Carrie Soto Is Back(87)

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—

After my father’s funeral and the reception, Gwen is packing up all the food as I stand there in the kitchen, not moving. She’s telling me about all the times my dad made her laugh.

“Can you please, for the love of God, shut up?” I say.

She stops putting cheese slices into Tupperware and looks at me.

I say, “I’m sorry.”

She takes my hand, but hers is cold and I want her to let go of me. But I also know that even if I ask her to, she won’t.

Bowe goes out onto the court every day. Sometimes I watch him from my window.

He comes inside after a particularly grueling session with a hitter. “How are you?” he says, breathless.

“How the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I say.

I look down and see I’m wearing my father’s slippers. And I don’t remember when I put them on.

Later, I ask Bowe if I should drop out of the US Open, and he tells me I already know the answer. But he’s wrong. I do not.



* * *



—

I am in a T-shirt and pair of Bowe’s boxers when Bowe comes into the room and tells me he’s scheduled to play Franco Gustavo. I’m scheduled to play Madlenka Dvo?áková in the first round in New York.

I hear my father’s voice. “Ah, será fácil. You can whoop her ass.” I turn to see him, but he’s not there.



* * *



—

I am standing in the middle of my living room, looking at all the flowers people sent. The house is overflowing with blooms that are starting to die.

So many people have sent something but not come by. Which is more than I would have done for any of them.



* * *



—

The phone rings as I am lying in bed, and I don’t answer it. But I can tell by the way the ringing stops that Bowe has picked it up.

He comes in a few moments later.

“It’s Nicki,” he says. “Chan.”

“I don’t want to talk to her,” I say. But then I take the phone from his hand anyway.

“Hi.”

“I’m so sorry, Carrie,” Nicki says.

“Thank you.”

“Listen, I want to tell you something…. If you don’t play the US Open, I will consider bowing out as well.”

I can’t quite process the rest of what she’s saying until she adds, “Just let me know what you’re thinking. I want it to be a clean win. I want a fair fight.”

“Honestly, Nicki,” I say, “it just doesn’t matter very much.”

Nicki laughs, like I am making a joke.



* * *



—

My first moment of clarity is the following day—when I finally get up the guts to go into my father’s house.

I stand in the same spot where I stood when I found him. I look at his things: his remote controls and the half-filled water glasses, his magazines and his books lined up on the shelf, his movies stacked to the side, his leather chairs, his panama hats.

I pick up one of his hats. It smells like English Leather and shampoo, earthy and human.

I wonder if this is how he felt when my mother died: flattened by the impossibility and yet inevitability of tomorrow. I am suddenly so tired, no match for the heaviness of gravity. I look at the floor and it calls to me, as strong as a magnet.

I lie down on the carpet of the home I bought for my father. The gift I gave him. And I do not get up for what feels like hours.

I am so angry at myself for thinking he’d be okay.

Don’t I know better? Didn’t I learn this lesson earlier than most? That the world doesn’t care about you? That it will take the one thing you need, rip it right from your arms?

Grief is like a deep, dark hole. It calls like a siren: Come to me, lose yourself here. And you fight it and you fight it and you fight it, but when you finally do succumb and jump down into it, you can’t quite believe how deep it is. It feels as if this is how you will live for the rest of your life, falling. Terrified and devastated, until you yourself die.

But that is the mirage.

That is grief’s dizzying spell.

The fall isn’t never-ending. It does have a ground floor.

Today, I cry for so long that I finally feel the floor under my feet. I find the bottom. And while I know the hole will be there forever, at least for now, I feel as if I can live inside it. I have learned its boundaries and its edges.

I stand up and feel ready to leave my father’s house. But as I walk toward the door, I notice a notebook on the kitchen counter. It’s the one he started keeping this year, full of all his coaching notes.

I walk into the kitchen, and I pick it up. It is a black leather book, as unassuming as can be. The front says Carrie.

I flip through it and see that every page is devoted to a player in the WTA—with stats and plays, strategies—for how to beat them.

Players like Dvo?áková and Flores and Martin and Carter and Zetov, they take up maybe half a page. Perez and Moretti and Nystrom and Machado each get more. And then there are multiple pages on Antonovich and Cortez.

Nicki Chan takes up the entire back half of the book.

He’s clearly rewatched some of her games, made notes on how she performed against every other player. He’s compared our serves and groundstrokes. Our shots. Our stances. Our forms.