Carrie Soto Is Back(19)

I didn’t take a step toward the lockers. I stood there, unmoving. I was waiting for it to feel the way I’d always imagined it would. For someone to hug me and tell me I had vanquished the enemy like the Greeks against Troy…

But, of course, there was none of that.



* * *



—

That fall, I beat Stepanova at the US Indoor, the Thunderbird Classic, and the Porsche Grand Prix. With her shoulder out of commission at the Emeron Lion Cup, I took her down in straight sets.

In December—having been ranked number one for thirty straight weeks—I flew to Melbourne. The Australian Open started on Christmas Eve. In a little less than a week, the end-of-the-year rankings would come out.

That night, as I sat in my hotel room, hearing Christmas music from the streets below, I finally picked up the phone to call my father. It had been almost eleven months since we had spoken.

“Hello?”

His voice, once such an everyday presence that it was as if it were my own, had been gone from my life. I expected it to sound foreign or strange to me now. But instead, it felt utterly familiar, as if nothing had changed.

“Hola, papá. Feliz Navidad.”

The line was quiet for a moment, and I wondered, briefly, if he’d hung up.

“Feliz Navidad, cari?o. I am so incredibly proud of you.”

My chest began to heave, and I could not stop the tears from falling down my face. He was quiet as I caught my breath.

“Pichona, you have to know that whatever happens between us, I am always proud of you. Always watching you.”

“I miss you,” I said.

My dad laughed. “You think I’ve been having such a grand old time?”

I dried my eyes.

“But you are doing beautifully,” he said. “So you keep going. You fight for what you want. Like you always have. And I’ll be here for you.”



* * *



—

I ended the year as the number-one-ranked player on the women’s tour. When it became official, I popped open a bottle of champagne by myself in my hotel room. But then I couldn’t bring myself to pour a glass for only one person.

After the Australian Open, I flew to my father’s house. When he opened the door, he was holding two glasses of Dom Pérignon. I hugged him and drank the whole glass right there at his door.

Later, I unpacked my bags in his guest room. My father seared steaks on the grill. And we tried to find a new way of speaking.

Should I ask my father why there was a women’s razor and an extra toothbrush in his bathroom? Was he going to ask about the tabloid photos that had recently started appearing of me being spotted outside hotels with a few different men?

Instead, our conversations only went as deep as “It feels wetter this winter than in the past, yes?” and “Oh, so you’ve been drinking Fresca now instead of ginger ale?”

But my second day home, he came into the living room and asked me if I wanted to go out for ice cream sandwiches.

“Ice cream sandwiches?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember when you were a kid and you always wanted an ice cream sandwich or a sundae?”

“That…doesn’t sound like me.”

My father sighed and picked up his car keys. “Come with me, por favor, hija.”

I looked at my watch. “I mean, I should get to the courts soon to practice.”

“It will take a half hour,” he said. “You can spare a half hour.”

That afternoon, I sat in the front seat of my father’s new Mercedes and ate an ice cream sandwich beside him as we people-watched. “These are good,” I said.

He nodded. “I’m sorry I never let you have one.”

“No,” I said. “I’m better for it.”

I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t sure that was true. And I thought, See, Dad, this is why you’re not my coach anymore.

But after that, something broke open between us. We went to the movies together. We went out to eat. I bought him a new panama hat. He gave me his old chessboard, “because you must always keep thinking four moves ahead.”

On my last day before heading back out on the tour, I was packing when my father came and found me. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said as I gathered pair after pair of Adidas. They were my biggest endorsement deal after Wilson rackets, and I had been designing a shoe line with them, the Carrie Soto Break Points. While I was not as popular as Stepanova or McLeod, I did have my fans. You couldn’t deny that when I was playing, you were going to see a show. And the number of spectators—and thus endorsement deals—were starting to reflect that.

“Okay,” I said.

“You’re getting higher and higher out there on the court, reaching for Stepanova’s lobs.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. I stopped packing and looked at him. “And it’s working. I’m beating her every time now.”

“But you’re landing hard,” he said. “Maybe during clay season it won’t be too much of a problem, but on the hard courts coming up…”

“I’m landing fine.”

“Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. You need to bend your leg more when you land. I’m worried your knee—”