but it will be worth it to see the look on Suzanneâs face.
But she is not home. Gone into town, the housekeeper says, but expected to call in. âTell her to meet me at the eagle,â I say. Already my plan is coming apart. Another half hour to drive into the city, who knows how long before Suzanne gets the message. I assured Black I would not fall behind on my cert work. As I get back into the car, I feel a twinge of pain in my neck.
Montgomery Avenue takes me east toward Philadelphia, right past the Merion Cricket Club. A pair of stone pillars marks the gate; behind them I can see the red brick of the clubhouse, the peaked windows with cricket bats crossed in stained glass. The flags are flying, the white MCC on a field of dark maroon, and next to it the stars and stripes. Off to the right lies the great lawn, chalked for tennis. For a moment my shoulders loosen. Everything feels right again.
I remember the childhood Easter egg hunts on the great lawn, my first steps on the squash courts, the afternoons spent watching our stars. And the evenings, with the red summer sun sinking low and the voices of the young at play rising from the deep-shadowed lawn. The brick glowed; the dayâs heat ebbed from the wooden decks. Inside old men read in silence, sunk intoleather chairs, wreathed in smoke from pipes and cigars. We were the boys in white ducks, the girls in flowered dresses, gardenias in their hair. We ran about the clubhouse laughing madly; we turned audacious waltzes across the ballroom; we wandered outside into the heavy dusk, alone or in pairs, losing ourselves in the scent of cut grass and the small white flowers of the privet. I felt sorry that my dancing friends would become the fat Scotch drinkers who eyed us from tables, the old men shivering in their red-striped club blazers, the widows with gorgeous jewels and crumpled paper skinâsorry, though in my heart I still believed it impossible. I never wondered what they thought watching us.
The past gains sweetness as it recedes, our golden cohort forever on the edge of adulthood. That was summer, burnished by loss. Those things are no longer in my world, replaced by hours in the law school library, caustic professors, memorized rules. And now the sweltering streets of Washington, the cool marble corridors of the Supreme Court. A strange man behind me on the street. Summer and then fall and now the smoky taste of winter in the night.
Coming up on the river, I can see willows standing along the bank, boathouses, and on the water itself an eight-man shell skidding like a bug. There is the familiar golden temple of the Art Museum, and the silhouette of Center City, John Kellyâs brickwork rising crimson against the blue.
It isnât a Manhattan skyline; no buildings go any higher than the peak of William Pennâs hat, where he stands atop City Hall. Nothing in the world passed Pennâs hat until 1908, when the Singer Building went up in New York. Now the point that marked Philadelphia as the top is a self-imposed limit holding us back. But that is the idea. âThe city does not know what it is now,â Judge Skinner told me. âOnly that it is not New York.â
I park the car near Suburban Station, step out onto Pennsylvania Boulevard, and head east. This is the way I used to walk to the Judgeâs courthouse, when I would come from the University to see him hurl lightning across the room. Philadelphia runs twenty-four blocks east to west, people say, but only five north to south. Every place you hear ofâevery club, restaurant, theater, and shopâis just around the corner. It is enough to make you wonder whatâs in the rest of the city. But Philadelphians do not wonder. We stay in the great country to which we owe our allegiance, which stretches five blocksby twenty-four and out along the railroad tracks, the Main Line colonies and the Center City motherland. And all around us, like the black space of a
But she is not home. Gone into town, the housekeeper says, but expected to call in. âTell her to meet me at the eagle,â I say. Already my plan is coming apart. Another half hour to drive into the city, who knows how long before Suzanne gets the message. I assured Black I would not fall behind on my cert work. As I get back into the car, I feel a twinge of pain in my neck.
Montgomery Avenue takes me east toward Philadelphia, right past the Merion Cricket Club. A pair of stone pillars marks the gate; behind them I can see the red brick of the clubhouse, the peaked windows with cricket bats crossed in stained glass. The flags are flying, the white MCC on a field of dark maroon, and next to it the stars and stripes. Off to the right lies the great lawn, chalked for tennis. For a moment my shoulders loosen. Everything feels right again.
I remember the childhood Easter egg hunts on the great lawn, my first steps on the squash courts, the afternoons spent watching our stars. And the evenings, with the red summer sun sinking low and the voices of the young at play rising from the deep-shadowed lawn. The brick glowed; the dayâs heat ebbed from the wooden decks. Inside old men read in silence, sunk intoleather chairs, wreathed in smoke from pipes and cigars. We were the boys in white ducks, the girls in flowered dresses, gardenias in their hair. We ran about the clubhouse laughing madly; we turned audacious waltzes across the ballroom; we wandered outside into the heavy dusk, alone or in pairs, losing ourselves in the scent of cut grass and the small white flowers of the privet. I felt sorry that my dancing friends would become the fat Scotch drinkers who eyed us from tables, the old men shivering in their red-striped club blazers, the widows with gorgeous jewels and crumpled paper skinâsorry, though in my heart I still believed it impossible. I never wondered what they thought watching us.
The past gains sweetness as it recedes, our golden cohort forever on the edge of adulthood. That was summer, burnished by loss. Those things are no longer in my world, replaced by hours in the law school library, caustic professors, memorized rules. And now the sweltering streets of Washington, the cool marble corridors of the Supreme Court. A strange man behind me on the street. Summer and then fall and now the smoky taste of winter in the night.
Coming up on the river, I can see willows standing along the bank, boathouses, and on the water itself an eight-man shell skidding like a bug. There is the familiar golden temple of the Art Museum, and the silhouette of Center City, John Kellyâs brickwork rising crimson against the blue.
It isnât a Manhattan skyline; no buildings go any higher than the peak of William Pennâs hat, where he stands atop City Hall. Nothing in the world passed Pennâs hat until 1908, when the Singer Building went up in New York. Now the point that marked Philadelphia as the top is a self-imposed limit holding us back. But that is the idea. âThe city does not know what it is now,â Judge Skinner told me. âOnly that it is not New York.â
I park the car near Suburban Station, step out onto Pennsylvania Boulevard, and head east. This is the way I used to walk to the Judgeâs courthouse, when I would come from the University to see him hurl lightning across the room. Philadelphia runs twenty-four blocks east to west, people say, but only five north to south. Every place you hear ofâevery club, restaurant, theater, and shopâis just around the corner. It is enough to make you wonder whatâs in the rest of the city. But Philadelphians do not wonder. We stay in the great country to which we owe our allegiance, which stretches five blocksby twenty-four and out along the railroad tracks, the Main Line colonies and the Center City motherland. And all around us, like the black space of a
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