Look: this is where Joshua lived. The house is different now but this is the way it was: low to the ground and grey, in a tired way, as if it used to be some other color. It was a long house, like an obstacle course that always leads eventually to some end even if it winds around a while first. The inside was always cluttered and dim, but comfortably, and Joshua got to do whatever he wanted.
The street where Joshua lived is perfectly straight and only one block long, and all the houses on it looked just alike except his. On each lawn, right by the curb, was one maple tree that stretched out over the street, so in the summer when they were in leaf the street was all shaded and it looked like a tunnel. It still does but some of the trees have been taken out so there are holes in the shade. All the houses are still there except Joshua's; this is the new one they built where his used to be.
On every side, the roads are bigger. There across the fence from Joshua's backyard is the Psychiatric Hospital. One block north is the School for the Deaf; on the east end of the street and a little further down is the Library for the Blind; across the street on the other end is a golf course. A little stream runs across the golf course, still, under a little green bridge where the banks have been shored with concrete. If you follow the stream it passes out of the course, under some weeping willows that are bigger now, through a huge culvert under the canal and down to the Delaware River; that runs into the ocean.
Buried under the street is a woman who believes she was killed by her husband's curse. She got sick and she died, a thousand years ago, and nobody knows she's there. Above the maples is nothing, just the air.