“Have you always lived in Los Angeles?”
Rachel took a swig of her beer. “We moved from Philly to LA when I was two.”
“You’re from Philadelphia?”
“Yeah. My mother grew up on the Main Line. She didn’t like it and beat it out of there as soon as she was eighteen.”
Rachel’s mother “beat it out of there” at the same age Blythe had been when she’d arrived, never expecting to spend her entire life in Philadelphia.
“So tell me about yourself, Rachel. Aside from all this family drama. Do you have a boyfriend back in LA?”
Rachel shook her head. “No. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve never, you know, been in love or anything.”
Blythe nodded. “None of you girls seem to be in a rush these days.”
She supposed, in that sense, they were a lot smarter than she had been.
It had started in the summer of 1988. The Tracy Chapman song “Fast Car” was on constant radio rotation. Blythe went to see the movie Cocktail three times. It was terrible, and still she could not stop watching it.
That was the first time Blythe realized there was something about the summer that simply made her feel unmoored. The warm air, the flowers in bloom, the backyard pools unmasked from their winter tarps, the long days and the glow of fireflies at night. All of it heightened her loneliness, made it that much more unbearable.
Last summer, the first of her marriage, had been no different; the humid air, thick with pollen, evoked a painful yearning. It was the strangest thing. By August, she was in such a state of longing she could barely sleep. Night after night, she reached for Kip, hoping to sate herself with his body. He often turned away. He had to be up early; he was stressed. He was uninterested.
When September rolled around, she was thankful for the first fallen leaves, the silence of the cicadas. The season of early darkness and bare trees would hopefully silence that thing inside of her. And it had. By Christmastime, she was thinking, I can do this.
But summer returned, and with it, the restlessness.
She sat on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, watching the cars round the traffic circle heading toward Kelly Drive. The roadway was named after rower John B. Kelly Jr., who happened to be the older brother of Grace Kelly—Philadelphia trivia courtesy of Kip’s mother.
But she didn’t want to think about the Bishops. She’d had an argument with Kip that morning, and just for a few hours she wanted to try to forget about him. It was a perfect Saturday afternoon, hot but not humid, a breeze off the river. She’d begged him to spend a few hours with her. They didn’t have to do anything crazy (though she would have loved to drive to the shore and walk on the beach and get cheesesteaks, sandy feet stuffed into their untied sneakers)—even just a walk around Suburban Square would have been nice. But he was working, as he was every weekend lately, and when she expressed frustration, he told her to “grow up.”
She climbed the seventy or so steps to the museum entrance, pausing to look behind her at the handsome vista of her adopted city. It was a great town, she couldn’t complain. But four years after moving there, what did she have to show for it? Her dancing career had fizzled out. She was a lonely housewife.
Maybe, she’d thought, the answer was a baby.
“A baby?” Kip had said, as if she’d suggested a trip to the moon. “You have zero body fat.”
Was that an issue? The thought upset her. She gained ten pounds. The doctor told her she was fine. Still, no baby. She made the mistake of expressing her frustration to Kip.
“The time isn’t right—for either of us. I have to really buckle down, Blythe. We’ll start a family when I’m more established.”
But she was afraid he’d never be “established” enough to slow down, to be a husband, let alone a father.
The doctor had told her to check with him in six months if she didn’t conceive. But at the half-year mark, she didn’t have the nerve to make the follow-up appointment. Of course she hadn’t conceived; her husband never touched her anymore.
Again, she complained to Kip. “Maybe we should see a marriage counselor?”
“Blythe, you have to relax. I have enough on my plate right now. Stop trying to control everything.”
Control everything? She had control over nothing. Her life was shapeless and empty. When she had first learned ballet hands, her instructor had told her to hold her middle finger and thumb as if a fluffy cotton ball were suspended between them. That was where she existed right now—in that tiny, amorphous space.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art was hosting a new exhibition of the Cubist masters: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Gris. Blythe was interested in the Cubist movement mostly because it coincided with the height of the Ballets Russes; Picasso had even collaborated with Sergei Diaghilev.
Her first stop inside the museum was the gift shop, where she lingered among the Impressionist posters, miniature Liberty Bells, and big expensive coffee-table books. She spotted a writing journal with Degas’s Dancers in Blue as the cover art, picked it up, and flipped through the blank pages. She imagined holding it in her bed at night, filling it with her frustrations and her dreams and her longing.
She bought it.
The entrance hall was surprisingly crowded. It was such a beautiful day outside, she’d expected the museum to be virtually empty. In her mind, everyone was enjoying the first blush of summer the proper way—outdoors—except for her. But no, the line for tickets stretched the entire length of the museum’s first floor. Inexplicably, Blythe felt like crying. The universe was conspiring against her.
After an hour, a uniformed museum docent walked the length of the line, asking people to come back in half an hour, one hour, two, depending on where they were in the queue. They needed to open up space in the lobby. The crowd was a fire hazard.
As everyone herded toward the door, a man behind quipped, “I can’t believe this many people are interested enough in Cubism to stand in line for an hour.”
She turned to him, her frustration needing an outlet. “You stood on line for it, so I don’t know why you can’t believe it.”
He wore jeans and a black Cocteau Twins T-shirt. His eyes were nearly black.
“I have to be here—it’s a school assignment. Believe me, I can think of a lot better ways to spend a summer Saturday.”
She wanted to say, Oh yeah, like what? But her second glance at him shut that right down. He was too good-looking. It would sound flirtatious, an invitation. She noticed he was carrying a sketch pad. She couldn’t resist asking.
“Where are you in school?”
“University of the Arts,” he said, adding, “School is the only reason to be in a town like Philly.”