Trophy Son(33)

We walked to a toilet stall. One official handed me a cup with the cap off and held the stall door open. I peed in the cup, handed it back and they sealed it up. We all signed the paperwork on the clipboard and that was that.

They tested at lots of tournaments. It was random which ones. After a match the loser is tested. If you keep winning, you get the test after the finals. Croatia was my fourth test while on the drugs. Made me so damn nervous.





PART II

maybe … the gypsy lied

—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN





CHAPTER

21

I was nineteen years old. Plenty old enough to vote. Plenty old enough to fight. I was at Wimbledon, holding a world ranking near thirty, trying to move up, and Wimbledon was the place where every player wanted it a little more. It had tradition to the point of stuffiness so players simultaneously wanted to be accepted and also to stuff it right back to them by winning their damn tournament.

I’d won three tournaments, smaller ones, but had never gone deep at a major. I was rolling at Wimbledon and rolled right into Kovalchuk in the semifinals, our first meeting since I had pushed him at the Miami Open.

In Miami, the feeling had been electric, the crowd had been with me, my adrenaline surging, and I had put it all to good use, a man possessed.

Wimbledon was different. I was in possession of myself. I didn’t go for big, risky shots like a player hoping to pull off an upset. I was calm, even steely, played my regular game the way I’d play it against anyone. The crowd was neutral and hushed the way Wimbledon crowds are. The match was two professionals, focused, lining up against each other in quiet fury.

He beat me in five sets, but I knew he was more afraid of me after that match. When we shook hands at the net I could see that he felt he’d beaten me for the last time, that I would run him down like a racehorse on the last stretch when his ears go flat back and the ground is a blur underneath. Ilya would watch me go by, helpless. I was fourteen years younger. He had to know someone was coming for him.

I didn’t think much about getting caught myself then because nineteen-year-olds believe in invincibility and immortality, or at least they aren’t conscious of the truth, but eventually someone would have to come defeat me, kill me. Of course they would.

After the match, I saw Mom and Dad for dinner. We went to a restaurant which we never did until the tournament was over for me.

“Anton, how are you feeling, honey? Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the room to lie down?”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“Your muscles must be getting tight.”

“I’m good.”

Dad drank his wine and said, “He could play another five sets right now, dear.”

Mom travelled to all the majors, but that’s only four tournaments each year so it was uncommon for her to be at the post-match meal. Dad had a near-photographic memory when it came to recounting the match, remembering exactly when certain points happened, even going shot by shot through the point. I guessed it was an expression of love. Getting through the commentary without acting like a disinterested teenage brat was a special challenge.

“Well, we’ll get you back to the room early for some rest. Maybe we can watch a movie together?”

“Sure,” I said. I ate steak with potatoes and water.

I didn’t feel that close to Mom then. I loved her, she loved me, but she took a backseat in my tennis life and tennis was nearly the totality of me. Her role as co-parent, let alone primary parent, ended by the time I was six years old, and I resented her for signing over her place with me so easily. From my perspective, it seemed too easy.

“Do you feel like drama or comedy?” she said.

“Drama,” I said. I didn’t care, but if I said I didn’t care then conversation about which type of movie would go on another ten minutes.

“Oh, good, me too. I looked through the on-demand menu and there are some great ones.”

Dad ate. When we weren’t talking about tennis at the table, he got his bites in.

If I were one of the millions of kids living in a home below the poverty line, or living in a country where my family, friends and I were on the run from genocidal warriors, then I would understand my unhappiness, could draw a straight line from poverty and genocide to despair.

I looked across to two loving parents dedicated to me, who loved me in their ways. I looked down at a $45 steak. Only a very selfish and bad person would feel less than fortunate. Less than happy.

But a person is happy in his life only if he finds meaning in it, and meaning in life is positively correlated with choice in life. While I wasn’t conscious of that fact then, I suffered from it unknowingly.





CHAPTER

22

I clicked through photos of Ana with Ryan Hall walking the red carpet in Los Angeles for the premier of her movie. There were about twenty photos and in most of them his hand was on the lowest part of her lower back. Ryan Hall had a part in the same film but Ana was the star. He had the same agent as Ana and the damned agent kept plopping them in the same films together. Apparently agents did that, Ana had explained to me.

She had told me over the phone about Ryan. Nice guy to work with, good to read lines with, fun to get a drink with while filming in a small-town location, but she never mentioned him as a boyfriend, all evidence in my web browser to the contrary.