Almost every Sunday evening my neighbours put my bins onto the curb for rubbish collection even though I am physically capable of doing it myself and I am mostly home. When I am not preoccupied with thoughts of wishing I were dead, I think of these small human acts of kindness and I feel warm all over and thank the universe that I have such lovely people living next door who save me from dragging the bins twenty metres down the drive because I'm lazy or have forgotten. They also do this because I never have more than a quarter of my bin full, and they like to use that space for their own rubbish which would otherwise overflow.
To repay this community spirit I let them park their cars in my driveway and I park mine on the road. Really, it's whoever gets there first. Sometimes in traffic I picture myself being killed in a road accident. They have a large family and their assortment of vans and hatchbacks take up a bit of room in the street, so I figure it makes the most sense for them to use the driveway which easily fits two cars. Especially when I live there mostly alone and am always out with no clear pattern of when I come and go.
I once got into an argument with the insurance people who wanted to charge me fifteen dollars extra per month because I had just moved back to the northwestern suburbs. This was back when my desire to not exist was more abstract. I told them it was discrimination and that my car has never been broken into in the twenty-plus years that I lived here, whereas when I lived in the posh inner-east my tires got slashed.
On summer weekends, sometimes I'll leave the house in my pyjamas and no shoes and get breakfast via the McDonald’s Drive Thru. I get back and park my car and shamefully tiptoe over the crunchy grass, drink and paper bag in one hand, maybe a hashbrown in my mouth, and keys in the other hand. I ungraciously unlock the door and sneak into the house and watch morning cartoons like I did when I was a child, except now I watch them on Disney+ instead of the illegal Foxtel I had growing up. Sometimes I get caught in the act and make small talk with the Dad, whose name I know, and who speaks broken English. Once he told me that if I ever felt scared being there alone at night or am in trouble to give his family a call and he will get his boys, whose names I don't know, to help.
I don’t get involved in any other sort of trouble, but I guess I am alone in this huge house all by myself. I like having their cars in the driveway so it doesn’t look so vacant, just the single glowing bedroom all the way up the back of the house, the blinds down during the day because I can’t be bothered to let the light in. I wonder how the boy I’ve seen for a few dates would find out about my funeral if I died. Sometimes there are voices in the park next door late at night, but I can’t imagine myself walking up to my neighbour’s house and knocking on their door because of that.
When I feel guilty that I forget the names of some of the kids (who are now adults), I remind myself that for the past two decades they've called me slightly the wrong name even though we sign off on the card we give them every Christmas time along with a very large box of Favourites, in which we receive a tray of treats from the Lebanese bakery in return, which I scoff down watching films about white Christmases while I try to forget our own winter and along with it the desire to sleep away the days.
The other week, I had forgotten to put the bins out again, so I frantically wheeled the rubbish and recycling onto the curb before I took off to work on Monday morning. When I returned home the rubbish was empty, but the recycling was still half full, meaning it would go a full month without the trucks emptying it. I wheeled my forgotten bins back, a familiar disproportionate anger pressing in, knowing the same pressure would arrive next time.
I’ll admit some of that frustration leaked outside of myself. While it was my failure that had landed me here, didn’t we have an unspoken agreement? In my sadness I indulged in the romance of neighbourliness, because it was prettier than weighing who benefited most from this transaction. But I wasn’t owed consistency.
When that Sunday night rolled around at last, I again realised quite late I had forgotten. I rushed outside in my pyjamas, porchlight off, barefoot down the steps to an empty space at the base of the driveway. When I looked towards the street the bins were twenty metres away, sitting curb-side awaiting collection.
Casper Dee a Melbourne/Naarm-based author. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in early 2027, and her work has appeared in Underdog: #LoveOzYA Short Stories (ed. Tobias Madden) and Vox Populi (Bowen Street Press).