For a month now I have walked the dog around the block at half past six, retracing the steps I took with Sarah in the baby sling six short-long years ago. Sarah is at home on the couch tonight, curled up with a book and a nightly yogurt shake she calls Milky, unwinding before I return home to tuck her into bed.
These evening walks have quickly become my own time to unwind. Some nights I walk briskly behind the leash, as if the dog’s inner drive to chase squirrels could pull me out from the layer of stress that has pressed against my shoulders all day. As we rush along, I imagine myself as a molting lobster, scrambling out of its shell. Other nights I simply shuffle—the soft shelled lobster now, vulnerable and sensitive to everything that is.
In six years, in my neighborhood, not all that much has changed. Deborah and Michael have moved from the big white house on the corner, but their son still lives in the house, with friends. The same for Stanley and his wife, just four or five houses down. One day they suddenly disappeared under the radar, but their son stayed behind with the house.
Then again, two other sons have vanished—not literally, of course—but the young men whom Sarah and I watched playing tag football or messing around with guitars on those bright fall afternoons are both in college now.
The daycare on our street is still there, silent for the night after the children have all gone home, and the elderly neighbors, too, walking a little slower perhaps, but otherwise seeming unchanged. Blue shadows flicker against the shades at Shirley’s house, announcing that she is watching the national news on TV. A month ago, the theme song would have spilled out from the corners as we walked past, but it is October now. Windows are closed.
October now—colder and, surprisingly, dark. During the years between baby walks and dog walks I had stopped noticing the darkening nights, realizing only that one moment we had eight o’clock sunsets and then I was reaching for lights before five. Slowly, I am becoming acquainted again with the ebb and flow of the world.
And with the darkness comes another tender moment of surprise. Because I realize that I have been here before and that, in fact, this may be the very reason I wanted the dog to begin with: so I could walk in this dark place again.
I do not mean this very same sidewalk, which has weeds growing up through the deep splits and fissures under my feet. I never took Sarah around this neighborhood after dark; for the past six years, I spent all of my evening hours indoors. In fact, the street I am thinking of has no sidewalks—no traffic to speak of—at all. But this falling darkness and the rustle of the brittle leaves in the trees: the same. The heavy wood smoke and the gaps between the hushed street lights: the same. Except I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t walking a dog; I was walking with my dad. We were going to visit my uncle Al, who lived halfway down the street.
The walk back then went something like this:
Leave your house, bundled up against the cold. (A navy snowsuit with thick knitted cuffs comes to mind.) Hold hands and head for the noise of the brook, several yards down, on the right. Pause to step on your shadow under the streetlight. Pass Uncle Tony’s house on the right; Uncle Paul’s house on the left. Pass Uncle Freddy’s house, after the second brook. He died a few years ago and someone rents it now, but you picture the soft curve of the staircase, and the toilet with the big pull chain. Pass the line of tiny box houses, shaped like the green plastic homes you squeeze four to a square in Monopoly games. Move back into wide open spaces and walk up Uncle Al’s drive, to the home where Grammy lived on the second floor, with Secret deodorant in her tiny medicine cabinet and twisty straws near her fridge for your cups of ginger ale, and where Uncle Al now works in his basement, surrounded by vice grips for gluing things back together, and rows of hammers and nails. Swing your feet as you perch on the edge of a sawhorse, watching smoke drift from Uncle Al’s pipe, getting sleepy while the men chat. Tiptoe back upstairs to pet the tiger cats in the kitchen and wait with Aunt Louise. Rock in the chair by the window while she throws some more wood on the stove, finishes wiping the dishes by the sink. Remember that near the front of the house, Kevin, a whole year younger than you, sleeps in his room. Your mother grew up here; this is ground zero; and you are safe.
Back in Exeter, it has become so dark that the dog cannot see squirrels now, even if he squints. They all seem to have gone to bed anyway. It is time to go home, hang up the leash, hold Sarah’s hand up the stairs, tuck her in. Sixty-two miles away, in the veteran’s home, Uncle Al is dying, right now. The days ahead will be filled with condolences and reunions, a wake, a funeral. Under the clear October sky, your dad, who will hold hands with your mother and look fragile in his best grey suit, will reach over to rest his free hand gently between your shoulder blades. But for now you will stop to listen to a small flock of geese, calling overhead, flying together in the dark, and you will acknowledge that even though you can’t see them, they are there. You will pause under a streetlight, step on your shadow, and, just for a moment, feel safe.
