Trophy Son(43)

“He’s in?”

“It’s early, but he wants to be. We sort of mapped out a plan. Do a short run off Broadway, then a six-month run on Broadway.”

“And you’ll star in it?”

“Writer, director, actor.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Writer and director are the ones I care about. Actor is the one everyone else cares about, so I get to write and direct only if I act too. That sells the tickets.”

“You sound like you don’t want to act,” I said.

“The acting part is good. No one should complain about being in the movies or on stage, so I’m grateful but acting is about ten percent of what I want to do and right now the acting is going well enough that I can use it as a platform to break into these other areas. In thirty years, I won’t be so in demand. There aren’t many Meryl Streeps out there staying busy over the decades.”

Our worlds were different but our problems were the same. Our culture made alluring careers of child games, then abruptly cut off the oxygen to those careers when we were barely more than kids.

She said, “I don’t think I could be Meryl and I don’t want to be. I want to be more like Amanda Peet.”

“You’re a much bigger star than Amanda Peet.”

“She’s a successful playwright. I love writing. In fifty years, I can still do what I love.”

My face betrayed something. Envy, maybe. The pain of a direct hit. I said, “That’s the dream.” I was twenty-four. I could be out of tennis in a few years, ten at the extreme most. Fifty years more of life, in or out of tennis, was incomprehensible.

“How’s tennis going?”

How deep to go into my response? She was safe, and wise too, but I wanted her to love me, not heal me. “I am reborn a tennis player.”

“What does that mean?”

“I should just have Minkoff send you my file.”

“You’re seeing him still?”

“I am, he’s great. Thank you.”

She smiled.

I said, “It means I haven’t been very focused on tennis the last few years but I’m going to commit myself now. I’d like to feel that I’ve done one thing great, and I do only one thing. So that’s why I’m reborn. I haven’t figured out what my version of writing and directing is.”

We ordered salads, entrees and a bottle of wine. The waiter was attentive but didn’t try to put on any kind of performance for us. These kinds of restaurants are very careful with celebrity clients.

When the waiter left, Ana said, “Have you thought about what you might do after tennis?”

“Every time I set my mind to that I draw such a blank that I terrify myself. It always ends with an image of me as a listless, pathetic loser at age thirty-five.”

It occurred to me that this was not the way to woo her, but she laughed and said, “That would never be you. You’re too smart. Thoughtful.”

I tasted the wine, then asked the waiter to pour.

Ana said, “Coaching?”

“No, I don’t think so. There are great players who retired, fed up with tennis and never imagined coaching and are back in the game coaching now, but I’d do that only as a last resort. If everything else were a dead end.”

She said, “Are you happy?”

Good question. I hadn’t put it to an up or down vote in a while, a simple summation. Probably because it’s not so simple, nor is it the same day to day. “No.” I paused, then said, “I’m not unhappy either, really. And I think I can be happy. If I get a few things right.”

“An optimist.”

“I’m out from underneath my dad. I’m myself now, so that’s a good start.” The salads came. Food and drink are good props to reset eye contact and posture naturally. I could have confessed my steroid use, how it was a sacrifice I hated but made with certainty. I think I held back from fear. Maybe she would see it as too dark and unforgivable. Instead I said, “Are you happy?”

She took her time finishing a bite of salad then said, “I am. Now.”

“You were not when?”

“When my uncle was molesting me. When my mother knew and did nothing about it.”

Wow. It was an abrupt and frank confession. She could let a guy know information like that is on the way. A small preamble. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m better. It took a lot of time, effort, but I’m better.” She sipped her wine. “Some people survive terrible experiences then say that even though it was terrible, they’re glad they went through it, wouldn’t trade it, because it made them who they are and they’ve gotten to like themselves. I can understand that but in my case I would trade it away in a second. I would trade away some of the goodness of who I am if I could trade away all the times he abused me. All the times my mother pretended.”

We all have problems. Many people would say I was emotionally abused as a child, but there was a difference between bad and severe and I knew it. “Where is your uncle now?”

“Out of my life.”

“Your mother?”

“It’s cordial but empty. We talk on the phone about two times a year.”

We were quiet for a long time. When the entrees came we talked about lighter things. Good movies to see. Hotels and museums in different cities that we liked. The kind of things we’d only ever done with other people but that I’d like to do with her. Had imagined doing with her many times.