What If Everything Works Out?
Photo by Sara Flitner
More than a week ago, she flared in my periphery, a lithe red paintbrush. From my ground floor office window, I turned my head towards the motion and fixed on her, a gleaming red fox, looking up at the magpies, while I gazed at her, frozen, watching. Delicate, clever eyes, cream white throat, antennae ink-black ears. She pounced on something and burrowed her face in dense grass. Up came the porcelain-like nose as she chewed, victorious, and swallowed. I reached for my phone as she trotted away, trying to keep something of her. A tiny grief bloomed as she disappeared from sight.
An hour later, she stood by my parked car in the thick grass. A second chance. I stole a picture.
A few days later, I’m walking, brooding about inflation, the midterms and the Cornell Seven, the job market for kids these days. It is days before the election. My body feels dense, incapable of pouncing.
I run into Carol, whom a local pastor calls Jackson’s tiny mystic. Her coat is buttoned up to a bright blue scarf, her eyes shimmering with a vibrance from somewhere within. She listens to my concerns, steady and calm. Well into her 80s, Carol says things that don’t compute to me, but they come out of her mouth like she is saying, “Have some chicken soup,” or, “Did you remember to pick up your dry cleaning?” I think of the fox’s ears, attending, and I lean in.
“As long as you’ve got it together in here,” she says, gesturing up and down her torso, “you’ve got it, kid.” Then, as if reading my mind, almost over her shoulder, she adds: “People are going to pull some shit. And you gotta keep yours together. Simple.” She’s already moving off. “Things work out.”
Even her step is optimistic.
Back home, I see her again, the fox. This time, she looks over her shoulder long enough to give me eye contact, like a model patiently giving the photographer a chance. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, sweet girl, ‘atta girl,” I purr at her quietly. I pray to her like a goddess as she stands there, black ears scanning, tail bushy, longer than her body. Tell me, I implore. Tell me all the things you know.
I see her most days now, and share pictures with friends, my sons and siblings, with my partner. She is good. So good I want to share her. Someone tells me that foxes like the suburban corridors, clever things. They know their coyote predators are more skittish, won’t come near the lights and bustle. For the price of allowing me to see her, she gets all the birds and mice under my window.
I’m out of town overnight, and driving home all I can think of is the fox. I want to see her, want evidence of my faith before I have it. Show yourself, I think, while simultaneously hearing Carol’s mischievous voice: “Keep your own together.” I pull into my driveway: no silhouette of those perfect ears, no light pounce in my periphery. Resigned, I take heavy bags inside and unpack. I’m grouchy after a long day, peeved at my fox. I take it personally, her absence.
A few days later, I’m talking to my partner on the phone and interrupt myself with a quiet shriek. “The fox?” he asks, his smile coming through the line.