Cherry Wren's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Monday morning Cherry stepped outside with her coffee and saw the curtain twitch in the cottage next door. The red roof across the fence caught the sun. Her neighbor was at the window. He had been at the window when she carried out her compost bucket Sunday night, and again when she came back from her car with groceries. The email had ended the planter fight. It had not ended him watching. She set her mug on the rail and made herself look at the fence between their yards. The fence was old. The carved cherry blossoms along the pickets had faded to gray-pink, and one rail sagged where his side leaned into hers. She could see his back step through a gap in the slats. He could see her whole yard through the same gap. She understood then that one more thing he didn't like would not stay at the fence. It would come to her door. It would come in writing, or worse. She went inside and opened her journal on the kitchen table. She wrote three columns: what he can see, what he can complain about, what the lease actually says. The first column filled fast. The cedar box. The compost bucket. The hose. The second column was shorter. The third column was shortest. She had the landlord's email printed and clipped to the back cover. She had been treating it like a shield. A shield only worked if she stayed behind it. She drove to the hardware store and bought a roll of jute screening and four zip ties. She came home and tied the screening to her side of the fence along the worst gap. She did not touch his side. She did not raise the height. She trimmed the long grass at the base of the planter so the box sat clean on the ground. She moved the compost bucket behind the shed. She carried the glass bottle with the pink ribbon off the planter and set it inside on the windowsill, where only she could see it. Then she walked to the fence and knocked once on the top rail. Her neighbor came out. She told him she had screened her side so his view would be cleaner. She told him the planter was staying. She told him if he had a question about anything else in her yard, he could knock on her door instead of watching from his window. He looked at the screening. He said that was fair. He went back inside and shut the door. Cherry sat at her kitchen table and opened the journal again. She wrote one line under the three columns: he watches less when he knows I see him. The yard was hers to use now, not just to defend. She pulled the pink planning box down from the shelf and turned to the page where she had listed a second planter. She crossed out the question mark beside it.