My revenge was paperwork. I requested the work order through the painting company’s office, and the signature on it was not mine, and the billing address was theirs. That is forgery and criminal mischief, and I filed for both, and I filed a civil claim for the cost of restoration.
They settled before it reached a courtroom. Eleven thousand four hundred dollars, which covered stripping the grey, priming, and two coats of the original yellow, matched from a chip I had kept in a kitchen drawer since 1998, because my father mixed that colour himself the summer he bought the place.
They moved out that autumn. A retired couple lives there now and the wife brings me tomatoes.
The street threw a repainting party the weekend it was finished. Fourteen people, folding chairs, someone’s terrible potato salad. The man who took the photographs made a short speech that embarrassed everybody including him.
I have thought a lot about why it mattered so much. It was never really the colour. It was two people deciding that something of mine was theirs to correct, and assuming I was small enough to accept it. The house is yellow again. It is loud, and it is mine, and I have stopped apologising for taking up space on this corner.
