One morning I woke early, about 4:30. Unable to go back to sleep, I went to sit on the front porch, where I could look out at the shadowy houses in the cul de sac and wonder about the people inside them.
Nothing is ever really dark or silent outside Washington, D.C. They sky is purple, not black, and the brightest lights are on the airplanes landing from National Airport, which is only about five miles away. Every so often the sound of a train whistle swirls through the air like a ghost, a reminder that there are people with purpose in the world.
I have always liked to be up and about when I should have been sleeping. When I was a teen-ager, I would creep past my parents’ bedroom and out the front door, to pad down the driveway in my nightgown, always believing I’d meet a man abroad in the night. I wanted him to be a lover. I expected him to be a murderer. I went, anyway.
Tonight, I feel like a spy. Eight houses ring the cul de sac, all nearly the same, making me think of the song: “little boxes, little boxes, just the same,” which was written about 10 years after these houses were built. They are ranchers. A single large window fronts each house. That is the living room. To the left or the right, depending on the home’s orientation, are two windows: the bathroom window and the window to the small front bedroom. In my house, that is the room where the baby sleeps.
She sleeps like a parked car in her crib, but I expect her to wake again, as she has twice already tonight, crying and wanting to be stroked.
The dominant feature of our cul de sac is the giant silver maple. Still winter bare though it is early spring, the tree rises up toward the sky like the skeleton of an empty vase. My neighbor says they are dangerous, these trees, because they rot from the inside and when they’re hollow they are apt to fall on a house, crushing it. I find its starkness in these shadows beautiful.
On another porch I spot Wildcat, curled on the doormat. She is an elderly grey and white cat, a friendly thing who comes to my door. When I put out food and water, she takes a few polite bites. Everyone feeds Wildcat. Her nominal owners, who live in the house with the silver maple, usually bring her inside at night, but not tonight.
I am uneasy about her presence on the porch. We have a fox in our neighborhood, and part of the reason I came outside was because I thought I might see him. It fascinates me to think that we share these neatly trimmed plots with a bona fide wild creature, a sly beast that hunts small joyous creatures, baby birds and raccoons and the rabbits who move under the azalea bushes in springtime. I don’t know that the fox would go after an elderly cat, but I can imagine it. I imagine what Wildcat’s screams would sound like, and how it would look in the dark if the fox had her in his mouth. I cannot shake the image from my mind.
And indeed I do seem him, after a time. I know him well, this fox. He runs past my office window sometimes in the daylight, when I can see how skinny he is, and how mangy his reddish fur. He is about the size of a medium-sized dog, and when he runs, he keeps his mouth open. I have seen his teeth flashing.
He trots along the sidewalk, passing the porch where Wildcat sleeps. When he turns and heads toward me, I’m not surprised. I came out here to meet him, after all.
I’m tense on the hard wrought-iron chair, waiting for him to come all the way, up the porch and at my throat. But he stops in the middle of the cul de sac, and lies down in the center on the pavement. I sense his eyes on me in the dark.
He owns this place.