Eric muscled the conversation back to Willy. He rattled off that she’d been the number-three junior in New Jersey without being allowed to compete outside the tristate area, that she’d been number one on the tennis team from her sophomore year at UConn, and that she’d recently made the semifinals in the Norfolk Masters, which was worth gobs more computer points than his own lowly satellite in Toronto. Though flattered, Willy was perplexed as to why Eric felt compelled to blurt this rush of statistics. They were supposed to be getting acquainted, and here Eric could as well have printed out her résumé, as if she were applying for a job.
“Your dad your coach, Willy?” Axel topped up his V&T with tonic at the bar.
“Willy’s coached by Max Upchurch, one of the best in the business,” Eric interceded, adding effortfully, “They’re very… close. Willy’s his bright and shining hope for the nineties.”
“What’s your father do, then?”
“He’s an English professor,” Willy jumped in to answer for herself. “Head of department.”
“Rutgers?”
Willy’s cheeks warmed. “Bloomfield College. He writes novels, and doesn’t much care about the academic—”
“What’s his name?”
“Chuck—Charles Novinsky.”
Axe rubbed his chin. “Can’t say I ever … What’s he published?”
Willy slumped as much as the backless cube would allow. “One book. You wouldn’t have heard of it. But it’s very good. It went underappreciated at the time.”
“Never met a teacher who didn’t have three novels stashed in his bottom drawer. At least your dad managed to get one published.”
Willy straightened her shoulders. “Well, I think my father is a pretty gifted writer. But you know, we can’t all be famous.”
“Yes.” Axel smiled; his teeth were small and perfect. “Many a worthy man’s toil is thankless, isn’t it?” he added grandiloquently. Floweriness neither suited his style nor served the sentiment. He raised his V&T. “To the unsung.”
Willy didn’t take a sip of her wine.
Before they were called to dinner, Eric gave Willy a tour of the two-floor condominium. When he showed her his old room, she was struck by its bare walls and bald surfaces. Had his mother cleared all trace of him away?
“No, I always kept it neat and simple,” he explained.
But the real explanation did not emerge until they ducked into the master bedroom. Prominently displayed across one wall was every award Eric had ever earned: his straight-A report cards, his grade school Advanced Reading Group assignment, the covers of his gold-starred essays from Trinity on Ronald Reagan, a letter of thanks from the Republican National Committee, several blue ribbons in track, eight consecutive dean’s list notifications from Princeton, his Phi Beta Kappa certificate dangling with a gold key, and a freshly framed summa BA in mathematics. A table underneath was crammed with sports trophies. Willy stared at the display agog. She was reminded of devout Catholics who kept novena cards, candles, crucifixes, and statues of the Virgin Mary cluttered in a hallowed corner of their homes. No doubt about it: this was a shrine.
“What is all this doing in your parents’ bedroom?” she asked incredulously.
“Personally, I count my blessings that this worthless crap isn’t plastered all over the goddamned living room.” Eric seemed both irritated and embarrassed, but he had shown her this array on purpose. If they were going to be married, there was something he wanted her to understand.
“But why didn’t you want to keep your awards in your own room?”
“I did, or I tried. I shoved them in my desk, but my father always filched them. When he helped me clear out of my dorm in May, he bullied me into forking over the Princeton stuff, claiming he’d paid for it. And in high school, he got so intrusive that I started throwing little bullshit tributes away. No use. Those blue ribbons in track? He rooted them out of the trash, banana peels and all. See?” Eric pointed. “That one’s still grease-stained.”
“Have you always been so humble?”
“It’s not humility; it may be the opposite, to tell the truth. I’m not interested in anything I’ve already done. I keep my eyes on the next hurdle. Ask any horse what happens when you run looking backwards, congratulating yourself on how well you cleared the last hedge. This is dross, Wilhelm. And rinky-dink dross at that.” He sounded disgusted.
“God, I can’t imagine my father even—”
“Don’t,” Eric cut her off sotto voce, “get envious too fast. Sure, these trinkets are in my father’s room. Because they’re his. You can’t imagine that he was bragging about me down there.” Eric gestured to the floor. “He was bragging about himself.”
When they returned downstairs, Eric’s three brothers were already seated at the sleek teak dining table, where the two younger boys were fighting over which building was the tallest in the world.
“Wrong! The Sears Tower! One thousand four hundred fiftyfour stories—”
“Feet, you moron. Think it goes all the way to the moon?”
“Nobody cares,” Eric interrupted. “You guys? This is Willy. Willy? Robert, Mark, and Steven,” he introduced from youngest up.
They were all roughly attractive boys, though the two older ones had more of Axel’s build, short and square. Maybe they’d not grown into themselves yet, but not one of his siblings possessed Eric’s arresting angularity and confident ease. They all three turned to Willy with expressions that mingled admiration with resentment. So Eric had brought home another good-looking girl. Big surprise.
The second eldest, Steven, was perhaps the most homely and about seventeen. Steven began drilling his brother Mark on which five American presidents had been shot, but when Axel arrived, drying his hands, their father took over as referee. “Begins with a G,” Axel prodded.
“No clues!” Steven complained. “You never help me!”
“Garfunkel!” Mark guessed.
Steven hooted. “So everyone in the sixties was listening to Simon and Garfield?”
As Alma delivered the first course, a venison tureen, Willy’s attention began to stray. Mark had begun to list every Robert De Niro film ever made. Steven had apparently memorized George Bush’s cabinet. Something about the banter disturbed her. At the Oberdorf’s, all fact was on a par. It didn’t seem to matter whether in which film De Niro played the devil was important, only that Mark knew it was Angel Heart and Steven didn’t. When knowledge had value only as a weapon, all information was cheap and fungible. These kids threw facts the way unrulier kids threw food.
Only Robert, the scrawny, sullen twelve-year-old at the end of the table, had ceased to joust as soon as his father appeared. Having mashed his venison into turds, he neglected his dinner for the notebook computer in his lap.
“Boys!” Axel called the family to order. “I’ll have you know that your brother Eric here just won a big Canadian tournament.”
“Enough!” Eric despaired. “It was a piece of shit tournament, and I told you that, Dad!”
Robert’s notebook wheedled. “I bet all the girls threw flowers and wet themselves,” the youngest muttered. “We can’t wait to hear all about it.”
“Gosh,” said Mark, “did you win, like, a million dollars?”
“I won squat,” Eric insisted. “You didn’t even have to be ranked to get in, the draw was overrun with amateurs, and what I won wouldn’t buy Robert a copy of ‘Microsoft Golf.’”
But Eric’s protestations washed off his brothers like rainwater. Willy supposed that modesty made him only a little more irritating.
“My debate team won the first round against Dalton, Dad,” Steven piped up.
“I got my paper back on GoodFellas,” Mark intruded. “My film teacher gave me an A plus!” The “plus” had the tinny ring of an embellishment.
Though in the early hubbub Willy couldn’t quite keep the brothers straight, she now discerned that their interests were cautiously discrete: tennis, politics, movies, and computer games. Each
son dwelt in his own preserve, like animals in a zoo that had to be fenced from one another lest they eat each other up.
Alma presented the main course, which to Willy’s surprise was a stuffed tenderloin. Eric had said his family was ultrasecular, but pork seemed ostentatiously so. Robert excepted, the children’s table manners, like Eric’s, were impeccable. Alma refilled her sons’ Pellegrino, quietly pointing to a little chunk of venison on Mark’s chin. He brushed it off with a collusive glance of gratitude at his mother. She is the real family, Willy thought. The one who picks up the pieces when one of these paragons shuffles home having been, perish the thought, denied the lead in the school play.
Willy was seated next to Steven, who might have picked up his ambition to become a politician from his older brother’s discarded fascinations, like a hand-me-down jacket. When she asked whether that meant a law degree he went vague, as if already oppressed by the mandatory admission into Harvard. He doubled back to that afternoon’s debate coup, the details carefully loud enough for his father to hear. Yet though Steven extolled his own lucidity, never once did he mention what the debate had been about. More, through his bluster she detected too high a ratio of relief to relish. Willy had seen it in tennis players before: with sufficient dread of a drubbing, victory inverts to not-getting-egg-on-your-face-this-time; triumph becomes a squeaking-by, more reprieve than reward. The conversion was deadly. Any defeat you put off rather than preclude takes on all the inevitability you accord it. There may even come a point when, just to get it over with, you invite your ruin with open arms like an old friend.
Inspecting her future husband across the table, Willy searched for signs that Axel’s summary dismissal of losers, his apparent lack of interest in complexity or excuses, had rubbed off on her fiancé. Despite the sharpness of its planes, there was gentleness in Eric’s face, in contrast to his father’s, whose round, jolly contours were punctuated by a merciless, impatient twitch around the mouth. Axe promoted a Darwinism that only a life of untrammeled success could afford. Willy speculated that doing well could be bad for you, should it result in this callous disregard for also-rans. If Eric seemed unbattered by such an upbringing, he had rarely disappointed his father. Mark, by comparison, had the wince of a boy who had failed to make first-chair clarinet, and the furtive fidget of a liar. Though infirmity had hitherto appeared universally unjust, Willy looked forward to their robust, barrel-chested father getting long in the tooth. For the harsh intolerance of weakness to which he had subjected his own family, Axel deserved old age.
“If you’re walking off with trophies,” Willy overheard Axel say to Eric, “you must have toughened up that tender heart. Had me worried with that track business.”
“That was back in high school, and I wish you’d let it go,” said Eric.
“Get this,” Robert muttered in Willy’s direction. “Not only is big brother Magic Johnson, Albert Einstein, and Andre Fagassi all in one, he’s Manhattan Gandhi, too.”
Axel brought Willy in. “The night before a big track meet, this guy starts limping from a sprain. Wraps the ankle with an Ace bandage; even gets himself a crutch. Day after the race, I find the little bastard running laps in the Trinity gym. Ace on a bleacher, crutch on the floor. Took him by the collar and said, leave the props, kid, you’ve got some explaining to do. Thought he’d chickened out. Figured he was just afraid to lose.
“Alma here squeezed it out of him. His best friend, What’s its—”
“Yossi Brenner,” said Eric, bored.
“Yossi was running the same race. Eric’s sure he can beat the guy, but doesn’t want him to feel outclassed. Fakes an injury. Gives him the event. I had to tell Eric, you’re not doing that guy any favors. If you don’t beat him, somebody else is going to.”
Eric sighed. “He did win, Dad. And the ribbon meant much more to him than it would have to me. I only ran track to help my basketball.”
“I always thought Eric’s bowing out for a friend was lovely,” said Alma quietly.
“It was sweet,” Axel granted. “But I’m sorry to say, there’s little place for charity where Eric’s headed. Where any of you boys are headed,” he added, as if just reminded that he had three other sons.
Willy caught Eric’s eye. “I wouldn’t worry about Eric’s competitive drive. To really give his friend satisfaction, he’d have run the race and dropped behind. Obviously, he couldn’t stand that. Compromise: a sprained ankle. He still wins the race in his head.”
Eric remarked to his father, “I told you she was smart.”
Alma offered Willy more polenta, and Axel stayed the platter. ‘’Willy doesn’t want seconds, Alma. She’s got to watch her figure.”
“Actually, Mr. Oberdorf, I rallied for three hours today and I’m famished. I’d love some more polenta, which, by the way, is delicious.” Willy lifted her plate and exchanged a smile with her hostess.
“Can you tell me why so many girl tennis players are fat?” Axel nodded at her dinner. ‘’Capriati is a load. Seles is a cow. Even Sanchez-Vicario is dumpy.”
“Well.” Willy smoothed the polenta in her mouth. “Sponsors pressure women players to look sexy. Sometimes that pressure backfires into eating problems. But we’re not paid to be fashion models.”
“Of course not,” Axel concurred heartily. “But a pretty face like yours sure brightens up a game. Nothing wrong with looking good, is there? And it must help your speed, to stay light on your feet.”
Willy resolved to be agreeable. “It did improve Martina’s agility when she dropped a few pounds.”
“Bit of a shame about the lesbianism, though,” Axel reflected innocently. “Mean, I’m as liberal-minded as the next person, but never thought Martina and Billy Jean were much good for the game’s rep. Every fan’s not as tolerant as we are.”
“Lesbianism in the WTA has been greatly exaggerated by the press.” Willy paused, placing her tongue between her molars to keep from grinding her teeth.
“I bet Willy’s not a dyke, Dad,” said Mark, raising his eyebrows. “Ask Eric.”
“Say, Willy, when you play Eric here,” Axel pried, leaning forward, “who wins?”
The boys had fallen silent, and with no other course immediately forthcoming it seemed that Willy was for dessert.
“Willy beats me easily, Dad,” Eric provided.
That this information registered Axel signaled by ignoring it. “Must be difficult,” Axel commiserated, “struggling in a profession with a number like 386.”
Willy’s voice rose despite herself. “It’s murderous to be ranked at all!”
“No need to get exercised,” Axel soothed his guest. “Just being sympathetic with the frustration of being relatively unknown.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but how many people have ever heard of Axel Oberdorf?”
“Every other vascular surgeon in the country,” said Axel gruffly.
“Exactly. I’ve been noted by my peers myself.”
“Sure you have,” Axel purred. “With plenty of tournament experience, since my son tells me you’re twenty-three. But I was wondering, isn’t that pretty mature in women’s tennis these days?”
“Dad,” Eric interjected, “I’m glad Willy’s twenty-three. I wouldn’t want to marry a thirteen-year-old nitwit.”
“What’s that, son?”
“I said, the woman you are insulting is going to be my wife.”
The subsequent bottle of champagne failed to bring Willy’s blood pressure back to normal.
Relieved to be on their own again, Eric and Willy debriefed on the crosstown bus. It was almost worth submitting to such an evening for the pleasure of dissecting it afterward.
“Your brothers sure have a lot to measure up to,” Willy ventured.
“They don’t, really,” Eric objected. “So I’ve got a college degree, big deal; I’m the oldest. I’ve been on some school teams; I have a decent academic record. Now I’m on the very outer margins of a long-shot career. What’s so intimidating?”
> “They just seem, I don’t know, wary. Are you very close to them?”
“How could I be?” Eric exploded, and the bag lady in a RESERVED FOR THE HANDICAPPED seat looked up. “Steven’s too nice a guy to flat out despise me, so Steven I simply depress. Mark’s a little gaga, but that won’t last; he’s shifty, always looking for a shortcut. He’s convinced I’ve mastered some kind of trick, and he wants me to share my secret. He’ll be plenty pissed off when he finds out the ‘secret’ is hard work. As for Robert, he thinks I’m a smarmy, ass-licking goody-goody. Christ, he’s probably right.”
“You’re not exactly James Dean,” Willy conceded.
“I’m not going to screw up my life just to rebel against my obnoxious father. I sometimes even wonder if that’s what he really wants. If he’s baiting me to go out and be a zero to spite him and so show I’m a real man.”
“It’s a shame.” Willy sighed. “Those kids could probably use a big brother.”
“My father’s taken care of that. Shit, I don’t blame them for resenting me. If I were them, with that fucking exhibit in my father’s bedroom? I’d take out a contract on my anointed brother. And Dad knows exactly what he’s doing. He wants them to hate me. He never wanted the four of us to make allegiances, potentially against him. Divide and conquer, that’s his motto, keep them at each other’s throats. And damned if it hasn’t succeeded. You noticed how he asked you, when we play, who wins? He’s trying to stir up trouble, pit us against each other.”
“You know, that story about your friend Yossi surprised me. To be honest, I’d have never expected you to forfeit a contest of any sort.”
“Well,” Eric admitted, “the real story’s a little more complicated.” He pulled the cord for their stop, and suggested they walk uptown from Eighty-sixth Street.
“Yossi was my best friend for a couple of years,” Eric continued up Broadway. “We were always rivals. Towards the end I thought it was all his problem, but by then I’d gotten the edge, so it was easy to feel lofty. Maybe if it were the other way around, I’d have been just as big a pain in the ass—you’re never aware of being ‘competitive’ when you’re winning. Still, it got pretty tiresome: who was getting taller, who got the hot-number girls into bed. You know, it was everything but whip it out with a measuring tape. Trite, in retrospect, but it didn’t feel like Happy Days at the time. I’d make the honor roll when Yossi’s GPA missed by .15, and he’d be surly for days, making bitter little digs and pointedly hanging out with the dope-smoking lowlifes in the stairwell.”