Carrie Soto Is Back(84)

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—

A month before the US Open, Bowe is lying in my bed in the middle of the night. His arm is cradled perfectly under my neck; his right hand is tracing shapes on my upper arm, and I’m almost asleep.

“Your dad knows what’s going on,” he says.

“He just thinks you’re into me.”

“No,” Bowe says. “He knows that I’m parking across the street and sleeping here until the morning, when I go home for four hours and then come right back, pretending I’ve been gone the whole time.”

“He doesn’t know any of that.”

Bowe laughs. “He does. Today after he was done barking orders at me about my backhand, he calmly asked me if I had any idea of my plans after I retire. And when I said I wasn’t sure, he said, ‘Well, do you think settling down is in your future?’?”

I cringe so hard I nearly spasm. “No, he didn’t,” I say, sitting up. I’m now fully awake. “You must have misunderstood him.”

“I assure you, I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“We could tell him the truth,” Bowe says, turning onto his side, toward me in bed. He’s been sleeping here so consistently that I’ve started wondering if I should get another nightstand. But I have always had one nightstand, and I can’t conceive of being the sort of idiot who would buy a second.

“No, c’mon,” I say. “Let’s not make anything weird, all right? I want him to train you for the US Open. I want you to win the damn thing. And I want to win it too.”

“Of course.”

“So we know that we’re going to be training together for the next month…”

Bowe looks at me, his eyebrows furrowed, as if he cannot tell where my train of thought is headed.

“But who knows if we’ll even be sleeping together tomorrow.”

Bowe pulls his arm away from me. “You’re fucking impossible,” he says, rolling onto his back. “Absolutely impossible.”

“What are we doing, Bowe?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You won’t tell me.”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know!” he says.

“See? You don’t have a plan. You don’t know what you want.”

“I do know what I want,” he says. “I’m here, aren’t I? You fucking rejected me back in ’82 and took up with Randall, of all people. You rejected me back in Melbourne. You all but rejected me back in Paris. And still, I’m here, every night, any second that you want me. I know exactly what I want, Carrie. I’ve made it clear.”

I watch him throw his head back on the bed. And I let myself believe for a moment that maybe he means it. Maybe this time, maybe this man, means it.

“Just forget it,” he says. And then he turns his back to me and fluffs his pillow angrily. And I smile to myself because you don’t fluff a pillow you’re not planning to sleep on.



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—

Bowe and I both take Sundays off from training. We need one day to recuperate. And sometimes, in the morning, I’ll watch tapes with my dad. But in the afternoons, even I need a break from tennis, and I can tell that my dad does not know what to do with himself.

Bowe starts coming over in the afternoons to play chess with my father on Sundays. Then it evolves into the two of them going to Blockbuster together and renting war movies.

They pop popcorn and watch the movies in our home theater, pausing every few minutes to talk about historical references to World War I or II or Vietnam. And I normally sit in the lounger in the same room, only half paying attention.

I’ve never realized until now that my dad is into war movies. But in hindsight, it’s painfully obvious that he would be drawn to them.

One Sunday, the two of them catch me tearing up at the very end of the movie, when the sergeant salutes his captain.





AUGUST 1995


    Two weeks before the US Open


I am running sprints across the court, training harder than ever.

“?De nuevo!” my father says as I stop short at his feet.

“Sí, papá.”

Bowe has a wild card for the US Open. But I do not need a wild card or to qualify, because I am now ranked twelfth in the world.

Twelfth. A delicious, enticing number, with the capacity to carry a boatload of fuck-yous.

When I am done with another sprint, I look at my father for what to do next. But instead of sending me to the baseline, he pats the spot on the bench beside him.

“?Qué pasa?” I say, sitting down.

“I see a change in you that I can’t quite describe, since Wimbledon. You’re…freer.”

“I’m less afraid,” I say. “Of losing.”

“Because you’ve made your peace with it?” he asks.

“Because it’s unlikely.”

My father laughs. “Well, then you need to keep that with you, heading into New York. Especially up against Chan. New York is her best court.”

I nod.

“And I think we both know that I can’t go with you.”

We’ve spoken around it for weeks—that he is not yet healthy enough to travel. “I know.”