her dimly lit kitchen, but 
she adjusted them just enough so she 
could peek through and watch the neigh-
bors move in. The stacks of boxes getting 
unpacked made her question if moving was 
ever really worth it. There was the physi-
cal labor of moving everything, of course, 
but there was also the mental labor. Leav-
ing a place that’s comfortable, a place that 
makes sense, and going to a place where 
your whole life just becomes about trying 
to adjust to it. She was just happy that Jill 
and Todd made this sacrifice.
The neighbors were on a break now. 
She watched them chat and monitored 
their expressions. The couple was social-
izing with the movers. They all had bright 

eyes, glowing faces, shining smiles. When 
they laughed it looked genuine, like they 
were actually enjoying themselves. The 
wife’s hair would fly through the wind as 
she threw her head forward with laugh-
ter. The husband’s strong hands would 
slap his thighs as if the laughter was too 
much for him. She wondered what kind of 
jokes existed that would create so much 
laughter when first meeting someone. The 
neighbors began to point out things to the 
movers, asking them questions, or some-
thing, but suddenly they looked at Lisa 
like they could see her right through her 
window. She could swear right then that 
their laughter turned to frowns, disgust 
and irritation. The sun burned their faces. 
Their skin turned a bright red. Maybe they 
knew this was her fifth batch and the cook-
ies weren’t ready on time. Whatever it was, 
Lisa knew she made a bad first impression 
and all she could hope for was that the 
cookies would taste good enough to make 
up for it. When the neighbors turned back 
away, Lisa closed the curtains and began 
to mix with more fury.
Soon enough all the ingredients became 
one consistent bowl of dough ready to 
again be separated from the rest onto a 
pan. Lisa scooped the mixture out, making 
several even piles of dough one and half 
inches in diameter. She had such a good 
eye for measurements that she didn’t need 
a ruler anymore while she baked, but at 
that moment she was having trouble see-
ing. The brightness of the sun was still 
affecting her vision, creating more and 
more dark spots every time she blinked. 
Lisa placed the spoon down back into the 

bowl and pressed her fingers to her eyes 
trying to get them to adjust. Each time she 
closed her eyes for too long, the sight of the 
neighbor’s frowns would appear and take 
over her vision. She had trouble remem-
bering the size of their noses or the width 
of their eyes, but she knew exactly what 
their frowns looked like.Judging frowns, 
hateful frowns, they burned her brain.
She opened her eyes back up and felt 
adjusted to the comfortable, dim lighting 
of her kitchen. However, even when she 
went back to scooping, she couldn’t get 
the image of their frowns out of her mind. 
With each scoop, Lisa couldn’t help but 
continue to ponder the details of the inter-
action she just had with the new neighbors. 
With each scoop she became more anxious 
to know why on Earth her new neighbors 
reacted this way. By the time she was at the 
scoop that ended the third row of cook-
ies, Lisa knew why the neighbors were 
disgusted by her. She started to slam the 
cookie dough onto the pan, careless about 
the evenness, and imagined each one as 
the heads of Jill and Todd. Every other 
scoop would be Jill then Todd, Jill then 
Todd, getting what they deserve. Because 
Lisa knew it was their fault. They had told 
the neighbors every bad thing about her, 
lies about her, just to get back at her. This 
infuriated Lisa, but still, she had hope that 
the sweetness of the cookies would change 
their mind about her. She quickly fixed the 
unevenness in the last row and threw the 
pan into the oven.
The question continued to pound inside 
Lisa’s head. She didn’t actually know what 
Jill and Todd would’ve told the new neigh-
bors, since she rarely allowed herself to be 
seen by them. But maybe Lisa was a bad 
neighbor in ways that she didn’t even real-
ize. Maybe they could hear her TV playing 
too loud, too late on those nights when she 
couldn’t sleep or they could tell when she 
was late mowing her lawn and her grass 
had grown too long next to theirs. Every 
morning when she left early for work, she 
could see their lights turn on as she pulled 
out of the driveway as if the sound of her 
car had woken them up. And every night 
when she came back home late and they 
were sitting on their porch, Jill and Todd 
would wave to her. The wave itself was like 
any friendly, neighborly wave, but their 
eyes were squinted as if they were focused 
on something else. Sometimes it was star-
ing at her grass that was too long, or her 
car that was too loud, and sometimes it 
was just an exhausted look that told Lisa 
that their misery was her fault.

The fifth batch a short story

BY JESSICA GARDINER, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

Read more online at 
michigandaily.com

ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN KUZEE

