Trophy Son(18)

“So, that’s very good.”

“It’s one dimensional. I’m one dimensional.”

Ford watched me.

“If I win a match, a tournament, I don’t have anyone to share it with. Not really. Gabe and I will high-five and talk about tactical points. Same with Dad. Mom will say congratulations and Panos is away. The best I can do is go up to my room and talk about it with the dust jacket of a Philip Roth novel.”

Ford smiled and looked at me. The piece of shit didn’t know where to go with this. I suppose it was possible he wanted to talk with me about developing a fuller self and some friendships but knew that’s not what Dad wanted. Or maybe he really believed his approach. In any event, it clicked for me that he wasn’t helping me, he was helping me play more tennis. He was just as invested in my winning as Gabe and Dad.

He never once engaged me, challenged me in a way that would lead to discovery. All he ever tried to do was calm me down.

I began to resent Dr. Ford. He was another connection to nothing and our meetings became just an obligation for me. Maybe it was doomed with Ford from the start. I had always been suspicious of his being just an emissary from Dad so I was cautious, and you get out of these things only what you put in. I held on to my consciousness of the deal I had willingly struck and on to my books.





CHAPTER

13

My second serve hit an inch inside the corner of the service box. It was loaded with spin and it kicked wide so by the time it was as deep as the baseline it was twelve feet off the court. My opponent in the semis had turned his shoulders to scramble wide but never got close and bowed his head.

Then he straightened up and walked toward the deuce court. I saw him remove despair from his face and replace it with something else. “Long,” he said.

I froze. I stared at him but he wouldn’t look at me. He kept walking to the deuce court to get ready to return serve again.

“Bullshit,” I said under my breath. I saw the ball clearly in and I knew he did too because I saw just as clearly the moment he made up his mind to cheat. There were no linespeople in the semis of a juniors tournament. It was the honor system.

It was a clay court tournament at a country club in Westchester, New York. The courts were right alongside the Long Island Sound. Boats of many shapes and sizes clung to moorings and dutifully pointed into the wind, geese climbed from the marshy beaches up to the outskirts of the club lawns and honked like damaged trumpets until a man chased them away by opening and closing an umbrella. Club members on their way out for a sail would pause by the courts to watch then fly off like the hundreds of seagulls around us.

He stood behind the baseline twirling his racket until enough time passed that he had to look at me. “Deuce,” he said.

“Let me see the mark,” I said.

“It was two inches out, at least,” he said.

“Let’s see it.”

I walked around the net and he walked back over to the service box of the ad court. The court was swept before the match and this was only the third game so there were very few ball marks. None was two inches outside the corner.

I saw he was looking hard as he approached. I’m long and work to shorten my steps for my tennis footwork, but he naturally moved in quick, short steps like a small dog. Good for tennis movement. “Where’s the mark?” I said.

“There wouldn’t be one,” he said. “It hit the sideline tape but it hit two inches long.”

If a ball hits the tape, the ball is wide enough that usually there is still a small edge mark in the clay around the tape. A ball off the tape also takes a different bounce. Neither of these happened. There was a ball mark right inside the corner of the service box. I circled it using the frame of my racket. “That’s my mark.”

“Sorry, it’s not. It hit the tape back here.” He was owning the lie and feeling more confident about it. He knew he’d already gotten away with it.

I stared at him and he shrugged his shoulders. I wanted to grab the hair on the back of his head and scrape his face across the court. He was trying to take something important from me.

He shrugged again to say this wasn’t his problem and walked away to return serve. I walked back to the baseline on my side of the court and I murdered the ball, as hard as I’d ever hit a serve, four times in a row, all four out. Game to the cheater. The first service game I’d lost the entire tournament.

I sat at the changeover. I took a towel in my hands and started to lean my face into it, then stopped because I didn’t want to show how rattled I was. I sat frozen with the towel across my lap and my hands over it, eyes straight ahead while I tried different conversations with myself to get calm again. It went something like this:

“He fucking cheated me.”

“Get it together. It’s one game.”

“He fucking cheated and he’ll cheat again.”

“You’re twice the player. Play conservative. Beat him.”

“You’re telling me I need to change my game because he’s shrinking the court in half. This is bullshit.”

“These are the moments that test us. You’re too good to play this guy straight up. This makes it interesting. Get focused and kick his ass.”

“Fuck him.”

“That’s right. Fuck him. Do it on the court.”