Back In the Game by Holly Chamberlin Read Free Book Online

school is located in Brookline. Instead, I take a commuter train. I could drive but having a car in the city is a hassle; parking is hard to find and traffic is always crazy. I tried for a while, but in the end I sold the car. I got very little for it. Simon had been in several accidents with it; I’m still surprised he hadn’t managed to total the machine.
    Life on a teacher’s salary doesn’t allow for a new car every other year.
    I like teaching; I’ve been doing it since graduating from the Massachusetts School of Design with a master’s in art education. I like teaching, though there’s definitely a burnout factor to consider. A few older teachers at my school have taken sabbaticals. And I’ve learned that one of two things happen after a sabbatical. You come back refreshed, armed with new ideas and bursting with creative energy, or you don’t come back at all.
    I used to wonder if I’d know what to do with a sabbatical of my own. Where would I go? What would I accomplish? I like to work; I need to work. I need to be taking care of someone or a roomful of little someones. What would I do if the only person I had to take care of was me?
    A few years back I stopped wondering about sabbaticals.
    A high-pitched voice to my right made me flinch. Two young girls, maybe about sixteen, brushed past me. They were dressed as if it were already summer. Their fat bellies hung over their low-slung, flouncy miniskirts; their hot pink and green flip-flops smacked the spring sidewalk smartly. I suddenly remembered all the times when Simon and I would be walking along, in the middle of a serious conversation or simply enjoying each other’s company, and an attractive woman would pass. Simon would stop, stare, even compliment her as if I wasn’t there, his wife, the woman supporting his career.
    More times than not the woman responded with appreciation.
    Are women their own worst enemies? So much for sisterhood.
    Simon.
    I caught up with the carefree teens at the next corner. One wore sunglasses that covered three quarters of her face; they were tinted purple. Was this, I wondered, the new style? If so, I’d need to buy a new pair of sunglasses or settle for looking old and frumpy this summer.
    Summer.
    The light turned green and I stepped into the street. What would I do with myself this summer now that I no longer had Simon to look after? How would I fill my time? There were options, of course. I could take a class, find a part-time job, sleep late, see my friends, maybe take a few road trips to museums—the Portland Museum of Art, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, the Farnsworth, DeCordova. I could eat some lobster if the prices weren’t too outrageous this year.
    Lots of options and yet, none of them seemed particularly enticing. It was only April but already the summer loomed as a long and lonely stretch of time.
    Jefferson’s Paints. I pushed open the door and walked inside. As always, I gravitated first to the aisles of paints—oils, acrylics, watercolors. And suddenly, I felt a wee spark of excitement, maybe even inspiration—at least, I felt the desire for inspiration.
    Yes, I thought, maybe this summer I would even work on my own art. I reached for a tube of cobalt violet. It’s a beautiful color, but difficult to use and for my budget, very expensive. I wondered if I dared to buy it. I remembered reading about the color in a paint catalogue; the ad said that cobalt violet had been used since 1664 by various Dutch masters.
    I frowned down at the tube of paint in my hand. I was no master, Dutch or otherwise. I thought of my bank account, underfed and in poor health. And I decided that there was no point in my buying the paint.
    Desire, I reminded myself, is not the same as need.
    Simon needs to paint. I like to paint, but it hadn’t felt like a need for a long, long time. Maybe it never had; I realized I’d forgotten a lot about myself. Why had