Trophy Son(14)

They kept staring at me. I didn’t recognize them but wondered if they recognized me. Finally one said, “OMG.”

The other said, “Later!” in an unnecessarily loud voice and they forced their way toward the swinging doors behind me. I thought I heard laughter from the corridor. The cheerleaders had been standing in front of a door to the room for all the swim team equipment and training tables. I heard muted voices from inside. Fearing what was on the other side but not giving any conscious thought to what the source of fear might be, I turned the knob and pushed the door open wide.

Two heads turned to me in alarmed synchronization. One was Liz Betterton, still in her cheerleader uniform, but with her skirt raised over her lower back while she bent forward and rested her elbows on the training table. Behind and inside her was a football player, also still in uniform. Number eleven. No helmet but eye black, shoulder pads and jersey, his football pants in a puddle around his cleated feet.

Liz’s face went from surprise to fear and I knew at once that it was fear for herself and reputation, not fear for damage to me. The football player’s face went from surprise to amusement. He said, “Hey, buddy, what the hell? Beat it.” He showed no recognition of who I was or even that there could be another competing for Liz.

Number eleven. It occurred to me in that moment that this was the punter, a fact I confirmed in the obsessive and depressive months that followed, using a team program. The damn punter.

I stepped back, leaving the pool, the gym and the school, the equipment room door still open so they’d have to untangle first if they wanted privacy again.

I walked to my car which was parked on a street off campus and realized then that I had never been the boyfriend. Not the primary. I had never parked in her driveway but down the street. I didn’t speak with her parents because they thought she was dating someone else. She wasn’t interested in meeting mine. Our routine wasn’t a rebellion. It was a fraud.

I had been unpracticed in the art of socialization. I didn’t know enough honest people and dishonest people so I had never learned to tell the difference. I knew one girl and she turned out to be dishonest. Brutally so.

I drove from campus knowing I’d never return. My window away from tennis that had been full of light was bricked over. So I returned to tennis the way a bulimic returns to the bathroom having been called fat. Dad won another round.

The woman I thought of as a kind of salvation, who had gotten a closer look at me than anyone else, found me interesting only as a toy on the side while she dated the punter. I was an oddity, a dropout, an Elephant Man.





CHAPTER

10

Mom and Dad knew Liz only from what they saw through the living room window as we would drive off. They didn’t ask after her much and so I spent two days numb and feeling more alone, surrounded by people I couldn’t reach and who couldn’t reach me. On the third morning Mom stood alone in the kitchen when I walked in. Dad was out for a breakfast meeting with an investment advisor. There was a big difference between Dad being out of the room and out of the house altogether. A feeling of the military at-ease command when you knew he wouldn’t drop in at any moment.

Mom was still so beautiful. She could have been a soap opera star. I didn’t want to talk about Liz. Didn’t know how to. “Do you think I should play tennis?” I said. I still hadn’t given Gabe the official answer.

“Oh, that’s your decision, honey.”

“I know that.” I didn’t know that at all. “But what do you think?”

“I think you have tremendous gifts. You can be a beautiful player. You are already, and it can open up a world of experiences to you.”

I nodded.

“I got to have an Olympic experience, travel to incredible places, compete, meet new people, all at a young age. I’d like for you to have experiences like that.”

“What do I have to give up?”

She made a sweet, sad smile. I’d say it was in response to my question but she always seemed to have a sweet, sad smile. She did take a very long time to answer, though. “A casual life.”

I knew what she meant. “Yeah,” I said.

“One year with Gabe sounds very reasonable.”

I nodded.

“Anton, if you stop fighting your father, if you support him, most of the difficulties will go away. It will be so much easier if you go along with it.”

“If I surrender to it.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Her voice didn’t get louder but it got harder. I didn’t know how much she loved Dad. It wasn’t the kind of love affair teen girls dream about but I guessed she loved him and was loyal to him and wouldn’t criticize him. “I mean work alongside him. Work together.”

“Together,” I repeated to my shoes.

“Anton, he wants what’s best for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t you want that also?”

“Who gets to determine what’s best for me?”

I think she had wanted not to tell me what to do, to let it be all my decision, but she was struggling with that and I had given her an out. “You asked my opinion. I think a year of dedicating yourself to tennis is what you should do.”

We heard steps in the hallway. Panos was slapping his shoes on the hardwood extra loud as a courtesy to let us know he was coming. We waited the few seconds in silence to let him come.