My Neighbors Son Threw A Pool Party In My Backyard So I Taught Them A Lesson
“I know you miss Chuck.”
“I do,” I said. “He spent two summers building that pool. He maintained it every single Saturday for almost forty years. I found him out there. When he—” I stopped. “When he passed.”
“Okay,” Denise said. “So?”
I looked at her.
“So when people let themselves in without asking,” I said carefully, searching for the right words, “it feels like they’re walking through my memories. With muddy feet.”
For one brief second, I thought she understood. Something flickered across her face. Something soft.
Then she patted my hand again.
“Oh, Abby,” she said. “You spend too much time alone in this house. You overthink things. It’s healthy having neighbors enjoy the space. Chuck would want it to be used.”
I almost laughed out loud.
Apparently, trespassing had become community wellness.
Brandon inherited every one of his mother’s habits.
He never asked. He just assumed.
If his basketball rolled into my yard, he’d hop the fence to get it and leave through the gate carrying one of my pool towels.
If he needed to cool off after mowing their lawn, he’d climb over, jump in, and climb back out without a word.
And if Denise wanted to sunbathe, she’d text me afterward.
Used the pool for a bit! Hope you don’t mind!
The smiley face somehow made it worse.
The final straw came three weeks ago.
My daughter Phoebe called me at six in the morning on a Thursday.
“Mom.” Her voice was shaking. “The surgery’s been moved up. They had a cancellation. It’s tomorrow morning.”
Phoebe had been dealing with a bad disc in her back for almost a year. She’d finally been scheduled for surgery in October. Now it was tomorrow.
She and her husband, Mark, had three young children. Lucy, who was eight. Sam, who was six. And Theo, who was four and believed with his whole heart that he was a dinosaur.
Mark couldn’t take time off work. Not on one day’s notice.
I didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll be there in two hours,” I said.
I packed an overnight bag. I checked the pool chemicals one last time. Chlorine good. pH good. I put the cover on the hot tub. I locked the gate with the padlock and spun the dial.
Then I backed my car out of the garage and drove two hours to Phoebe’s house in Millbrook.
Her surgery went well. Better than well. The surgeon came out to the waiting room smiling and said everything had gone “textbook.”
The grandchildren kept me wonderfully exhausted.
We built a blanket fort in the living room that took up the entire couch and half the dining room. We made dinosaur-shaped pancakes, which looked more like potatoes with legs, but Theo said they were “perfect stegosauruses.” We watched the same animated movie four times in two days because Theo insisted the turtle “needed another chance.”
“Another chance at what, honey?”
“At being brave,” he said seriously. “He was scared the first three times.”
By the time Phoebe could finally move around comfortably again, I’d been gone almost three days.
On Sunday afternoon, I kissed all three grandchildren goodbye. Lucy hugged me so tight around the neck I couldn’t breathe.
“Can we come swim in Grandpa’s pool this weekend?” she asked.
“As soon as your mom’s feeling better,” I said. “I’ll have it ready for you.”
As I turned onto my street that Sunday evening, I was smiling.
Home.
I couldn’t wait to sit beside Chuck’s pool with a cup of iced tea and watch the sun go down over the fence.
Then I pulled into my driveway.
And I knew something was wrong immediately.
The backyard gate was standing slightly open.
Chuck never left gates open. Never, in forty-one years. It was one of his rules. Gates stay closed, Abby. Kids and dogs.
Neither did I.
My heart started racing.
I got out of the car without even shutting off the engine. I hurried across the lawn and pushed through the side gate.
The padlock was lying in the grass. Open.
For a moment, I just stood there.
Wet towels covered every piece of patio furniture. Not my towels. Bright neon beach towels with cartoon characters on them.
Pizza boxes lay crushed under one of the lounge chairs. Grease stains were soaking into the cushions.
Confetti was everywhere. Gold and silver. It clung to every flower bed. To the leaves of the rose bushes. To the bricks. It floated in the pool.
Red plastic cups drifted lazily across the surface of the water. Dozens of them. Turning slowly in circles.
Someone had tossed a giant inflatable pink flamingo into the deep end. It was floating on its side, half deflated, like it had died there.
Empty soda cans lined the edge of the pool like decorative ornaments. All the way around.
And the flower pots.
Chuck had built them from old whiskey barrels, the summer before he died. He’d cut them in half with a hand saw and sanded them and stained them and lined them with plastic, and I’d planted geraniums in them every spring since.
Three of them had been knocked over. Dirt and broken geraniums were spilled across the bricks.
One of them had a sneaker print across the side. A big one.
I looked around slowly.
It wasn’t just messy.
It looked used. Abandoned. Disrespected.
Destroyed.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I didn’t march next door and pound on Denise’s door.
I walked back to the car. I turned off the engine. I pulled the car into the garage and closed the garage door.
Then I quietly walked inside my house through the side door. I set my suitcase down in the hall.
And I sat down at the kitchen table and opened the security camera app on my phone.
Danny had installed the cameras for me two years ago. “Mom, you live alone now. Humor me.” There was one on the front porch, one on the back deck, and one on the side gate. I’d never looked at the footage once.
The recording started the afternoon after I’d left. Friday. 3:42 p.m.
At first, it was only Brandon.
He climbed the fence. He spun the padlock. It took him about twelve seconds. He opened my gate and propped it with a brick.
Then he went back to his house and came out carrying three folding tables.
Then came coolers. Speakers. A bag of ice. A box of plastic cups. A string of party lights.
Then more teenagers. Two. Five. Twelve.
Cars started lining the street. I could see them in the front porch camera. Twenty cars. Maybe more.
By sunset, there had to be thirty people in my backyard.
I watched it all.
Somebody climbed up on Chuck’s waterfall and jumped off it into the shallow end, which is two and a half feet deep. My heart stopped when he hit the water. He came up laughing.
Another boy climbed up on Chuck’s outdoor table, the big teak one he’d built from a kit, and pretended to surf on it while his friends filmed him.
One girl sat down in one of my flower beds, right on top of the hostas, and stayed there for an hour.
Someone knocked over the first whiskey barrel. Then the second. A tall boy in a backward baseball cap kicked the third one on purpose, laughing, and his friends cheered.
I rubbed my forehead and kept watching.
Then, around 9:30, I heard a voice through the speaker.
A skinny boy with glasses was standing near the gate, looking around nervously. He leaned toward Brandon.
“Dude,” he said. “Doesn’t the owner know?”
Brandon laughed.
“The old lady’s out of town.”
“What if she comes home?” another boy asked.
Brandon shrugged.
“My mom said not to worry about it.”
And then he did an impression of Denise. He put one hand on his hip and flipped his hair and made his voice high and breathy. It was almost perfect.
“‘The old lady won’t do anything.’”
Laughter exploded out of my phone speaker.
Then Denise herself walked into the frame.
She was carrying two large pizza boxes, one balanced on top of the other. She was wearing a sundress and her big floppy hat.
She waved at everyone like she was the queen of a parade.
“Who’s hungry?” she called out.
The teenagers cheered.
One of them actually shouted, “Best mom ever!”
Denise took a dramatic little bow. Right there on Chuck’s bricks. In front of Chuck’s pool.
Then she set the pizzas down on Chuck’s teak table, grabbed a seltzer out of the cooler, and sat down in Chuck’s blue-striped lounge chair.
I paused the video.
I stared at the screen for a long time. At Denise, leaning back in Chuck’s chair. At the empty soda cans on the edge of his pool. At the sneaker print on his whiskey barrel.
And then, slowly, I smiled.
Not because I was happy.
Because something had just occurred to me.
I sat at the kitchen table in the dark and thought it through.
Calling the police would cost Brandon a frightening afternoon. Maybe a ticket. Maybe nothing. Denise would cry and say he was just a kid and they’d let him off with a warning, and two weeks later he’d be back in my pool.
Sending Denise a letter from a lawyer would cost her some money. She’d pay it. She’d be angry. She’d tell the whole neighborhood I was a bitter old widow who couldn’t stand to see young people having fun.
Neither of those things would change the one thing that actually needed changing.
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