I know it is him because he is russet-colored and missing his tail. Perhaps he lost it in a fight, perhaps he was caught in a gate. Perhaps he was struck by a car crossing the street. I’ve seen a fox flattened into the pavement just outside of the neighborhood, all tufts of red and orange and bits of bone. I thought it was him for a moment, but in the coagulated black and purple smear was a beautiful, bushy shivering with every passing car.
This morning, the fox trots over the yellow-green mounds that make up the backyard and disappears between the trees. I am with my sister at the kitchen table for the first time in a little over a year. She doesn’t notice the fox, but she knows he is there. Her focus is consumed by the email she’s been typing and retyping, the Slack messages announcing their arrival with a loud whoosing noise every few minutes. I am sitting in front of a mostly blank Word document. I switch tabs to the local bus station’s website to purchase a ticket back to the city.
I first noticed the fox ten years ago, shortly after my mom moved to Pennsylvania. The fox and I always seem to be in a constant state of movement as though we are afraid of being caught. There are eyes on us. I feel the eyes especially when I try to write.
I work at an upscale women’s retailer whose clientele skews mostly millennial, affluent, and white. It’s not the clothes–vegan leather trousers, oversized blazers, figure-smoothing tops–that these clients are after. What they want is the illusion of the everyday luxury we promise as they walk through the door and into an aspirational world of beige and snake plants and Anish Kapoor. Nothing innovative exists here. Nothing glamorous, despite the advertisements featuring Pamela Anderson mowing the lawn in stilettos. No risks. The clients will come in with their milky iced coffees, slicked back buns, and cartoonishly large gold plated earrings. They will spend the money they earned at their finance and marketing jobs on fabrics sourced from Japanese mills and extra-fine merino wool. They will ask if this satin blouse comes in any additional colorways, and we will tell them, yes, of course–black, white, and matte pearl, not to be confused with light birch. I wonder if their closets are organized by color, and if so, how.
I remind myself as I wrap their expensive bodysuits and denim in printed tissue paper that I am equal to our clients, perhaps not financially, but in more important ways. Sure, I laugh at their recycled jokes from the Internet and nod as they go through the itinerary of their upcoming work trip to Paris–modeling taught me how to perform, even if only for a few seconds–but I know that if we were to sit next to each other at the bar, no one would be able to tell who works in service and who works in an open-concept office. Besides, if they are delusional enough to believe they are buying quality garments (“Ever since I stopped buying fast fashion, my wardrobe has been so much better,” said one client after swiping her card for nearly $1,600 worth of polyester), then I can–no, should–be delusional enough to believe that I can build something bright and worthwhile, that this is just the in-between, that in a few years, this stint will just be another story on the shelf.
I enter my payment details in the blue-gray rectangles in front of me. The website directs me to a page notifying me that my ticket has been sent to my inbox. I close my laptop and look at my sister. She sticks out her tongue when she’s concentrating, so I know now is not the time to tell her that the fox has returned. He lopes over the rocks ans through the trees, his black lips curled upwards in a satisfied grin with a squirrel between his teeth. Its body lolls like a broken flower.
The average fox has a lifespan of five years in the wild. When I see him next year, things will be different. Tomorrow I will return to the city, return to work, return to the essays I’ve been trying to finish. For now I have this, and that is enough.
Your writing is exquisite! The mind you have!!
I think this is the fourth or fifth posting you have made since you began this substack in, I believe, the summer of 2022. It has been interesting to watch you evolve, the questions you pose, the things you notice, the social commentary you make. Your lack of pretension is perhaps what I like best--along with your quiet determination. But most striking of all is your fascination with the primal, the sense one gets that you might be happiest as an animal, but an intelligent, stealthy one, who might spring out of anywhere and light up the sky and, just possibly, be spoken of long after you are gone.