Trophy Son(22)

“You have information on people?”

“Do a web search on the phrase ‘tennis has a steroid problem.’ A site will come up that collects all the information. Players deny it, of course.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a small community of professionals in this business. I worked in baseball a lot of years. In my opinion, tennis players need the leg-up much more than baseball players, but there are far fewer players in tennis with enough money to get on a Cadillac program. Lots more money in baseball. So lots more steroids.”

“Jesus Christ.” I was a babe. Not yet eighteen. People around me were taking life-altering drugs to make a career, for world fame and millions of dollars. If I were still in school, I’d be studying for a history test, trying to figure out how to get a girl to take her pants off for me. Real kid problems. Not this.

“Sorry to tell it all to you this way, Anton. You’re going pro. It’s a conversation we knew was coming sooner or later.”

“Who’s we?”

“Gabe,” he said. “Your dad.”

I was too weak to nod. I just closed my eyes and lay motionless.

Bobby put his hand on my head. It was gentle. Surprisingly so, the way a bear is surprisingly gentle with cubs. I looked over at him in his too-small T-shirt, hair in a ponytail and his tan, meaty hand. He said, “It’s a sort of running joke in tennis that at the end of these tournaments it should be the doctor up on the podium, not the player. Which doctor came up with the best cocktail of recovery drugs.”

“I hadn’t heard that one,” I said.

“Yeah. Not such a good joke, I guess. Anyway, I know most of these guys. These doctors. Think about it.” He patted my head a couple times.

“My dad wants me to think about it? Gabe?”

He waited a moment to answer. “They do.” He sounded like a guilty man. “I’m sorry, Anton. It’s the way it is. All of life is a trade-off. You get to be famous, see the world, get the girls, make lots of money. But you have to put some crap in your body.” He took his hand back. “Not a terrible trade, really.”





CHAPTER

16

Dad kept on smacking the side of his wineglass with a fork long after the room had gone quiet. We were at a birthday dinner for Mom with our family and a dozen friends at Merion Cricket Club. The party was on the porch dining room overlooking the great lawn that was used for grass tennis and sometimes cricket matches. Built in the late 1800s, the club looked like an English country estate. Little had changed since the time umbrellas were called parasols and the members arrived by horse and carriage.

When Dad was certain all eyes were on him and there had been plenty of time for dramatic effect, he rose up above us and lifted his palms like an evangelical. “Welcome,” he said. He and Mom were one table over from Panos and me.

Everyone murmured something in response.

“What a day,” he said. “What a day.” More pause. More effect. He could have been one of the great dictators. It’s as though he studied old footage of Mussolini, making a short declarative statement then the silent, affirmative head nods as he scanned the audience back and forth, bathing in the triumph of the words. “My beautiful wife is fifty today.” He turned to her. “More beautiful today than ever.” He cupped his hand over her ear and the side of her head. “We’ve had such a beautiful life, such magic together.”

“Oh, barf,” said Panos in my ear.

I had to stare at my lap. Panos kept watching because he wasn’t close to laughter. He really was nauseated. Dad always made these over-the-top toasts that were total bullshit. No connection to anything that we are. It was plausible that he and Mom were negotiating a divorce settlement on the drive over and he’d have made the same toast. No matter what traumas or toxic events were happening in our lives, the toast cleared it away for him. So let it be toasted, so let it be written, so let it be real. If never mentioned by him, then it wasn’t official, not even acknowledged and didn’t count as a part of our family history. He dialed it up ten times more when people other than family were around.

I know his actual words were fine and I sound cynical, but you never had to live with him.

The toast went on too long and when it was over Panos said, “Let’s get a drink at the bar.”

Nobody ever checked ID at the club, especially when parents were around. We gave Mom and Dad a wink and a wave, two brothers off to do wholesome, brotherly things. They smiled back and we walked to the Cricket Bar, dim with a low fire, dark wood panels, dark carpets, soft lighting. It felt like the quarters on a ship of a nineteenth-century monarch. The bar was empty except for the bartender so we sat and got two beers.

“When do you leave for the ski trip?” I said to Panos.

“The twenty-second,” he said.

I nodded, said nothing.

“Wish you could come,” he said.

There was no prohibitive reason. Except Dad. Panos got to go to high school, go to college, take ski trips where he might twist his knee or bruise his shoulder. He even got to play tennis. He played doubles on his college team, one of the kids I might have hustled for $500 five years earlier. He went to Pepperdine, a gorgeous college campus in California, far from Main Line Philadelphia. “Me too,” I said.

“You’re knocking on the door now, Anton. All the work you put in, even if it doesn’t turn into something big, it’s an experience you have that you can tuck away and you’re still a teenager. But it looks like it’s going to turn into something.”