Carrie Soto Is Back(20)

“Lars says it’s fine. Without adding in that height, I’d never—”

“I don’t want to talk about Lars with you,” my dad said.

“And I don’t want to talk about my tennis game with you.”

“Está bien,” my father said. And he left the room.



* * *



—

We talked on the phone every day I was on tour in the early eighties. And we started opening up about things we’d never discussed before.

He finally started talking about my mother, telling me how much he missed her. I told him I thought about her when things around me got too quiet. He told me about the things she had wanted for me.

“She never thought tennis was terribly important,” he told me once, when I was in Rome for the Italian Open. “She thought joy was more important.”

I laughed. “Winning is joy,” I said.

“Exactly, pichona, I tried to tell her that. But she was less competitive than you and me. More happy in the moment. And she was so open-minded and accepting about things. She probably would have been fine with all your dating. But, cari?o, I don’t know if I want to see many more of these photos in the magazines of you and your…suitors.”

I sighed. “I’m having fun. That’s all.”

I didn’t know how to tell my father that these men weren’t suitors, that they rarely even called me twice. But I let him assume that it was me who chose not to see them again, instead of the other way around.

I was “the Battle Axe.” I was cold. I was a machine. Sure, a lot of them were intrigued by the idea of the sheer power of my body. But I was not the woman that men were looking to bring home to their mothers.

I reminded myself not to fall for the bullshit they peddled. How much they admired me, how I was unlike anyone else they had ever met before. So often there was talk of going on vacation together, ideas of renting a yacht in the south of France, conversations about some imaginary future. I knew I had to ignore the promises they made so casually, the promises I wanted so badly for at least one of them to keep.

“Maybe you can find someone good for you,” my father said. “Someone for more than one date.”

“It’s not that simple, Dad. It’s not…” I wanted to get off the phone. But at the same time, I did want to tell someone, anyone, the growing fear that had started feeling as if it could corrode the lining of my stomach. No one wants me.

“You are picking the wrong men, like that Bowe Huntley. What are you doing being photographed coming out of a hotel with that walking tantrum? He’s the number two player in the ATP and he’s screaming at the umpire? That’s not the guy you pick.”

“So then who is the guy I pick?”

“That Brandon Randall is a good one.”

Brandon Randall was the number one player in the ATP. They called him “the Nice Guy of Tennis.”

“Sí, claro, papá,” I said. “I would love to go out on a date with Brandon Randall. But he’s married. To Nina Riva, a swimsuit model.”

“Mick Riva’s kid?” my dad said. “I cannot stand that guy. Oh. Well, someone like Brandon, then. A nice guy. Go for a nice guy. Please.”





1983


Brandon Randall was married. And he was not as nice a guy as my father thought he was.

I know because I went back to his hotel room with him in Paris after the final of the French Open in 1983.

I’d never won the French Open before. It’s a clay court, which is the hardest kind for a fast-moving serve-and-volley player like me. Plenty of greats have gone their entire careers without winning it.

But then I defeated Renee Levy in the final that year, and in that moment, I felt the breathtaking joy of knowing I had the rare distinction of claiming each and every Slam.

Brandon and I ran into each other in the elevator the weekend we each took our singles titles. When we stopped on Brandon’s floor, he took a step out but then put his arm out to stop the elevator door from closing. He looked me in the eye and said, “Do you want to grab a cocktail in my room? A toast, maybe? To our success.”

I searched his face for some clue as to what he wanted—what he was really asking. I wasn’t quite sure. But I still said yes.

As he made me a drink, he told me his marriage to Nina was on the rocks. “She doesn’t understand me,” he said. “Though I get the distinct impression you do.”

I am embarrassed by how unoriginal it all was.

In the morning, as we lay underneath the bright white sheets, Brandon told me he thought that I might be the only person in the world who made him feel less alone.

“I try to tell the people around me the pressure I feel, just how low the lows are sometimes. But they can’t relate. And I’m kicking myself because it seems so obvious now: Who else but you, my equal, could ever truly understand?”

It was presumptuous of him to call us equals. I had significantly more Slams than he did. Still, I let him compare us.

Lying in his bed, with the sun shining through the big windows, I felt like maybe I wasn’t destined to be alone after all. Maybe I was the sort of woman who was so singular, so exceptional, that I could only form a connection with someone like Brandon, someone as driven as me.

I feared it might still end up a one-night thing. But Brandon kept calling. He kept calling! This closeness between us, it continued growing, like a balloon filling with air.