DC By the Book

Excerpt: The National Cathedral was just a few blocks away from us, and the Bishop's Garden -- with its labyrinth of hedges-became our favorite place to play. In the garden, we were princesses and fairies, we were orphans and spies. The gargoyles towering above us become monsters we had to escape; the cathedral bells chimed to celebrate make-believe weddings. We held summits in the gazebo.

Excerpt: I got my mother's answering machine and was glad to know she was out of the house. After I went off to college, I worried that her loneliness would metastasize and corrode her completely. When she was home, she always answered the phone, and so every time I got the machine, I took it as a positive sign. It was proof that she had gone somewhere, and even though that somewhere was probably just the grocery store, I still clung to the possibility that she might meet someone, that she might fall in love in the produce section of Georgetown's "social" Safeway. She and some kindly widower might reach for the same grapefruit and their fingers would meet and she would find her way to happily-ever-after.

Excerpt: KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko defected in August of 1985 -- just eight months after Jenny died -- and then escaped from his CIA handler at Au Pied de Cochon in Georgetown and matched up the street to the Russian embassy to redefect. In high school my friends and I used to go to Au Pied du Cochon for croque-monsieurs after we'd been drinking at house parties. The restaurant was open all night and was a good place to sober up before curfew.

Excerpt: The house was a stately Queen Anne in white clapboard with black shutters and a wraparound front porch that was typical of Cleveland Park. I always thought of our neighborhood as a community of giant dollhouses.

Excerpt: We road our bicycles around the oak-canopied streets of our neighborhood. There were a lot of kids in Cleveland Park. They congregated on the Macomb Street playground or at the community club on Highland Street. We were all allowed to roam without supervision until dusk, when a chorus-mostly of the accented voices of nannies and housekeepers-summoned everyone home for dinner.