“I can see how I might feel … a little left out.”
She studied Eric’s face, incredulous. A little left out? In the understatement was a refusal to do what she requested, a small favor in the scheme of things: to try and really think how he might feel in her shoes. Then, any efforts in this direction had always seemed mere feints. Winners first and foremost did not wish to imagine themselves as anything but winners. The refusal was superstitious: Don’t look down. Besides, since triumph filled the rankest bastard with goodwill, the victor, halfheartedly forming his fictional failure, always pictured a similar magnanimity in defeat. In fact, one source of friction between Willy and her husband was Eric’s tacit presumption that he would surpass her even at losing.
But he was right. A hologram of Eric the Megaflop materialized perfectly before her on the coffee table, and it bore little resemblance to her own bilious tearing of hair. Had his career come up snake eyes and hers a natural, Eric would be a gentleman. When she won, he’d buy flowers. His brittle congratulations would never strike him as cold or less than sincere. In public, his rigid bows to her glory would impress others as gallant. Eric’s performance as her unreserved advocate would be so well acted that he’d be persuaded by the theater himself. Only a pervasive vacancy would pester him at times, as if the doors in his mind were all shut and locked and he found himself out in the hall.
Abruptly, he’d fall in love with someone else—a younger, pretty woman with a hesitant manner who had, more’s the pity, never picked up a racket in her life. (He was teaching her to play. They had a lovely, goofy time, though she displayed, sadly, little aptitude.) Eric would come to his wife remorseful, perplexed, declaring that he’d had no more warning than she, but the thing was done: behind his own back his love for Willy had died. Mystified and affronted, his tone would imply that he, not she, had been betrayed. He would describe their shattered marriage like a vase he had knocked over by accident, whose several pieces defied glue. Of this she was sure: in confessing his tragic disaffection, nowhere would the information feature that she was ranked number three in the world and was worth several million dollars while he, a stickler for pulling his weight, was part-timing in a sporting goods store. Since Eric could not apprehend her vision, Willy had to stop herself from exclaiming, Why, you self-deceiving sack of shit!
“Can you at least grant that your being ranked 864 while I was 75 might put our relationship under strain?” she asked dryly.
“Not that long ago I was ranked in the 800’s, and you were ranked—”
“You were on your way up and you knew it. Me? I’ve hit the skids. I’m through.”
Eric sighed and shook his head. “When we met, I’d never have figured you for a quitter.”
“A quitter is the last thing I’d have figured myself for,” Willy concurred agreeably. “But isn’t there a point at which giving it another go is delusional? Pushing on for its own sake, rather than striving for a goal you’ve a hope of attaining? Isn’t there a stick-to-itiveness that starts to look pathetic? For heaven’s sake, I’m twenty-seven.”
“You’re twenty-six.”
“Twenty-seven,” she corrected. “As of today.”
Eric covered his eyes. “Oh, God, Willy. I’m sorry.” But when he lowered his hands, he was clearly relieved. Forgetting her birthday was a catastrophe on a scale he could handle.
“Don’t worry, I’m not in the mood for cake.” She reclined to the far side of the sofa.
“You’re twenty-seven, not eighty-five. And you’re still on the computer—”
“Would merely remaining on the computer be good enough for you?”
Eric stood again, pressing his palms to his temples. “What would be good enough for you, Willy? At what ranking would we no longer have this fucking conversation?”
“What do you want to hear, that I’d only settle for number one?” she asked drolly. “That I’m going to play my darnedest until I’ve won all four Grand Slams? Is that the way a real winner thinks, and if I’d be happy with number two you’ll say that’s my ‘problem’?”
“Shut up and answer me. Would number ten be acceptable, you wouldn’t snuffle when we went to sleep? 25? 50? 110? What’s the number, Willy? At what ranking will this apartment be livable again?”
Tolerantly, she entertained the question. Even from this distant a vantage point Willy could see how top billing could pall: clothing contracts would become a curse, having to wear those dipshit dresses; sleazoid agents would grow irksome; importunings to play tournaments would quickly lose their flattery value, and she would groan on the eve of one more twelve-hour flight to Australia. She might even start chucking trophies in the closet herself. In short, the goal was dreck; once attained she would dismiss it. But that, in a sense, was the real aim; to disdain celebrity, you had to be famous.
“Sure I’d like to be a star,” Willy admitted. “But anything in the top 200 would be comfortable. Just so long as I made a living doing what I love.”
“So you won’t be at peace until you’ve scrambled to the top 200?”
“250, then!” A familiar gorge began to rise.
“What if it’s 251? Screaming fits, crying jags?”
“What’s the point?” Willy’s smooth demeanor was slipping.
“275, 350, what’s the difference? No one is stopping you from loving the game. Nobody stops hackers in Riverside from loving the game, or playing it.”
“That’s horseshit!” Willy cried. “When you’ve been demoted it’s not the same. No way a concert violinist gets the same thrill from fiddling in his room as performing in Carnegie Hall. Especially after being fired for playing out of tune.”
“If he really cares about music? Sure he does. But for all your talk of ‘loving’ tennis, Willy, I don’t witness much affection these days. I’ve seen you packing for a match. You look as if you’re marching to the gas chamber.”
“So that’s another of my problems, is it?” Willy’s foot was on the Plexiglas table, and with one heft she kicked it over. The top flopped forward onto the carpet, and hundreds of dead balls spilled over the room. Stonily, Eric righted the box and, one by one, pitched them back in.
NINETEEN
ERIC’S REDOUBLED SEARCH FOR remedies signaled a better appreciation for the urgency of their situation than Willy gave him credit for. The only solution he did not pursue was to close the disparity in their rankings by deteriorating himself. Eric rose to 58 by July.
But he came home the moment the crowds collected their picnics. Between times, he coached her. Though he refused to play formal games, in long hitting sessions at Riverside Eric tried every tack, from cajoling, hectoring, and abuse to adulation and applause—each of which Max, too, had tried in turn. Though when Willy relaxed she did return to the deep, plunging consistency of earlier incarnations, competent practice was no guarantee that in match conditions she wouldn’t clench into her own worst enemy. And even these recitals were imperceptibly impaired; by what Willy could, but wouldn’t say.
Lowering himself, Eric entered with Willy in a mixed-doubles satellite. He reasoned that they would benefit from playing as allies. But as soon as his foot touched the baseline, Eric the Attentive became Eric the Asshole. He either took over their whole court, poaching balls that landed three feet into his wife’s territory, or covered the net so effectively that the ball never reached the backcourt. He didn’t trust her, and he was a singles player by nature. Any oncoming ball belonged to him by right. They got into such arguments by the second set that the couple gathered a crowd, the onlookers riveted less by the stupendous rivalry between duos than by the shots that Eric and Willy fired at each other. With Eric on her side, of course they won, but having touched the ball only a handful of times Willy didn’t regard the win as hers. Feigning injury, Eric withdrew their “team.”
The next togetherness scheme was to play in the same tournament, to relive and optimally rewrite the Chevrolet. Once more this dictated that Eric play beneath himself, but as long as the
small-draw coed tournament didn’t interfere with his own schedule he was willing.
The men’s and women’s first-round matches were played simultaneously on adjoining banks of courts. Halfway through Willy’s second set, which was going well, one of her aces roused a cheer. That her match was attracting attention stirred Willy to hit with a vengeance. Yet her next doozy inspired no reaction. Midway through an unexceptional point, whistles rose once more. The sound track and picture were out of synch, as if the game were poorly dubbed.
Disconcerted, Willy glanced up to find the audience in her bleachers standing and craning their necks to see over the green-netted fence at her back. On a changeover, Willy mumbled to a spectator in front, “What’s the hoopla about?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing here, but there’s a top 100 player behind you. His name’s Over-something. He’s amazing!” The woman whispered, “I do hope there’s a seat left. Good luck!” Waving, she slipped out the gate.
In no time all of the spectators at Willy’s courtside had either left or clambered to the top rows to get a better view of the Oberdorf match. Deflated, Willy frittered her lead. With his wife eliminated, Eric was stuck playing out the rest of the sordid tournament, which he resented. At his wits’ end, as a belated birthday present Eric sent his wife to a sports psychologist.
***
“Why do you want to play tennis professionally?”
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was five.”
“That’s not an answer… And you don’t have to lie down, unless you’re tired.”
The psychologist had a wandering eye. When his left pupil traveled toward the window of its own accord it seemed to pine for the summer’s day, hankering for the baseball games across the way in Central Park. Yet only the eye had a noticeable taste for sport, and she wondered what had drawn him to this specialty. His middle thickened and arms spindly, Dr. Milton Edsel didn’t appear to have indulged in anything more vigorous than croquet. She couldn’t pin his accent; if anything, his articulated English seemed foreign from lacking one. Well-educated immigrants borrowed a tongue conscientiously, like a library book they were loath to deface.
“There may be one activity in everyone’s life that expresses them—that is them,” Willy speculated. “Maybe for some people that’s dancing, or painting a picture; maybe it’s just thinking. For me, it’s tennis. The first time I connected with a ball was like coming home.”
“But nothing in what you describe explains why you have to play tennis for a living.” The doctor’s therapeutic approach, it evolved, was to be obstreperously stupid.
“That’s what Eric says,” Willy groaned. “What, I’m employing you to talk me out of my profession?”
“I’m concerned that you tell me you ‘are’ tennis. Perhaps in that case the sport is too important.”
“That’s what Eric says,” Willy grumbled again. “He thinks I take my ranking too personally. That I regard it as my ranking as a person.”
“Is it?”
Flustered, Willy, too, looked out the window. “Yes. And don’t.” She held up her hand. “No lectures. The WTA ranks me on everything about myself that I care for.”
“Do you care for yourself?”
“Not when I play badly.”
“Why do you think you play badly?”
“Because I don’t care for myself?” she posited caustically. “Neat circularity, but there’s more to it.”
“You were once ranked—?”
“214. My coach claims I should have kept going; that I had the aptitude to be a real little earner. But lately Max tends to describe me in the past tense.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Eric happened.”
“You bring up your husband often.”
“That’s what Max says.”
“Other people are always telling you things. I want to know what you think. Why are you here?”
“Because my ranking is a scandal. I practice, I play great; I start a match, I stink the place up. For two years I’ve played like garbage.”
“You like to say bad things about yourself. Your voice—it has joy in it.”
“Self-laceration is one of my only remaining pleasures,” Willy grumbled. “I know this doesn’t make sense, but I gave my affection for myself away to someone else.”
“Do you mean you fell in love?”
“That’s the more conventional way of putting it,” she grunted. “I injured my knee badly two years ago. Other people think that’s where my trouble started. I think it started the tournament before, at the Chevrolet. That was the day my husband surpassed me numerically. We were both in the finals. He won. After which, I choked. I choked like you wouldn’t believe.”
Finally Edsel smiled. “Remember my job. I would believe.”
“I was so grateful when I got married. I’d never had boyfriends to speak of, and I was lonely. My coach—” She decided to skip it. “Let’s just say I wanted my coach to be my coach. To love my game.”
“You also wanted your husband to love your game? Since, according to you, Ms. Novinsky, you are your game?”
“I guess. And now I’ve disappointed him.”
“Eric has told you that he’s disappointed?”
“No, I—okay, I’ve disappointed myself. Eric claims he doesn’t care whether I win, that he loves me for me—”
“You say that sarcastically.”
“I mean it sarcastically. What’s me without what I do? I’m not the same person I was when I was winning, Dr. Edsel. I’ve become a complete shit. And it sounds crazy, but I feel betrayed.”
“By yourself again?”
“By Eric. I was glad for a man who understood my way of life, but I hadn’t bargained for a companion who would make me look like dog doo in comparison.”
“Maybe I’m missing something. Do you believe that if your husband were to lose his matches your standing would improve? You’re not ranked on the same computers.” Edsel was deploying it again: belligerent witlessness.
“How can I avoid comparing myself with the tennis player lying next to me in bed? And listen, Eric is incredible. When we met his strokes were ragged, he couldn’t keep the ball in the court. A year or so later, I was living with a McEnroe. Or excuse me, a Stefan Edberg.” She added dryly, “Eric thinks McEnroe was rude.”
“You told me Eric is number 58. That is no McEnroe. Do you exaggerate your husband’s ability?”
“Maybe. A little.”
“Leaving aside that he’s a man and can hit a harder ball, do you think his talent is much greater than yours?”
Willy sat up straighter and cocked her head. “No. No, I don’t. If I could get over being a head case, I’m at least as talented as he is.”
“You realize that it doesn’t matter. That his ability has nothing to do with yours.”
“Yes, rationally, that makes perfect sense.” Willy was starting to get mad.
“And what is wrong with being rational, pray?”
“Dr. Edsel, you don’t understand! I’ve started to despise my own husband! And it’s not fair! He does everything he can for me! He’s a mensch!”
“I see. So not only is he John McEnroe, but he is a paragon in other respects. Maybe I should meet this husband. I don’t think I’ve ever met such an ideal person.”
“Stop making fun of me. He may not be perfect, but he doesn’t deserve what I’ve become. I hate Eric, I hate myself, I even hate—”
“Go on.”
“Tennis.” Willy bowed her head. “Maybe that’s what I’m being punished for.”
“You have used the passive voice.”
“You sound like my father.”
“Do you like your father?”
“He’s a disappointed man. He wants his kids to be disappointed, too. His sick version of intimacy, I guess.”
“Just as you want your husband to be disappointed with you. Why can’t you imagine being close by both being successful?”
??
?Great fantasy, doesn’t help. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch the person you live with get everything you want? Money, trophies, acclaim, a future—while I run up debts. How would you feel if you were defrocked, or whatever it is you people get, and meanwhile your wife waltzes off to her office every day and makes a couple hundred thou a year on sports therapy?”
“Fortunate. Our mortgage payments would keep pace.”
“But would you feel like a man?”
“Do you wish to feel like a man?”
“Hell, yes. Any woman worth her salt does.”
“I think,” he smiled a second time, “you are a very good player.”
“That’s what Eric says,” she grumbled. “Except Eric’s compliments feel condescending. They’re like insults.”
“And his insults must feel like insults. So everything out of his mouth offends you.”
“Boy, don’t you just wish you were married to me?”
“Did your father push you very hard?”
Willy snorted. “My father didn’t push me at all. When I was young that made me angry, and I was out to prove he’d underestimated me. Now I’m worried he planted some seed of doubt that’s grown into an oak tree in my head. Poison oak.”
“Poison oak is a shrub.”
“You sound just like Eric. He’s a pedant.”
“That is the first negative thing you’ve said about your husband. Yet if you ‘hate’ Eric, you must think ugly thoughts about him often.”
Willy rubbed her forehead. “It’s not Eric’s fault he’s a tennis prodigy. When I think mean things about him, I feel ashamed. At least my tumbling in the ranks is my fault. All Eric did was marry me.”
“Are you frightened that at some point you will no longer be able to play tennis professionally at all?”
“Of course. In a couple of months I could fall off the computer altogether, which as far as I’m concerned is dropping off the edge of the world.”
“You said you had a serious injury two years ago. What if the accident had been worse? Since you ‘are’ tennis? What if you’d never been able to play again? How would you have coped?”