The Front Door

Priya bought the house in March and the first thing she did was paint the front door. She picked a deep teal. She loved it for about nine hours.

The next morning her neighbor Gail leaned over the fence. “Bold,” she said. “Bit much for this street, don’t you think? Something softer.”

Priya repainted it sage green.

The mail carrier said sage was nice but a little sleepy. Gail’s husband said red doors bring luck. A woman walking her dog said she’d always wanted a yellow door and wished she had the nerve. Priya tried red. Then yellow. By June she had spent four weekends and three hundred dollars on paint, and the door was a muddy brown, the color you get when you mix everything together.

Nobody mentioned the brown. The neighbors walked past with their eyes slightly down, the way you pass someone else’s bad haircut.

One evening Priya sat on the steps and looked at it. She felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with painting.

Old Mr. Alvarez from the corner house stopped on his walk. He studied the door for a while.

“I liked the first one,” he said.

“You never told me.”

“You didn’t ask me. You asked everybody else.”

Priya laughed, then stopped, because it wasn’t funny. She went to the garage and found the teal, half a can left, thick on top. She stirred it for a long time. That Saturday she covered the brown in two coats.

Gail still thought it was a bit much. She said so over the fence. Priya said, “Probably,” and went on watering her plants.